Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Chinese EVs are good for the world. Biden says they’re bad for America. 

Why the Solomon Islands election matters to China and the U.S.

Biden calls ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ like China, Russia, at campaign event

The 6 best things to do with kids in the D.C. area this weekend 

The 33 best things to do in D.C. this weekend and next week

Trevor Williams’s escape act helps Nationals blank Rangers 

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

On Press Freedom Day, little to celebrate for Hong Kong’s journalists

Taxes are inevitable. Paying to prepare them doesn’t have to be.

Miss Manners: Offering my bedroom to guests

Ask Amy: My wife’s sister confessed her feelings for me

Carolyn Hax: Will request for a postnup offend much younger wife?

NASA moon capsule suffered extensive damage during 2022 test flight

Russian state media ramping up English, Spanish presence on TikTok, study finds

Apple is behind in AI and killed its self-driving car project. What’s next?

This masterpiece ‘Birth of Venus’ probably isn’t of Venus at all

The beginner’s illustrated guide to watching an F1 race

Wait, what is Stephen A. Smith talking about? Find out with our quiz.

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

You asked: Do I need a passport for my cruise?

Adaptive equipment is making national parks more inclusive

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

Brave Little Hunter is free: Baby orca escapes lagoon for open seas

I learned to heal my sadness by cradling dying chickens 

World Press Freedom Day, 2024

How Trump convinces Republicans to adopt extreme views

Campuses are grappling with the Gaza war. So are our columnists.

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

Trump and allies say Biden pays rent for ‘illegals’ in Michigan. Not true.

Eighty percent of Ukraine-Israel bill will be spent in U.S. or by U.S. military

Stephen A. Smith would like even more of your attention

Local sports networks go dark mid-game amid dispute with Comcast 

Trump hush money trial live updates: Witness testimony to continue

Federal prosecutors filed new court papers Friday directly implicating President Trump in plans to buy women’s silence as far back as 2014 and offering new evidence of Russian efforts to forge a political alliance with Trump before he became president — disclosures that show the deepening political and legal morass enveloping the administration.

[Read prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation for Michael Cohen]

The separate filings came from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and federal prosecutors in New York ahead of Wednesday’s sentencing of Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Taken together, the documents suggest that the president’s legal woes are far from over and reveal a previously unreported contact from a Russian to Trump’s inner circle during the campaign. But the documents do not answer the central question at the heart of Mueller’s work — whether the president or those around him conspired with the Kremlin.

The documents offer a scathing portrait of his former lawyer as a criminal who deserves little sympathy or mercy because he held back from telling the FBI everything he knew. For that reason, prosecutors said, he should be sentenced to “substantial” prison time, suggesting possibly 3½ years.

[Read the special counsel’s memo on Michael Cohen]

Trump immediately declared that he was vindicated. “Totally clears the president. Thank you!” <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1071177621445230596" title="twitter.com">he tweeted</a>. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the Cohen filings “tell us nothing of value that wasn’t already known.”

The special counsel’s office said Cohen had provided “useful information” about its ongoing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, as well as “relevant information” about his contacts with people connected to the White House between 2017 and 2018.

Mueller revealed that Cohen told prosecutors about what seemed to be a previously unknown November 2015 contact with a Russian national, who claimed to be a “trusted person” in the Russian Federation offering the campaign “political synergy” and “synergy on a government level.”

Cohen told investigators that the person, who was not identified, repeatedly proposed a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, saying that such a meeting could have a “phenomenal” impact, “not only in political but in a business dimension as well,” the special counsel’s office wrote.

Cohen, though, did not follow up on the invitation, because he was already working on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-cohen-trumps-former-lawyer-pleads-guilty-to-lying-to-congress/2018/11/29/5fac986a-f3e0-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html?utm_term=.f2f361c0d997" title="www.washingtonpost.com">a Trump project in Moscow</a> through a different person he believed to have Russian government connections, the special counsel’s office wrote.

[Michael Cohen pleads guilty to lying to Congress about Moscow project]

Prosecutors also singled out Trump as being directly involved in efforts to buy the silence of women who might level public allegations against him.

The memo from New York prosecutors identifies three people at an August 2014 meeting: Cohen, “Individual 1” and “Chairman 1.” The document elsewhere identifies Individual 1 as Trump, and people familiar with the case said Chairman 1 is David Pecker of the National Enquirer.

“In August 2014, Chairman-1 had met with Cohen and Individual-1, and had offered to help deal with negative stories about Individual-1’s relationships with women by identifying such stories so that they could be purchased and ‘killed,’­ ” the prosecutors’ memorandum says.

