RUTHFULLY YOURS

The FBI agents who carried out the raid on Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office were seeking records related to the infamous Access Hollywood tape, among other information, three people briefed on the contents of the federal search warrant told the New York Times.

The warrant specifically sought evidence that Cohen suppressed damaging information about then-candidate Donald Trump, though it remains unclear what Cohen’s role was in containing the fallout from the tape, which showed Trump bragging about grabbing women by the genitals years earlier.The raid on Cohen’s office, which was reportedly approved by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, occurred after Special Counsel Robert Mueller came across evidence of wrongdoing that fell outside the purview of his probe and passed that information along to the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

A Tuesday Times report revealed that the authorities were also seeking evidence related to Cohen’s payment of $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have engaged in an affair with Trump shortly after his marriage to wife Melania.

The payment raised questions about a possible election-law violation, as Daniels’s attorney and others have alleged the payment constitutes an illegal in-kind contribution from Cohen to Trump’s campaign.

Do the Grand Inquisitor and his leftist cheerleaders understand what they’re sowing?

When Watergate blew up and Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, the U.S. dodged a bullet. Because honorable Republicans like Howard Baker and Elliot Richardson put country above party, Nixon saw the light, and the U.S. was spared the trauma of almost certain impeachment by the full House and conviction by the Senate. A presidency ended unnaturally without the institution of the presidency suffering damage.

Had Nixon hung tough and taken his chances in the dock, no one could have predicted the domestic and international consequences of an American administration paralyzed, adrift, and leaderless. The only certainty: Our adversaries would seize the moment to challenge us.

Almost forty-five years later, bitter and dishonorable people are waging a campaign to remove, by any means necessary, a president not credibly accused of anything warranting impeachment. Mueller, the Grand Inquisitor, is hip deep in garbage, hoping to find something nasty and smelly to take down his target. If honorable Democrats exist, none (as far as I know) has stepped up and said, “Wait. Are we sure it’s in the country’s best interest to cheer Mueller on and hope he finds a reason to decapitate the administration?”

Unlike the principals in Watergate who calmed the country, the cabal working to prosecute and delegitimize Trump appears unconcerned by the poison it’s injected into the body politic. Its members are oblivious to the damage being done to our institutions as they wage their jihad. Or maybe Trump-hatred is so blinding that they don’t care about setting a dangerous precedent for opposition to future administrations.

In the here and now, the danger is real. Trump’s ankle-biters seem unaware the world is watching the circus in Washington. Bad actors like Iran, Russia, and China see the president besieged and wonder if now is the time, while he’s distracted, to try for some advantage. Kim Jong-un may calculate that it is not in his interest to deal with a president whose clout is diminishing by the day.

Members of Congress took turns lashing Mark Zuckerberg this week for Facebook ’s myriad screw-ups. The CEO showed contrition, but his apologia has raised important questions about the government’s failures.

Democrats who were once enthralled with Silicon Valley fell out of love with Facebook following reports that Russian trolls used its platform to promulgate fake news and ads to support Donald Trump in 2016. Then came news that a political firm linked to the Trump campaign may have misappropriated data on 270,000 users and their 87 million friends collected by a third-party app.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s defense? Facebook was too “trusting.” After the Guardian newspaper reported in 2015 that a Cambridge University researcher had shared data from his personality-quiz app with the political firm Cambridge Analytica , Facebook asked Cambridge Analytica to delete the data. Cambridge Analytica said it had, and Facebook accepted its word.

The incident demonstrated that Facebook’s privacy protections were flimsier than it claimed. In 2011 Facebook settled charges with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over mishandling user data, and Facebook agreed to establish stronger privacy protections and obtain periodic third-party audits. But Facebook has now disclosed that tens of thousands of apps may have obtained data on users and their friends beyond what they needed to operate.

This seems to violate the FTC’s consent decree, as Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal noted. Mr. Zuckerberg waffled in reply that “it certainly appears that we should have been aware that [the researcher] submitted a term that was in conflict with the rules of the platform.” But he said the third-party audits didn’t turn up problems.

The FTC is now investigating Facebook’s privacy controls, but a few questions: Why didn’t the commission ensure years ago that Facebook had established policies to prevent third-party apps from repurposing data? Was the agency too trusting? The Obama campaign app in 2012 exploited data from users and their friends. This may also have violated the FTC consent decree, especially if it shared the data with other liberal groups. Did political considerations influence the FTC’s lax oversight?

These are important questions since Democrats are pressing for more stringent privacy regulations, which Mr. Zuckerberg said he’s open to. But regulation typically benefits incumbents like Facebook that can afford to spend more on compliance while tripping up small competitors. Before establishing new regulations, the FTC should ensure that tech companies abide by their own policies.

Mr. Zuckerberg was also keelhauled for letting Russians exploit the platform in 2016. Facebook has since identified 470 pages and accounts linked to the Russian-controlled Internet Research Agency, which generated at least 200,000 pieces of content over two years. The Russian outfit also bought 3,000 ads on Facebook and Instagram.

