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Trump Russia Tag

President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that his legal team reached out to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office after BuzzFeed dropped a supposed bombshell that Trump told former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. Giuliani said that both sides "agreed a significant portion of it was false."

Alleged prostitute Anastasia Vashukevich, also known as Nastya Rybka,was detained last year in Thailand on charges related to soliciting for sex and conspiracy to solicit.  At the time of her arrest and subsequent plea, she claimed to have video and audio tape evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 U. S. presidential election. She has now retracted that claim and apologized for making a false claim.  It's not clear why she initially made this claim, but reports suggest that she was trying to leverage this purported "evidence" into a lesser charge/sentence.

We have been here sooooooo many times before. A media outlet publishes an article based on anonymous sources providing information that is so vague it cannot be proven or disproven, but which purports to (1) implicate Trump in a crime, (2) show collusion with the Russians, and/or (3) raise enough suspicions to justify a 3-5 day news cycle.

Attorney General William Barr said that he plans to tell the Senate during his confirmation hearings this week that he believes Special Counsel Robert Mueller should finish his Russia investigation. From NBC News:
"I believe it is vitally important that the Special Counsel be allowed to complete his investigation," Barr plans to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to prepared remarks obtained by NBC News.

Two supposed bombshell reports about Trump-Russia collusion rocked the media news cycle this weekend, but as all of the other bombshells dropped by the media, there is a lot less to the reports than the hype suggests. The hype has given rise to a Manchurian Candidate accusation against Trump, that he is an agent of some sort of the Russians, with Vladimir Putin his controller.

One key part of the so-called Steele Dossier on Donald Trump was a reference to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen attending a summer 2016 collusive meeting in Prague to seek Russian help for Trump's campaign. It's something Cohen repeatedly has denied, including under oath. Cohen not only denies such a meeting, he denies EVER having been to Prague. While Cohen has been prosecuted for some lies under oath, he has not been charged -- so far -- with lying about Prague.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller claims that Paul Manafort, the former chairman for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, lied to the FBI and investigators "on a variety of subject matters," which means he broke his plea agreement. NBC News continued:
Manafort, 69, was convicted of eight counts of tax evasion and bank fraud in August. In September, he agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation when he pleaded guilty to two new counts and admitted his guilt to 10 counts outstanding from the earlier trial in Virginia.

As the #NeverTrump right joins forces with the progressive left to call on acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to recuse himself from the Mueller probe, President Trump appeared on Fox News Sunday and voiced his support for Whitaker's decisions regarding the investigation. Asked if he would be "okay" with any attempt by Whitaker to "limit or curtail" the Mueller investigation, Trump responded, "Look, it's gonna be up to him."

Friday, a Russian woman was charged for allegedly interfering in US elections, including the 2018 midterms. The Department of Justice indicated that the criminal charges are not indicative of interference to the degree that electoral outcomes were swayed. Elena Khusyaynova, 44, is accused of attempting to "sow discord", "as part of a conspiracy that exploited thousands of social media accounts and emails that claimed to be owned by U.S. residents, authorities said," reports CNBC.