With money laundering charges against Paul Manafort, Trump's ‘fake news’ claim is harder to defend

The independent investigation into Trump-Russia collusion just made its most serious move since it began in May. Three former campaign officials have been charged with crimes; one has pleaded guilty. President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his former business partner Rick Gates have been charged with 12 counts of financial crimes related to their work in Ukraine over the past decade.

And the special counsel announced that Trump's foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty earlier this month to giving false statements to the FBI about his ties to a Russian-connected professor who promised "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

Nothing to see here, Trump said of the news:

But those definitive statements are very hard to make, since legal experts say this is very likely to be the beginning, not the end, of the probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. And no, collusion is not ruled out.

"While the White House could say that these indictments don't advance the collusion narrative, they don't negate it either," said Ira Matetsky, a partner at New York City-based Ganfer and Shore law firm.

Here are some of Trump's common claims about the investigation — and why the facts don't necessarily back them up yet.

Trump claim No. 1: There's no evidence of collusion

Trump's main argument here is that the FBI, in some form or another, has been looking into this for more than a year and that because it hasn't come to a conclusion about collusion, there must be none.

It's true that the Manafort and Gates indictment doesn't mention the Trump campaign and refers to alleged crimes over the past decade.

But that doesn't mean the probe is over. He could indict Manafort or anyone else of collusion-connected crimes any time he has evidence to do so, said Jens David Ohlin, a vice dean at Cornell Law University.

"You can't rule out that [Mueller] didn't rule out Manafort colluding with Russia," Ohlin said.

We do know he's also looking into Donald Trump Jr.'s meetings with Kremlin-connected Russians,  whether the president obstructed justice when James Comey was the FBI director and Jared Kushner's business dealings.

“Mueller wouldn't have hired 16, 17 people to investigate these events just to indict some tangential person unrelated to the campaign,”said white-collar lawyer Jeffrey Jacobovitz.

The timing of the indictments is noteworthy, too. In just five months, Mueller's team has impaneled a federal grand jury and now is charging Trump's former campaign chairman. Those are both significant escalations.

Nor has Congress dropped its investigation into collusion. Earlier this month, top Senate Republican and Democratic investigators said that after eight months of investigating, hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 100 people and nearly 100,000 pages of documents, they aren't ready to rule out collusion.

Translation: At the very least, accusations that the Trump campaign worked with Russia are not a hoax. It's worth significant time and resources for three committees in Congress and one independent investigation to continue to look into on a variety of fronts.

Claim No. 2: These charges have nothing to do with the Trump administration

Manafort and Gates are charged with something that does not seem directly related to Russia collusion, and Trump has used that fact to argue that this has nothing to do with his campaign.

Except, Trump may be getting out ahead of himself. Many legal experts think Mueller is putting pressure on these outside figures to get them to cooperate by sharing what they know about Trump's inner circle. If true, that would explain the FBI knocking on Manafort's door in an aggressive predawn raid or the special counsel looking into former national security adviser Michael Flynn's son.

"Charging Person A can be  way to put pressure on Person B or Person C to testify," said Jack Sharman, a white-collar lawyer in Alabama and former special counsel for Congress during the Bill Clinton Whitewater investigation.

And then we get to Papadopoulos. His guilty plea is directly related to Russia, in that he gave false statements to the FBI about his interaction with a Russian-connected professor during the campaign. Mueller chose to telegraph on Monday that he has someone on the inside of Trump world advising him, which legal experts said underscores that this is far from over.

Claim No. 3: Mueller and his team are politically motivated

Some of Trump's allies have tried to draw lines between the prosecutors Mueller has hired and their ties to Democrats. Since Mueller's team is operating behind closed doors, it's been hard to directly rebut that.

But that logic falls into a gaping hole with this indictment. Mueller has persuaded a federal judge to set up a grand jury, he has presented the evidence his team has found, and that independent grand jury decided to return an indictment.

“This is out of Mueller's hands,” Jacobovitz said. “It's an independent jury. They could have declined the indictment, but apparently they did not.”

“It's a first step, and it could be one of many,” he said.

This Is What the Trump Abyss Looks Like

The past week was another watershed, it seems to me, in the rising power of Donald Trump. Flake is quitting; Corker is retiring; McCain is mortal. Sasse, Murkowski, Collins, and Paul remain, but the odds are mounting against them. A new slew of Bannonite candidates is emerging from under various rocks and crannies to take their places. The Trump propaganda machine was given a chance to turn the Russia story into a Clinton scandal - lowering even further the possibility of impeachment - and gleefully took it. The FBI is the next target for a barrage of hostile propaganda, since it might expose the Supreme Leader. Mueller is being daily savaged in the right wing press. Outside Washington, Trump’s targets are faltering. The NFL is reeling; a Gold Star widow is attacked; Obamacare is at risk of being sabotaged to death; the EPA is castrated.

This time last year, I warned about an abyss. This is what it looks like.

