J.D. Vance Is Now Seriously Considering Running For Senate In Ohio

J.D. Vance (second from right)

Drew Angerer / Getty Images

J.D. Vance is now seriously considering a US Senate campaign in Ohio and discussing the prospect with Republicans in Washington, following overtures from party donors and leaders who believe he would be their best candidate.

The author of the best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy previously had ruled out a bid. But Josh Mandel, who had been the frontrunner in the GOP primary, dropped out last week, citing a health issue involving his wife. His surprise decision has shaken up the race.

“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since Friday,” said Jai Chabria, an adviser to Vance who joined Vance in Washington this week for meetings with those encouraging his candidacy.

“The amount of support for J.D. Vance is incredible,” Chabria told BuzzFeed News. “People are starting to realize he has the best message to beat [Democratic incumbent] Sherrod Brown. J.D. is giving serious consideration toward this, because there are very serious people asking him to run.”

Ohio Republicans are interested in Vance, too. Several close allies of Gov. John Kasich, who has ruled out a Senate bid, were urging him to run last year, before Vance initially announced he would not be a candidate. With Mandel now out of the picture, a Draft J.D. Vance website appeared Monday, not long after allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell revealed that McConnell had spoken with Vance in recent days and was very high on his potential candidacy.

Another name in the mix is US Rep. Jim Renacci, who is running for governor but has received encouragement to move into the Senate race. Renacci, though, has made his Senate candidacy contingent on a blessing from President Donald Trump, who has yet to weigh in on the race.

"If the president would call, I would consider it, because I would need his help really at this late part of the game," Renacci said Tuesday during an interview with Cleveland radio station WTAM. "But again, my commitment is still to try and change the state of Ohio, and if I can do that in a Senate seat with the backing of the president because he wants me to do it, I would clearly consider it only at that time."

It’s not certain the call from Trump will come in time for Renacci to switch gears for a Feb. 7 filing deadline. The White House has not responded to requests for comment.

Meanwhile, self-funding investment banker Mike Gibbons, who had emerged as Mandel’s strongest primary challenger, remains in the race and is working to convince GOP activists that he would be the party’s best option against Brown in the fall. He has pledged another $5 million to his campaign, and on Wednesday he announced endorsements from a slate of conservative leaders, including two who had served as county chairs for Mandel’s campaign.

Vance's 2016 book was seen as key to understanding the Appalachian and white working-class voters who carried Trump to the White House. He recently returned to his native Ohio to promote a public policy agenda, fueling speculation about his political future.

Source BuzzFeed - Politics http://ift.tt/2DjuS89

Read More

Court Strikes Down North Carolina's Congressional Map For Being A "Partisan" Gerrymander

Voters cast their ballots inside the Hawthorne Recreation Center near uptown Charlotte, North Carolina.

Logan Cyrus / AFP / Getty Images

A federal court on Tuesday found North Carolina's congressional map to be an unconstitutional "partisan" gerrymander devised by the state's Republican lawmakers — and ordered the state to submit a new map by the end of the month.

The court gave the state until 5 p.m. Jan. 29 to submit a new map, but also began a process for appointing a special master who would draw a map if the state is unable to do so successfully.

The ruling comes as the Supreme Court is considering how partisan gerrymanders are considered by courts — in cases out of Wisconsin and Maryland — and it is expected that North Carolina lawmakers will ask to put the ruling on hold until the Wisconsin case, which was heard by the justices in October 2017, is resolved.

The possibility for delay, however, will soon run up against February filing deadlines for the North Carolina congressional races.

On Tuesday, the three-judge panel considering the case, in an opinion by Circuit Judge James Wynn, ruled that the North Carolina's map violated Equal Protection Clause, the First Amendment, and the Election Clause of Article I of the Constitution. Judge William Britt joined Wynn's opinion. Judge William Osteen Jr. wrote separately, but ultimately agreed that, under current Supreme Court case law, the state's plan was unconstitutional — although he did not agree that it violated the First Amendment.

Although the 205-page ruling went into great detail about the plan, the claims, and the law, the underlying facts were blunt: After the original redistricting plan was struck down as a racial gerrymander, lawmakers asked the person they had re-drawing the map "to remedy the racial gerrymander and "to use political data ... in drawing the remedial plan."

