“Well someone is going to be a big sister next year!” Geary revealed on Instagram Tuesday with an adorable video of their daughter holding a sonogram. “We’re so excited to share with y’all that I’m expecting again!”
In the Instagram video, Geary asks: “Mia what’s that? What are you holding?” The dotting six-month-old smiled as she had her way with her future sibling’s first photo.
The couple will find out whether Mia will have a baby brother or baby sister over the weekend. Their newest family member is due March of next year on Thicke’s birthday, Geary revealed on Instagram.
Thicke shared an intimate moment from Geary’s ultrasound appointment on Instagram Tuesday: “They said we couldn’t make another anthem, so we went and made another anthem! Thank you April.”
This will be Geary’s second child and Thicke’s third. He has a 7-year-old son, Julian, with ex-wife Paula Patton. The two finalized their divorce in March 2015.
Months later, Thicke, 41, and Geary, 23, went public with their relationship at the Cannes Film Festival.
Everyone who’s read Harry Potter will have fond memories of practicing their wand twirling action in front of the mirror, muttering “Expelliarmus” over and over again in the vague but undying hope that something will actually happen and that magic is indeed real.
Even though our Hogwarts letters may have never arrived, though, we’ll always have the memories. And the spells.
Harry Potter readers recently voted on their favourite spells as part of a world-wide survey by Bloomsbury Children’s Books — you can probably guess which Harry Potter spell got the top vote, but there are still a few surprises in here…
10. Riddikulus.
Transforms nasty Boggarts from something scary into something silly.
9. Obliviate.
The charm Gilderoy Lockhart uses to accidentally wipe his own memory, the big buffoon.
8. Sectumsempra.
A mouthful of a curse invented by troubled teen Severus Snape.
7. Avada Kedavra.
We all know what this one does. How did it manage to make the top 10 favourite list, though?
6. Alohomora.
That one Hermione keeps using to unlock doors when they go sneaking around in the first book.
5. Lumos.
The spell equivalent of that little torch app on your iPhone.
4. Expelliarmus.
Basically the only spell Harry ever uses when he’s in a duel.
3. Wingardium Leviosa.
Makes things levitate. Sounds fun.
2. Accio.
The perfect charm for lazy people who can’t be bothered to get up and fetch the TV remote.
1. Expecto Patronum.
The Harry Potter spell to end all Harry Potter spells.
Gets rid of pesky Dementors by summoning a badass Patronus to chase them away.
It’s been cut and printed, but nobody moved on from the beloved, ballyhooed NBC series that admirably strove to bring musical theater to the masses, weekly, in primetime. Another theatrical collaboration between Zadan, Meron, and NBC chief Bob Greenblatt, Smash followed the behind-the-scenes drama of a Broadway musical, peppered with juicy stage cameos, Debra Messing in scarves, and an insanely catchy score of original music (from several shows-within-the-show, to boot). Critics and fans still can’t get over some of the over-the-top melodrama, but though Smash may be gone from NBC, a visit to any cabaret, cast party, Musical Monday bar night, or Twitter-of-a-theater-geek is proof enough that Smash lives on in the musical theater lexicon — and a legacy is far better than a recoupment.
At a White House ceremony honoring heroes serving in immigration, customs and border patrol, President Donald Trump called one officer to the stage noting how well he speaks English. USA TODAY
Just after the White House dismissed a speechwriter amid reports he spoke at a white nationalist conference, President Donald Trump’s economic adviser confirmed to The Washington Post that the publisher of a website that features white nationalist content attended his birthday party.
Peter Brimelow, the 70-year-old publisher of the anti-immigration website Vdare.com, joined Larry Kudlow at his Connecticut home for a party celebrating the former CNBC host’s 71st birthday, the Post reported.
Kudlow told the Post that he had known Brimelow “forever” but was unaware of his work on VDare.com and of his views on race.
“If I had known this, we would never have invited him,” Kudlow said. “I’m disappointed and saddened to hear about it.”
He added that Brimelow has been “coming to my dinner parties for years” but “none of this other stuff has ever come up.”
