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titriwrites · 5 years

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Polaroid Picture -- Chapter Six

It's been a while again. Sorry for the longish wait. But here we are with chapter 6, which you can read under the cut or here on AO3.

Having Tom back in Oxford brings back memories.

Chapter Six

„Libby?“ Tom whispered in her ear, his breath leaving goose bumps on her naked skin as they were lying in bed, blissfully naked, the duvets covering just their lower bodies.

Beth was on her stomach, one arm draped over Tom's abs, her head resting against his shoulder.

“Hmm?” she murmured, way too tired after their lovemaking. Repeatedly.

“Do you want children?”

Her head snapped up, almost knocking Tom in the jaw. “Huh?”

“Children, do you want them?” His eyes were sparkling, and a grin spread over his face.

“Well,” she started. “At the moment we're too broke and too young and too busy.”

Tom rolled his eyes. “As far as I know, you’re not pregnant right now, Ms Smartypants.”

“Mrs Smartypants-Hiddleston, please.”

“I love that sound.”

“You love me.”

“That I do.”

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon two months after their small wedding. They were lying in bed – in the living-room, because that’s where you put the bed in a flat that only has one room, a small kitchen area and a tiny bathroom – enjoying the feels of their bodies after the sex. And probably before the sex as well, because what else were you supposed to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon when you were young and in love? And broke. But they were living in London, like they wanted to.

Beth closed her eyes. She could feel the smile on her face. Tom smelled nice. And goodness, she was so in love with him.

“Libby?” She also loved her name on his lips.

“Hm?”

“Kids? Ever?”

“What is it with you and kids now?”

“Well, we're married,” he shrugged. “Guess it’s time to talk about it.”

“Two months.”

“Best months of my life.”

She rolled her eyes. “Smooth, Hiddleston.”

“You love it, Hiddleston. So. Kids?”

Beth shifted. Her chin rested on Tom’s chest as he grinned down at her. Her fingers trailed patterns on his sides, making him chuckle.

“Yes, Tom. Children. Of course. Not now, not without having a steady income or enough time. But yes. I wouldn’t have married you, if I didn’t want a family.”

His smile grew. “Okay.”

“Okay. Just promise me you’ve got enough time for me and our five children when you’re a big Hollywood heartthrob. And that you’ll leave your three girlfriends waiting in your penthouse.”

Beth screeched when Tom suddenly turned to pin her to the bed. He planted a wet kiss straight on her mouth. “Always.”

***

“—right?”

Beth jerks, shakes her head and blinks once, twice. She stares at her patient in front of her, both hands holding her big, round baby belly.

She shakes her head again, trying to get rid of the last remnants the daydream left in her mind. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

“Are you alright?” her patient, Sarah, asks.

This time, Beth nods. “Yes. Yes, sorry. And I should ask you that. You’re the one 38 weeks pregnant.”

A smile, almost giddy, graces her face. “I am. I can’t wait. And I wanted to know, if there is a chance that I can come in before the baby’s due. There is, right?”

“You come in at week 40 again, that’s correct.”

Beth tries – and fails – to tear her eyes away from Sarah's stomach. It’s not easy. Not at all. She suppresses a sigh. Damn Tom Hiddleston and him coming back into her life, bringing all the memories with him. She managed just fine before. Has been managing for six years now.

She shakes her head. No. No, Tom’s definitely not back in her life. They haven’t talked all weekend after the night in the pub. He’s not tried to contact her again. But why would he? He was drunk, they were drunk, nothing happened, nothing happens, nothing is going to happen.

Well, maybe she should sign those papers.

It’s just that all these thoughts have been in her head all weekend. And it doesn’t help that she's meeting all of these pregnant women in her job.

Still, Beth is 32. There's enough time. Eventually, she’ll meet the man of her dreams. Again, her mind chimes in, something she shuts down immediately. Tom obviously isn’t the man of her dreams. That never worked out.

There's enough time to have children on her own. Rationally, she knows that. But one doesn’t get married – even at the age of 21 – if one doesn’t want a future with someone. At least, not normally. And Beth wanted a future with Tom. And at the time she thought he wanted that too. He’s told her he wanted that. So, he either lied to himself, her, or in the end she wasn’t important enough.

All of these options hurt. Still hurt.

Beth clears her throat as Sarah does too. Apparently, she's been lost in her thoughts again.

She checks the clock on the wall. 8.45. She sighs. This is going to be the longest Monday she's had in a while.

***

“Okay, Hiddleston. Man up,” Tom whispers to himself as he makes his way to the old Johnson place. To Libby’s flat.

It’s Monday evening, he’s given them both the weekend to recover from Friday night. Or well, has given himself the Saturday off to wallow in self pity induced by a hangover from hell. On Sunday he was too ashamed to meet, and now it’s time to talk business. And by business he means papers.

Time’s running out, it’s not like he wants to spend his time here instead of London with his friends. He needs to get this done before Julia arrives in England to meet his family.

Tom’s here without his car – fresh air does him some good after all – but with food from the Indian place between his flat and Libby's. She's always loved Indian food. Maybe it makes both of them talk to each other like normal human beings.

He sighs and rings the bell. After about half a minute he rings the bell again for good measure. She has to be home, right? Matt is back to work and their friends are home doing coupl-y things. Surely.

