Federal prosecutors in Washington recently began investigating the 2017 leak of classified information to reporters at The New York Times and The Washington Post, and appear to be focusing on whether former FBI Director James Comey was involved, people with knowledge of the matter told the Times.
The Post and Times articles both mentioned a Russian government document that was obtained by Dutch intelligence officials and passed along to the FBI. The existence of the document and its collection method were both highly classified secrets. The document, which appeared to be part of a Russian disinformation campaign, played a role in Comey's decision to announce in July 2016 that the FBI did not plan on recommending Hillary Clinton face charges for her use of a private email server while secretary of state.
Typically, leaks of classified information are investigated as soon as they appear in the media, not several years later. It's unclear if there is a grand jury, the number of witnesses interviewed, or what prompted the investigation, although the timing raises the question of whether it is motivated by politics, the Times notes. Federal prosecutors in New York already investigated Comey after he asked his personal lawyer and friend Daniel Richman to give a Times reporter contents of the memo he wrote about his interactions with Trump. It was retroactively determined that the memo contained classified information, but prosecutors declined to charge Comey with a crime. Catherine Garcia
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has been re-elected to a second term with 50.64 percent of the vote, results released Tuesday reveal.
It's been five months since Afghans voted in that election, with concerns of fraud and mechanical error forcing recounts. Yet supporters of Ghani's rival Abdullah Abdullah have so far refused to accept the results and have even proposed creating an alternative government, putting a peace deal between the Taliban and the U.S. in question, The Washington Post reports.
Ghani received a majority of the vote, meaning there won't be a runoff in the election. Abdullah meanwhile earned 39.5 percent of the vote, according to Afghanistan’s election commission. Abdullah's backers say that commission was biased in favor of Ghani, and former vice president of Ghani turned top Abdullah supporter Abdul Rashid Dostum said last week that "if they announce a government based on fraud, we will announce a parallel government," per The New York Times.
The September vote was marred by Taliban attacks aimed at destabilizing the election, though President Trump's refusal to hold peace talks scheduled for that time eventually allowed the vote to proceed. U.S.-Taliban negotiations have since continued, and both sides said a few days ago they agreed to a conditional deal. But uncertainty in the government could jeopardize the next step after a U.S.-Taliban agreement, which involved negotiations between Afghanistan's government and Taliban leaders. Kathryn Krawczyk
President Trump may have received the impeachment acquittal he hoped for, but that doesn't mean he's satisfied. Indeed, Politico reports, he now appears to be testing the limits of executive power through methods like firing White House staffers who testified against him during House proceedings or weighing in on active Justice Department cases over Twitter.
Per Politico, he's received little resistance from his attorneys, like White House Counsel Pat Cipollone who led Trump's defense during the Senate trial, or congressional Republicans. That means, in the eyes of some analysts, the presidency may continue to grow more powerful.
"It is beyond anything the presidency has achieved yet and beyond anything Nixon could have imagined," Michael Gerhardt, a professor of jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina School of Law, told Politico, referring to the 36th president of the United States. "There is literally no way to hold the president accountable in Pat Cipollone's worldview."
Cipollone's allies, on the other hand, reportedly believe the arguments Cipollone made during the trial simply sought to maintain and protect Trump's ability to exercise the same amount of executive authority as President Obama did during his tenure in the Oval Office. Read more at Politico. Tim O'Donnell
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is apparently letting the progressives get to him.
The billionaire and 2020 candidate is set to unveil his plan for regulating the financial industry on Tuesday, and as The New York Times reports, it "features ideas that wouldn't be out of place" for 2020 candidates Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Diverging from his past criticism of Wall Street regulation, Bloomberg will propose tighter oversight rules that touch on hot-button topics such as student loans, per the Times.
In his Tuesday announcement, Bloomberg will propose a financial transactions tax of 0.1 percent, as well as create a Justice Department team devoted to corporate crime, the Times reports. That tax plan is "remarkable similar" to one that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has co-sponsored, the Times writes. Bloomberg also calls for strengthening the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Warren established during former President Barack Obama's administration, by "expanding its jurisdiction to include auto lending and credit reporting."
Bloomberg's plan stops far short of Sanders and Warren's pledges to cancel student loan debt, but does suggest putting student loan borrowers "into income-based repayment schemes and capping payments," per the Times. There's no sign of Sanders and Warren's pledges to break up big banks, or Warren's call for totally "transforming the private equity industry."
Read more about the plan at The New York Times. Kathryn Krawczyk
The jury in Harvey Weinstein's rape trial is about to begin deliberating.
After the defense and the prosecution in the disgraced movie mogul's trial delivered their closing arguments at the end of last week, Judge James Burke on Tuesday will give jurors instructions before they start to deliberate, USA Today reports.
The sexual assault and rape charges against Weinstein center around the allegations of two women: Jessica Mann, who alleges Weinstein raped her in 2013, and Mimi Haleyi, who alleges Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in 2006. Four other Weinstein accusers testified during the trial, while additional witnesses were brought in to back up the accusers' accounts. Testimony from Sopranos actress Annabella Sciorra that Weinstein raped her in 1993 or 1994 could support the predatory sexual assault charge.
Weinstein pleaded not guilty, and his defense has argued the encounters with his accusers were consensual. His lawyers have pointed to the fact that Haleyi and Mann maintained relationships with Weinstein after he allegedly assaulted them, and they cited friendly email exchanges with him in court. During her closing argument, lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi told jurors that Weinstein "made sure he had contact with the people he was worried about as a little check to make sure that one day, they wouldn't walk out from the shadows and call him exactly what he was: an abusive rapist."
Meanwhile, Weinstein attorney Donna Rotunno in her closing argument asked jurors to use their "New York City common sense" and ignore the "gut feeling" they may have had coming into the case to rely only on the evidence presented. CBS analyst Rikki Klieman observed Tuesday the jury "may take a long time because there's a lot of evidence in this case."
Weinstein himself did not testify during the trial. If the jury, which consists of five women and seven men, convicts him of predatory sexual assault, he could receive life in prison. Brendan Morrow
The White House Correspondents' Dinner's break from comedians turned out to be short-lived.
Kenan Thompson will host the 2020 White House Correspondents' Dinner in April, where Hasan Minhaj will perform as the featured entertainer, the White House Correspondents' Association announced Tuesday.
This is a pivot back to the show's regularly-scheduled programming of having a comedian perform at the yearly gathering of journalists. Last year, in a break from this tradition, the featured speaker was instead historian Ron Chernow.
The year before, comedian Michelle Wolf had headlined and sparked some outrage with her roast, as when she joked that then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders "burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye." The New York Times reports Chernow's appearance in 2019 "was a direct consequence" of Wolf's controversial performance.
But the White House Correspondents' Association is bringing back the comedy this year, with Minhaj returning after performing the year before Wolf. WHCA President Jonathan Karl said on Tuesday per the Times, "I'd argue that humor is more important now than ever."
Still, although it had been a tradition for sitting presidents to attend the White House Correspondents' Dinner, it seems unlikely that Trump will go in April after skipping the event every year of his presidency so far. Last year, Trump briefly teased that he could potentially attend for the first time, only to not do so, calling the event "negative" and "boring." Brendan Morrow