The Post describes Brimelow as a “once a well-connected figure in mainstream conservative circles” who “over the past two decades, he has become a zealous promoter of white-identity politics.”
Brimelow founded the website in 1999. In 2016, he told the Harvard Crimson in an email that, “I don’t regard us as a ‘white nationalist’ site although we certainly publish a few writers I would regard as ‘white nationalist’ in that they stand up for whites just as Zionists, Black Nationalists do for Jews, Blacks etc.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center called Brimelow “one of the leading voices in the anti-immigrant movement.”
Peter Brimelow is a white nationalist and one of the leading voices in the anti-immigrant movement. He met last week with President Trump’s top economic advisor. https://t.co/dJFHyFwwXk
“I’ve known Larry for nearly 40 years,” Brimelow told the Post in a statement. “I regard him as a personal friend. They knew my first wife, who died, and were most kind to Lydia when I remarried. We agreed to disagree on immigration long ago.”
Kudlow told the Post Brimelow’s immigration views were a “side of Peter that I don’t know, and I totally, utterly disagree with that point of view and I have my whole life.”
Dan Wolken breaks down a case wherein a former Texas A&M player alleges that the culture at Jimbo Fisher’s program forced him to transfer. USA TODAY Sports
Santino Marchiol had no difficulty deciding in June that he needed to leave Texas A&M. The hard choice was how to get his football career moving as quickly as possible at the highest level possible.
A four-star linebacker who enrolled at College Station in January 2017, he was hopeful even after his redshirt season ended with Kevin Sumlin’s firing and Jimbo Fisher’s arrival. Backed by a 10-year, $75 million contract, Fisher had vowed to make a culture change that would lift the Aggies into college football’s elite.
Over the next several months, however, Marchiol said he witnessed behavior that made him uncomfortable, including, he asserts, an assistant coach giving him cash to host top recruits on“unofficial” visits. Marchiol also said he and other players were evaluated in June practice sessions that were allegedly voluntary but were operated and observed outside the NCAA rule book.
The new coaching staff arrived with a mind-set that the team was soft, Marchiol said, and demeaning and vulgar language directed at players became common. Then the training staff at Texas A&M, he claims, mishandled an ankle injury that doctors had said would require caution because of a surgery Marchiol had that sidelined him in his freshman year.
“I’m not a complainer,” Marchiol said. “I like to adapt to any environment I’m in. I was excited to take on a new challenge with Jimbo Fisher. I was nervous, but I like new things like that. I told my dad, ‘I’m going to be his favorite player here.’ ”
It didn’t work out that way. Convinced that he needed a fresh start, Marchiol faced a choice if he was going to play at another top-level school: He could transfer quietly and per NCAA rules sit out a year before returning to the field, but that would mean a lost year of college eligibility because he already had redshirted a season. Or he could seek a waiver from the NCAA, which this year approved a policy change that allows transfers to play immediately if there were “documented mitigating circumstances that are outside student-athlete’s control and directly impact the health, safety and well-being of the student-athlete.”
The change to the transfer rule was implemented in May to address the eligibility of six former Mississippi players, who said they were misled during their recruitment about the seriousness of the NCAA case against then-coach Hugh Freeze’s staff. The case resulted in penalties against the football program, including a one-year bowl ban on top of the one-year ban the school imposed on itself.
In the Ole Miss case, the players were granted waivers long after the school had been sanctioned. Marchiol’s case presents a new possibility — that athletes could, in applying for a waiver, include allegations of improprieties within their former athletic program.
It’s quite possible Marchiol’s account might otherwise not have come to light. He did not contact the NCAA. He included the allegations as part of a statement he sent to the compliance office at Arizona, where Sumlin is the coach and Marchiol is enrolled and practicing with the football team, in his request for an NCAA waiver that would allow him to play instead of sitting out the upcoming season.
Marchiol’s attorney, Thomas Mars of the Arkansas-based law firm Friday, Eldredge & Clark, allowed USA TODAY Sports to view a copy of that statement before its submission to Arizona. Mars declined further comment and referenced a section of NCAA bylaws that deals with infractions and investigations, suggesting the information has subsequently drawn the interest of NCAA investigators.