Cohen pleaded guilty in August to violating campaign finance law when he arranged payments to an adult-film star during the 2016 election. At the same time, he pleaded guilty to a handful of other crimes, including making a false statement to a bank. In recent weeks, he pleaded guilty to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-cohen-trumps-former-lawyer-pleads-guilty-to-lying-to-congress/2018/11/29/5fac986a-f3e0-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html?utm_term=.f2f361c0d997" title="www.washingtonpost.com">lying to Congress</a> about efforts during the presidential campaign to get a Trump-branded tower built in Moscow.

Cohen had asked for a sentence of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cohen-seeks-time-served-prison-sentence-says-again-his-crimes-were-meant-to-protect-trump/2018/12/01/dd7436e8-1d24-4091-92c5-cd25c1b857bd_story.html?utm_term=.1ae336f1d200" title="www.washingtonpost.com">no prison time</a>, citing his cooperation with investigators. Mueller’s office gave him some credit for his assistance, saying that while his crime was “serious,” he had “taken significant steps to mitigate his criminal conduct.”

“He chose to accept responsibility for his false statements and admit to his conduct in open court. He also has gone to significant lengths to assist the Special Counsel’s investigation,” the office wrote.

New York prosecutors, however, were far harsher in their assessment of Cohen’s character, saying he should get only a modest reduction in an expected prison sentence of about five years. In their 38-page filing, they suggest he should receive about 3½ years in prison.

“He seeks extraordinary leniency — a sentence of no jail time — based principally on his rose-colored view of the seriousness of the crimes; his claims to a sympathetic personal history; and his provision of certain information to law enforcement,” prosecutors wrote in their filing. “But the crimes committed by Cohen were more serious than his submission allows and were marked by a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life.”

[Cohen seeks ‘time served’ prison sentence, says again his crimes were meant to protect Trump]

The filing also suggests that Cohen’s cooperation with law enforcement was not so significant to the investigations swirling around the president.

“To be clear: Cohen does not have a cooperation agreement and is not . . . properly described as a ‘cooperating witness,’ as that term is commonly used in this District,” the prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors also accused Cohen of holding back some of what he knew.

“This Office understands that the information provided by Cohen to [Mueller’s office] was ultimately credible and useful to its ongoing investigation,” prosecutors wrote, but said they would not give him a legal letter detailing his cooperation because “Cohen repeatedly declined to provide full information about the scope of any additional criminal conduct in which he may have engaged or had knowledge.”

The two memos were submitted to U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III, who is scheduled to sentence Cohen.

Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said the filings show that Cohen “was trying to have it both ways” and that, instead of succeeding, he became “a textbook example of how not to cooperate with federal prosecutors.”

Mueller submitted a seven-page memo that doesn’t take any firm position on how long Cohen should spend in prison.

In their memo, federal prosecutors in New York lambasted Cohen, detailing his lies to the IRS and banks and his gaming of the campaign finance system — acts that prosecutors said were driven largely by his “own ambition and greed.”

Cohen, they claimed, relished the role of being Trump’s “fixer,” trying to use it to win a role in the administration. When that failed, he set out to swindle companies out of money by tricking them into thinking he could provide access and insight.

In reality, though, they said Cohen was not much more than “a man whose outlook on life was often to cheat,” and he did not deserve to be spared entirely because he finally decided to plead guilty.

“After cheating the IRS for years, lying to banks and to Congress, and seeking to criminally influence the Presidential election, Cohen’s decision to plead guilty — rather than seek a pardon for his manifold crimes — does not make him a hero,” prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors repeatedly highlighted what they suggested was minimal information provided by Cohen, noting that while he also met with New York state investigators and tax authorities, that cooperation “warrants little to no consideration as a mitigating factor” because Cohen told them nothing of value beyond what they would probably have gotten without his help.

The Mueller memo says that Cohen “repeated many of his prior false statements” when he met with the special counsel’s office in August, and it was only in a second meeting on Sept. 12 — after he pleaded guilty to the campaign finance charges — that he admitted “his prior statements about the Moscow Project had been deliberately false and misleading.”

The special counsel’s office wrote that Cohen’s lies to Congress “obscured the fact that the Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government,” and that, if completed, the Trump Organization could have received “hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues.” They noted, as Cohen had already admitted, that he and Trump discussed the project “well into the campaign.”

The special counsel’s office added, though, that Cohen “has gone to significant lengths to assist the Special Counsel’s investigation.”

The office wrote that Cohen had “explained financial aspects of the deal that would have made it highly lucrative,” and, without prompting, he had corrected other statements he made about his contacts with Russian officials during the campaign.

For example, Cohen said in a radio interview in September 2015 that Trump should meet with the president of Russia during the United Nations General Assembly, and he claimed for a time afterward that the comment had been “spontaneous” and not discussed with members of the campaign. In fact, the special counsel’s office said, Cohen later admitted that he had conferred with Trump about contacting the Russian government for the meeting — which ultimately did not take place.

