The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: george stephanopolous
#EndorseThis: Preet Bharara Shreds Trump Defense Against Comey

#EndorseThis: Preet Bharara Shreds Trump Defense Against Comey

Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who shares with James Comey the honor of being fired by Donald Trump under highly questionable circumstances, sat a few rows behind the former FBI director when he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8. On Sunday, Bharara discussed that hearing with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, where his measured responses did not quite conceal his disdain for the president.

As a law enforcement veteran who has worked with both Comey and special counsel Robert Mueller, the former New York prosecutor laid out the critical facts revealed by Comey and placed them in context:

“You have uncontroverted evidence, from someone who is under oath, that on at least one occasion the President of the United States cleared the room of his vice president and his attorney general, and told his director of the FBI that he should essentially drop a case against his former national security adviser.

“And whether or not that is impeachable or indictable, that’s a very serious thing.”

Pressed by Stephanopoulos to say whether Trump indeed had obstructed justice, Bharara replied judiciously: “There’s absolutely evidence to begin a case” for obstruction. But, he added, “I think it’s important for all sorts of armchair speculators in the law to be clear that no one knows right now whether there is a provable case of obstruction… It’s also true that there’s no basis to say there’s no obstruction.”

But without additional evidence — such as tapes of their conversations — how would a jury determine whom to believe in a “he-said-he-said” such as this case?

Bharara permitted himself a tiny smile. “You look at the surrounding circumstances and the indicia of truthfulness,” he said. “And those things include contemporaneous statements to other people; they include the track record of the witness; they include whether one of the ‘he’s’ in the ‘he-said-he-said’ has a track record for lying or not, both on the air and in legal proceedings such as depositions — and I believe there is such a track record with respect to one of the parties.”

Now what could he mean by that?

h/t Raw Story

On Sunday News Shows, Trump’s Latest Russia Problem Almost Ignored

On Sunday News Shows, Trump’s Latest Russia Problem Almost Ignored

CNN’s Jake Tapper was the only Sunday show host on September 25 to discuss a report that American intelligence officials are probing Russian government ties to a man Trump has identified as a foreign policy adviser, Carter Page. This latest revelation is yet another missed opportunity by the Sunday political talk shows to feature investigative stories about Trump and his campaign over the past month.

On September 23, Yahoo! News’ Michael Isikoff reported that “U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials.” Among the problematic contacts Page has reportedly had with aides to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, is Igor Diveykin, who “is believed by U.S. officials to have responsibility for intelligence collected by Russian agencies about the U.S. election.” The article also quoted a Trump spokesperson calling Page an “‘informal foreign adviser’” to Trump.

In an interview with Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on CNN’s State of the Union, Tapper cited the Yahoo! News article and questioned Conway if the campaign had talked to Page about his meetings with Russian officials. Conway denied that Page was part of the Trump campaign at this time and said that he was not authorized to talk to Russia on the campaign’s behalf.

The other Sunday hosts — NBC’s Chuck Todd, CBS’ John Dickerson, Fox’s Chris Wallace, and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos — who interviewed Trump adviser Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s running mate Mike Pence, and Conway, respectively — all failed to question their Trump surrogate guests about the report. The only other mentions of the report on the Sunday shows were from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s surrogates, with Clinton running mate Tim Kaine alluding to the “news of this past week [that] shows us a whole series of very serious questions about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia” on CBS’ Face the Nation, and Clinton’s press secretary Brian Fallon mentioning Page on CNN’s Reliable Sources.

The near blackout of this story from the Sunday shows is turning into a familiar pattern regarding investigative reports on Trump. Over the past month, the Sunday political talk shows have repeatedly failed to feature new reporting that reflects poorly on Trump. On September 4, just days after The Washington Post broke the story that Trump’s foundation illegally gave a political donation in 2013 and that Trump paid the IRS a penalty for it, only CBS’ Dickerson brought it up; on other shows, guests were forced to mention it.

The next week, as they were all covering the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, every Sunday show completely ignored theNew York Daily News’ investigation that revealed Trump unethically accepted $150,000 in government aid after the attacks and that Trump bragged that one of his buildings was now the largest in the area just hours after the 9/11 attacks.