“At this time, commenting beyond what I’ve already said about the waiver process would appear to violate Article 19 of the NCAA bylaws,” Mars said. “Therefore, I won’t be able to answer any questions about the specific grounds for the waiver.”
NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said the association does not comment on current, pending or potential cases.
Texas A&M provided a statement that read: “Texas A&M Athletics takes these allegations seriously, and we are reviewing the situation with the NCAA and the SEC Office.”
That a request for a transfer waiver, of all things, could spark an investigation into one of college football’s most prominent programs might seem like an unexpected outcome. But Marchiol’s willingness to speak out shows how the new process could bring impromptu scrutiny to any number of schools whose departing players allege rules violations as they seek waivers.
“Transfer restrictions have been lessened, but I don’t think it’s gone far enough” said B. David Ridpath, an associate professor of sport management at Ohio University and frequent NCAA critic. “If it’s true what he’s saying, I think it’s great. Players are getting smarter, much more savvy. They realize even more than you and I that people are making billions here and we’re not getting a whole heck of a lot and now they’re telling me I can’t even transfer and be immediately eligible? I’d be singing like a bird.”
Love for A&M soured
The NCAA being alerted to potential wrongdoing at Texas A&M comes at a tumultuous time for college football, which has already endured a scandal-filled month with allegations of a toxic culture at Maryland that has put DJ Durkin’s future in limbo and Urban Meyer being placed on administrative leave at Ohio State while he was investigated for whether he properly handled domestic abuse complaints against one of his then-assistant coaches.
The allegations against Texas A&M follow the arc of a more traditional NCAA controversy but are underscored by Chancellor John Sharp famously giving Fisher a national championship plaque with the date left open along with his $75 million contract. After firing Sumlin, who had a 51-26 record, the message for what Texas A&M expected was clear: No more messing around in the middle of the Southeastern Conference pack.
Fisher, who led Florida State to the 2013 national championship, has embraced those expectations and rallied the Aggies fan base behind a renewed momentum in recruiting. (Texas A&M’s 2019 class is ranked No. 3 nationally by 247 Sports.)
Marchiol, a top recruit himself from the Denver area, could end up being a speed bump in that process, which isn’t at all how he envisioned his career after choosing the Aggies from among more than two dozen Power Five scholarship offers. It was the unique atmosphere at Texas A&M, he said, and a life-long fascination with the SEC that drew him to be an Aggie.
“I loved everything A&M stood for, the religious part, the kids, everybody there,” said Marchiol, who spent his senior season at the prestigious IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. “Football in Texas is like its own cult. It was everything I always dreamed of.”
Ultimately, though, Sumlin didn’t win enough, which meant Marchiol would go from choosing his coach to having one chosen for him.
While Texas A&M fans have celebrated the so-called culture change that comes with paying millions for someone of Fisher’s pedigree to come in, the reality can be punishing for leftover players who might not mesh well with the new regime for myriad reasons.
For those players, however, NCAA rules offer little remedy besides a transfer.
Due to the urgency of getting a waiver so that he doesn’t lose a year of eligibility, Marchiol was willing to give a lengthy interview to USA TODAY Sports about what he experienced after Fisher was hired. While Marchiol’s intention was not to ensnare Texas A&M in an investigation, he was determined to give a full account in order to give him the best chance at playing right away.
“Santino doesn’t want to go through this process, and he doesn’t like it one bit,” Mars said. “He just wants to play football.”
College administrators and coaches have long resisted the idea of significantly loosening transfer restrictions for high-profile sports such as football and basketball, arguing that players being able to pick up and leave without penalty would create a never-ending, chaotic system of free agents.
The current system has produced a different kind of chaos, fueled by endless paperwork, subjectivity and attorneys looking for a soft spot in the rules. In this case, it has drawn the attention of the NCAA, which will at minimum be an inconvenience to Texas A&M.
Cash for recruits’ entertainment
Marchiol detailed to USA TODAY Sports the allegations that formed the basis of what he submitted to Arizona’s compliance office. Marchiol acknowledged in the statement that NCAA bylaws required him to be honest and forthcoming and that a failure to do so could result in the loss of his own eligibility.