In asking for a sentence of no prison time, Cohen stressed his extensive cooperation with Mueller as well as investigators from other agencies. His lawyers linked his wrongdoing directly to Trump, writing that Cohen was motivated to pay the women to keep quiet and lie to Congress out of his “fierce loyalty” to Trump. Trump has publicly denied the affairs and said he “stayed away” from business in Russia.

“He could have fought the government and continued to hold to the party line, positioning himself perhaps for a pardon or clemency, but, instead — for himself, his family, and his country — he took personal responsibility for his own wrongdoing and contributed, and is prepared to continue to contribute, to an investigation that he views as thoroughly legitimate and vital,” Cohen’s lawyers wrote in court papers submitted last week.

For his part, Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-michael-cohen-deserves-a-full-and-complete-sentence/2018/12/03/e63df19e-f70f-11e8-8d64-4e79db33382f_story.html?utm_term=.26903dd1e6ca" title="www.washingtonpost.com">ridiculed Cohen’s request on Twitter</a> and seemed to contrast him with Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser who has suggested publicly that he would be unwilling to cooperate against the president.

Of Cohen, Trump said, “He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.” Of Stone, he said, “Nice to know that some people still have ‘guts!’ ”

<email>devlin.barrett@washpost.com</email>

<email>matt.zapotosky@washpost.com</email>

Pulitzer Prize co-finalist for Feature Writing, 2017

Pulitzer Prize co-finalist for International Reporting, 2017

Part of team that won Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, 2018

Part of team that won Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, 2022

"October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election"

McGill University, BA 

Devlin Barrett writes about the FBI and the Justice Department, and is the author of "October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election." He was part of reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 and 2022. In 2017 he was a co-finalist for the Pulitzer for Feature Writing and the Pulitzer for International Reporting. 

Devlin Barrett

Shared in a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, for reporting in 2021 on the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol 

Shared in a George Polk Award, for reporting in 2017 on ties between the Trump campaign and Kremlin-connected Russians 

Ohio University, bachelor's degree in journalism

Matt Zapotosky is Deputy Metro Editor, responsible for overseeing criminal justice and breaking news coverage and other strategic initiatives. Before moving into editing, he spent 15 years as a Metro and National reporter. He was part of The Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting on the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol. 

Matt Zapotosky

The Washington Post

Mueller: Cohen spoke with Russian seeking ‘political synergy’ with campaign

Trump Lawyer Investigation

name

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary/court/judge

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary/prosecution

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/crime

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance/economic_sector/financial_and_business_service/legal_service

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/law_enforcement/punishment_(criminal)

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance/economic_sector/financial_and_business_service

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/law_enforcement

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/law_enforcement/punishment_(criminal)/prison

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary/court/trial_(court)

iptc-media/politics

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary/court

iptc-media/politics/government

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/law

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary/court/trial_(court)/defendant

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Amazon KWs - EXCLUDE ALL 

client-blocklists/Client List: Becton Dickinson KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: Nomura KWs 2021 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Boeing KWs 2021- INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Exxon Mobil  - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/GEICO KWs - INCLUDES ANY_4.26.21

client-blocklists/Client List: T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Microsoft KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/HBO KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Ford/Lincoln KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ExxonMobil 03312021 KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Bank of America KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/WaPo: Combined Disaster Keyword List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs 2 - EXCLUDES ALL - 12.23.20

advertising/B2_Congressional Elections_legacyaux_r48

client-blocklists/Client List: Eli Lily KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Purina KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Citrix Mindfulness

advertising/B2_Government & Policy_legacyaux_mza

client-blocklists/BP KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Politically Active - DO NOT REMOVE_legacyaux_lmp

advertising/B2_Politics_legacyaux_8f3

advertising/B2_Positive News_legacyaux_hlt

advertising/B2_Russia & Putin_legacyaux_F55

client-blocklists/Client List: GEICO KWs

client-blocklists/Client List: KPMG KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/WaPo: Human Disaster

client-blocklists/Client List: Novo Nordisk KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Siemens KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Cisco KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T ALT KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Mercedes KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/FX Excludes All Disney

client-blocklists/Client List: Boeing KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Inpixon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Aetna KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Google KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Philip Morris KWs - INCLUDES ANY 

client-blocklists/Dupixent neg kws - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Capital One KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 1.4.21

client-blocklists/Bank of America Merrill Lynch KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/CME KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Google PG KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Chase KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Office Depot KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: ETrade KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

/WashingtonPost/Production/Digital/Queries/site-service/world/national-security

National Security - OLD

National security news and U.S. military news from The Washington Post. Full coverage of national security, the Pentagon, Department of Defense, defense budgets, and all military branches including Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and more.

National Security

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/world/&limit=20

World

The Washington Post World section provides information and analysis of breaking world news stories. In addition to our world news and video, Post World News offers discussions and blogs on major international news and economic issues.