Rep. David Lewis — the senior chair of the state House's redistricting committee — "acknowledge[d] freely that this would be a political gerrymander," which he claimed was "not against the law," the court noted.

In considering the Equal Protection claim, the court reviewed expert testimony in the case at length to consider the claim. One expert for the plaintiffs computer generated 1,000 maps using "the non-partisan criteria included in the Committee’s Adopted Criteria: population equality, contiguity, minimizing county and VTD splits, and maximizing compactness."

The expert "found that none of the 1,000 plans yielded a congressional delegation of 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats — the outcome that would have occurred under the 2016 Plan — when he evaluated the sample." (The expert, Dr. Jowei Chen, went on to consider two other 1,000-map simulations to control for different situations — with the same result that none had as partisan a result as the actual map passed by the state.)

The court concluded that "the General Assembly intended to discriminate against voters who supported or were likely to support non-Republican candidates" and that "the 2016 Plan dilutes the votes of non-Republican voters and entrenches Republican control of the state’s congressional delegation."

In ruling the map unconstitutional under the First Amendment, the court looked to several areas of First Amendment law — including viewpoint discrimination ("prohibit[ing] the government from favoring or disfavoring particular viewpoints"), electoral speech dilution (addressing "the First Amendment’s prohibition on laws that disfavor a particular group or class of speakers"), retaliation ("prohibiti[ng] ... burdening or penalizing individuals for engaging in protected speech"), and election regulations (having "the potential to burden political speech or association").

"Against these many, multifaceted lines of precedent, the First Amendment’s applicability to partisan gerrymandering is manifest," Wynn wrote, before concluding the North Carolina plan violated the amendment.

The court also found that the plan violated provisions of Article I of the Constitution — clauses detailing that the "House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen . . . by the People" and the Elections Clause, which states that state legislatures have the authority to set the "times, places and manner of holding elections," subject to congressional alterations.

The court found the plan "exceeds the General Assembly’s delegated authority under the Elections Clause" because, in part, it "represents an impermissible effort to 'dictate electoral outcomes' and 'disfavor a class of candidates.'"

"[T]he 2016 Plan’s demonstrated partisan favoritism," the court concluded, "simply is not authorized by the Elections Clause."

Source BuzzFeed - Politics http://ift.tt/2ErzYyf

Read More

Autonomous vehicles will reshape how we live in more ways than you think.

Source CNN.com - RSS Channel - App Tech Section http://ift.tt/2ErK3LN

Read More

A Major Democratic Donor Is Reconsidering Support For Senators Who Pushed For Al Franken’s Resignation

Clinton with Buell in 2007.

Paul Sakuma / ASSOCIATED PRESS

One of the Democratic Party's biggest donors says she is reconsidering her support for the women in the U.S. Senate who called for Al Franken’s resignation following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate touching.

The San Francisco-based donor, Susie Tompkins Buell, 75, has given millions of dollars to Democratic causes since the 1990s. She is best known as a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton, but has also contributed for decades to Democratic women senators, hosting a regular spring fundraiser for the lawmakers in California called "Women on the Road to the Senate."

Buell said she is weighing whether to continue her financial support after the calls for Franken's exit last month. The charge for his resignation — led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and followed almost immediately by a string of statements from other prominent female Democratic senators — came on Dec. 6, before the conclusion of an official Senate Ethics Committee inquiry.

Franken was accused by at least six women of inappropriate touching and kissing, and was the subject of a photograph in which he appeared to jokingly grab the breasts of a sleeping woman. He made his resignation official earlier this week. The governor of Minnesota appointed former Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, a Democrat, to fill the vacant seat.

In two interviews this week, Buell described the push for Franken’s departure as "unfair," "cavalier," and somewhat politically motivated — "a stampede," "like a rampage," she said, speaking in stark terms about senators she has backed for years, naming Gillibrand in particular.

"They need to know that some of their biggest supporters are questioning why they did that," Buell said. "We have to do things conscientiously and fairly. He didn't have the chance to defend himself."

The critique marks a somewhat significant departure for Buell, who is a mainstay in Democratic donor circles and has cultivated a reputation over the years as a fierce and vocal supporter of Democratic women.

During the 2016 election, the New York Times reported this week, Buell contributed to an unsuccessful effort by attorney Lisa Bloom to make public sexual misconduct claims against then-candidate Donald Trump. According to Bloom, the funds would have been used to defray costs of security and relocation for women seeking to come forward with allegations against Trump.

