Ahead of Michael Cohen’s testimony, read the original paper trail behind the campaign to build Europe’s tallest tower in Moscow — and how it played out alongside Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.



As a candidate, Donald Trump had a lot of praise for Vladimir Putin — and no business, he kept insisting, in Russia. These documents tell a different story.

When Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and longtime fixer, testifies before Congress this week, one topic that is likely to be front and center is his work on Trump Moscow, the over-the-top luxury real estate venture he helped spearhead leading up to the election.

The development, which was never built, has already become a focus for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion between Trump and Russia during the 2016 campaign. And when Cohen was convicted last November of lying to Congress, it was over his false testimony that the deal had fizzled in January 2016, well before Trump emerged as the Republican nominee.

BuzzFeed News is today publishing a cache of internal Trump Organization documents that lay bare the secret negotiations that continued long after Cohen claimed the deal had been abandoned. The documents, many of which have been exclusively obtained by BuzzFeed News, reveal that — despite Trump’s claim that the development was never more than a passing notion — the effort to get the tower built was long-running, detail-oriented and directly entwined with the ups and downs of his campaign.

As Trump went from rally to rally, vociferously denying any dealings in Russia, his representatives, Michael Cohen and his associate Felix Sater, worked with Trump Organization lawyers and even Ivanka Trump to push forward negotiations to build a 100-story edifice just miles from the Kremlin. The fixers believed they needed Putin’s support to pull off the lucrative deal, and they planned to use Trump’s public praise for him to help secure it. At the same time, they plotted to persuade Putin to openly declare his support for Trump’s candidacy. “If he says it we own this election,” Sater wrote to Cohen.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/azeenghorayshi/trump-tower-moscow-the-secret-files-cohen-sater-putin?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc

Tremendous numbers of people are coming up through Mexico in the hopes of flooding our Southern Border. We have sent additional military. We will build a Human Wall if necessary. If we had a real Wall, this would be a non-event!

Currently, there are 20 states poised to outlaw abortion if given the opportunity, which would impact more than 25 million women of child-bearing age — and disproportionately poor and minority women.

I met Danielle in the counseling room of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi, which sits on a busy corner in the city’s arts district. Its vibrant pink paint job has earned it the name “the Pink House,” and it is the state’s only remaining abortion clinic.

Dressed in gray sweatpants and a T-shirt, Danielle looked pensive as she sat in a narrow room in the back of the building alongside 12 other women there for abortion care. Betty Thompson, a counselor who has worked at the clinic for 24 years, stood before the women, ready to walk them through the necessary paperwork and go over next steps.

Twenty four years old with two young children, Danielle had just found out she was pregnant again. She had a fling with a co-worker, only to learn that he had sabotaged the condom they used. She was now four weeks pregnant. After weighing her options, she decided to terminate her pregnancy. She’d become pregnant via deception, she thought, and that didn’t exactly suggest stability on the part of the man she would be bound to if she were to carry the pregnancy to term. But more importantly, she told me that she just wasn’t in a position to have another child. A single mom, she takes pains to ensure that her two kids, ages 4 and 2, have everything they need to thrive. It’s a struggle and a lot of responsibility, and she didn’t think it would be fair to anyone to bring another child into the mix. “I got my kids in a place where they can take piano lessons and they can take swimming lessons; they’re having a great life,” she said. “I would feel like a bad mom if I couldn’t do that for them. So I don’t regret doing this now. And every woman should have a choice with her body, what to do with her body.”

On August 7, Danielle boarded a Greyhound bus for the three-hour trip to Jackson. She left the kids with their grandmother, and she packed a duffle bag because she’d be gone at least three days — Mississippi law requires abortion patients to have an initial visit in which they’re counseled on the choice they’re making, and then a second appointment for the abortion itself. In between is a state-mandated 24-hour waiting period, allegedly necessary to allow the patient extra time to wrestle with the gravity of her decision.

This meant that in addition to the bus fare and the $450 she needed to pay for the abortion, she would also have to come up with money for a hotel, meals, and cab rides back and forth to the clinic, all of which posed a significant burden, especially since Danielle was between jobs. By the time she left Jackson three days later, Danielle estimated that she would have less than $30 to cover family expenses for the rest of the month.

https://portside.org/2019-02-04/millions-women-already-live-post-roe-america-journey-through-anti-abortion-south

THREAD. Why is the Chicago Police Department intentionally spreading misinformation about #JussieSmollett? Even if I didn't know him, I'd be concerned just about the way information has "leaked" via "sources" within the Chicago PD to reporters. And it's been since day one. 1/

It was reported that "sources" w/in the Chicago PD said that Jussie refused to release his phone records. Then they quietly noted that he *never* refused to the phone records. He denied giving them his *phone.* They don't need his phone to access his phone records. 2/

Then "sources" said that Jussie's ribs were broken, but neither the hospital nor Jussie's team ever said that his ribs were broken. But the "sources" made Jussie out to be a liar when he never said that in the first place. 3/

Then "sources" said that Jussie didn't call 911 for 40 mins after the attack. Why don't we have the timestamps from the 911 call(s) yet? It is my understanding that the call was made immediately but that it took police 40 mins *to arrive*.

