Days after Special Counsel Robert Mueller accused Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman, of violating his plea agreement, Trump is signaling that he could receive a pardon.
Trump told The New York Post in an interview Wednesday that he has "never discussed" pardoning Manafort, who in August was convicted of five counts of tax fraud and two counts of bank fraud and who in September pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy. Manafort agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign's possible involvement with Russian election interference. That being said, Trump added of a possible pardon, "I wouldn't take it off the table. Why would I take it off the table?"
Mueller earlier this week said that Manafort violated the terms of his plea deal by lying to federal investigators about "a variety of subject matters," per The New York Times. The Times also reported that Manafort's lawyer briefed Trump's lawyers about his discussions with investigators, which "inflamed tensions with the special counsel's office." Trump's comments about a possible pardon came just hours after he refused to speak about Manafort in an interview with The Washington Post, saying he did not want to "get in the middle of the whole thing." Brendan Morrow
Jason Reitman considers himself "the first Ghostbusters fan," and it's only fitting that he will direct and co-write a new movie set in the original universe.
"I wanted to make a movie for all the other fans," he told Entertainment Weekly. "This is the next chapter in the original franchise. It is not a reboot. What happened in the '80s happened in the '80s, and this is set in the present day." His father, Ivan Reitman, directed the original 1984 movie, and will serve as producer of his son's project.
The movie will begin filming in the next few months, and is expected to be released in the summer of 2020, Sony Pictures said. Reitman isn't sharing any information on the plot or if any of the original actors will make appearances, because he wants "the film to unwrap like a present. We have a lot of wonderful surprises and new characters for the audience to meet." Catherine Garcia
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) indicated on Tuesday he's seriously considering a run for president in 2020, announcing that he plans on traveling to early-primary states over the next few weeks to meet with voters.
Brown will visit Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina on what he's calling the Dignity of Work Tour. After a stop in Cleveland on Jan. 30, Brown will head to Iowa on Jan. 31, and will visit the other three states in February. "Some national Democrats, they've created this sort of binary choice that you speak to the progressive base or you talk to working class voters of all races," Brown told reporters. "I don't think it's an either or. I think you do both. That's how you win the heartland. That's how we won in Ohio. That's what I hope the narrative is for all the presidential candidates on the Democratic side."
Brown made the announcement just hours after Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) revealed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert she is launching a presidential exploratory committee. Catherine Garcia
Should the government shutdown still be in effect on Jan. 28 when tax filing season begins, the Internal Revenue Service will recall 46,000 furloughed employees, nearly 60 percent of the workforce, to handle tax returns and refunds.
The employees will not be paid. Last week, the Trump administration said it would go against precedent and still process tax refunds, despite the shutdown. The IRS on Tuesday said refund money will be drawn from a "permanent, indefinite refund appropriation" that can be accessed even in the midst of a shutdown, Politico reports.
The IRS will not be conducting audits or accepting applications by organizations for tax-exempt status, and a limited number of employees will be available to answer telephones. Tony Reardon, head of the National Treasury Employees Union, told Politico he is concerned that highly-trained IRS employees who are forced to work without pay will leave the agency. "Who will replace these employees after seeing how poorly they are treated by the federal government as their employer?" he asked. Catherine Garcia
While on the witness stand Tuesday, the onetime right-hand man of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman said the alleged drug lord once paid a $100 million bribe to former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Guzman is accused of running the Sinaloa Cartel, and was extradited from Mexico to the United States in 2017 to face charges of trafficking heroin, cocaine, and other drugs. In a Brooklyn federal courtroom, witness Alex Cifuentes admitted under cross-examination by Guzman's lawyer that he told prosecutors in 2016 that the bribe had been arranged. He revealed to them that it was Peña Nieto who first asked for $250 million, and the bribe was paid in October 2012, two months before Peña Nieto was sworn in as president.
Cifuentes also said that during a meeting last year, he told prosecutors he was no longer sure how much was paid to Peña Nieto in bribes, and Guzman told him after Peña Nieto received the money, he sent a message to Guzman that he didn't have to live in hiding anymore. Peña Nieto served as president from December 2012 to November 2018, and has denied ever taking bribes from people involved in the drug trade. Cifuentes is one of about 12 witnesses who have made deals with U.S. prosecutors in exchange for their testimony against Guzman, Reuters reports. Catherine Garcia
In a new court document filed Tuesday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office listed what investigators believe are lies Paul Manafort told since he agreed last year to be a cooperating witness.
Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman, agreed to a plea deal in September so he would not have to go on trial in Washington, D.C., on conspiracy charges. In the heavily-redacted document, an investigator with Mueller's office writes that Manafort was "advised that lying to the government could subject him to prosecution." Last month, Mueller filed a document saying he believed Manafort had been lying, and the plea deal is now void.
The latest document states that Manafort lied about his dealings with Ukrainian business associate Konstantin Kilimnik, his contacts with members of the Trump administration, and a $125,000 payment he made in June 2017 to a redacted name. His lawyers have claimed that if Manafort gave any false statements, it was purely by accident. Catherine Garcia
A Canadian businessman looking to avoid liquidation just got his hopes dashed by a font.
When Gerald McGoey's company went bankrupt at the end of 2017, a court tried to use his homes to pay back $5.6 million in debt to creditors, Ars Technica details. McGoey wasn't having that, and said he had papers from 1995 and 2004 showing his wife and children owned the homes.
The document from 1995 was written in the typeface Cambria, and the deed from 2004 was written in Calibri. Unfortunately for McGoey, those fonts were introduced by Microsoft Word in 2002 and 2007, respectively, as The Province describes.
It wasn't just some ordinary Microsoft aficionado who found the discrepancy, The Province says. The Ontario court brought in self-described "font detective" Thomas Phinney, who said "no one, other than a Microsoft employee, consultant or contract designer" could've used those typefaces at the time, per the court decision. McGoey's lawyers tried to argue they were misdated, but a judge still shredded McGoey's claim.
Calibri has a long history of tripping up schemers. When the infamous Panama Papers tied the Pakistani prime minister's children to some offshore companies, his daughter posted documents showing she was a trustee, not an owner of the companies. One problem: The Calibri-typed papers were dated before the font debuted.
These examples should teach would-be fraudsters a thing or two about typing out boldfaced lies. Kathryn Krawczyk
