Federal prosecutors are backtracking on their allegation that a Russian woman accused of working as a secret agent offered to trade sex for access, according to a Justice Department court filing. Prosecutors had earlier accused Maria Butina of offering to exchange sex for a position with a special interest organization.
A proposal to decriminalize marijuana in Gary fell one vote short of passage amid concerns that it would overstep Indiana law. Councilwoman Lavetta Sparks-Wade said she abstained from voting because the council’s attorney advised the council that it would circumvent state law.
President Donald Trump will not answer federal investigators’ questions, in writing or in person, about whether he tried to block the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, one of the president’s attorneys told The Associated Press.
United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions will visit Indianapolis on Thursday to speak at the 2018 Indiana Law Enforcement Conference. Sessions is scheduled to speak on the importance of Project Safe Neighborhoods.
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is set for a week of marathon hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republicans are focusing on Kavanaugh’s 12-year career as an appellate court judge, while Democrats are expected to grill the 53-year-old conservative on hot-button issues that could swing the court’s majority rightward.
Attorneys interested in filling vacancies on the Monroe Circuit Court and Terre Haute City Court have just days remaining to make their interest known. Wednesday, Sept. 5 is the deadline to submit applications for Gov. Eric Holcomb’s appointments to both positions.
Increasingly convinced that the West Wing is wholly unprepared to handle the expected assault from Democrats if they win the House in November, President Donald Trump’s aides and allies are privately raising alarm as his circle of legal and communications advisers continues to shrink.
White House Counsel Don McGahn, a consequential insider in President Donald Trump’s legal storms and successes and a key figure in the administration’s handling of the Russia investigation, will be leaving in the fall, the president announced Wednesday. Trump praised McGahn as “a really good guy” who has done “an excellent job.”
Federal judges on Monday affirmed their earlier decision striking North Carolina’s congressional districts as unconstitutional because Republicans drew them with excessive partisanship. The Tarheel State is one of several in which lawsuits are challenging partisan gerrymandering.
As Indiana prepares to collect nearly $100 million from a multi-state lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act, Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill held a meeting Wednesday with ACA proponents who are urging him to drop a second lawsuit challenging a controversial portion of the health care law. Though both parties said they were pleased with the dialogue, Hill also reinforced his opposition to the Obamacare individual mandate.
Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler is again demanding that President Donald Trump stop using the band’s songs at rallies. A Trump rally is scheduled for Aug. 30 in Evansville.
Lawyers for Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, were pursuing negotiations with prosecutors that could result in a plea deal and a court hearing was set for Tuesday afternoon, according to two people familiar with the financial fraud investigation. If a deal is struck, Cohen would plead guilty in federal court in Manhattan and agree to cooperate with the government.
President Donald Trump’s personal attorney says he wasn’t trying to make an existential point about the meaning of veracity when he declared “truth isn’t truth.” Instead, he said he was trying to make the case that having Trump sit down for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team wouldn’t accomplish much because of the conflicting nature of witnesses’ recollections.
President Donald Trump is expressing concern that anything he tells special counsel Robert Mueller under oath could be used to charge him with perjury as part of Mueller’s ongoing investigation into coordination between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.
The judge in Paul Manafort’s financial fraud trial says he has received threats and he fears for the “peace and safety” of the jurors deciding the fate of the former Trump campaign chairman. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III revealed his concerns Friday when explaining why he doesn’t intend to make jurors’ names public at the end of the trial.
“Truth isn’t truth,” says President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, explaining why he’s wary about pushing the president into an interview he says could be a perjury trap. He was trying to make the case that having Trump sit down for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team wouldn’t accomplish much because of the he-said-she-said nature of witnesses’ recollections.
The jury in the fraud trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort ended its first day of deliberations with a series of questions to the judge, including a request to “redefine” reasonable doubt. The questions came after roughly seven hours of deliberation, delivered in a handwritten note to U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III. Ellis read the questions aloud to lawyers for both sides as well as Manafort before he called the jury in to give his answers.
Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill Jr. may have violated a state ethics law prohibiting officeholders from using their names in audio, video or newspaper ads paid for with state funds.
Newly released documents from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s time on the Kenneth Starr team investigating Bill Clinton reveal his resistance to issuing an indictment of a sitting president. The memo, tucked toward the end of nearly 10,000 pages released Friday, provides greater insight into Kavanaugh’s views on executive power that are expected to feature prominently in his Senate confirmation hearings next month.
In defending the Indiana Attorney General’s objection to an agreement about early voting, Indiana Solicitor General Thomas M. Fisher said the action is “rather routine” and the office would be submitting additional filings to the courts, including an appeal to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. The comments came two days after the attorney general filed a motion challenging the consent decree establishing five early voting sites in Marion County.