►On two separate weekends this spring, Marchiol told USA TODAY Sports, he was given hundreds of dollars in cash by linebackers coach Bradley Dale Peveto to entertain prospects on unofficial visits. Those recruiting visits occurred, he said, following the April 14 spring game with Zach Edwards, a three-star linebacker from Starkville, Mississippi, and the second weekend in June with four-star linebacker Christian Harris (now a Texas A&M verbal commitment) and Nakobe Dean from Horn Lake, Mississippi, ranked as the No. 1 inside linebacker in the country by Rivals.com.
While NCAA rules at the time allowed schools to give a student host $40 a day to entertain recruits during official visits, prospects must pay their own expenses for unofficial visits, meaning any money provided by coaches would be an NCAA rules violation. Recruits are allowed to take up to five all-expenses-paid official visits each, but many also add unofficial visits to see other schools or make additional visits to a favorite school. News accounts of the visits that Marchiol discussed indicate all were unofficial.
Marchiol describes being taken aback after the spring game when Peveto pulled him into a bathroom near the coaches’ offices and handed him $300.
“There were coaches having meetings in the other office, and he said, here, come in the bathroom real quick because he’d just asked me to host the recruit,” Marchiol said. “So I went in the bathroom and it was just me and him in there, and he’s like, ‘Take this, if you need any more just text me and make sure they have a good time.’ ”
►On the second occasion, Marchiol said, the money exchange took place in the bathroom at Razzoo’s Cajun Cafe in College Station, a restaurant where the team frequently takes recruits to eat. Marchiol said he received $400 in cash from Peveto and that a teammate Marchiol identified in his waiver request was handed another $300 during the exchange.
“You know how you tip people in Vegas? He had the cash in his hand and he like handed it to us like, here (with a handshake),” Marchiol said.
Marchiol said the money went toward drinks and snacks, but he had no record of the cash or purchases made with it and kept whatever wasn’t spent. He said he did not give any of it to the recruits.
Offseason workouts
When Texas A&M’s players returned after Memorial Day weekend, defensive coordinator Mike Elko brought his players into a meeting and made clear what he expected of them: “He said, ‘We’re going to have a lot of meetings and practices that aren’t technically required, but you guys have to be here because you’re way behind. We need to win,’ ” Marchiol said.
NCAA rules changed in 2014, allowing football programs to schedule up to eight hours of mandatory work a week in the summer months, with up to two of those hours available for film review. Anything beyond that is supposed to be student-led and organized, without coaches viewing or participating.
What Marchiol described, however, was more akin to a full-time job: Four days a week he would show up at the Texas A&M football facility at 9 a.m. for study hall and online classwork, not leaving until well after 6:30 p.m. In between, he described linebacker meetings to review film and discuss schemes that lasted between one and two hours and required conditioning sessions that lasted up to three hours (a schedule he provided showed his group had workouts scheduled from 1 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, but he said they frequently lasted longer).
Later in the afternoon, he said, he was expected to participate in “voluntary” 7-on-7 sessions where some coaches watched, called out plays and evaluated performance.
NCAA staff interpretations of Bylaw 17 states members of the on-field coaching staff are allowed to be present during the eight hours of required summer conditioning drills and that those drills, according to the bylaw, “(which) may simulate game activities are permissible, provided no offensive or defensive alignments are set up and no equipment related to the sport is used.”
While the bylaws are vague enough to allow for wide latitude — in other words, 7-on-7 isn’t a real offensive or defensive alignment — Marchiol described sessions that mirrored a standard football practice.
“We’d be in our defense running our plays and if the offense caught a ball you’d see Elko go running over and go, ‘What the f—? You’re supposed to (cover) here over the top,’” Marchiol said, describing a voluntary workout.
On Wednesdays, Marchiol said, players were required to arrive at 5:15 a.m. for conditioning drills with coaches that began at 5:30 a.m. If players showed up even a minute past 5:15 a.m., he said, the gates were closed and they were banished to the Stairmaster for 45 minutes.