Then "sources" loudly said that there was essentially no video of anything. But at the same time the "sources" said that, the police *had video* of Jussie in Subway, walking down the street, and had various other footage -- again, this was quietly reported.

Then "sources" said that Jussie couldn't have actually been hurt because he drove himself to the hospital. Later, "sources" cleaned that one up and noted that he was driven to the hospital by a friend *after* the police had interrogated him at his home.

Then we learned that a woman in Jussie's condo bldg saw someone outside of the building in the timeframe & reported this to the police. Then "sources" discounted *her* account by saying the description didn't match Jussie's description of the attackers.

First, "sources" said that Jussie kept the rope around his neck to the hospital. Then "sources" later corrected the story to note that Jussie had the rope around his neck when he arrived back to his building when the police arrived. Why did the "sources" lie initially?

Recently, "sources" said that Jussie arrived home with the food he purchased from Subway in his hand as if to suggest that if he had really been attacked he would have immediately thrown away everything he had. C'mon. The attack was close to his condo, not miles away.

And this is a great example of the "reporting" that's been happening re: the leaks from the Chicago PD. When pressed, the reporter brazenly notes that he's just blindly repeating what he's told by the PD:

https://twitter.com/RaferWeigel/status/1091528580889227265

In all, it's been wild to watch people blindly repeat every little detail leaked from the Chicago Police Department as fact. I'm familiar with @AJGuglielmi because he once had the same PR role (and tactics) in Baltimore. We all deserve better. Jussie is the victim, here, FYI.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1092558641121628161.html

Lansing — Republican mapmakers made a concerted effort to protect U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg from challengers in 2012, according to new emails disclosed in a federal lawsuit alleging GOP gerrymandering.

With the case heading to trial Tuesday, plaintiffs are asking the three-judge panel overseeing the case to admit into evidence a trove of new documents obtained last week when the federal court waived “privilege” for information related to weekly GOP redistricting meetings held at a Lansing law firm.

In a June 2011 email, congressional mapmaker Jeff Timmer forwarded an email to then-Gov. Rick Snyder’s deputy legal counsel David Murley describing how proposed changes to Walberg’s district would affect the 3rd District seat held by fellow GOP Rep. Justin Amash.

“No question the new (3rd) district is a bit less GOP, but not so much that it is in jeopardy of going south on us,” Timmer wrote. “It was intended that the new 3rd would become slightly less Republican in order for the Walberg seat to become slightly more so.”

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/02/04/emails-gop-redistricting-mapmakers-protecting-walberg/2766683002/

Washington (CNN)Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has invited Ana Maria Archila to be her guest at President Donald Trump's State of the Union address.

Archila, the co-executive director at the Center for Popular Democracy, is the activist who confronted Jeff Flake, who was then serving as a GOP senator, in an elevator on Capitol Hill in a viral moment over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

The Center for Popular Democracy announced the news on Monday with a video featuring Ocasio-Cortez, and Archila and the congresswoman's office confirmed the invitation to CNN. It was first reported by The Intercept.

In the video, Ocasio-Cortez tells Archila that she bought them matching pins with the message "well-behaved women rarely make history." The congresswoman tells Archila "we can wear them on Tuesday," the day of the President's address to Congress.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/04/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-state-of-the-union-ana-maria-archila/index.html

BlazeTV host Eric Bolling will be hosting a hours-long live show from the lobby of the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C. right after President Donald Trump gives his State of the Union on Tuesday.

The show will be filmed at the lobby’s bar until midnight, Bolling told Mediaite exclusively.

Prior to that, he also plans on having big names on a pre-SOTU show from the BlazeTV studios, including his former Fox News colleague Bill O’Reilly, former Trump campaign manager Cory Lewandowski, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, Glenn Beck and Mark Levin.

Trump will deliver his State of the Union at 9 p.m. EST, with the overall theme expected to be “Choosing Greatness.” According to an excerpt provided by the White House, he will also call for more unity as he faces a Democrat-controlled House: “Together we can break decades of political stalemate. We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future. The decision is ours to make.”

https://www.mediaite.com/online/blazetv-host-eric-bolling-hosting-sotu-show-live-from-trump-hotel-lobby-bar/

Donald J. Trump was burning through cash.

It was early 2016, and he was lending tens of millions of dollars to his presidential campaign and had been spending large sums to expand the Trump Organization’s roster of high-end properties.

To finance his business’s growth, Mr. Trump turned to a longtime ally, Deutsche Bank, one of the few banks still willing to lend money to the man who has called himself “The King of Debt.”

Mr. Trump’s loan request, which has not been previously reported, set off a fight that reached the top of the German bank, according to three people familiar with the request. In the end, Deutsche Bank did something unexpected. It said no.

Senior officials at the bank, including its future chief executive, believed that Mr. Trump’s divisive candidacy made such a loan too risky, the people said. Among their concerns was that if Mr. Trump won the election and then defaulted, Deutsche Bank would have to choose between not collecting on the debt or seizing the assets of the president of the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/business/trump-deutsche-bank.html