The Congress is paralyzed, reduced entirely to staffing the judiciary with the far right; it can pass no significant legislation and reach no compromise on anything, without Trump undermining it. The bureaucracy is shell-shocked and demoralized; the State Department is a wasteland; the press has sunk even further into public disdain. The police are increasingly seen either as incapable of error, or morally suspect. The essential civilian control of the military has been weakened, with an embittered general’s honor now deployed as a way to play political defense in front of the press corps. “My generals”, as the president calls them, as if they swear loyalty to him and not to the Constitution. The Republican candidate for the Senate from Alabama, Roy Moore, believes that there should be a religious test for public office. As Ben Sasse blurted out yesterday: “It feels like this party I’m a member of has gone post-Constitutional.”

The discourse has been coarsened to sub-tabloid levels; the courts’ authority has been weakened by their own over-reach and Trump’s refusal to follow core Constitutional norms.. The neutral institutions that might be capable of bringing the president to heel, such as the FBI, are now being trashed by their ultimate boss. The possibility of a shared truth, about which we can have differing opinions, has evaporated in a blizzard of web-fueled distraction and misdirection, aided and abetted by a president for whom reality is whatever he wants it to be at any given moment, and always susceptible to change. It turns out that Mark Zuckerberg’s real achievement will be the collapse of a rational public dialogue and the empowerment of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Almost all our liberal democratic norms and institutions are much weaker today than they were a year ago. Trump has not assaulted the Constitution directly. He has not refused a court order, so far. But he has obstructed justice in his firing of James Comey, and abused the spirit of the pardon power by using it for a public official who violated citizens’ Constitutional rights, before he was even sentenced. In the most worrying case so far, he has refused to enforce the sanctions against Russia that were passed by a veto-proof margin by the Congress. I fear this is because his psyche cannot actually follow the instructions of anyone but himself. This is also why, after failing to repeal, replace or amend Obamacare, he has not faithfully executed the law, but actively sabotaged it. If he does not have his way, he will either sulk and refuse to do his constitutional duty, or he will simply smash whatever institution or law that obstructs his will. At some point, we may come to a more profound test of his ability to operate as just one of three equal branches of government. I think he’ll fail it.

Yes, the forms of the Constitution remain largely intact after nine months. But the norms that make the Constitution work are crumbling. The structure looks the same, but Trump has relentlessly attacked their foundations. Do not therefore keep your eyes on the surface. Put your ear to the ground.

And we know something after a year of this. It will go on. This is not a function of strategy or what we might ordinarily describe as will. It is because this president is so psychologically disordered he cannot behave in any other way. His emotions control his mind; his narcissism overwhelms even basic self-interest, let alone the interest of the country as a whole. He cannot unite the country, even if, somewhere in his fathomless vanity, he wants to. And he cannot stop this manic defense of ego because if he did, his very self would collapse. This is why he lies and why he cannot admit a single one of them. He is psychologically incapable of accepting that he could be wrong and someone else could be right. His impulse - which he cannot control - is simply to assault the person who points out the error, or blame someone else for it. Remember his excruciating pre-election admission that his foul racist lies about Obama’s birthplace originated with Hillary Clinton? That’s as good as you’ll get and it’s the only concession to reality he has made so far. And do not underestimate the stamina of the psychologically unwell. They will exhaust you long before they will ever exhaust themselves.

But by far the most important development in all this, the single essential rampart, is how, through all this, Trump has tightened his grip on 35 percent of the country. He has done this when he has succeeded but also critically when he has failed, because he has brilliantly turned his incapacity to be president into an asset with his base. No wall? Congress’ fault. Obamacare in place? The GOP’s fault. No tax cut? Ditto. The only way forward? A deeper and deeper trust in him. Only he can fix the Congress by purging it. Only he can fix the Courts through nominees who will never stand up to him.

And this base support is unshakable. It is not susceptible to reason. No scandal, however great, will dislodge it - because he has invaded his followers’ minds and psyches as profoundly as he has the rest of ours. He is fused with them more deeply now, a single raging id, a force that helps us understand better how civilized countries can descend so quickly into barbarism. In a country led by a swirling void, all sorts of inhibitions slowly slip away. Nativism, racism, nationalism: these are very potent catalysts of human darkness. Usually it is the president who takes responsibility when these demons appear to emerge, and attempts to refute, or discredit or calm them. But this one amps them up. That is why we have the astonishing scenario of his two predecessors trying to do what he cannot. They know the fire he is playing with. And they have some sense of responsibility. He has absolutely none.

He is the total master of an enormous mob that, so far, has completely overcome the elites. He achieves this mastery through incendiary oratory, hourly provocations, and relentless propaganda. His rallies are events of mass hysteria and rage. His propaganda machines - Fox News, Limbaugh, Breitbart, Drudge - rarely crack. And there is no one in our political life capable of matching this power. Name one, if you can. And when you look at the Democratic field of 2020, no one seems up to it at all. Among the few responsible Republicans left, what we see is either utter cowardice in the face of an enraged base, or the kind of courage that manifests itself too late to make a difference, which is to say no real courage at all. There are a few exceptions: Senators Collins and Murkowski in particular, doggedly playing their Constitutional roles and not quitting. The rest? The only thing we have to slow this assault is already Congressional roadkill.