According to an NCAA bylaw that became effective in August 2017 as part of a legislation package to address time demands for athletes, “required athletically related activities other than competition” are, with few exceptions, prohibited between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Marchiol showed USA TODAY Sports a text message from Peveto dated March 4 at 8:21 p.m. to linebackers informing them of a “Academic meeting at 5 am Monday morning! See u’ya there ! Thanks”
Marchiol said the “academic” meeting was not for school work (which would have been permissible) but rather a film session.
Early in the morning of June 6, Marchiol raised concerns in a text message to his father, Ken.
“Hey dad for the past three days now the involvement with the coaching staff has not vanished, like it should have, but rather increased as they are now full-on coaching us during a full practice. We are not allowed to meet/practice at all and the coaches are doing it every day and telling us not to say anything. How ridiculous is that.”
Marchiol said players frequently questioned the workouts when talking privately with each other but didn’t bring their concerns to Texas A&M compliance officials.
“Everybody was scared,” he said.
Injury treatment the final straw
The third set of allegations Marchiol submitted to Arizona involves the handling of an ankle injury in June, which he said was the last straw that convinced him to transfer. On June 11, Marchiol said, he was warming up for a conditioning workout when he heard a “pop” while landing on his right foot.
Unable to put weight on it, Marchiol was immediately concerned because of the Lisfranc fracture he suffered in his other foot the previous spring. The Colorado doctor who surgically inserted three screws in his left foot had instructed him to be cautious with his feet, a warning the previous Texas A&M training staff under Sumlin took seriously, he said, by holding him out of practice last fall when he suffered an ankle sprain.
After Fisher got the job at Texas A&M, changes were made to the football program’s training staff, which hired Dan Jacobi from Mississippi State as the director of athletic training. Marchiol said he was examined on June 11 by Jacobi and athletic trainer Dalis Boyette, who taped his ankle and rubbed Tiger Balm on it.
According to Marchiol, Jacobi told him to take four ibuprofens and advised him that he should continue with the practice and that X-rays would be taken afterward. Marchiol said he returned to practice and ran 24 100-yard sprints until he could not feel his ankle anymore.
“Dan said there was no fracture but that it was a Grade 2 (ankle sprain) and there was probably some ligament damage,” Marchiol said. “I told him with the last staff I had this happen and I didn’t feel like I could be my best at practice. It was hard to even walk on. He made me feel stupid because he’d say something to reassure me but I know my body. My whole foot swelled up.”
He practiced the rest of the week and said his lower leg continued to swell and showed significant bruising.
Marchiol said he believes he was pushed to play through the injury because of a belief coaches frequently shared loudly with the players: The Aggies program had been like a country club under Sumlin. In fact, he said, everything in the message of Fisher and his assistants had been themed to demand more toughness, from the duration of workouts to the language coaches used on the field to players being told outright that highly rated recruits were coming to replace them.
“They called us soft all the time,” Marchiol said. “They kept telling us, ‘This is gonna get worse, you haven’t seen shit.’ “
Ken Marchiol, who played briefly in the NFL before moving into the financial services sector, said he also witnessed language that he felt crossed the line.
“He called them a bunch of p——, said they weren’t worth a f—,” Ken Marchiol said. “It wasn’t teaching, just attacking.”
After persevering through what he felt like was unfair treatment, Santino Marchiol had reached his limit. The week after he was forced to practice on an injured ankle, he packed up and moved out of College Station.
“I’d see on Twitter kids transferring and I was like, ‘I wonder what didn’t work out there. Why would you leave the school you committed to?’” Marchiol said. “I could never see myself doing that until it happened.”
‘What choice do you have?’
While the NCAA has seemingly been more lenient granting transfer waivers this summer – Demetris Robertson (California to Georgia) and Taysir Mack (Indiana to Pitt) were both recently ruled eligible despite no obvious basis for a waiver – it is still a process shrouded in the mystery of the NCAA bureaucracy.
Some of the leniency appears to be connected to the NCAA’s “mitigating circumstances” policy modification, which came together quickly this spring as the Ole Miss issued simmered. While it allowed Shea Patterson, who was announced as Michigan’s starting quarterback Monday, along with other transfers represented by Mars to be eligible right away, it also seems to have wider implications.
