The Southern District of New York (SDNY) has announced criminal charges against attorney Michael Avenatti (full complaint pdf below) for attempting to extract more than $20 million in payments from Nike Corp, a publicly traded company, by threatening to use his ability to garner publicity to inflict substantial financial and reputational harm on the company if his demands were not met.
The SDNY counts against Avenatti include conspiracy to transmit interstate communications with intent to extort, conspiracy to commit extortion and more.  In the SDNY case, attorney Mark Geragos is a co-conspirator.
Additionally and simultaneously, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles alleged in a separate criminal complaint that Mr. Avenatti embezzled a client’s money to pay his own expenses and cover debts—including for his law firm and coffee business—and defrauded a bank using phony tax returns.
Here’s the SDNY criminal complaint:
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UPDATE: Below is a video of the SDNY Press Conference:
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White House and administration officials were on multiple news outlets today giving interviews about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report.  Below you will find interviews with Attorney Jay Sekulow, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and White House Senior Advisor to the President, Kellyanne Conway.
Jay Sekulow:

Speaking with “Fox & Friends” after the Mueller report found no evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy, President Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, issued a cryptic warning Monday that whoever convinced the FBI to pursue the Russia collusion investigation into the Trump campaign will soon be outed.
Giuliani was asked whether someone tricked the FBI into opening the original investigation.  Mr. Giuliani also called for President Trump’s “shameless ” critics to apologize for their false claims.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham holds a press conference after receiving the Principal Conclusion notification from AG William Barr.  Within this presser Lindsey Graham starts the process toward public discussion of investigations against the FBI and DOJ around the fraudulent FISA application against Carter Page.

CTH is going to break down the AG Barr Principal Conclusion notification letter against more than three years of background research.  Yes, more than “three years“, is the correct time-frame here.  The origin of the DOJ/FBI operation against Donald Trump goes back to 2015; the Mueller probe was a 2017 concluding chapter in the seditious conspiracy effort.
I’m going to cite as much background as possible; however, this review encompasses so much granular history that some parts might be too complex for a person who only recently jumped into the story.  Disclaimer: this outline does not fit the narrative from those who claim Mueller and Rosenstein are honorable men.  They ain’t.
The first part that matters is a few paragraphs into the letter.  Here we find the scale of the investigative group, and a description of some of the investigative paths they traveled:

There are several takeaways that are worthy of notation.
♦ First, the team of 19 lawyers and 40 FBI agents is more than the original Crossfire Hurricane investigative team (lawyers added), but includes the exact same group of FBI and DOJ staff level investigative officials that originated the Trump operation long before Robert Mueller was selected to lead them.
The transferring team assembly has been missed by media; and also missed by those who have researched the investigators. It is an important point, yet completely overlooked.
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Alan Dershowitz is exactly correct on the point; but he’s incorrect on the Mueller team’s motive.
Team Mueller didn’t punt the Obstruction issue to the Attorney General because Mueller’s a coward…. Team Mueller punted the Obstruction issue because they specifically wanted to create room for The House to work an impeachment angle.  It was a political decision.

CTH will break down the important granules within the “Principal Conclusion Letter” to congress in another post; including the obvious evidence of how Robert Mueller’s team have conspired to assist the impeachment agenda.  However, in the interim we celebrate the predictably obvious legal finding of ‘no collusion and no obstruction‘.
Here is President Trump responding to the four page summary from AG William Barr.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr sends a four-page letter to congress summarizing the Robert Mueller report.  This four-page letter is known as the “Principal Conclusion” notification to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
[pdf link] and [raw download link]

Here’s the Letter:

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Full page screen-grabs below
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It should always be remembered that Representative John Ratcliffe is one of only a few members of congress who have seen every single document across the entire spectrum of classification.
Rep. Ratcliffe appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo for a lengthy discussion on the Mueller probe, report, and the findings.  Additionally and importantly, Ratcliffe then shifts to discuss the corruption of the DOJ/FBI and how accountability might soon surface.

We shared a discussion thread several months ago about how the media are enmeshed within the story of the DOJ and FBI corruption. The media engagements with the parties swirling around the FBI, DOJ and Clinton-Steele Dossier are so pervasive they cannot reasonably report on any aspect of the story without exposing their own duplicity.
As more and more information surfaces about corrupt DOJ and FBI activity, it’s worth remembering the media’s complicit role. Here’s an updated review for context:

Michael Isikoff highlighted that level of how enmeshed media is with the story in February when he admitted his reporting was being used by the DOJ and FBI to advance the political objectives of the intelligence community. Additionally, FBI investigator Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page were shown in their text messages to be leaking stories from the Clinton Investigation, the Trump investigation and the Mueller investigation to journalists at Politico, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. –SEE HERE–
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was busted by the Inspector General leaking stories to the media and then lying about it to INSD and IG investigators. FBI Director James Comey admitted to leaking stories to the New York Times, and even hired his friend Andrew Richman (off-the-books), gave him access to FBI and NSA databases, and then leaked information to Richman along with another friend Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare blog.
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