If I were asked which were the problems that are most overlooked right now, I’d say record levels of social and economic inequality, declining social mobility and a dangerous, unsustainable level of debt. Acquiescence to all three poses a threat to the legitimacy of democratic capitalism. My own understanding of conservatism would be particularly concerned about all three, because conservatives should want to conserve our system of government and support for free market economics.

So what does the ostensibly conservative party in America - the Republicans - propose we do? They propose that we make all of this de-legitimization of democratic capitalism much, much worse. I’m referring primarily to their proposed massive tax cut to the super-wealthy, the abolition of the estate tax, and their bid to add over a trillion dollars to the debt.

How on earth does the GOP defend this? They argue that the US economy desperately needs a boost. This was not a position they held in 2009, as the global economy was teetering on collapse, and as the US economy was close to its worst crisis since the 1930s. The House GOP coughed up one single vote for massive tax cuts at that time … because they insisted that we couldn’t add to the debt, even as a depression loomed. But apparently, debt-fueled growth is urgent now that unemployment claims have hit a 44-year low, the Dow is at a record high, we are still in the longest recovery in history, and the debt is far greater than it was in 2009. This is so perverse it could not possibly be entertained without massive amnesia, extreme partisanship, or a need to have something - anything - to point to in 2018.

The second argument is that the tax cuts pay for themselves through faster growth. Well, they don’t exactly argue this, because they cannot. We know now beyond any conceivable doubt that this is untrue, false, disproven, and unfounded, because every single tax cut of the last thirty five years has increased the debt. Reagan’s tax cut created the first lurch toward insolvency; George W. Bush’s created the second; and the Great Recession - Bush’s last gift to the country - compounded both. In Kansas, we have yet another contemporary case of the demonstrable failure of this supply-side fantasy. For Mitch McConnell to say with a straight face that this time will be different is therefore either madness or cynicism so profound it … well I was going to say beggars belief, but at this point, it seems utterly believable.

Now, there is a credible argument that, given soaring inequality, and globalization’s disproportionate impact on the middle classes and working poor, tax relief for many in the lower half of the earning population is a good idea. I agree. So why not give it to them, rather than the obscenely wealthy? And why not make it revenue-neutral or even debt-reducing as well as helpful to social stability? You could indeed pay for big middle class tax cuts or an increase in tax credits for the working poor if you doubled the estate tax, or adding a new tax bracket - say, 45 percent - for those earning over $1 million a year. This would be a political master-stroke for the Trump administration (which is why Steve Bannon was rumored to favor something on these lines). It would instantly rebrand the GOP. It might even get buy-in from the Democrats. It could pass without using reconciliation rules in the Senate, thus helping entrench it in the system. It would help defuse our dangerous tribalism. It would do a lot to restore generational fairness, and counter the emergence of a rich caste of people who are fabulously wealthy for doing nothing. It would support work rather than privilege, a meritocracy rather than an oligarchy.

If the Democrats were smart, they would propose something like this themselves - and get ahead of the GOP, using it as a platform for 2018. And if the Republicans could abandon zombie Reaganism, they could rescue themselves from the electoral oblivion they so richly deserve. There’s a win-win here for both parties and the country. So why do I suspect it will once again be lose-lose?

Jared O’Mara - the name itself deserves an award - is a 35-year-old new member of the British parliament in the Labour party. He’s from Sheffield in the north of England, calls himself a “ginge” and has cerebral palsy. He won a surprise victory in the last election and used his acceptance speech to talk about the rights of the disabled. He earned a living running a pub in his 20s, and wrote online rock reviews, while volunteering at a local charity for disabled kids. He was so sure he wouldn’t win his election that he didn’t even buy a suit for his acceptance speech. After winning, he got shit-faced in his pub, in true English fashion: “There may have been some refreshments, and I may have gone home at 6am,” he drily informed the Guardian.

In a profile earlier this year, the Guardian explained his appeal: “He comes across as a real person, as opposed to a robot pretending to be one. A 35-year-old Marvel comics geek who loves Douglas Coupland, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (“I worship at the church of Joss Whedon”) and Sheffield Wednesday (the local soccer team), he’s the kind of bloke who likes nothing better than to spend an evening singing drunken karaoke at Dempsey’s, a Sheffield LGBTQ bar. When I ask if he is single, for instance, he doesn’t just tell me that, yes, he is. ‘I’m open to offers,’ he says. “Of his cerebral palsy, he explained: “The entire right side of my body is semi-paralysed or significantly weaker than the left. My main symptom is fatigue. I can’t stand for long, or walk about too much. Mobility is an issue. Some stairs are too difficult if they’re narrow and steep – I need banisters on both sides – and I can’t wear a shirt and tie because I can’t do the buttons. I’m going to be wearing plain T-shirts here [Westminster], which is against the dress code.”