Just as Tom puts his finger on the bell to ring yet again, he sees a shadow on the other side of the door.

“Dammit, yes, I'm here!” Libby grumbles as the door flies open. Then she stops, her mouth hanging open for a few seconds, before she shuts it and blinks at him instead. Then she opens her mouth again to utter a, “Tom?”.

He doesn’t answer right away. No. Just a few seconds have passed and now he’s the one staring and being gobsmacked. He hasn’t seen her like this in forever. Well. He hasn’t seen her in forever. Period. Neither like this nor in any other form.

Libby’s apparently had a shower quite recently as her wet hair is combed back, little droplets still falling on her shoulders. Her shoulders that are clad in his old dark blue Cambridge t-shirt he’s never seen again after he left for Los Angeles. Damn it, damn her, she still looks good in it. Especially paired with his old dark grey jogging bottoms she obviously didn’t get rid of either. It was her favourite sleeping outfit back in the days when they would sleep dressed at all.

Brought back to the present by the clearing of a throat, Tom looks back at Libby's face and into her brown eyes. He can’t help but grin as he sees her cheeks darken with a red tint. So, she knows that he’s recognised her outfit. Does she still sleep in this? Is it some sort of melancholy? Hell, he knows he himself feels rushes of memories during his stay here. But then again, he is sleeping in his old room at his father’s house.

“What?” she hisses now, not moving an inch from the door or looking like she would let him into the house anytime soon. Keen on making him leave, obviously.

Tom knows he shouldn't do it, but he can’t stop himself from teasing her. At least a little. A tiny bit of old times. “Nice outfit.”

“It's comfy,” Libby snaps, her cheeks reddening a bit more.

“It's also not an outfit I thought I’d ever see again.” Stop it, Tom.

“Well, here you go. I’m wearing it. Look your fill and then you can go back to--,” A noise from one of the rooms downstairs makes her pause and close the door a bit more. “What do you want?”

Tom holds up the bag containing their food. “I brought dinner.”

Now, Libby stands up little straighter, her lips forming that adorable pout of hers and her eyes squinting at him. “Why?”

“I thought we could talk.”

“Again, why?”

Well, damn it all. Now, he’s the one sighing. “Please, Libby? I think you know why. And can we not do it here? Also, it’s Indian.”

“Is it spicy?” It’s almost a whisper, and Tom has to suppress his grin at that.

“Of course, it is.”

***

Libby’s flat is larger than Tom imagined. He probably thought of a smaller space, because the last time they've been in Oxford together was when she was living in her parent's house.

Not that she's shown him more than the hallway – which admittedly he had to somehow cross – and her living-room with the very comfortable looking sofa, her tv and a massive book shelf along with a dining area. From his place on the chair at the table, Tom also has a good view into the kitchen, which looks bright, woody and inviting.

Munching on her rice and curry, Libby studies him from across the table. She swallows as Tom rises a brow, takes a sip from her beer bottle and then fixes him with a look she's already perfected about ten years ago.

“You wanted to talk, Hiddleston.”

Tom swallows his own food, which is a bit spicier than he thought. He can also see Libby grinning at the light sheen of sweat forming on his forehead. “I did, yes. I wanted to apologise for Friday, actually.”

At that, she looks down. “For what?”

Ugh, she makes him say it, huh? “I probably was a bit drunker than I thought. That and all those memories... I just hope you don’t think I wanted to take advantage of you.”

She smiles a little at that. “It is full of memories here, huh?”

“Yeah.” He can only nod. “I can’t imagine what it must be like still living in all these memories.”

He knows he said the wrong thing the moment the words have left his mouth. He doesn’t even need to look at Libby and see the scowl on her face. He looks at her anyway.

“It's been okay with the right company actually,” is all that she answers, before chewing on another spoonful of rice.

Fair enough. “Okay.” He swallows. “I wondered,” he then continues, before he glances at his plate and puts his fork down. Then, he looks up again. “I wondered if these memories maybe help us talk about the papers like grown up human beings.”

Libby chuckles and rolls her eyes. But it’s not the chuckle he knows from years ago. It’s more grown up and it’s definitely not friendly. Tom used to make her chuckle quite lovingly.

He shakes his head. He doesn’t want to make her smile, laugh, or chuckle like that again. Julia – his fiancée Julia – has a lovely chuckle as well.

“Is that how you get your fangirls and co-stars to swoon, Hiddleston?”

“Hm?”

“The puppy dog eyes that you just pulled. Along with that tiny pout on your lips. And the furrowed brows. The look you’re sporting right now. You haven’t learned that at RADA. That’s all Hollywood. Surely works wonders on your fans on the internet.”

“I wasn’t--,” Wasn’t he, though? Isn’t he? He’s trying to convince her, and he also knows what works on her. At least he used to.

She interrupts him with a sigh. That he knows from previous arguments. She's always been good at that. “Just, shut up for a moment, Tom. I’ll read your damn papers, and then we both can move on without all these memories, huh?”

Well, isn’t that exactly what he wants? “I’ll bring them over tomorrow then.”