The spread of fake news was partly due to Mr. Zuckerberg’s refusal to exercise editorial control over content or pay for quality news. Employing people to sift out junk is expensive, though the increased regulation that may come if he doesn’t also isn’t cheap.

But Facebook can’t be held entirely responsible for Russia’s interference. Only the Justice Department can see across media channels and has the power to investigate election fraud, as special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russians in February showed.

The Russians began organizing in 2013 and stole American identities. “Beginning in or around June 2014, and continuing into June 2015, public reporting began to identify operations conducted by the [IRA] in the United States,” the indictment says. The Russian operatives also created fake accounts on Twitter and YouTube. Yet the Obama Administration waited until December 2016 to slap sanctions on Russians for hacking Democratic National Committee emails. It doesn’t appear that social- media interference was ever a priority.

While Facebook has endorsed legislation that would require more disclosure for buyers of political ads, the regulatory burden could make it harder for small companies and blogs to sell ads. This could drive more political advertising to Facebook. And it’s unclear how the legislation would prevent identity fraud.

Democrats are bitter that President Trump won the election and are using Facebook as a scapegoat. Facebook is hardly blameless, but neither is the Obama Administration.

Somehow in our time all the problems of human existence have boiled down to one cause: Russian collusion.

What is the main reason Mark Zuckerberg was hauled in front of three committees of Congress? It is because the media connected a long series of dots to suggest the possibility that Russian bots exploited the personal Facebook data obtained by a firm named Cambridge Analytica to . . . put Donald Trump in the White House. Without the link to collusion—an infinitely elastic phrase with no legal meaning—Mr. Zuckerberg never would have had to leave Menlo Park.

The live Zuckerberg testimony was torture, forcing anyone interested to hear innumerable senators and House members share their thoughts on technology. Lowering the bar on Senate discourse below swamp level, Louisiana Republican John Kennedy said the Facebook user agreement “sucks.”

Despite the legislators’ thunderings about regulation, the likelihood of the House and Senate enacting rules for the web is more remote than Halley’s Comet, due back in 43 years. Congress has failed for years to bring royalty payments for creators of music into the digital age. CONTINUE AT SITE

If there was any doubt that Robert Mueller’s Ahab-like goal is the unseating of President Trump at all costs and by any means, it was erased by the thuggish FBI raid he orchestrated on the home and office of Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen.

Can’t find any collusion between Trump and Russia? Hey, why not look for collusion between Cohen and professional whore and porn star Stormy Daniels? Was she paid to go away with campaign funds? Even so, that’s an FEC violation punishable by a fine and something that does not require a SWAT team.

It certainly does not compare with money funneled by Team Hillary and the DNC though a law firm to Fusion GPS and British foreign agent Christopher Steele to put together a fake dossier on Trump using Russian sources. But where were the raids on the offices of the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and Fusion GPS?

This is the FBI of Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, whose mission was to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House. They never raided the home and office of Cheryl Mills, did they? They never raided Hillary’s house or seized the acid-washed server, did they? But Michael Cohen is a threat to our democracy warranting brute force? Why wasn’t Michel Cohen offered the immunity deal given to Cheryl Mills and other Clinton cronies:

The FBI gave partial immunity to Hillary Clinton’s former State Department chief of staff Cheryl Mills and two other staffers during the investigation of Clinton’s private e-mail server, according to a member of Congress.

When you stretch the law to “get” a political opponent, it’s rarely possible to return the law to its original shape. Which brings us to Stormy Daniels.

Shortly before the 2016 election, one of President Trump’s lawyers, Michael Cohen, arranged a $130,000 payment to the porn star in return for silence about a 2006 affair she claimed to have had with Mr. Trump. (Both the president and Mr. Cohen have denied the affair; Mr. Trump has said he did not know of the payment to Ms. Daniels until this February.)

Not satisfied with an old-fashioned sex scandal—perhaps because the president seems impervious to that—some want to turn this into a violation of campaign-finance law. Trevor Potter, a former member of the Federal Election Commission told “60 Minutes” the payment was “a $130,000 in-kind contribution by Cohen to the Trump campaign, which is about $126,500 above what he’s allowed to give.” The FBI raided Mr. Cohen’s office, home and hotel room Monday. They reportedly seized records related to the payment and are investigating possible violations of campaign-finance laws.

But let’s remember a basic principle of such laws: Not everything that might benefit a candidate is a campaign expense.

Campaign-finance law aims to prevent corruption. For this reason, the FEC has a longstanding ban on “personal use” of campaign funds. Such use would give campaign contributions a material value beyond helping to elect the candidate—the essence of a bribe.

FEC regulations explain that the campaign cannot pay expenses that would exist “irrespective” of the campaign, even if it might help win election. At the same time, obligations that would not exist “but for” the campaign must be paid from campaign funds.