He also has a classic British working-class sense of humor. And that is why he has now been suspended from the Labour party. In his twenties, he used his band’s website “to try his luck with imagined groupies”, as the gossip site Guido Fawkes put it. Asked to describe what he wanted in a groupie, he wrote: “What can I say. I am the front man in the world’s coolest rock band *and* the best looking ginger bloke ever .. any girl that would like to make whopee [sic] with me must be passionate about charity and the fight against social injustice … and have a pretty face.” On another online forum, he described himself as a “dirty perv who dreams of bumming birds … I just wanna get drunk and chase some skirt” He once referred to “sexy little slags”. Referring to a local band at one point, he also wrote it has “a rhythm section that’s tighter than your mother was when I took her virginity all those years ago.” Listening to it was “even better than receiving fellatio from the beautifully pert lips and wet mouth of Angelina Jolie.” He occasionally mocked fat women.

He also opined of Morrissey: “Just cos he writes about gayness and gay issues, doesn’t mean he drives up the Marmite motorway, or for that matter, allows someone else to drive up his… You do mean ‘took it up the ass’ figuratively don’t you?… I just think that this story is much more poignantly romantic than fudge packing Jake or anyone else in a casual manner and I don’t want such a lovely vista to be spoilt. To those of you that are bitter and resentful about being homosexual, maybe you need to take a bit of pride in your gayness, it’s not something to be ashamed of.” In one online fight before a football match with Denmark, he also opined: “Oh yeah I might be a ginge but at least I don’t practice bestiality like all you Danes. Up yours with brass knobs on, pig shaggers!”

For all this, he has been suspended by his party, and subject to a public shaming. Maybe I’m a terrible, horrible human being, but it seems to me almost all of his comments, however sexist, homophobic or racist, were also meant to be jokes. Some of them actually made me laugh out loud as I read. These extended, silly, over-the-top insults are very British. More to the point, they are very laddish jokes - the kind my high-school mates would try to make. They’re massively hyperbolic and largely self-mocking, but part of a male subculture that is already under siege. They were all made before he became an MP. Before the Internet, he would never have been hauled in front of today’s huffy puritans because they would have had no sources, and if they did, they wouldn’t have cared less.

The web was supposed to expand free speech. It has come to constrain it. What appears to be private is eternally public and your sins will be exposed someday. And so the enforcement of correct manners and speech is becoming more and more Victorian by the day, and the cultural police have far more powerful tools to punish and humiliate you. It’s obvious that O’Mara needed to apologize for his past online excesses, as he has. They’re not acceptable for someone in public office. But I see no evidence of real bigotry. The Tories now attacking him are as opportunistic as the usual identity groups pretending to be offended. He’ll probably have to go through a public re-education camp as penance. I understand. Public standards need to be maintained. But if every last shred of bawdy, prejudiced working class humor and extreme hyperbole is scrubbed from British culture, we will lose something that makes life just a little bit more worth living.

Will Mueller get Trump?

Paul Manafort, President Trump's campaign chairman from June to August 2016, was indicted Monday along with an associate, Rick Gates, as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump's ties with Russia. Manafort was removed from the campaign after it came out that he had coordinated a secret lobbying campaign for pro-Russia elements in Ukraine — but Gates continued to work for Trump after that, and was part of the inaugural committee.

The indictment against Manafort includes 12 counts, including conspiracy against the United States, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, conspiracy to launder money, and numerous other financial crimes. It describes Manafort's behavior as shockingly brazen — receiving millions of dollars in secret illegal cash, laundering it through a Byzantine network of shell companies, and using it to buy up multimillion-dollar properties and expensive luxury goods, including $934,350 spent in an antique rug store.

Additionally — and more damningly — it was revealed Monday that George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to Trump, pled guilty to lying to the FBI on Oct. 5. He told investigators that before he joined the Trump campaign, a source had told him the Russian government possessed "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of emails, when in fact Papadopoulos had been told after he joined the campaign.

For his part, Trump tweeted this.

That settles that. I suppose Mueller should just pack it in and call it quits.

Of course, the Mueller probe is likely to end in a far different way. As witnesses flip, and criminal charges are attached to more members of Trump's inner circle, many observers expect Trump to just fire Mueller. The major question then becomes whether congressional Republicans will allow the president to escape from a criminal investigation of his associates (and maybe himself) by abusing the powers of his office. I bet they will.

Of course, neither Manafort nor Gates have been convicted, nor have any criminal ties to Trump been proven. But let's remember that shady financial practices and criminal connections are a constant theme in the business career of Donald J. Trump. There's the time his father bailed out his struggling casino by illegally buying $3.5 million in chips, or the time the Trump Taj Mahal admitted to violating rules to prevent money laundering, or Trump's many close personal connections to figures in organized crime, or how a former associate helped international fugitives invest money in the United States. Trump's world has long been populated by shady characters, including himself.

The way investigations like this typically proceed is by first charging subordinates or those whose crimes are more obvious, and pressuring them to testify or provide other evidence against people further up the chain. You can expect that prosecutors will try to get Manafort and Gates to testify against other potential conspirators. Mueller, who was appointed FBI chief under President George W. Bush and served until 2013, is widely known as a careful and thorough investigator. He is surely very deliberately covering every possible base here.

Trump and the Republican noise machine have been desperately rooting around for some kind of distraction to take attention off Trump, and provide an excuse to get rid of Mueller. They recently ginned one up in the form of a dusted-off report about Hillary Clinton and the Uranium One deal, and the news that the DNC and the Clinton campaign (and, amusingly, the conservative website The Washington Free Beacon) had helped pay for opposition research into Trump's past.