***

Ten minutes later – honestly, what’s the point in staying after dinner? – Tom leaves, walking in front of Libby through the hallway. The walls are full of pictures. Some look like they’re drawn and painted by children, some are photographs of babies and toddlers. They can’t all be related to Libby.

And indeed, as Tom stops to inspect them closer, he can see thank-you-notes written on most of them.

She's helped these children into the world.

“Don't you want children on your own?” he asks and immediately feels the tension in the room shift. He looks back over his shoulder at Libby. She's glaring at him. “What?” he mumbles.

“Are you kidding me right now?”

“Uh.”

“Yes, Tom,” she hisses, and he cringes. “Yes, I fucking want children on my own. I wanted them ten years ago, and I wanted them six years ago. You wanted them too. You wanted them with me. We got married, Tom. We got fucking married and we talked about children. How dare you ask me that?”

Just as he wants to answer, though he’s got no idea what he should even say, Libby continues. “I wanted children with you Tom, and you left me. I see children every day at work and they’re not mine. And you know what? That’s fine. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. We didn’t work out because of exactly that. Work. You chose work over a life with me, and you chose work over having children with me. I just wonder what changed.”

Tom looks at her, stunned. It was a simple question. She always loved children. And yes. They talked about them. Apparently. But now tears are streaming down Libby's face as she stands before him, shaking and holding herself, wearing clothes from his Cambridge days.

“I wonder, if it was just me that wasn’t enough for you. Because I couldn’t compete with your job. And Julia – that’s her name, right? – Julia can compete with your job. So. It was me.”

“Libby.”

She shakes her head. “You should leave. Put the papers in the mailbox tomorrow, I’ll read and sign them.”

“Libby, I...”

“Leave.”

And so, he does. Glancing at Libby, he turns and hears the door close behind him. He doesn’t know what to think. Has no idea what to do.

Tom sighs. That’s a lie. He does know. Leave the papers, have her send them to his solicitor and leave for London.

Tagging @devikafernando @itsliterallythis @justthelosersblog @avenger-nerd-mom @archy3001 @nuggsmum @majk78 @hakimo2015 @noplacelikehome77

#tom hiddleston fanfiction #real person fanfiction #polaroid picture #chapter six #beth + tom

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thisdaynews · 4 years

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Possible pardons loom for former Trump aides

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/possible-pardons-loom-for-former-trump-aides/

Possible pardons loom for former Trump aides

In any other administration, and in any other time, it’d be shocking to consider that three men with such deep personal ties to the president might get their legal troubles expunged in an election year — not to mention from a president facing impeachment proceedings.

But this is not any other administration.

The clemency calculations come because Stone, Flynn and Manafort — all former Trump campaign aides — know the president has repeatedly proven willing to trample over his own advisers despite warnings of political consequences. Most recently, Trump cleared the records of three armed services members accused or convicted of war crimes over the objections of several of his top military brass.

“Like everything else with this president, you can’t look to history for precedent,” said a person who previously worked for President Trump. “If he felt Manafort and Flynn and others were deserving of pardons, he’d just do it.”

Trump got involved in the military cases after being lobbied not only by lawmakers but Fox News personalities who spotlighted their stories. It’s a tactic employed repeatedly by people seeking pardons or prison-sentence commutations. Earlier in the Trump administration, Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and George W. Bush White House aide Scooter Libby saw their prospects for presidential mercy take off thanks to well-connected allies and conservative cable TV segments highlighting complaints about how they’d been mistreated inside the federal justice system.

In Trump’s White House, few of his top aides see pardons for the likes of Stone, Flynn or Manafort as a good idea, at least not until after Election Day 2020. There are still scars from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which concluded with a 448-page report that featured an obstruction of justice section detailing several conversations and public statements about pardons for former Trump aides involving the president and his personal lawyers.

While Trump himself has been coy in recent months about any post-Mueller pardon plans, he’s been anything but shy when registering his disdain for the Russia probe and how it landed him, members of his family and so many other current and former staffers in considerable legal jeopardy.

Back in August 2018, the president wrote on Twitter that he felt “very badly” for Manafort on the morning after a Virginia jury convicted the former Trump campaign chairman on a series of financial fraud charges. This June, Trump praised Flynn when the former national security adviser who had already pleaded guilty and cooperated with Mueller’s investigators made a U-turn and hired Sidney Powell, an outspoken Mueller critic, as his new lawyer. “Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!” the president tweeted. And Trump complained, just minutes after Stone’s conviction last month on charges of lying to Congress and witness tampering, because several of his own longtime adversaries — he named Hillary Clinton, James Comey and Adam Schiff, among others — weren’t facing the same kinds of criminal prosecutions.

Despite the presidential airing of grievances, people who regularly speak with Trump say the looming impeachment proceedings have dominated conversations — not pardons. “I think the president is probably focused on other things at the moment,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and outspoken Trump defender.

But Trump’s pardon calculations could very well change as a rapid-fire series of events unfold.

Stone is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 6 before U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, where he faces up to 50 years in prison. As a first-time offender, Stone’s punishment is expected to be significantly lighter. Still, prison is prison, and attempts to get the president’s attention have been coming from all directions to keep Stone — a longtime political adviser dating back to the early 1980s — a free man.