Since 1991, Buell has contributed to nearly every one of the 17 women currently serving in the Capitol's upper chamber, according to campaign filings. She has given the most to Gillibrand and her PAC, Off the Sidelines, a group dedicated to supporting other female candidates.

In 2014, at the California fundraising event she hosts for female Senate candidates, Buell made a point of praising Gillibrand's year-long push to change military sexual assault policies. At the podium, she chided Sen. Claire McCaskill, another Democratic senator, for voting against Gillibrand's bill. "'There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.' And I believe that," she said at the time, citing a phrase famously attributed to Madeleine Albright.

This week, Buell described Franken's case differently.

"These are senators that almost unanimously said he should have his opportunity to explain himself with the Ethics Committee," she said. "Then, within hours of each other, they said he should resign. It was clearly, clearly highly organized."

Franken is one of several members of Congress to resign or announce they will not run for reelection after reported allegations or disclosed settlements, joining the growing list of men felled amid a nationwide reckoning with sexual assault, misconduct, and sexism in the workplace.

Still, Buell's comments this week also come as some Democratic senators have expressed regret about Franken's exit.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who joined the rush of calls for a resignation on Dec. 6, has since said that he and others in the Senate acted too hastily. "I have stood for due process throughout my years as a prosecutor and in chairing the Judiciary Committee," Leahy told the Burlington Free Press on Dec. 18. "I regret not doing that this time. The Ethics Committee should have been allowed to investigate and make its recommendation."

That same week, another Democrat in the Senate, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said in an interview with Politico that the move by Franken's Democratic colleagues was "hypocritical" and "atrocious." In addition to Leahy, Politico reported at the time, two of the other senators who had called for Franken to step down earlier that month said the decision had been rushed. Franken himself was defiant in his resignation speech, saying both that "we are finally beginning to listen to women" and that some of the allegations against him "are simply not true."

Buell said she has no "personal relationship" with Franken. In 2007 and 2008, she contributed at least $4,300 to his Senate campaign.

Buell declined to elaborate on the extent to which she planned to reduce her financial support. "I'm just taking a look at where I put my energy and money," she said. "I won't be doing it to the degree I did before. I'm just too upset and discouraged by the way they did this."

Source BuzzFeed - Politics http://ift.tt/2Cz7KRG

Read More

Below the surface of the Internet we all know, lies a deeper, darker web where a piece of your personal data may end up.

Source CNN.com - RSS Channel - App Tech Section http://ift.tt/1zKGvdA

Read More

White House Lawyer Who Reportedly Cautioned Against Comey Firing Used To Work For Comey

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images

The White House lawyer who reportedly advised President Trump that he had limited authority to fire former FBI director James Comey has an unexpected background: He once worked for Comey.

Uttam Dhillon, who the New York Times on Thursday night reported had taken "the extraordinary step" in early 2017 "of misleading" President Trump about the circumstances under which he could fire Comey, has served in several Republican-led offices.

Prior to joining the White House, he worked for Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling. More than a decade earlier, he had worked for then-Rep. Chris Cox. And, notably, in between those jobs, he served in the George W. Bush-era Justice Department, working for Comey, who was then deputy attorney general.

At the start of the Trump administration, however, Dhillon joined the White House Counsel's Office, led by White House Counsel Donald McGahn.

In that role, Dhillon, the New York Times reported, had a junior lawyer examine what grounds Trump would need to fire Comey. The lawyer, per the Times, concluded that — like any executive branch employee — Trump could fire Comey at will.

"Mr. Dhillon, who had earlier told Mr. Trump that he needed cause to fire Mr. Comey, never corrected the record, withholding the conclusions of his research," the Times reports.

The story asserts that Dhillon did so because he "was convinced that if Mr. Comey was fired, the Trump presidency could be imperiled" — because it could lead to the sort of investigation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is now overseeing.

White House spokespeople did not immediately return a request for comment late Thursday about Dhillon's role in the White House counsel's office.

Before joining the White House in early 2017, Dhillon was chief counsel for oversight for the House Financial Services Committee under Hensarling, the committee's chair. Before that, he had worked for a law firm doing securities litigation in Dallas. Before that, he had been in DC, a part of the Bush administration.