The president and his lickspittle hacks at Fox News quickly blared this narrative at maximum volume. Trump's press secretary went full Big Lie, accusing Clinton and Democrats of having colluded with Russia to influence the election:

The fact that they are straining this hard to find distractions is in itself highly suspicious. If Trump had nothing to hide, he could just be quiet and let the investigation proceed.

Of course, it's impossible to imagine him behaving that way. There is simply no way that President Trump will sit quietly as Mueller methodically issues more indictments, flips more witnesses, and grows ever closer to Trump. Our president has never shown restraint of any sort. He certainly won't when his own life and career is at stake.

So what happens if Trump fires Mueller and issues blanket pardons to all of his associates? Finding enough Republicans to vote to impeach, much less convict in the Senate, is not going to happen. However, it would only take a handful of Republicans — as few as three senators, or a couple dozen GOP lawmakers in the House — to gum up Trump's agenda permanently. Such a group of Republicans threatening to stop the Republican agenda if the investigation doesn't proceed would change the political calculus for the party as a whole — especially the business wing that is salivating for tax cuts.

But that would also put these lawmakers under tremendous pressure from Fox News and the rest of the conservative propaganda apparatus, which treats any opposition to Trump as blasphemy and treachery. The criticism of any Republican lawmaker pushing for Mueller's investigation to continue would be completely unhinged.

It has become virtually impossible to go wrong predicting the maximum possible level of perfidy, lies, and cowardice from the Republican Party. Allowing the president to stop an investigation into his possible criminal past — and just possibly how he colluded with a foreign power to influence an American election — is, sadly, entirely imaginable.

Robert Mueller better hurry up.

Meet the new accessory that lets you actually feel virtual reality

The team behind a new accessory for virtual reality headsets that will create wind and synchronize it to VR events, immersing users even deeper into the VR content, came up with the idea for their gadget by happenstance.

Paige Pruitt, the cofounder and CTO of Weasel Labs, hit on the idea for what would become the company’s ZephVR product while playing the Playstation VR game “London Heist.” In it, there’s a car chase scene where you’re supposed to lean out the window of a virtual car and shoot down some bad guys.

While she was playing the game, she executed that move — while at the same moment she didn’t realize she was putting her face in front of her window fan. She was shocked at the presence of that air — and how real it made the moment feel.

“She called me right after that,” recalls company cofounder and CEO Sean Spielberg, “and was like whoa, it was so real. And from that, we started to think about how we could recreate immersive moments like this intentionally using wind.”

What they came up with are two 40-millimeter fans the users would buy and then attach to whatever VR headset the own. The fans would sit below the head-mounted display, listen for wind in audio games and trigger themselves accordingly.

A Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund the ZephVR goes live on Nov. 2 and runs for 30 days with a funding goal of $30,000. Pricing for the ZephVR will start at $49 for early backers on Kickstarter.

The company cites research for Greenlight Insights which shows that global VR revenue is expected to reach more than $74 billion in 2021, an annual growth rate of almost 80 percent. Weasel Labs, which is part of the inaugural class of the HMC INQ incubator in Santa Monica, sees their product as helping amplify and stoke interest in the space, helping people enjoy deeper experiences with the content.

There are so many instances, Spielberg says, in which the ZephVR can pick up wind in the audio track of VR content. Think of running, falling, flying. Bullets whizzing past. Extreme weather. A roller coaster drop. There are a lot of great moments in horror games in particular, Spielberg says, that add to the sense of terror you get while playing a game.

“We have a prototype design that’s ready for manufacturing, and we’re going to launch on Kickstarter,” he says. “And then from there our plan is to deliver within six months, max.

“We think that long-term the natural place for a feature like this to live in is the headsets themselves. We did file for a provisional patent, and we’ll be turning that into a full patent, so our hope is that the headset manufacturers want to license our technology and build this in a really awesome way.”

It’s also bigger than just the wind effect. Spielberg & Co. sees this as a first-step toward a world where they can help power any sort of physical effect or peripheral.

It started, of course, with Pruitt and her moment. Once the pair realized what they wanted to try, they started cobbling together quasi-prototypes. Crude implementations, like a couple of fans, duct-taped to a Playstation VR. One person would be in the game, and the other would be watching the TV to turn the fans on and off at the right moments, just experimenting.

The pair was surprised how even that helped deepen the VR experience. From there, they roped in friends for their opinion, and the positive feedback kept growing. Theirs is also a product that shows the potential for VR accessories like this, such as other products we’ve covered, like this glove that lets the wearer experience the sensation of touch in VR.

“We think — especially now, with all the new headsets released — there are so many different headsets out there competing for this market,” Spielberg said. “And they’re all going to be looking for a competitive differentiator, so we’re hoping we can be a big part of that.

“There’s definitely been a lot of hype around VR, and a lot of people out there have been disappointed that it didn’t hockey stick quite as soon as a lot of people were predicting.

But that being said, I think there’s a very promising future with VR. In a lot of different directions.”

