Monday, Sep 26th
Last update05:20:13 AM GMT
Political Glance
Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort helped a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine secretly funnel more than $2 million to two lobbying organizations in Washington, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Citing unidentified sources with knowledge of the effort, the AP reported that the $2.2 million in payments was concealed in order to mask the party’s efforts to influence U.S. lawmakers.
Gov. Chris Christie’s New Jersey tax collectors let Donald Trump off the hook for almost $25 million in back taxes, according to The New York Times. In 2010, New Jersey auditors had been working for years to collect overdue taxes—totaling nearly $30 million—owed by Trump’s casinos in the state.
New Jersey had pursued the issue aggressively for nearly six years, including at one point accusing the company of filing false reports with its casino regulators. But then, the Times reports, Christie took office, and the state agreed instead to accept just $5 million to settle the matter.
The State Department will release all of the work-related emails that the FBI recovered from Hillary Clinton’s private system, the department confirmed in a recent court filing, eliminating the possibility that the messages will remain secret.
However, it remains unsettled whether the full set of emails will be out before the presidential election on Nov. 8.
The thousands of messages will be released to Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that has filed numerous legal complaints over the former secretary of State’s email setup while in office, the department said. Judicial Watch, which routinely releases documents it obtains via open-records lawsuits, is expected to make the emails public.
An adviser to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump doubled down Tuesday on comments he made saying that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton should be shot for treason.
But New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro, a Republican who co-chairs Trump's national veterans' coalition, stressed that he was not saying someone should assassinate Clinton.
Former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, who resigned from the company in July after mounting allegations of sexual harassment, will advise Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for the upcoming presidential debates, The New York Times reports.
According to the Times, Ailes is helping Trump prepare for the first presidential debate against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, which is scheduled for Sept. 26.
North Carolina officials are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate key parts of the state's voter ID law blocked last month after a federal appeals court found that the measure intentionally targeted African-Americans.
Lawyers for the state filed an emergency application with Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday in an attempt to allow officials to conduct this November's election using the law's the photo ID requirement and reduce the number of early voting days from 17 to 10.
On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.
And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
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