InfoWars host Alex Jones said he was relaying a direct message from Stone to Trump on his show the day before the jury reached its guilty verdicts. “He said to me, ‘Alex, barring a miracle, I appeal to God and I appeal to your listeners for prayer, and I appeal to the president to pardon me because to do so would be an action that would show these corrupt courts that they’re not going to get away with persecuting people for their free speech or for the crime of getting the president elected,’” Jones said.

Just hours after Stone’s conviction, reporters filmed an unidentified man just outside the White House’s West Wing entrance blowing a giant horn and urging the president to give Stone “immunity.” That same night, Stone’s daughter Adria pleaded for the president’s intervention during a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson. “Donald Trump, if you can hear me, please save our family,” she said.

Flynn’s fate, meantime, remains very much up in the air. The retired Army lieutenant general’s sentencing this month got postponed in anticipation of a Justice Department inspector general report about the intelligence community’s conduct during the Russia probe. While the report expected to be released Monday may not yield the thunderclaps Trump and his conservative allies have envisioned, Powell nonetheless says she expects it can produce additional evidence that would prompt the federal judge presiding in Flynn’s case to toss out her client’s guilty plea because of “egregious government misconduct.”

In light of Flynn’s new legal posture, the federal prosecutors who obtained his initial guilty plea have said they may revisit their initial recommendation to Judge Emmet Sullivan that he sentence Flynn to one year of probation instead of prison time. But their sentencing memo is now on hold until the IG report comes out — raising the prospect that Flynn may indeed need Trump’s help to stave off a more severe punishment.

“All we want is justice to be done as we know he committed no crimes and was set up,” Michael Flynn’s brother, Joseph, said in an email to POLITICO when asked about a potential Trump pardon. He added that Powell “has it well under control.. and we are extremely thankful she is in our lives.”

Manafort, meantime, still has about six years to go on his prison sentence, which also covers a series of lobbying and witness-tampering crimes. His allies have been less public in their attempts to win Trump’s help — a year-old petition on Change.org asking Trump to commute Manafort’s remaining time in jail has less than 1,000 signatures. But the president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, confirmed to the Washington Post in October that he’d recently been in touch with the former Trump campaign chief as he presses ahead with a controversial campaign to pin the blame on Ukraine for meddling on Hillary Clinton’s behalf in the 2016 presidential election.

Republicans say Trump may also have running room on the pardon front should he successfully fend off impeachment early next year in the Republican-led Senate.

“For the president’s sake, he should be looking at the political implications,” said Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King. “I’d say for all the specious reasons that have been manufactured by the Democrats, they’d probably call that reasons number infinity-plus-one and infinity-plus-two to impeach the president. So, I’d say let’s get this through first and then take a look at those circumstances.”

For the most part, presidents before Trump tended to stay clear of controversial first-term pardons. President Barack Obama granted five pardons and one commutation in fiscal year 2012, according to clemency data compiled by the Justice Department. Bush granted 12 pardons and two commutations during fiscal year 2004 as he geared up for his reelection race. President Bill Clinton didn’t give any pardons or commutations in fiscal 1996, though the year before that he granted 53 pardons and commuted three sentences.

No doubt, the most famous example of a president suffering at the ballot box over a clemency decision involves Gerald Ford, who arguably lost his 1976 bid for a full term because of his decision to give former President Richard Nixon a pardon after his resignation due to the Watergate scandal.

Lame-duck presidents have also gotten into hot water for exercising their pardon powers. Clinton faced significant scrutiny for issuing a pardon on his final day in office to Marc Rich, a fugitive international financier whose ex-wife had made donations to Democratic Party accounts and the Clinton Foundation. After losing his reelection bid to Clinton in 1992, President George H.W. Bush pardoned six former Reagan administration officials ensnared in the Iran-Contra scandal, including Caspar Weinberger, the defense secretary who was scheduled to go on trial in a case where Bush may have been implicated. The Bush pardons were backed by the attorney general at the time: William Barr.

While it might not be seen as politically savvy in the middle of an election year for Trump to pardon people like Stone, Flynn or Manafort, he has seen an advantage when getting involved in other high-profile cases that have been featured on Fox News and brought to his attention by allies.

Pete Hegseth, a Fox contributor, helped draw Trump’s interest to the latest military case, which culminated last month with full pardons for former Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who were convicted of war crimes, and allowed for chief petty officer Edward Gallagher, who was stripped of military honors during his prosecution on murder charges, to have his promotion reinstated.

Bernie Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner and himself a convicted felon, advocated for Gallagher. Tim Parlatore, Gallagher’s attorney, said Fox News and Hegseth should also be credited with presenting the case on Trump’s preferred cable channel. “Whether you believe Fox News or not, the president took the time to hear the other side of the story rather than just believing the Navy,” Parlatore said.

Over the weekend, Trump welcomed two of the pardoned men to the stage at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida.

Several other possible pardons that Trump hasn’t touched still remain on the president’s radar. Parlatore recently submitted Kerik’s name for a pardon that would wipe clean a criminal record from a 2009 guilty plea for tax fraud and false statement charges and a since-completed four-year prison sentence.

Then there’s the so-called “Blackwater Four,” a group of four security contractors who were convicted and jailed for a 2007 shooting in Baghdad in which 17 Iraqis died, as well as the case of a Marine sniper group photographed urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in 2011.