New Accusers Expand Harvey Weinstein Sexual Assault Claims to Four Decades

Hope Exiner d’Amore said Harvey Weinstein raped her in a hotel room in the 1970s, when he was a young concert promoter in Buffalo. Cynthia Burr said that during this time, he assaulted her in an encounter that began in an elevator and ended with forced oral sex in a hallway. Ashley Matthau, a dancer with a bit part in one of his movies, said that in 2004, he pushed her down on a bed and masturbated while straddling her. Days later, she said, he paid her to remain silent.

Three weeks after complaints of sexual harassment and misconduct by Mr. Weinstein were first reported in The New York Times, women from different continents, fields and time periods have come forward with allegations of rape, sexual assault and groping. New accounts reported to The Times include one previously undisclosed settlement with Mr. Weinstein and expand the time frame of alleged wrongdoing to the 1970s.

Together, the accounts provide a widening tally of alleged abuses, and illustrate the toll on women who say they felt ashamed and isolated as they watched the Hollywood producer walk red carpets, pile up Oscars and showcase his ties to prominent figures.

“This has haunted me my entire life,” said Ms. Exiner d’Amore, now 62, who was in her early 20s at the time of the alleged rape.

She and three other women who spoke to The Times described Mr. Weinstein as inappropriate and unrelenting. Some said that he used the pretext of work to lure them to hotels, that he touched them or forced them into unwanted sexual activity and that he wouldn’t stop when they said no.

Ms. Matthau, the dancer who reached a settlement with Mr. Weinstein, said she was willing to break its confidentiality clause even if it meant that he might pursue legal damages. “I want to do my part to help bring this to light so it doesn’t happen with other people in Hollywood or anywhere else,” she said in an interview.

The allegations add to those previously documented in The Times, The New Yorker and elsewhere.

Last week, the actress Dominique Huett filed a lawsuit claiming that in 2010, Mr. Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her. The same day, Mimi Haleyi, a former production assistant of Mr. Weinstein’s, appeared at a news conference in New York accusing him of the same behavior in 2006.

The New York Police Department is conducting a wide-ranging investigation of allegations against Mr. Weinstein. Detectives with expertise in old cases are reviewing complaints that have come through the department’s hotline, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In New York, the statute of limitations for prosecuting rape and other sex crimes depends on the force alleged and the charges considered, but it can range from two years to no time restrictions for the most serious offenses. Ms. Burr, the woman involved in the hallway encounter in the 1970s, said that she contacted the New York police in recent weeks and that they told her the alleged assault had happened too long ago to be prosecuted.

Women have also spoken to law enforcement authorities in London, Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States. The London police are investigating three sexual assault cases involving Mr. Weinstein, ranging from the 1980s to 2015.

Mr. Weinstein’s spokeswoman, Sallie Hofmeister, said in a statement that “any allegations of nonconsensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein.”

Cynthia Burr

For 40 years, Cynthia Burr has almost never talked about the time she met Mr. Weinstein.

But she didn’t forget how he greeted her in the lobby of a beautiful old building in New York City. How he tried to kiss her in the elevator. And how, she said, he unzipped his fly and forced her to perform oral sex on him in a hallway.

“It was just him and me alone,” she said. “I was fearful I didn’t have the wherewithal to get away.”

It was the late 1970s, and Ms. Burr was an actress in her early 20s. Mr. Weinstein was in his mid-20s and a “real up-and-comer,” Ms. Burr remembers. Her manager said they should meet.

After the encounter, she recalls feeling ashamed. “The way he forced me made me feel really bad about myself,” she said. “What are you going to do when you are a girl just trying to make it as an actress? Nobody would have believed me.”

Ms. Burr, now 62, went on to build a career in Hollywood. She appeared in “Scarface” and the first two “Lethal Weapon” films, and in soap operas and other television shows, including the mid-90s sitcom “Crossroads Café.”

Eventually, she told her husband, now deceased, and a close friend, Lee Chavez, what had happened. Mr. Chavez confirmed that she had told him her account about ten years ago.

“I’m really sad for everybody, but I’m really glad it’s out in the open,” Ms. Burr said about learning of the other allegations against Mr. Weinstein. “I finally felt like I had a voice.”

Ms. Exiner d’Amore had worked for Mr. Weinstein for just a few weeks when he asked if she’d like to take a trip to New York City. Both of them were in their 20s, living in Buffalo in the late 1970s.

She was working for Mr. Weinstein’s concert promotion company, Harvey and Corky Productions, doing odd jobs. She was interested in film, so when Mr. Weinstein asked if she wanted to come to New York City to meet with people in the industry, she agreed.

When they got to the Park Lane Hotel, Mr. Weinstein went to the check-in desk while she waited elsewhere in the lobby, Ms. Exiner d’Amore recalled. He returned and said there had been a mistake with the reservations; there was only one room. They would have to share.

“I gave him a look like that was ridiculous,” she recalled. But she ultimately agreed, assuming it was harmless. When she got into bed that night, she said, he slipped in next to her, naked.

“I told him no. I kept pushing him away. He just wouldn’t listen,” Ms. Exiner d’Amore said. “He just forced himself on me.” She said he forcibly performed oral sex and intercourse on her.