In his time at the Justice Department, Dhillon, per his LinkedIn bio, was "®esponsible for advising and assisting the Deputy Attorney General in formulating and implementing Department of Justice policies and programs relating to explosives, firearms, capital punishment, violent crime, gangs, and civil liberties."

The deputy attorney general for almost all of Dhillon's time in that role was Comey.

Dhillon was one of a handful of associate deputy attorneys general who worked under Comey, according to a 2005 directory published by the Government Printing Office. While at the Justice Department, Dhillon worked on law enforcement and related matters.

Among the others in the office at the time were Chuck Rosenberg, who was Comey's chief of staff when he was deputy attorney general but was the acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration until his resignation in September 2017 — reportedly because of concerns about Trump's respect for the rule of law — and Jim Rybicki, who later was Comey's chief of staff when he was the FBI director.

The time period was a notable one for the Bush-era Justice Department: It was in March 2004 when Comey — later described in great detail before a Senate committee — rushed to the hospital, where then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had been admitted for nearly a week, in an attempt to stop the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, and chief of staff, Andrew Card, from attempting to, as Comey testified, "ask him [Ashcroft] to overrule me when he was in no condition to do that." Comey was the acting attorney general due to Ashcroft's hospitalization and had refused to reauthorize the domestic surveillance program in place at the time, but he was concerned that the White House was going to attempt to circumvent him by going directly to Ashcroft — which they did, but without success.

In November 2005, a few months after Comey left his role as deputy attorney general, President Bush nominated Dhillon to be the first head of the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement at DHS, where he served after Senate confirmation.

Source BuzzFeed - Politics http://ift.tt/2Cuzc2S

Read More

Rebekah Mercer Publicly Breaks With Steve Bannon

Jonathan Bachman / Reuters

Billionaires Bob and Rebekah Mercer say they've cut Steve Bannon off from the millions that have kept him a key player in right-wing politics and in the White House over the last year.

"I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected," Rebekah Mercer said in a statement Thursday, distancing herself from Bannon following the release of excerpts from a forthcoming book in which Bannon is critical of the president's son.

"My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements."

But the statement, a rare public one from Rebekah Mercer, leaves a lot to the imagination about when and where her family stopped being a benefactor to Bannon's efforts.

It's not clear when Mercer and Bannon last spoke, multiple people told BuzzFeed News. What happens next at Breitbart, where the Mercers are major investors, is also unclear.

Bannon allies have indicated for months that they were coordinating with the Mercers in selecting the candidates to take on Republican incumbents whom they did not consider to be supportive enough of the president's priorities. Bob Mercer contributed fundraising to two of those candidates last summer: $300,000 to a super PAC boosting Kelli Ward in Arizona and $50,000 to a super PAC helping Chris McDaniel in Mississippi.

After leaving the White House, Bannon reportedly spent five days in Long Island meeting with the Mercers. Even after Bob Mercer stepped down from his hedge fund in part because of the media attention on his connections to Bannon, those close to the former Trump adviser insisted that Rebekah Mercer continued to stay engaged.

And Republican candidates had been wooing Bannon in hopes that his support would translate into financial support from the Mercers. But for most, the endorsement so far meant little more than name recognition and favorable coverage by the far-right, Bannon-led website Breitbart.

Bannon did create a nonprofit, Citizens of the American Republic, in November to serve as a vehicle for pushing his political agenda, but a source told BuzzFeed News that the group was largely dormant and discussions regarding a detailed website — crucial for fundraising and messaging — never really materialized.

Source BuzzFeed - Politics http://ift.tt/2lYrp7g

Read More

Trump Allies Are Bashing Steve Bannon — And Defending Katie Walsh

Katie Walsh

Zach Gibson / Getty Images

President Trump isn’t complaining publicly about the other former White House official who’s been quoted making provocative observations in a forthcoming book — in fact, prominent Trump allies are publicly standing by Katie Walsh, the former White House deputy chief of staff.

A Thursday report from Axios had Trump administration officials debating whether Walsh should be fired from a nonprofit advocacy group that operates with Trump’s blessing after a book excerpt quoted her as characterizing the president as an indecisive “child.” But several top-ranking officials with the nonprofit, America First Policies, quickly came to Walsh’s defense and made clear she is in no danger of losing her job as a senior adviser, a sign of how well Walsh has navigated the tricky politics of 2018.