Trump himself has maintained interest in two convicted cast members from his reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice” — Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor convicted in 2011 for trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, and businesswoman Martha Stewart, who served five months in jail in the mid-2000s for obstructing justice and lying to investigators about a stock sale.

Illinois’ House GOP delegation has urged the president to leave the Blagojevich case alone. But Trump is hearing both sides. The former governor’s wife has appeared multiple times on Fox asking for the commutation of the remainder of her husband’s 14-year jail sentence. At an October fundraiser in Chicago, Trump reportedly polled supporters about letting the governor go free.

“I feel very badly. I think he was very harshly sentenced, but we’re looking at it very strongly,” Trump told reporters in August. “People feel very strongly about Rod Blagojevich and his sentence.”

A spokesman for Blagojevich, Mark Vargas, said “the family is grateful to President Trump, and they remain hopeful that their 11-year nightmare might soon be over. As the president has said publicly, 14 years was a very harsh sentence — and thanks to the president, we are now seeing broad bipartisan support for the former governor’s release.”

Beyond the Mueller probe, Trump’s pardon powers have drawn scrutiny from Democrats. The House Judiciary Committee sent a subpoena this fall to the Homeland Security Department seeking documents about the president allegedly offering pardons to government officials who break the law while implementing his immigration agenda. Before abandoning his 2020 presidential bid, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke proposed a constitutional amendment banning presidents from pardoning anyone tied to an investigation involving the president, or for family members.

Democrats in the middle of the current impeachment probe said Trump would only make matters worse for himself if he pardoned any of the former aides ensnared in the Mueller probe.

#Aides #Foreign #Politics #Trump

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2019/01/25/roger-stone-charges-mueller-1127624?__twitter_impression=true

Stone made it perfectly clear that he expects to be pardoned. That was the message he sent #Trump when he said he would need to consult his lawyers before deciding if he would cooperate with #Mueller

President Donald Trump’s reaction to Roger Stone's indictment will be closely watched, particularly because the president has the power to end Stone’s prosecution at any time.

"The #WikiLeaks-Trump campaign association adds a juicy subplot to the ever-expanding Mueller probe—and legal experts say that coupled with Stone’s upcoming case could mean the special counsel still has many months to go before wrapping up his investigation."

The juiciest morsel in Mueller’s charges against Roger Stone

The special counsel offered the clearest evidence to date of the Trump campaign’s alleged attempts to cooperate with WikiLeaks.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN and JOSH GERSTEIN | Published 01/25/2019 04:18 PM EST | Politico | Posted January 28, 2019 |

The indictment of longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone offered the clearest evidence to date of the Trump campaign’s alleged attempts to cooperate with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election.

Special counsel Robert Mueller embedded the tantalizing morsel near the start of the 24-page indictment. He recounts how the Trump campaign swung into action after WikiLeaks — the activist organization suspected of cozying up to Kremlin-backed hackers — started releasing stolen Democratic emails in late July 2016, just days before Hillary Clinton accept her party’s nomination.

In one paragraph, Mueller alleges that an unnamed individual gave instructions to a senior unnamed Trump campaign official to get in touch with Stone “about any additional releases and what other damaging information” WikiLeaks was holding about Clinton’s campaign.

After getting those orders, Stone allegedly told the Trump campaign “about potential future releases of damaging material” that WikiLeaks was holding.

Democratic lawmakers and legal experts tracking the Russia probe singled out those details — which suggest the Trump campaign willingly engaged with a foreign entity seeking to meddle in the presidential election — as the most alluring revelation yet in the Mueller investigation.

The revelation, if true, also suggests that Mueller is potentially sitting on more evidence that could firm up a case of collusion against at least some individuals in Trump’s orbit, or even the president himself.

“This indictment is significant because it alleges coordination between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks,” said Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who called the language in the paragraph “particularly alarming” because it used the passive voice when describing the campaign officials.

“This language is very different from other language we have seen Mueller use,” she told POLITICO. “He usually is careful to use some identifying language so that the person can be referenced easily. One reasonable inference is that the person who directed the senior campaign official is someone who cannot be indicted: the president himself.”

The White House so far has distanced itself from Stone, who was formally charged by a Washington, D.C., grand jury on Thursday with lying to Congress and obstructing lawmakers’ investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

And senior Trump officials have claimed the specific charges in the indictment don’t implicate the president. “What I can tell you is that the specific charges that have been brought against Mr. Stone don’t have anything to do with the president,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNN on Friday morning.

But she repeatedly declined to answer whether Trump directed a senior Trump campaign official to contact Stone about his WikiLeaks connections, saying she hadn’t read the indictment.

The WikiLeaks-Trump campaign association adds a juicy subplot to the ever-expanding Mueller probe, and legal experts say that coupled with Stone’s upcoming court case — he told reporters outside the South Florida federal courthouse he would plead not guilty — could mean the special counsel still has many months to go before wrapping up his investigation, even as it approaches its second anniversary.

“It’s going to be messy, and that takes time,” said Mary McCord, a former senior Justice Department official who helped oversee the FBI’s Russia probe before Mueller’s appointment in May 2017.