She did not tell her boyfriend, feeling ashamed, but she did confide in her next-door neighbors in Buffalo. She did not specifically say she was raped, but the couple, David and Irene Sipos, told The Times that they remembered her being extremely upset and crying when she told them about Mr. Weinstein and the hotel room.

After the trip, Ms. Exiner d’Amore said, Mr. Weinstein kept asking her out and offered her credit cards to go on shopping sprees. She declined. Within three or four weeks, she was fired.

“It was a relief,” she said. “I hated being there.”

Ms. Exiner d’Amore never went into the film industry. She got a job administering an undergraduate program at Cornell University, and later moved on to jobs in fund-raising.

Ashley Matthau said that Mr. Weinstein was aggressive with her the moment they met in 2004. She was in Puerto Rico performing in “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights” when Mr. Weinstein visited the set. As soon as he saw her, she said, he began pressuring her to come to his hotel room for a private meeting. Ms. Matthau, who then went by her maiden name, Anderson, said she tried to brush him off, explaining that she was engaged. She said he persisted.

When the cast broke for a meal, Ms. Matthau told some production members that Mr. Weinstein was being pushy and she was afraid. No one offered to help, she said, and when she returned to the set, Mr. Weinstein instructed her to get into a car.

“‘Don’t worry,’” Ms. Matthau, now 36, remembers him saying as they sat in the back seat. “‘Nothing is going to happen. We’re just going to discuss future projects.’”

She said they went to his hotel room, where talk quickly became sexual: Mr. Weinstein told her that he had helped launch the careers of high-profile actresses who had slept with him, and that she should consider doing the same. When she declined, Mr. Weinstein pushed her onto the bed and fondled her breasts, she said. He then stripped, straddled her and masturbated on top of her.

“I kept telling him, ‘Stop, I’m engaged,’ but he kept saying: ‘It’s just a little cuddling. It’s not a problem. It’s not like we’re having sex.’”

Back in California days later, Ms. Matthau tearfully told her fiancé, Charles Matthau, a general description of what had happened. Mr. Matthau said in an interview that he was outraged. With his encouragement, Ms. Matthau retained John S. West, a partner in the law firm of Gloria Allred, who has a record of taking on powerful men.

Soon, Ms. Matthau recalled, she and Mr. West met at the Peninsula Beverly Hills with Mr. Weinstein and Daniel M. Petrocelli, who had represented high-profile clients including Jeffrey Skilling, the chief executive of Enron.

The experience, she said, was chilling. She had attended a couple of parties at the Playboy Mansion, and Mr. Petrocelli said she would be painted as promiscuous if she went public with her accusation against Mr. Weinstein.

“‘We’ll drag you through the mud by your hair,’” she recalled the lawyer saying. Mr. Petrocelli declined to comment.

Going up against such powerful men felt like more than she could handle. Ms. Matthau said she agreed to enter into a more than $100,000 settlement with Mr. Weinstein in exchange for a legally binding promise never to speak of the allegations again.

Lacey Dorn

Lacey Dorn moved to New York City in 2011, soon after graduating from Stanford University, where she had helped create two documentaries. Ms. Dorn, then 22, was introduced to Mr. Weinstein at a New York Film Festival party for “The Artist,” which was distributed by his company.

A few weeks later, Ms. Dorn attended a Halloween party at Rose Bar in the Gramercy Park Hotel and ran into Mr. Weinstein, who asked for her email. He wanted to talk about her career over lunch, she said.

“Great meeting you,” he wrote in the subject line of an otherwise blank email sent to her at 12:26 a.m.

On her way out of the party, Ms. Dorn said goodbye to Mr. Weinstein. As she turned her back to him, he grabbed between her legs, touching her buttocks and crotch through her clothes.

“I was so naïve, I didn’t say anything. And he didn’t say anything either,” she said. “I just got out of the party as fast as possible.”

Ms. Dorn said she never heard from Mr. Weinstein and never spoke to him again. Ms. Dorn said that when she told friends what had happened, many seemed to shrug it off as if it were a “rite of passage,” an acknowledgment of how “awful” the entertainment business could be.

Review: Will Gompertz on Harry Styles's Paris gig ★★★★☆

After seven years in One Direction, Harry Styles is on his first solo world tour. Will Gompertz has been to see him in Paris before the singer hits the UK this weekend.

It is 20:59 on a warm October evening in Paris.

It's warmer still inside the legendary L'Olympia music hall on the Boulevard des Capucines; the walls of which can tell tales of other hot nights, with Edith Piaf in the 50s, the Stones and the Beatles in the 60s, followed by Bowie, Madonna, The Grateful Dead, Nina Simone - anyone who's anyone, basically.

The 2,000 highly excited young fans (the audience is entirely female, barring the odd dad chaperone and your correspondent) waiting in a state of tremulous expectation for the night's show to begin, couldn't care less about the venue's past.

They are here for one thing, and one thing only: to be part of their own piece of history.

At 21:00 precisely, a sea of smartphones appear above the canopy of teenage heads. A chant breaks out.

"Harry! Harry! Harry!"

This lot expect things to start on time.

