Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty-three. Sunrise is 5:51 AM and sunset 7:52 PM, for 14h 00m 56s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1862, the 5th Wisconsin Infantry takes part in a reconnaissance at Lee’s Mill, Virginia.
Recommended for reading in full —
➤ Andrew E. Kramer and Sharon LaFraniere report Lawyer Who Was Said to Have Dirt on Clinton Had Closer Ties to Kremlin Than She Let On:
MOSCOW — The Russian lawyer who met with Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower in June 2016 on the premise that she would deliver damaging information about Hillary Clinton has long insisted she is a private attorney, not a Kremlin operative trying to meddle in the presidential election.
But newly released emails show that in at least one instance two years earlier, the lawyer, Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, worked hand in glove with Russia’s chief legal office to thwart a Justice Department civil fraud case against a well-connected Russian firm.
Ms. Veselnitskaya also appears to have recanted her earlier denials of Russian government ties. During an interview to be broadcast Friday by NBC News, she acknowledged that she was not merely a private lawyer but a source of information for a top Kremlin official, Yuri Y. Chaika, the prosecutor general.
“I am a lawyer, and I am an informant,” she said. “Since 2013, I have been actively communicating with the office of the Russian prosecutor general.”
(Of course she had closer ties: this Russian lawyer would only be meeting with Trump officials if she did have Kremlin ties; it’s not as though the Trump people were, after all, interested in meeting with human rights activists.)
➤ John N. Tye and Mark S. Zaid consider Robert Mueller’s Last Resort:
Many people think that exposing classified misconduct requires breaking the law. Not necessarily. If Mr. Mueller is fired, he and his team would not have to do anything illegal to disclose classified information and ensure that the American people learned the truth.
Here’s how it could work:
The moment he was dismissed, Mr. Mueller could lawfully take all the evidence he had collected — even the most highly classified materials — straight to Congress. If he personally lost access to the evidence, a remaining member of the Office of Special Counsel could do the same.
Such a move would require speedy execution, so his office should already have a contingency plan. It is illegal to send classified documents across the regular internet, and Congress does not have access to the secure email system used by the executive branch. Therefore, someone with proper security clearance would probably need to manually transport the evidence — hard copy pages or encrypted hard drives — from the special counsel’s facility to Capitol Hill, less than a mile away.
Every detail of such transports is governed by regulations for handling classified information. The president might order federal marshals to arrest the courier en route, alleging national security information was being mishandled, so this individual would have to know and follow the law.
But if the evidence safely reached Congress, the president probably could not contain it. The 37 members of Congress on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, as well as their staffs, are authorized to receive the most sensitive of classified information. Committee members from both parties would get access.
If necessary, members of Congress could unilaterally release classified information on the floor of the House or the Senate. The Constitution’s speech and debate clause would protect them from criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits. If Mr. Trump attempted any legal action, courts would almost certainly dismiss it on separation-of-powers grounds. With bipartisan support, Congress could even pass a new statute specifically to declassify key documents, overriding a presidential veto if necessary.
➤ Jon Swaine reports Michael Cohen case shines light on Sean Hannity’s property empire (“Fox News host who said Trump’s fixer ‘knows real estate’ has a portfolio that includes support from Department of Housing, a fact he did not mention when interviewing Ben Carson last year”):
Hannity’s chosen investment strategy is confirmed by thousands of pages of public records reviewed by the Guardian, which detail a real estate portfolio of remarkable scale that has not previously been reported.
The records link Hannity to a group of shell companies that spent at least $90m on more than 870 homes in seven states over the past decade. The properties range from luxurious mansions to rentals for low-income families. Hannity is the hidden owner behind some of the shell companies and his attorney did not dispute that he owns all of them.
Dozens of the properties were bought at a discount in 2013, after banks foreclosed on their previous owners for defaulting on mortgages. Before and after then, Hannity sharply criticised Barack Obama for the US foreclosure rate. In January 2016, Hannity said there were “millions more Americans suffering under this president” partly because of foreclosures.
Hannity, 56, also amassed part of his property collection with support from the US Department for Housing and Urban Development (Hud), a fact he did not disclose when praising Ben Carson, the Hud secretary, on his television show last year.
(Supposedly private businessmen of this ilk are merely undeserving leeches of public funds.)
➤ Jon Swaine follows up with Sean Hannity’s real estate venture linked to fraudulent property dealer:
Sean Hannity’s real estate venture bought houses through a property dealer who was involved in a criminal conspiracy to fraudulently obtain foreclosed homes, according to records reviewed by the Guardian.
In 2012, a shell company linked to the Fox News host bought 11 homes in Georgia that had been purchased by the dealer, Jeff Brock, following foreclosures. Brock transferred the properties to corporate vehicles that sold them on to the Hannity-linked company at a profit.
Brock pleaded guilty in 2016 to federal charges of bank fraud and conspiracy for his role in an operation to rig foreclosure auctions between 2007 and 2012. He was sentenced to six months in prison and had to pay more than $166,000 in fines and restitution.
Some of the houses sold on to the Hannity-linked firm in 2012 had been acquired by Brock from banks later named by prosecutors among his victims. But the justice department declined to identify specific properties sold in the rigged auctions. Hannity has not been accused of any wrongdoing and there is no evidence he was aware that Brock was involved in fraud.
➤ That’s one relaxed pup:
How adorable is this?!?
?: snanothegolden pic.twitter.com/dWdodqZqqq— Cute Emergency (@CuteEmergency) April 27, 2018