Rudy Giuliani plans to leave Trump legal team

President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani says he plans to depart that role after he finishes “clean up” from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The former New York City mayor, who once led the federal prosecutors office in Manhattan, has been a key Trump spokesman and strategist since joining his legal team in April 2018 after Trump struggled to attract other legal talent, in part due to legal conflicts on the part of the attorneys. But Giuliani has been working for free and has other projects crammed into a “pretty busy” schedule.

Giuliani told the Washington Examiner he’s working on legal issues on Trump’s behalf before the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and the New York attorney general’s office, where prosecutors are reviewing evidence generated by Mueller. As with the Mueller probe, Giuliani believes there would be a point where it becomes clear that non-congressional legal fallout is over. When that happens, he intends to end his representation of Trump, saying he would “probably not” remain his personal attorney. If asked by Trump to continue, however, he said it’s possible he would remain. “Depends on if I’m needed,” he said.

The White House legal team is handling the most high-profile fallout from Mueller: investigations in Congress, where Democrats are seeking to supplement Mueller’s work, creating standoffs over documents and testimony with Trump invoking executive privilege. Mueller found no collusion with Russia but analyzed instances of Trump possibly obstructing justice, including by allegedly ordering Mueller's firing. Dozens of Democrats and one Republican, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, have called for his impeachment. Giuliani is also "following up on evidence concerning [the] creation of the false narrative” that Trump colluded with Russia. The former mayor recently said he believes Ukraine may be behind efforts to allege collusion.

Though he reportedly turned down Trump’s post-election offers to be attorney general or Homeland Security secretary — in an apparent bid to become secretary of state — Giuliani said he has “no plan” to join the government. With his additional time, he would do more of “what I am doing now: security analysis and consulting all over the world and legal cases I am interested in.” Giuliani, 75, said he would continue to give speeches to businesses such as Wall Street banks and charitable groups — a lucrative income source that netting him millions of dollars.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/rudy-giuliani-plans-to-leave-trump-legal-team

Federal Election Commission investigating financial discrepancies at AOC political action committee

The Federal Election Commission is examining financial discrepancies at a political action committee that was run by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after an outside watchdog group raised questions about the group’s spending activities. Justice Democrats PAC, a committee where Ocasio-Cortez served on the board until last summer, said in financial reports that it helped pay off candidate debts that did not appear to exist, according to a May 30 letter from the FEC cited by the Washington Free Beacon. The FEC asked the PAC to explain the discrepancies, request refunds from the campaigns that allegedly received the payments, and update its financial statements, noting that the commission “may take further legal action regarding this impermissible activity.”

Justice Democrat PAC’s financial report for April 1, 2018, to June 30, 2018, “discloses one or more contributions to federal candidates for the retirement of debts incurred by the 2018 Primary election campaign,” according to the FEC letter. “[H]owever, it appears that the recipient committee(s) had insufficient debts to warrant such a contribution,” said the commission. “Please note that a committee may only designate contributions to retire a candidate's debts if those debts exist.”

The FEC questioned the PAC’s payments to 11 Democratic campaigns, including Texas congressional candidates Ricardo Jose Trevino and Jimmy Darnell Jones, and Illinois congressional candidate Sameena Mustafa. The commission also asked Justice Democrats to explain reimbursements it said it received from seven campaigns that did not correspond with any payments made by the PAC. The commission said the group must respond to the letter by July 5 or it could result in enforcement action. Ocasio-Cortez has said she stepped down from the board of the Justice Democrats PAC at the end of June 2018 and would have still been part of the group’s leadership when most of the debt payments were made. Her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, co-founded Justice Democrats and also served on the board. Justice Democrats PAC did not respond to request for comment by press time. A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez did not respond to request for comment by press time.

The Washington Examiner first reported that Justice Democrats and another PAC co-founded by Chakrabarti called Brand New Congress made payments of over $1 million to an LLC controlled by Chakrabarti. The National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group, filed a complaint asking the FEC to investigate the payments. The FEC has yet to indicate if it is pursuing an investigation of the NLPC complaint. But the Justice Democrats PAC’s payments to Chakrabarti’s company, which were described as consulting fees to help build infrastructure for Democratic campaigns, raised eyebrows with campaign finance experts. "None of that makes any sense," said Adav Noti, the senior director of the Campaign Legal Center and a former FEC lawyer. "I can't even begin to disentangle that. They're either confused or they're trying to conceal something."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/federal-election-commission-probing-financial-discrepancies-at-aoc-political-action-committee

Mexican president optimistic for deal with White House to avoid tariffs

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Thursday he remained optimistic that a deal with the Trump administration could be reached to avoid new tariffs on Mexican goods, which are set to go into effect Monday. U.S. and Mexican officials are meeting Thursday in Washington, D.C., for their second day of talks. Earlier hopes for a Wednesday deal proved premature, but the Mexican president said the talks remained productive. “The U.S. authorities have behaved very well, President Trump, because they haven’t closed themselves off to dialogue and we hope that a deal is reached today,” López Obrador told reporters in Mexico City. “I think the meeting tomorrow will be important and that there will be a deal before June 10, before this tariff comes into effect."

Trump said Thursday he believed the Mexicans wanted a deal but that they had to make more concessions before the U.S. would agree to anything. "They have to step up, and they have to step up to the plate, and perhaps they will. We’re going to see if we can solve the problem," he told reporters while in France for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. The president said last week he would place a 5% tariff on all Mexican goods, increasing 5% every month until the “illegal immigration problem is remedied.” Business groups and GOP lawmakers have called on the president to back away from the threats, saying the tariffs would likely harm the U.S. economy without resolving the border issue. Mexico has warned of possible trade retaliation of its own.

Talks between the U.S. and Mexican officials were hastily arranged and Trump has said the quick response was indicative that a deal could be reached quickly. He tweeted, "Immigration discussions at the White House with representatives of Mexico have ended for the day. Progress is being made, but not nearly enough!" Immigration discussions at the White House with representatives of Mexico have ended for the day. Progress is being made, but not nearly enough! Border arrests for May are at 133,000 because of Mexico & the Democrats in Congress refusing to budge on immigration reform. Further…

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/mexican-president-optimistic-for-deal-with-white-house-to-avoid-tariffs