Stone’s indictment is also hardly good news for Trump, with the drip-drip of yet more revelations tied to the 2016 presidential campaign clearly on track to spill into the president’s 2020 reelection race and as Democrats prepare for their first primary debates this summer while the party’s House leaders contemplate whether to begin impeachment proceedings.

Speaking to reporters in the Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the Stone indictment reflects poorly on Trump and should be seen in the broader context of a series of pro-Kremlin administration foreign policy maneuvers.

“It’s very interesting to see the kinds of people the president of the United States has surrounded himself with. This connection to the integrity of our elections is obviously something we have to get the truth about,” the California Democrat said. “But it’s also interesting to see his connections to Russia and the president’s suggestions the we should question whether we should be in NATO, which is a dream come true for Vladimir Putin.”

The new details in Stone’s indictment also prompted Democrats, including some involved in investigating Russia’s 2016 meddling, to inch ever closer to proclaiming that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russian affiliates whom U.S. intelligence officials have accused of stealing the Democratic emails.

“It is clear from this indictment that those contacts happened at least with the full knowledge of, and appear to have been encouraged by, the highest levels of the Trump campaign,” said Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the revelation that a senior Trump campaign official directed Stone to get in touch with WikiLeaks was the “most significant” allegation in the indictment.

“Our committee will be eager to learn just who directed a senior campaign official to contact Stone about additional damaging information held by Wikileaks, one of the publishing arms of Russian government hackers,” Schiff said.

He also called attention to the timing of the outreach by the Trump campaign to WikiLeaks; it came just days before Trump invited Russia to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing” from Clinton’s private server. “That would mean that at the very time that then-candidate Trump was publicly encouraging Russia’s help in acquiring Clinton-related emails, his campaign was privately receiving information about the planned release of stolen Clinton emails,” Schiff said.

In many ways, the Stone indictment is relatively straightforward: It avoids many of the thorny legal issues that would be raised by a case directly charging Trump aides or supporters with conspiring with Russians or WikiLeaks.

Despite all the outrage and debate about collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, prosecuting a case charging Americans for such activities could be tricky and raises a series of uncertain legal questions.

Among them: Is encouraging the release of negative information about one’s opponent the equivalent of soliciting a campaign donation? Is anything that foreign nationals do to help or hurt a U.S. campaign automatically unlawful?

The Stone indictment dodges those issues in favor of a garden-variety obstruction, false statement and witness-tampering case. It opens Mueller to criticism from Trump allies that he’s not focused on collusion but is instead pursuing what some derisively call “process crimes” that may be easier to prove.

Mueller’s playbook looks similar to that used by then-special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald 15 years ago in his investigation of the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. No one was ever charged for the actual leak, but then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted for making false statements and obstruction.

Critics complained that Fitzgerald was skirting the core issue, but he seemed more than willing to defend a vigorous prosecution of those trying to thwart investigators. “What we have when someone charges obstruction of justice, the umpire gets sand thrown in his eyes. He’s trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view,” Fitzgerald said then.

A former prosecutor on the Libby case, Peter Zeidenberg, dismissed the attempt by Trump’s attorneys and allies to minimize the charges against Stone as “process crimes.”

“It’s just spin,” he said. “The crimes alleged here — false statements, obstruction of justice and witness tampering — cannot be looked at in a vacuum. People do things for a reason. There is a reason why Roger Stone lied about this — he did not want prosecutors to know the truth because, obviously, the truth would have been damaging to him as well as others. You cannot divorce these offenses from the underlying offense of Russian interference.”

McCord, a former head of DOJ’s National Security Division who now teaches at Georgetown University Law Center, said the Stone indictment does draw the investigation closer into Trump’s orbit by referring to the two people from the campaign orchestrating the plan to get Stone in touch with WikiLeaks. But she also cautioned that it doesn’t mean the Trump aides broke the law.

“There’s no conspiracy charge in here,” she said. “Does it mean there’s no evidence of one? Not necessarily.”

McCord said it could be that Mueller is holding onto that evidence but didn’t want to release it in the Stone indictment. The special counsel also has been “trying to do things strategically” and could be looking for more evidence.

“Once you obtain an indictment like this, sometimes other potential witnesses come out of the woodwork,” she said, adding that the Stone arrest and the searching of his home starting early Friday morning might help the special counsel obtain materials useful as the Russia probe continues.

Stone complained Friday after his court hearing that he wasn’t notified ahead of time about his indictment, which led to an early morning arrest and FBI agents executing searches of his residences in South Florida and Manhattan. “I would have been more than willing to have surrendered voluntarily,” he said.

But in a court filing Thursday, Mueller argued that he wanted to keep the Stone indictment under wraps until the arrest because of a concern that publicizing the charges “will increase the risk of the defendant fleeing and destroying (or tampering with) evidence.”

“That shows the level of distrust the special counsel has for Stone,” said McCord, noting that Stone is also charged with obstructing justice and witness tampering.

Mueller fretted that if he given Stone a heads-up he could have destroyed evidence in the case. “That shows the level of distrust the special counsel has for Stone,” she said, noting Stone was also charged with obstructing justice and witness tampering.

By allegedly lying to the House panel and seeking to limit the information it received, Stone also made Mueller’s job easier. Instead of the heavy lift of a foreign-collusion prosecution that would arguably be unprecedented, Mueller’s team now faces the more mundane task of proving that what Stone told the panel wasn’t true, that it was material to the investigation and that the longtime Trump adviser intentionally misled.

