Section: POLITICO – U.S. Edition (USA)
Russia investigators probe 2016 GOP platform fight
U.S. investigators are focusing on an enduring mystery of the 2016 election: whether Trump campaign officials made the Republican Party platform more friendly to Russia as part of some broader effort to collude with the Kremlin, according to congressional records and people familiar with the probes.Congressional investigators have interviewed...
Podesta Group labors to remake itself after founder’s exit
Days after Tony Podesta shook Washington by stepping down as chairman of his namesake lobbying firm, the Podesta Group is laboring to remake itself as some staffers and clients eye the exits.Podesta announced his resignation on Monday, hours after an indictment was unsealed charging Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, with violating foreign...
Podesta’s downfall sends shock waves through K Street
Washington lobbyists who represent foreign powers have taken comfort for decades in the fact that the Justice Department rarely goes after them for potentially breaking the law. That all changed on Monday.The news of Tony Podesta’s resignation from his namesake firm and indictment of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates sent K Street scrambling, as...
Trump and allies dismiss Papadopoulos as the ‘coffee boy’
President Donald Trump and his allies fought back Tuesday against special counsel Robert Mueller’s wave of indictments against former campaign aides, dismissing an ex-foreign policy adviser who cut a plea deal with prosecutors as a “liar” and nothing more than the “coffee boy.”The White House was rocked on Monday after Mueller’s team...
Trump: ‘Podesta running from his firm’ has ‘Dems in a dither’
President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that Monday’s “biggest story” was Democratic lobbyist and Podesta Group founder Tony Podesta “running from his firm.”Podesta, whose brother John was chairman of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, announced his resignation after coming under investigation by special...
Inside White House, a sense of both danger and relief in Mueller’s first moves
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s first charges in his sprawling Russia investigation were a one-two blow that partially caught the White House off guard but also offered a measure of relief, according to several of President Donald Trump’s aides, advisers, lawyers and others close to the case. The indictments of former campaign...
The sudden fall of Washington’s ultimate powerbroker
Tony Podesta has epitomized the height of Washington influence and wealth for two decades.He has a home in Washington a few doors down from Barack Obama, a villa in Italy, an apartment in New York and a multi-million-dollar art collection. He’s been a K Street rainmaker, holding fundraisers for the party’s top elected officials and...
The deep roots of Trump’s Manafort problem
It was clear from the beginning that Paul Manafort was problematic.When Donald Trump hired him in March 2016 to help him tamp down a delegate revolt at the Republican convention, Manafort’s distasteful associations were widely known in Washington. He hadn’t worked for an American political candidate since Bob Dole, in 1996, and he had...
Trump campaign aides charged in Mueller’s Russia probe
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian election interference has dramatically escalated, with authorities indicting former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and unsealing a plea deal with a foreign policy adviser who lied about meeting with Russia-linked contacts. The moves are the...
Where Is Bob Mueller Headed Next?
After five and a half months of speculation, anticipation and, in some cases, dread, Americans on Monday learned of the first charges in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign. Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman and a longtime Republican strategist, along with...