The Ole Miss situation was an instructive process for Mars, a former director of the Arkansas State Police who once worked as general counsel for Walmart Inc. Traditionally, as Mars discovered, the waiver process has been a collegial undertaking between the two schools, but not always to the benefit of the athlete.
Though Marchiol said he understands that speaking out about his last few months at Texas A&M will make him a target for criticism from those who believe he simply couldn’t cut it under Fisher, his attorney was adamant that laying all his cards on the table was the best path to overcoming the obstacles built into the system.
“When the stakes are this high, nobody should expect the student-athlete’s advocate to be pulling punches,” Mars said. “After all, what choice do you have when the transfer rules invite the disclosure of misconduct at the student-athlete’s former school as grounds for a waiver?”
But the 42-year-old American, who is in contention to be picked for September’s Ryder Cup, says his comeback has endeared him to a new set of fans.
“I think people are more appreciative,” said Woods.
“They’ve all gone through it – when you get to your forties you’re feeling it.
“They know I’m at the tail-end of my career. I don’t know how many years I’ve got left but I’m certain I’m not like I was when I was 22. At 42 it is a different ball game.”
Woods, who made his latest comeback at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas last November, made a remarkable return to form earlier this month at the US PGA Championships, carding a final-day 64 to finish second behind winner Brooks Koepka.
He will be back in action this week at the FedEx Cup play-offs in New Jersey and says fans can relate to his new vulnerabilities.
“I’ve struggled and I’ve had some back pain, I’ve been through four surgeries and I’m trying to work back and it’s been tough, and people understand that,” he said.
“This entire year has been so different. Go back to how everyone received me at Tampa [in the Valspar Championship in March] – that was very special.
“I hadn’t received ovations and warmth like that.”
The lights, the likes of which locals had never seen before, were understood by scientists to be a new aurora. Or so they thought.
Turns out “Steve,” which stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, is no aurora. It’s an entirely new celestial phenomenon, with a different atmospheric process to an aurora.
The conclusion was made by researchers from the University of Calgary in Canada, who authored a study which was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
“So right now, we know very little about it,” Bea Gallardo-Lacourt, a space physicist and the study’s lead author, said in a statement online.
“And that’s the cool thing, because this has been known by photographers for decades. But for the scientists, it’s completely unknown.”
Researchers refer to “Steve” as a “skyglow,” to make it distinct from an aurora. Auroras are produced when charged particles from the sun collide with the magnetic fields in Earth’s ionised upper atmosphere (the ionosphere), generating a stunning light display.
A NOAA satellite, POES-17, didn’t detect any charged particles raining down to Earth’s upper atmosphere when “Steve” took place, likely suggesting the “skyglow” could be a result of something else completely.
The next step for researchers is to see if streams of fast ions and hot electrons in the ionosphere are responsible for “Steve,” or if the light is produced in higher atmosphere.
In the wake of the news of prolific producer Craig Zadan’s death, luminaries of stage and screen took to social media to celebrate the life of the renowned producer who brought countless musicals to film and television alongside producing partner Neil Meron.
Zadan died unexpectedly following complications from surgery at the age of 69 on Tuesday.
The news was met with shock from many of Zadan’s former collaborators, ranging from singer John Legend — who worked with the producer on the recent live TV adaptation of Jesus Christ Superstar — to director Adam Shankman, whom Zadan tapped to bring Hairspray to the big screen.
“RIP to our friend Craig. He produced Jesus Christ Superstar with us and also produced the Oscars when Common and I sang “Glory” in front of a replica of the Pettus Bridge. A wonderful producer and a lovely man,” Legend wrote on Twitter. Shankman shared the news on Instagram, saying he was “in shock” and that Zadan and Meron gave him “the opportunity of a lifetime” on Hairspray.
Zadan produced three Oscar telecasts alongside Meron, choosing song-and-dance man Neil Patrick Harris to host in 2015. Harris paid tribute to the producer on Twitter, writing, “I’m stunned and saddened the unexpected passing of Craig Zadan. He’s been a friend my entire adult life, championed me to host the Oscars, brought musical theatre back to TV. A wonderful, kind spirit. My sincere condolences to his family and his partner, Elwood. #RIP.”