"As the chairman of the board of America First and a longtime friend of the Trump family, I say with the utmost confidence that Katie Walsh’s work ethic, loyalty, and commitment to the president are incomparable,” Tommy Hicks Jr., a Trump fundraiser, said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News. “We are proud to have her on the team at America First."

Brian O. Walsh, the president of America First Policies (and no relation to Katie Walsh), also was unequivocal in his support for her. “Katie Walsh is a political professional who has navigated the DC Swamp with skill and grace and worked tirelessly to help launch our new president and his administration on a path to success,” he said. “She is a pivotal part of our team at America First, and there has been no discussion about any change in her role.”

Walsh has denied making some of the comments the book attributes to her.

“It is the honor of my lifetime to work for President Trump, as I have on his campaign, during the transition, in his White House and continue to do so every day because I believe in the president and I believe in his leadership,” Walsh told BuzzFeed News in an emailed statement. “I look forward to when we can get back to talking about the stunning economic comeback our country is experiencing because of the tremendous vision of President Trump.”

The response is starkly different from the fire trained on Steve Bannon: His criticism of Trump in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House has burned bridges at a White House where he once served as chief strategist and possibly within the populist Republican political movement that he sees as his creation. On Thursday, influential Republican donor Rebekah Mercer publicly said that she does not support his “recent actions and statements.” Meanwhile, the Breitbart board is reportedly considering taking some action regarding Bannon, the right-wing news site’s executive chairman.

Brian Walsh’s point about “skill and grace” helps explain why Walsh appears to be on safe ground while Trump uses official White House statements to declare that Bannon has “lost his mind.” With her Republican National Committee background and subsequent assimilation into the political organization built from the remnants of Trump’s anti-establishment campaign, Walsh has friends — and business interests — in all corners of today’s GOP. That’s not the easiest of feats in a party fractured by Trumpism.

A St. Louis native, Walsh had a traditional upbringing in national Republican politics. She was a regional fundraising director for John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid and then moved on to roles with the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the RNC, where during the 2016 cycle she served as chief of staff under then-chairman Reince Priebus. The RNC’s data operation played a substantial role in Trump’s victory and put Walsh in close contact with two of Trump’s top advisers: son-in-law Jared Kushner and digital director Brad Parscale.

Walsh followed Priebus to the White House, where she became his deputy chief of staff. But she lasted only two months. Some viewed Walsh’s departure as symptomatic of a West Wing shakeup following the collapse of a health care bill. Priebus, who would last only a few more months himself, sent Walsh to help turn around America First, which had been criticized for not providing enough advertising support for Trump during the administration’s early days.

"No one can fix this problem better than Katie Walsh,” Priebus said at the time.

After Walsh joined, America First became more more visible, particularly on health care messaging and on behalf of special election candidates Trump supported last year. The nonprofit, which is not required to disclose its donors, has counted several core Trump allies among its team of advisers, including Parscale, who remains close with Walsh.

Walsh also returned to the RNC as a senior adviser for data. She’s not on the payroll, but the party paid her consulting firm, the Laymont Group, $135,000 last year, according to Federal Election Commission filings. And Walsh’s husband, Mike Shields, has a new consulting firm that worked extensively with one of those special election candidates — Trump-endorsed Karen Handel in Georgia — and the National Republican Congressional Committee last year.

“Katie has worked tirelessly for the party and is a valuable asset to the RNC as we head into the midterm elections,” RNC spokesperson Ryan Mahoney said Thursday.

The perception among several GOP sources who spoke with BuzzFeed News is that Walsh has thrived financially and professionally in the Trump era without attaching herself too firmly to Trump’s brand. It’s a notion that’s undermined a bit by her brief White House tenure and prominent role with the main outside group responsible for promoting Trump’s agenda.

But excerpts from Wolff’s book suggest Walsh was no Trump acolyte. Walsh comes off as the type of operative you’d expect to find in a typical Republican White House, thrown into a White House that was anything but — and as someone who bailed out of the job early because she had had enough. Wolff portrays her sympathetically, as a frustrated aide struggling with the competing interests of Priebus, Bannon, and Kushner, and with the whims of Trump. The killer quote attributed to Walsh compares managing Trump to “trying to figure out what a child wants.”