And just last week, the Sunday shows again mostly omitted new reporting on Trump, specifically the news that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was investigating Trump’s charitable foundation over concerns of impropriety and Kurt Eichenwald’s Newsweek report that detailed the “serious conflicts of interest and ethical quagmires” that would be present in the foreign policy of a President Trump due to his deep business ties to foreign countries and businesspeople.

The report on Page also follows Trump’s repeatedpraise of Putin, who he has called “highly respected within his own country and beyond,” later adding that if Putin “says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him.” Journalists have slammed Trump for his remarks, noting the country has targeted and murdered journalists.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters for America.

 IMAGE: Carter Page, a businessman identified by Donald Trump as a foreign policy adviser to his presidential campaign/TASS
ABC’s Stephanopoulos Grills Trump Campaign Chairman Over Trump’s Claim Of A ‘Rigged Election’

ABC’s Stephanopoulos Grills Trump Campaign Chairman Over Trump’s Claim Of A ‘Rigged Election’

Published with permission from Media Matters of America

From the August 4 edition of ABC’s Good Morning America:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (HOST): In that Fox News poll, it also shows that almost 70 percent of the voters thought that those comments about the Khan family were out of bounds. Why not apologize?

PAUL MANAFORT: Well, I think Mr. Trump has paid the respect. It’s just nobody’s acknowledging it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, he hasn’t apologized.

MANAFORT: What he said is that he respects and is totally sympathetic to the sacifices that family has made. And he’s talking about the son and he’s talking about the family. And, you know, beyond that I think it’s politics. I mean, the driving of what the right words are. He is appreciative of their efforts. But he receives them as part of something that’s a part of a bigger thing, which is the campaign and the issue of ISIS, and the issue of the mismanagement of foreign policy. That’s what he’s campaigning on. He’s not campaigning on the Khan family. He’s campaigning on the —

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, he’s hoping to move on without an apology?

MANAFORT: Well, no, he’s expressed his sympathy. He’s expressed his support for what the family is going through. I mean, it’s like the same thing we’re caught up in, what’s the difference between I support you and I endorse you? We quibble over words, but the sentiments are there. And I think the sentiments about what he feels towards that family and what they went through, he’s expressed. Just because he doesn’t say the words everyone wants, he said he is sorry for what they’ve gone through. But he keeps going back to the main issue and the main issue isn’t this family, it’s the main issue that caused the suffering of this family, which is the war in the Middle East, destabilization, and the policies of Obama and Clinton that caused them.

[…]

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of the messages that Mr. Trump has been putting out the last few days, he warned several times that this election is going to be rigged. Is that a real concern? Is it responsibly suggesting that the outcome of this election may not be legitimate?

MANAFORT: I mean he’s concerned about several things. I mean he’s concerned about the coverage of the election, which is part of the election process.

STEPHANOPOULOS: His opponents say he’s gotten $2 billion in free media.

MANAFORT: But, for example, the two conventions, when you look at the analysis of the coverage of the two conventions, the Republican convention got 12 times more negative coverage than the Democratic convention.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s not a rigged election.

MANAFORT: But that rigs the process if the messaging is one-sided. If the message is taking their narrative from one side of the campaign, that affects the messaging absolutely. Now do we think that we can overcome that, yes, we do. But at the same time, it’s a real issue to him.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And finally, you heard Jon Karl report on Reince Priebus, the chair of the RNC — he’s been a strong ally of Mr. Trump — is livid about his refusal to endorse Paul Ryan. Are we going to see an endorsement? Has he spoken with Mr. Priebus?

MANAFORT: Reince Priebus is a strong supporter of Donald Trump and a good friend and supporter of Paul Ryan and he’s been a bridge between the party and the campaign since Mr. Trump became the presumptive nominee in April. They’ve spoken several times in the last two days, they’re very good friends, we’re doing a lot of things together. You know, there’s a conflict within the Trump campaign. And we’ve sort of had a rule of not getting involved in primaries because it’s usually not a good situation for the presidential candidate. Of course, he’s going to work with Paul Ryan. Of course he’s tried to bridge the party together with Paul Ryan. But Ryan is also running against somebody who’s not going to win, but nonetheless is a strong supporter of Mr. Trump’s.

Screenshot via Good Morning America