Broadway great Kristin Chenoweth posted a photograph of her and Zadan on Instagram, reminiscing about their collaborations on both stage and screen. She wrote, “Annie, The Music Man, Promises, Hairspray… Craig, you were there with me from the beginning. This is a true loss not only for me, but for the world. Rest in peace, sweetheart.”
Others including Kevin Bacon, Michael Chiklis, Debra Messing, and more took to social media to express their shock over Zadan’s passing and honor his contributions to entertainment, particularly when it came to musicals and their return to television.
Steve Reilly and Brad Heath, USA TODAY
Published 9:27 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2018 | Updated 9:29 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2018
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President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance and other charges. Deputy U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami told reporters that Cohen thought “he was above the law.” USA TODAY
President Donald Trump’s onetime personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight federal crimes on Tuesday.
Cohen’s abrupt plea caps one of the criminal investigations of members of Trump’s inner circle. Cohen admitted to charges of lying about his income to evade income taxes, lying to banks to obtain loans, and making illegal contributions to benefit Trump’s campaign.
Here are five things to know from the court filings and from Cohen’s own words.
The charges against Cohen implicate others in Trump campaign
Prosecutors charged Cohen with two counts of violating campaign finance laws by arranging payoffs to silence two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump. The payoffs followed the release of video from an Access Hollywood outtake in which Trump had boasted about sexual assault.
Prosecutors said Cohen worked to secure a $150,000 payment from the National Enquirer to former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, who claimed to have had a relationship with Trump years earlier. They said he also made a $130,000 payment to a Stephanie Clifford, a pornographic actress better known as Stormy Daniels.
Prosecutors said the payments were illegal because they were made by a corporation, and because they exceeded the maximum allowable donation to a federal candidate.
Cohen stunned a federal courtroom in New York on Tuesday by declaring that he made those payments “at the direction of the candidate,” by whom he plainly meant Trump. He also said he did so specifically to influence the outcome of the election.
Additionally, the Justice Department alleged in a court filing that Cohen had “coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments.” Cohen pleaded guilty to that allegation.
While the court record doesn’t name names other than Cohen’s, it provides sufficient detail to identify individuals and organizations involved in the public record of the widely-reported chain of events.
Trump’s company was behind one of the payments
Prosecutors also alleged that Trump’s private company, The Trump Organization, agreed to reimburse Cohen for the $130,000 he paid to Clifford through a Delaware shell company, and the $35 it had cost him to wire the money. The company also reimbursed him $50,000 for what he described as “tech services.”
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The audio, released by Cohen’s attorney exclusively to CNN, allegedly reveals plans between Cohen and President Trump to keep a story about Trump’s affair out of the National Enquirer. USA TODAY
Then an executive at the Trump Organization doubled his payment and threw in a $60,000 bonus. Prosecutors said an unnamed executive told an employee to pay it and to falsely describe the payment as a retainer for legal services.
“Please pay from the Trust. Post to legal expenses. Put ‘retainer for the months of January and February 2017’ in the description.”
President Trump’s two adult sons and a third Trump Organization executive are in charge of a revocable trust which holds the president’s business assets.
The charges detail Cohen’s hidden sources of income
Five of the eight charges outlined by the Justice Department allege that Cohen “engaged in a scheme to evade income taxes by failing to report more than $4 million in income” between 2012 and 2016. Prosecutors charged that meant he failed to pay about $1.3 million in federal taxes.
The income came from a diverse array of sources which Cohen allegedly hid from his accountant and the Internal Revenue Service, including a $6 million loan to a business partner in the taxi industry at more than 12 percent interest which resulted in $2.4 million in interest payments which was not reported to the IRS.
Other income sources prosecutors said Cohen hid from tax authorities included:
$100,000 for brokering the sale of a piece of property in a private aviation community in Ocala, Florida in 2014.
More than $200,000 from an assisted living company “purportedly for Cohen’s ‘consulting’ on real estate and other projects” in 2016.