If paying hush money is a campaign expense, a candidate would be required to make that payment with campaign funds. How ironic, given that using campaign funds as hush money was one of the articles of impeachment in the Watergate scandal, which gave rise to modern campaign-finance law. CONTINUE AT SITE

The FBI raid Monday on lawyer Michael Cohen raises the political and legal stakes in the vast prosecutorial investigation into Donald J. Trump. The probe into allegations of Trump campaign collusion with Russia has careened into a dive into the dumpster of a payoff to a porn actress to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Mr. Trump. This is the way of special prosecutors, and Washington now seems headed toward a fight-to-the-end between the President and his enemies.

The press is reporting that Mr. Cohen is being investigated for possible bank fraud and campaign-finance violations in connection to his $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels (née Stephanie Clifford ) in October 2016. Mr. Cohen said he made the payment as a personal favor for his friend and client, Mr. Trump.

But if the payment was intended to silence the actress to help Mr. Trump win the election, then it could be considered a campaign contribution that exceeded the donation limit in 2016. As Bradley Smith notes nearby, proving such a crime would be difficult, and former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was acquitted in a similar case. But these days in politics anything can be criminalized.

The raid is especially notable, and troubling, for piercing the attorney-client relationship between Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump. That is a serious step legally, and it typically requires significant evidence to justify. It would also require the approval at senior levels of the Justice Department. The warrant came at the request of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan on a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, who could use whatever information the raid generates.

The Fourth and Sixth Amendments prohibit government officials from in any way intruding on the privacy of lawyer/client confidential rights of citizens.

The very fact that this material is seen or read by a government official constitutes a core violation. It would be the same if the government surreptitiously recorded a confession of a penitent to a priest, or a description of symptoms by a patient to a doctor, or a discussion of their sex life between a husband and wife.

The recourses for intrusions on the Fourth and Sixth Amendments are multifold: the victim of the intrusion can sue for damages; he or she can exclude it from use by the government in criminal or civil cases; or the victim can demand the material back. But none of these remedies undo the harm to privacy and confidentiality done to the citizen by the government’s intrusion into his private and confidential affairs.

Many TV pundits are telling viewers not to worry about the government’s intrusion into possible lawyer/client privileged communications between President Trump and his lawyer, since prosecutors will not get to see or use any privileged material. This is because prosecutors and FBI agents create firewalls and taint teams to preclude privileged information from being used against the client in a criminal case. But that analysis completely misses the point and ignores the distinction between the Fifth Amendment on the one hand, and the Fourth and Sixth Amendments on the other.

The Fifth Amendment is an exclusionary rule. By its terms, it prevents material obtained in violation of the privilege of self-incrimination from being used to incriminate a defendant – that is to convict him of a crime. But the Fourth and Sixth Amendments provide far broader protections: they prohibit government officials from in any way intruding on the privacy of lawyer/client confidential rights of citizens. In other words, if the government improperly seizes private or privileged material, the violation has already occurred, even if the government never uses the material from the person from whom it was seized.

There is much speculation as to the significance of the search of the offices and hotel room of President Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen. To obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must demonstrate to a judge that they have probable cause to believe that the premises to be searched contain evidence of crime. They must also specify the area to be searched, the items to be seized and, in searches of computers, the word searches to be used.

At least that’s the constitutional requirement in theory, especially where the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is involved, in addition to the general Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches. Yet, in practice, judges often give the FBI considerable latitude, relying on the “firewalls” and “taint teams” they set up to protect the subject of the search from violation of his or her constitutional rights.

But the firewalls and taint teams are comprised of government agents who themselves may not be entitled to read or review many of the items seized. It is an imperfect protection of important constitutional rights. That’s why Justice Department officials must be careful to limit the searching of lawyers’ offices to compelling cases involving serious crimes. We don’t know at this point what the prosecutors are looking for but, if it relates to payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels, that would not seem to justify so potentially intrusive a search of Cohen’s confidential lawyer-client files.

It’s Equal Pay Day – an opportunity for activists to raise awareness about the perceived pay gap between America’s working men and women. It’s also an opportunity for politicians to attack gender bias in private companies, as they do throughout the year.

In October, we published our OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – Federal and State Government’s Gender Hiring Gap Oversight Report analyzing payrolls from federal agencies, Congress, the White House, and government positions at the state and local levels. We found it’s still a man’s world in government. Across the board, we found that men significantly outnumber women in the top-paid government positions.

However, it’s important to note that we didn’t find any evidence that men and women in the same position were paid differently – that would be illegal. We didn’t find a gender pay gap, but a gender hiring gap, meaning men far outnumber women in highly compensated executive positions.

For example, in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio issues Equal Pay Day proclamations, and, last year, made quite a spectacle hugging the “Fearless Girl” statute that faces the Charging Bull on Wall Street. Yet, 197 out of the 200 top-paid New York City workers are men. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s controlled payroll has just 12 females out of the top 100 most highly compensated city employees.

Here’s how some members of Congress are doing on their own executive-controlled payrolls: