WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says the conviction of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort on financial crimes is “a disgrace.”
But he hasn’t publicly reacted to former personal attorney Michael Cohen’s guilty pleas to felonies, including campaign finance violations he stated he carried out in coordination with Trump.
Manafort was convicted Tuesday in Virginia on charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential obstruction of justice. Cohen pleaded guilty in New York, saying he and Trump arranged the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and a former Playboy model to influence the election.
Trump told reporters in West Virginia that Manafort’s conviction “has nothing to do with Russian collusion.” Of Manafort’s crimes, he says: “It doesn’t involve me.”
NEWBURGH, N.Y. — A private jet carrying rapper Post Malone blew two tires during takeoff at a small New Jersey airport on Tuesday but made a safe emergency landing hours later in upstate New York, prompting the rapper to thank fans who prayed for him and diss those who “wished death” on him while he was in the air.
The face-tattooed singer/rapper, who had been headed to England, tweeted, “i landed guys.”
“Oh, my God, I hate flying in general. I don’t even know what to say, man. I’m shook,” he told the celebrity website TMZ on Facetime. “There was one hell of a team on that aircraft, and we’re here, we’re here on earth, and I need a beer, and I need some wine, at the same time, mixed together.”
Fans had gathered at New York Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, about 70 miles north of New York City, after hearing he was on board, and they cheered when the plane landed just before 4 p.m. The rapper was scheduled to perform at the Reading and Leeds Festival in England over the weekend, according to his website’s tour schedule.
“thank you for your prayers,” he posted on Twitter after Tuesday’s emergency landing. “can’t believe how many people wished death on me on this website.”
GREELEY, Colo. — Frank Rzucek Sr. leaned forward in a Colorado courtroom, weeping with his face in his hands as his son-in-law, just feet away, was told Tuesday he could face the death penalty if convicted of killing Rzucek’s daughter and two granddaughters.
Collecting himself, Rzucek glared as that son-in-law, Christopher Watts, was escorted back to jail.
The brief hearing came a day after court documents revealed that Watts told police that it was Rzucek’s daughter, Shanann Watts, who strangled the kids after he told her he wanted a separation.
Watts told police that he flew into a rage and strangled his wife, took the three bodies to a remote oil site, buried Shanann in a shallow grave and dumped the girls’ bodies inside nearby oil tanks.
Rzucek’s silent angst dominated Tuesday’s routine court hearing in which Christopher Watts, wearing an orange jail suit and cuffed at the wrists and ankle, stoically answered, “Yes sir,” as District Judge Marcelo Kopcow told him he could face life in prison or the death penalty if convicted of killing Shanann, 34, and their daughters Celeste, 3, and Bella, 4.
Intentionally or not, Microsoft has emerged as a kind of internet cop, thanks to its efforts to thwart Russian hackers.
The company’s announcement Tuesday that it disrupted fake internet domains mimicking conservative U.S. political institutions sparked confusion and alarm on Capitol Hill and led Russian officials to accuse the company of participating in an anti-Russian “witch hunt.”
Microsoft stands virtually alone among tech companies with its aggressive approach, which uses U.S. courts to fight computer fraud and seize hacked websites back from malicious perpetrators. In the process, it takes on a role that might look more like the job of government than a corporation.
In the case this week, the company did not just accidentally stumble onto a couple of harmless spoof websites. The discovery was part of an ongoing legal fight against Russian hackers that began in the summer before the 2016 presidential election and was part of a broader, decade-long battle to protect its brand from cybercrime.
“What we’re seeing in the last couple of months appears to be an uptick in activity,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, said in an interview this week. Microsoft says it caught these particular sites early and that there’s no evidence they were used in hacking attacks.
BERLIN — A 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard who lived quietly in New York City for decades was carried out of his home on a stretcher by federal agents and flown to Germany early Tuesday in what could prove to be the last U.S. deportation of a World War II-era war-crimes suspect.
Jakiw Palij’s expulsion, at President Donald Trump’s urging, came 25 years after investigators first accused Palij of lying about his wartime past to get into the U.S. But it was largely symbolic because officials in Germany have repeatedly said there is insufficient evidence to prosecute him.
Trump “made it very clear” he wanted Palij out of the country, and a new German government that took office in March brought “new energy” to expediting the matter, U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell said.
Eli Rosenbaum, the former head of the U.S. office investigating accused Nazi war criminals, said Palij’s removal “is a landmark victory in the U.S. government’s decades-long quest to achieve a measure of justice and accountability on behalf of the victims of Nazi inhumanity.”
Palij lived quietly in the U.S. for years, as a draftsman and then as a retiree, until nearly three decades ago when investigators found his name on an old Nazi roster and a fellow former guard spilled the secret that he was “living somewhere in America.”
From Associated Press