$30,000 for brokering sale of a French handbag, which retails for $11,900 to $300,000 “depending on the type of leather or animal skin used.”
Tabloid media payments were to influence the election
One of the payments Cohen acknowledged violated campaign finance laws wasn’t made by him.
Instead, prosecutors charged that he helped arrange an agreement for another woman to sell the story of her affair with Trump to The National Enquirer. The magazine paid Karen McDougal $150,000 for the rights to any story involving her relationship with “any then-married man.”
The magazine was not named in court documents, but prosecutors’ description matches the Enquirer. McDougal is referred to as “Woman-1.”
Prosecutors said that although the agreement was ostensibly to pay her for writing for the magazine, “its principle purpose … was to suppress Woman-1’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.”
The court records allege the chairman and chief executive of the magazine’s parent company had agreed to help the campaign “deal with negative stories about [Trump’s] relationships with women, by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”
The court records describe a method known as “catch and kill” whereby a tabloid media company pays an individual for exclusive rights to a story, but never publishes it.
There is no cooperation agreement, but Cohen could still cooperate
Despite the details provided in the plea agreement, questions remain about the broader implications for people other than Cohen who prosecutors have said took part in the payment.
Cohen’s legal deal struck as part of his plea agreement Tuesday does not include any explicit promises to cooperate with authorities as part of any broader investigation. (Cohen also has testified to congressional investigators examining Russian interference in the 2016 election.)
George Washington University Law School lecturer Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor, said Cohen “could certainly implicate at a minimum other members of the campaign.”
“The biggest unanswered question in my mind is: Is he now going to seek to cooperate in additional investigations against trump or other members of the campaign?” he said. “Or, his he going to plead guilty, stay silent and just walk away from it all?”
The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation announces charges related to the Mollie Tibbetts case during a news conference in Montezuma, Iowa. Rodney White, rodwhite@dmreg.com
WHAT WE KNOW
Mollie Tibbetts
Mollie Tibbetts, 20, of Brooklyn, was reported missing July 19 after she failed to show for work that day at a Grinnell daycare. She was a psychology major at the University of Iowa.
Tibbetts grew up in San Francisco and moved to Iowa with her mother and brothers after her parents separated when she was in second grade. In high school, she was involved in choir and high school speech contests, and she went from “Oompa Loompa to a lead role” in theater productions, said her brother, Jake Tibbetts.
Law enforcement officers said they confirmed with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that Rivera is an undocumented immigrant.
He was employed and lived in the area four to seven years, investigators said, but they would not disclose his employment history during a press conference Tuesday.
Tibbetts was last seen on surveillance footage running along Boundary and Middle Streets in her hometown. Cristhian Bahena Rivera allegedly followed her in a black Chevy Malibu. A criminal complaint said he then pursued her east of Brooklyn into the county along 385th Avenue.
Rivera parked his car and started running alongside and behind Tibbetts. She pulled out a cell phone and said she would call the police. Rivera told police he panicked and got mad, and then “blocked” his memory, becoming aware while at the driveway of a cornfield that he placed a woman in his trunk, according to a criminal complaint.
Rivera dragged the woman to an isolated area in the cornfield, he told police, then covered her body with corn leaves and drove away. After officials identified his vehicle in surveillance footage, he complied with law enforcement and led them to the body.
A tentative identification by the medical examiner indicates the recovered remains are Tibbetts’, based on clothing found at the scene, according to the criminal complaint.
The location
Tibbetts was first seen running along Boundary and Middle Streets the evening of July 18, according to the criminal complaint.
She ran east, outside of town, along 385th Avenue. Rivera allegedly abducted Tibbetts around the 1900 block of 385th Avenue, according to the criminal complaint.
Rivera said he “blocked” his memory, coming to at an unknown intersection, according to the criminal complaint. Iowa DCI did not release the location of this intersection and would not say whether Tibbetts was alive at this point.
After making a U-turn, Rivera told police he drove up a driveway and toward a cornfield where he hid Tibbetts’ body along 460th Avenue in rural Poweshiek County, the complaint alleges.
Remains were found south of Highway 21, where officials had closed off a portion of the road Tuesday morning.
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