Murray Waas is an investigative reporter who reports on national security and law enforcement. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a winner of the Goldsmith Prize.
Flynn, Comey, and Mueller: What Trump Knew and When He Knew It
Previously undisclosed evidence in the possession of Special Counsel Robert Mueller—including highly confidential White House records and testimony by some of President Trump’s own top aides—provides some of the strongest evidence to date implicating the president of the United States in an obstruction of justice. Several people who have reviewed a portion of this evidence say that, based on what they know, they believe it is now all but inevitable that the special counsel will complete a con...
Sidney Powell filed false incorporation papers for non-profit, grand jury finds
A federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s former attorney Sidney Powell has uncovered evidence that Powell filed false incorporation papers with the state of Texas for a non-profit she heads, Defending the Republic, according to sources close to the investigation.
In the incorporation papers, Powell – who filed lawsuits across the US questioning the 2020 election result which Trump lost to Joe Biden – listed two men whom she said served with her on the organization’s board of director...
Finalist: Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas of Los Angeles Times
For persistent reporting that created a model for transparent journalism in political campaign coverage while casting doubt on Donald Trump’s assertions of generosity toward charities.
For her smart, persistent coverage of the Secret Service, its security lapses and the ways in which the agency neglected its vital task: the protection of the president of the United States.
For expanding the examination of how wounded combat veterans are mistreated, focusing on loss of benefits for life after ...
Mike Pence, Star Witness
News summary:
Despite strong recommendations from Vice President Mike Pence, then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and White House Counsel Don McGahn during a February 10, 2017, conversation that the president immediately fire his then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Trump still refused to do so, according to confidential White House records.
Earlier that day, Pence, Priebus, and McGahn had met in the Situation Room to read classified transcripts of Flynn’s conversations on sanctions w...
Tools of Trump’s Fixer: Payouts, Intimidation and the Tabloids
As accounts of past sexual indiscretions threatened to surface during Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, the job of stifling potentially damaging stories fell to his longtime lawyer and all-around fixer, Michael D. Cohen.
To protect his boss at critical junctures in his improbable political rise, the lawyer relied on intimidation tactics, hush money and the nation’s leading tabloid news business, American Media Inc., whose top executives include close Trump allies.
Mr. Cohen’s role has ...
How Trump and Barr’s October Surprise Went Bust
On September 10, Nora Dannehy resigned as the deputy to John Durham, the federal prosecutor investigating the government’s probe into the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. Dannehy left her post and the Justice Department in part because of Attorney General William Barr’s pressure on Durham to release a report on his investigation’s findings before Election Day, according to a person familiar with her thinking. Trump had long been hoping a report out this fall would damage De...
IN THE LOOP: BUSH'S SECRET MISSION
The New Yorker, November 2, 1992 P. 64
ANNALS OF GOVERNMENT about Iraqgate and the Iran-Contra scandal. Describes an assignment Vice-President George Bush received in 1986 from William Casey: To convey a message through intermediaries to Saddam Hussein: He was to deliver an incendiary message from Washington to Baghdad--escalate the air war and escalate the bombing deep inside Iranian terrotory. The Iranians would then beforced to come to the US for more arms and thus be in a position both to...
Timeline of Deceit: From Trump’s Draft to Rosenstein’s Cover Story
In a confidential draft of a letter that President Trump wrote, firing James Comey as FBI director, the president repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s covert interference in the 2016 presidential election. That the FBI’s inquiry was the president’s main complaint in the original four-page May 2017 draft provides new and previously unreported evidence that Trump’s primary motivation in firing Comey may have been to impede the Russia investigation, a pot...
Revealed: how Sidney Powell could be disbarred for lying in court for Trump
The former lawyer filed cases across America for the former president, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 election
Sidney Powell, the former lawyer for Donald Trump who filed lawsuits across the US for the former president, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, has on several occasions represented to federal courts that people were co-counsel or plaintiffs in her cases without seeking their permission to do so, the Guardian has learned.
Some of these indivi...
The Trump Obstruction of Justice Mueller Missed?
News summary:
In early 2017, Deputy Counsel to the President John Eisenberg pressed a senior Justice Department official to tell him whether anyone close to President Trump was the subject of electronic surveillance as part of a continuing federal criminal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. That enquiry appears to have violated the Trump White House’s own official policy restricting its officials from discussing open criminal investigations with Justice...
Michael Flynn ignored official warnings about receiving foreign payments
The defense department inspector general has uncovered evidence that Michael Flynn accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from foreign interests and governments, despite repeated warnings by the DoD and the justice department that his conduct might be illegal, the Guardian can reveal.
After the retired general pleaded guilty in 2017 to federal criminal charges that he had lied to the FBI during its investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, then-president Don...
Mitt Romney's administration stifled antibullying guide over ...
Mitt Romney's administration stifled antibullying g...
Murray Waas is Our Woodward Now
t should be obvious from the work who the Woodward of Now is. And if it isn’t obvious Greg Sargent can explain it to you over at the American Prospect.
The guy’s name is Murray Waas; he’s an independent journalist who recently went to work as a staff writer for the National Journal and the Atlantic Media Company, which owns the Atlantic Monthly, the Journal, and other titles. Waas has been in the game since he was 18, when he started working for the columnist Jack Anderson.
By Woodward Now I mean the reporter who is actually doing what Woodward has a reputation for doing: finding, tracking,
Jeff Sessions impeded inquiry into role in Trump’s family separation policy
Former attorney general Jeff Sessions and other senior justice department officials impeded an internal departmental investigation into their role in implementing the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy that separated thousands of children from their parents on the border, according to interviews and government records.
Sessions declined to be interviewed by investigators for the department’s inspector general, who conducted an inquiry of the family separation policy, according...
Bush Had Long History of Support for Iraq Aid : Arms control: Actions in the ‘80s are an example of how leaders bend programs to serve their own ends.
WASHINGTON —
In early March of 1987, Vice President George Bush met with Nizar Hamdoon, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States, to deliver some good news: Bush’s lobbying efforts were about to pay off handsomely for Saddam Hussein.
First, Hamdoon was told, two long-awaited licenses permitting Hussein’s government to buy militarily sensitive American technology had been approved--over the objections of the Pentagon, according to classified documents. Moreover, Bush had telephoned the chairm...