TRUMP’S TROUBLES PILE UP AS HE IS FORCED TO CLOSE PERSONAL CHARITY
▶ President accused of running foundation like a business as his former adviser is told ‘you sold your country out’
US President Donald Trump’s woes intensified yesterday as he agreed to shut down his personal charity amid allegations that it was used for his personal and political benefit, and his former national security adviser received an extraordinary dressing down in court.
At the same time, two new investigations revealed how Moscow’s operatives used social media to target African-Americans and suppress the turnout of Democratic voters.
Barbara Underwood, New York’s Attorney General, and the Trump Foundation filed a joint stipulation with the court laying out a process for dissolving the charity.
New York filed a lawsuit last spring accusing the foundation of operating like an extension of Mr Trump’s businesses and political campaign. That suit will continue.
Lawyers for the foundation insist any infractions were minor and say they have been trying to shut down the foundation voluntarily for months.
“This is an important victory for the rule of law, making clear that there’s one set of rules for everyone,” Ms Underwood said.
“We’ll continue to move our suit forward to ensure that the Trump Foundation and its directors are held to account for their clear and repeated violations of state and federal law.”
The lawsuit accused Mr Trump of illegally using the charity’s money to settle disputes involving his business empire and to boost his political fortunes during his run for the White House.
That included giving out grants of other people’s money to veterans’ groups during the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, the first presidential nominating contest of 2016.
Yesterday, Michael Flynn, who served only 24 days in the White House, appeared in court for sentencing after admitting he lied to prosecutors.
With the judge indicating that he was minded to impose a jail term, Flynn asked that sentencing be delayed.
A lenient sentence had been requested by Robert Mueller’s investigation team in return for his co-operation, but no-one expected the broadside from Emmet Sullivan, US District Judge, who raised his undeclared work on behalf of the Turkish government.
“You were an unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security adviser to the president,” Mr Sullivan said. “That undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country out.”
Flynn pleaded guilty in December last year to concealing that he had discussed US sanctions against Russia with Sergei Kislyak, the then Russian ambassador to Washington, according to his plea deal.
He would have been the fourth defendant in the Mueller investigation to have been sentenced.
Michael Cohen, Mr Trump’s former personal attorney, George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the 2016 campaign, and Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer, each pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and received prison sentences.
The end of this year has been marked by three weeks of revelations against Mr Trump and his team.
Taken together, the latest twists reveal how almost every aspect of the president’s campaign and time in office is under investigation – from his businesses to his close associates. Wired magazine counted 17 different investigations.
The two new investigations reveal how Moscow’s operatives used social media to target African-Americans and suppress turnout among Democratic voters.
Those efforts started earlier than previously understood and continue today with websites and online accounts targeting Mr Mueller, according to reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee.
One post on a Facebook page titled “Merican Fury”, for example, falsely claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with “radical Islamic groups”.
Adam Schiff, the most senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said every concerned American should read the reports.
“Russian efforts to manipulate Americans through social media are sophisticated, cynical, effective and very much ongoing,” Mr Schiff said.
The scale of that operation was laid bare in two reports – one by social media analysts New Knowledge and the other by an Oxford University team working with analytical company Graphika – that examined online Russian attempts to influence the election.
The researchers analysed more than 10 million posts to understand how the Russian government’s Internet Research Agency, based in St Petersburg, tried to manipulate American politics.
They included stoking “secessionist movements” in California and Texas, according to the New Knowledge report.
“The most prolific IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,” the report says.
It used websites and usernames that sounded African-American in origin such as blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info and @blackstagram.
Oxford/Graphika said the content included messages urging black voters to boycott the election as well as misinformation about voting procedures to suppress turn-out for Hillary Clinton, while also encouraging right-wing voters to be more confrontational.
The new details build on a US intelligence report that last year concluded that Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, directed a campaign to undermine Mrs Clinton’s chances of election victory.
Mr Trump has always denied collusion with the Russian regime.
Yesterday, he tried to shift focus, accusing social media platforms of working against him.
“Facebook, Twitter and Google are so biased toward the Dems it is ridiculous. Twitter, in fact, has made it much more difficult for people to join realDonaldTrump,” he posted on Twitter.
Yet analysts said it beggared belief that he and his supporters were unwilling to acknowledge the way Russia had exploited American democracy.
The end of this year has been marked by three weeks of revelations against Mr Trump and his team