Elsewhere in the book, Walsh is quoted saying that Trump “fundamentally wants to be liked. He just fundamentally needs to be liked so badly that it’s always … everything is a struggle for him.”

According to Wolff, Walsh was an equal-opportunity critic in her quest to achieve White House order, fuming about advisers of all ideologies. She is quoted as disapproving of “Bannon’s Breitbart shenanigans;” observing that getting Gary Cohn “to take a position on something is like nailing butterflies to the wall;” and predicting that Dina Powell “will expose herself as being totally incompetent.” As for Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump: “If they tell [the president] the whales need to be saved, he’s basically for it,” Walsh reportedly said.

Walsh has denied making the “what a child wants” comment and told Jon Ward of Yahoo News that Wolff misattributed some Bannon quotes to her. Walsh declined to respond Thursday when asked by BuzzFeed News if she denied giving any of the other quotes attributed to her.

The comments, which have not gotten as much attention as Bannon’s assertion that a 2016 meeting with Russians at Trump Tower was “treasonous,” nonetheless caused a stir among GOP operatives. Some doubted Walsh would say such things on the record. Others doubted she could keep her place in the Trump orbit if she can’t convincingly prove that she didn’t.

Source BuzzFeed - Politics http://ift.tt/2CDUAa2

Read More

Trump Just Disbanded His Contested Election Integrity Commission

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

President Trump has dissolved his election integrity commission, blaming states for refusing to turn over voter data as well as the lawsuits that have dogged the commission since Trump announced it in May.

The White House announced Trump's decision late Wednesday, citing an executive order that has not yet been made available by the White House.

The announcement included a statement that repeated Trump's oft-made claim of voter fraud, but said that "rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense," Trump had ended the commission and asked the Department of Homeland Security to take up the review of US election systems.

Democrats and civil rights groups criticized the commission from the start, accusing the administration of using it as a pretext for suppressing minority voters. The Trump administration faced a string of lawsuits challenging the legality of the commission itself as well as its efforts to collect voter data from states.

Most recently, the commission was sued by one of its own members, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat, who claimed he was blocked from getting information about the group's activities. In the lawsuit, Dunlap's lawyers said that the commission's "superficial bipartisanship has been a facade."

A judge on Dec. 22 had ordered the commission to provide Dunlap with some of the materials he had requested.

The commission was chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, but its driving force was Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. It was Kobach who sent a letter to states in June seeking information from their voter rolls. The majority of states refused to comply with the request, according to press reports.

Kobach told the Topeka Capital-Journal last week that although the commission's work had been delayed because of the lawsuits, it would meet in January. The group's last meeting was in September.

A spokeswoman for Kobach did not immediately return a request for comment.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Source BuzzFeed - Politics http://ift.tt/2CAz1al

Read More

Paul Manafort Is Suing The Justice Department To Get Rid Of Special Counsel Robert Mueller

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the validity of special counsel Robert Mueller's appointment and asking a judge to set aside the criminal case that Mueller's team is pursuing against Manafort.

Manafort — who is facing a slew of criminal charges in connection with his past work overseas — is arguing that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein went too far when he gave Mueller authority in May to investigate not only any possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, but also any other matters that "arose or may arise" from the investigation.

"The Appointment Order purports to grant authority to the Special Counsel to expand the scope of his investigation to new matters without the consent of — indeed, without even consulting — any politically accountable officer of the United States," Manafort's lawyers wrote.

Manafort wants a judge to declare Rosenstein's original appointment order invalid, to block Mueller's office from investigating issues outside of Russian collusion, and to set aside "all actions taken against Mr. Manafort pursuant to the Appointment Order."

A spokesperson for the special counsel's office declined to comment. A Justice Department spokesperson wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News: "The lawsuit is frivolous but the defendant is entitled to file whatever he wants."

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia by the same lawyers representing Manafort in the criminal case, Kevin Downing and Thomas Zehnle.

Manafort and his longtime associate Rick Gates were charged in late October with money laundering, failing to report overseas bank accounts, failing to register as lobbyists for foreign entities, and making false statements. They've pleaded not guilty.

The criminal case is still in its early stages — Manafort and Gates have been fighting in court most recently over the conditions of their release while the case is pending. The judge has yet to set a trial date.

Source BuzzFeed - Politics http://ift.tt/2CloATX

Read More