The treatment of other top Trump officials wrapped up in the probe underscores the point. While the indictment includes an exchange Trump campaign chief Steve Bannon had with Stone about WikiLeaks releases in October 2016, there’s no indication that Bannon faces any legal jeopardy as a result.

A source familiar with the situation said Bannon was advised by Mueller’s team that he’s only a fact witness in the investigation and not a subject or target — designations that can signal someone faces legal jeopardy.

Of course, the charge of obstructing a congressional investigation could be more politically momentous than being charged with interfering in an FBI investigation. (Stone’s indictment appears to allege he did both.)

And the key test for Trump in the near term is likely to be a political one, not a legal one. Do lawmakers view the role Stone and others played in courting WikiLeaks and trying to encourage damaging releases of stolen emails as bolstering an impeachment case? Mueller seemed not to want to step directly into that debate with the Stone indictment.

Trump’s reaction to the Stone indictment will be closely watched, particularly because the president has the power to end Stone’s prosecution at any time. The complexity of the financial charges Mueller brought against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort meant that state prosecutors could step in if Trump acted to pardon Manafort on the federal charges he’s pleaded guilty to.

But Stone’s alleged lies to Congress and his alleged obstruction efforts aren’t crimes that state or local prosecutors could readily go after, so a Trump pardon might get Stone entirely off the hook, but it would obviously come with a political price.

#donald trump #u.s. news #politics #trump administration #republican politics #legal issues #president donald trump #trump #trump scandals #republican party #russia investigation #politics and government #white house #donald trump jr #must reads #national security #robert mueller #roger stone

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newestbalance · 6 years

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Trump pardons pundit D

WASHINGTON/ON AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Thursday granted a pardon to conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to U.S. campaign finance law violations, and said he was considering pardoning lifestyle maven Martha Stewart.

FILE PHOTO: Conservative commentator and best-selling author, Dinesh D’Souza exits the Manhattan Federal Courthouse after pleading guilty in New York, May 20, 2014. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

After earlier tweeting his decision on D’Souza, Trump told reporters on a flight to Houston that was also weighing a pardon for Stewart, who was convicted in 2004 on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements related to a probe of alleged insider trading.

James Comey, who Trump fired as FBI director last year and has repeatedly attacked, served as the lead federal prosecutor in Stewart’s case.

Trump also said he might commute former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s 14-year prison sentence, saying “what he did does not justify” the time he was ordered to serve. Blagojevich remains incarcerated.

Blagojevich’s was convicted of corruption offenses including soliciting bribes for appointment to the Senate seat that former Democratic president Barack Obama vacated after being elected president in 2008. Blagojevich, a Democrat, was a former contestant on Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” reality TV show.

Trump was an executive producer on a TV spinoff of his own program called “Martha Stewart: The Apprentice” starring Stewart.

Trump also told reporters he might pardon a woman serving a federal prison sentence over a drug-related charge after reality television star Kim Kardashian discussed the case with him at the White House on Wednesday.

The announcement on D’Souza drew criticism from some Democrats and legal analysts who said the Republican president had undermined the rule of law with a series of pardons based on political considerations.

On Twitter, Trump wrote that D’Souza “was treated very unfairly by our government!”

D’Souza, 53, admitted in 2014 that he illegally reimbursed two “straw donors” who donated $10,000 each to the unsuccessful 2012 U.S. Senate campaign in New York of Wendy Long, a Republican he had known since attending Dartmouth College in the early 1980s.

He was sentenced to five years of probation. Prosecutors had urged a prison sentence of 10 to 16 months to discourage future abuse of the election process, including by “well-heeled individuals who are tempted to use their money to help other candidates.”

FILE PHOTO: Martha Stewart attends the 2017 Glamour Women of the Year Awards at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., November 13, 2017. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

D’Souza waited until “the last possible moment” before trial to admit guilt, the government said, then went on television shows and the internet to say he was “selectively” targeted for prosecution.

In a statement before sentencing, D’Souza said he was ashamed of his actions and contrite.

The case against D’Souza, a critic of Democratic former President Barack Obama, prompted some conservatives to accuse the government of selective prosecution. The prosecutor in the case, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan, was an Obama appointee.

Bharara, who was fired by Trump last year, tweeted: “The President has the right to pardon but the facts are these: D’Souza intentionally broke the law, voluntarily pled guilty, apologized for his conduct & the judge found no unfairness. The career prosecutors and agents did their job.”

PREVIOUS PARDONS

Trump has pardoned other notable conservatives convicted of various offenses. Last August, he pardoned former Arizona lawman and political ally Joe Arpaio less than a month after he was convicted of criminal contempt in a case involving racial profiling of Hispanics.

Arpaio, the self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America,” was known for his crackdown on illegal immigrants in Arizona’s Maricopa County. He also investigated unfounded claims, supported by Trump, questioning Obama’s citizenship.

In April, Trump pardoned Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Dick Cheney and was convicted in 2007 of lying in an investigation into the unmasking of a CIA agent.

Both cases prompted critics to accuse Trump of abusing his pardoning power.

“As with the pardon of Joe Arpaio, Trump is sending a message that he will reward political allies for loyalty with get-out-of-jail-free cards,” Democratic U.S. Representative Don Beyer said on Twitter. “He doesn’t care about the rule of law.”

Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by David Gregorio and Jeffrey Benkoe

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newsintodays-blog · 6 years

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Trump pardons 'Scooter' Libby, former Iraq war-era Cheney aide

New Post has been published on http://newsintoday.info/2018/04/13/trump-pardons-scooter-libby-former-iraq-war-era-cheney-aide-2/

Trump pardons 'Scooter' Libby, former Iraq war-era Cheney aide

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday pardoned former George W. Bush administration official Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who years ago was convicted of lying in an investigation of the unmasking of a CIA agent.

Democrats immediately criticized the president’s move, drawing an arc running from the Iraq war to today and linking the Libby pardon to Trump’s bitter feud with James Comey, who Trump fired as FBI director last year, and to a widening investigation of possible links between the Trump campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The Libby pardon came just hours after Trump’s morning Twitter attack against Comey. The president called the ex-FBI chief a “weak and untruthful slime ball.”

Excerpts of Comey’s new book due out Tuesday, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” slam Trump, calling him “unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values.”

Before heading the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Comey was deputy attorney general during the Bush administration. During that time, he appointed a special counsel to prosecute a high-profile case that led to Libby’s guilty verdict in 2007.

“I don’t know Mr. Libby,” Trump said in a White House statement, “but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”

Libby could not immediately be reached for comment.

Conservative Republicans had sought a pardon for Libby for years after former Vice President Dick Cheney was unable to persuade Bush to grant one late in his presidency. Bush did, however, commute Libby’s 2-1/2-year prison sentence.

Libby, chief of staff to Cheney during the run-up and early years of the Iraq war, was found guilty in 2007 of lying and obstructing an investigation into who blew the cover of CIA officer Valerie Plame. Her husband Joseph Wilson, a former career U.S. diplomat, had criticized the Iraq war.

‘SIMPLY FALSE’

“President Donald Trump has granted a pardon to I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby on the basis that he was ‘treated unfairly.’ That is simply false. Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in a fair trial,” Plame said in a statement.

House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement, “This pardon sends a troubling signal to the president’s allies that obstructing justice will be rewarded.”

FILE PHOTO: Lewis “Scooter” Libby listens as his attorney speaks to the media at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Washington March 6, 2007. REUTERS/Jim Bourg/Files

Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the Libby pardon was Trump’s way “of sending a message to those implicated in the Russia investigation: You have my back and I’ll have yours.”

The Libby pardon coincided with the arrival in the White House of John Bolton as Trump’s new national security adviser. Bolton was a key Bush administration advocate, along with Cheney and Libby, of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“I am grateful today that President Trump righted this wrong by issuing a full pardon to Scooter,” Cheney said in a statement.

Bush spokesman Freddy Ford said, “President Bush is pleased for Scooter and his family.”

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, in a briefing with reporters, said on Friday that the pardon had nothing to do with Trump’s views on Mueller’s investigation.

Trump has been attacking the FBI amid the investigation of his 2016 presidential campaign for possible links to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, and a key Manafort associate are among those who have been indicted in the Russian meddling probe run by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

FILE PHOTO: Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, is greeted by photographers as he departs a federal courthouse at the end of the third day of his perjury trial in Washington,U.S., February 23, 2007. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/Files

White House aides said earlier this week that Trump was fuming over FBI raids related to the investigation on Monday of the office and home of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen.

Trump has repeatedly called Mueller’s probe a “witch hunt” and he and Russia have both denied any wrongdoing.

It was the second high-profile pardon of Trump’s tenure. Last year, he pardoned Joe Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff who campaigned for Trump, less than a month after he was convicted of criminal contempt in a case involving racial profiling.

Reporting by Steve Holland, Justin Mitchell and Makini Brice; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Bernadette Baum, Bill Trott and David Gregorio

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newsintodays-blog · 6 years

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Trump pardons 'Scooter' Libby, former Iraq war-era Cheney aide

New Post has been published on http://newsintoday.info/2018/04/13/trump-pardons-scooter-libby-former-iraq-war-era-cheney-aide/

Trump pardons 'Scooter' Libby, former Iraq war-era Cheney aide

In an arc running from the Iraq war to today, Democrats linked the Libby pardon to Trump’s bitter feud with James Comey, who was fired by Trump as FBI director last year, and to a widening investigation of possible links between the Trump campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

The Libby pardon followed by only hours a Friday morning Twitter attack against Comey by Trump, in which he called the former FBI chief a liar and a leaker.

Excerpts of Comey’s new book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” give an unflattering portrayal of Trump and have been widely reported in the media this week.

Libby could not immediately be reached for comment.

Conservative Republicans had sought a pardon for Libby for years after former Vice President Dick Cheney was unable to persuade Bush to grant one it late in his presidency. Bush did, however, commute Libby’s 2 1/2-year prison sentence.

‘TROUBLING SIGNAL’

“President Trump’s pardon of Scooter Libby makes clear his contempt for the rule of law,” House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “This pardon sends a troubling signal to the president’s allies that obstructing justice will be rewarded.”