A thin, makeshift curtain, decorated with a few spring flowers, obscures the stage. When it ripples, the crowd gasps. When a spotlight reveals a silhouette of a figure holding a guitar, the screaming starts.

When it drops to reveal that figure to be Harry Styles standing in front of a microphone, wearing a floral red Gucci suit, an ear-splitting hysteria breaks out. The crowd surge forward.

This is what happens when the 23-year-old singer walks into a room.

"Tell me something I don't already know," he sings.

There's nothing they don't already know about his song Ever Since New York, or any of the other tracks on his recently released first solo album. Two thousand voices joyously sing along.

Styles is supported by a four-piece band: Sarah Jones on drums, Clare Uchima on keyboard, Adam Pendergast on bass, Mitch Rowland on lead guitar. They too are decked out from head-to-toe in Gucci.

Jones - a visual and sonic presence throughout - is elevated on a raised platform just behind The Main Man. They make a tight combo.

The stage set is modest, just a ruched red curtain backdrop. This is an intimate gig. The first stop on a credential-building European tour aimed at establishing Styles as a bona-fide pop star, not some wannabe pretender from a manufactured boy band.

He keeps it simple. There is something of a young Johnny Cash about him at this stage.

A solid, surprisingly modest performer singing his catchy tunes with confidence and sincerity while rooted to the spot. And so it goes, with a "bonsoir" here and "you're all beautiful" there.

Until Only Angel, when the red curtain backdrop gives way to a mighty lighting stack which becomes the show's sixth performer, throwing the sort of choreographed shapes that Styles was once instructed to do in One Direction but now appears to have happily abandoned. He takes it up a notch.

Mic in hand, he channels his inner Jagger and performs the moves he must have rehearsed a thousand times in front of his bedroom mirror: the strut, the clap, the pout. He nails them all without ever really letting go.

"Everybody's alright?" he asks

[The audience screams.]

"Who's from Paris?"

[The audience screams.]

"Who's not from Paris?"

[The audience screams.]

Audience and performer are simpatico, hard wired. This is a love-in. It is not rock'n'roll. There's no anger, no wildness, no danger. It is polished, professional entertainment.

The singer's early Cash-like cool ebbs as his self-deprecating patter and well-meaning instructions to "be kind" and "embrace someone you don't know" pitches him somewhere between a Sunday school teacher and a shiny-suited children's entertainer.

And then the chants begin. Not for Harry this time, but for one of his songs, Kiwi. Styles smiles. And diverts. To his past and One Direction. Which he embraces, acknowledges, and respects.

He is classy. As is his re-working of the band's early hit What Makes You Beautiful. The place goes wild.

But they want Kiwi more. So he gives it to them. And they go wilder.

"I think she said, 'I'm having your baby, it's none of your business'." The crowd swoons and screams.

And then, a couple of numbers later, his time is almost up.

"I only have one song left," he says. Up go the chants again, "Kiwi! Kiwi! Kiwi!" He laughs, resists and sings Sign Of The Times instead.

And then waves goodbye and exits stage right, before returning, to touch his heart, and leave again. Tears and more screams fill the air. The band plays on.

A little later, when I leave, a large crowd of young women are waiting patiently outside.

One of them asks if Harry is still in the venue. I'd been with his team and knew he was long gone. I tell her so.

"But how do I know that I can believe you?" she asks.

I shrug. The truth is Styles had probably jumped into a waiting car while the band was still looping Sign Of The Times and the crowd was holding its collective breath desperately hoping for another encore. Such are the practicalities of showbiz.

I don't know how much longer they waited, but I do know every one of the 2,000 fans who crammed into that 19th Century music hall and made it shake to its foundations, had got their money's worth.

They got what they came for - their piece of history.

As for Harry Styles, he seemed to have a ball too. He clearly loves the freedom of being his own man, doing his own thing. Which he does with oodles of charm and notable technical assurance. He is very good. Albeit still a work in progress.

He's still too cautious to match Robbie Williams's post-boy band artistic heights, nor can he yet take his place among the greats whose ghosts haunt L'Olympia.

But he is - as they say in Paris - en route.

Melania Trump does things her way

During a Thursday afternoon event in the White House's East Room, first lady Melania Trump stood at the podium and closed her remarks by saying something she has not often said — and certainly not said lately — about her husband: "I am so proud to support him today, as he sees this commitment through."

It was a perfectly conventional thing for a first lady to say. In this case, she was discussing President Donald Trump's decision to declare a public health emergency to stem the country's ongoing opioid crisis. But like so many other things in the Trump administration, for the first couple, convention is an anomaly and the line of support marked a rare public moment.

Melania Trump, in stark contrast to her seemingly ubiquitous husband, has emerged as the most mysterious woman in Washington. Since moving here with her young son, Barron, this summer, she has demonstrated none of the extrovert bravado that so defines the man she married.

In fact, of late it's been her quietly touted solo activities that have begun to define an otherwise private first lady.

'Mrs. Trump is independent'

Take, for example, the East Wing response to cries of hypocrisy when she outlined an early platform taking on school bullying.

The idea that Melania Trump would tackle bullying when her husband is seen by millions as one of the country's best examples of bad behavior sparked countless opinion pieces pointing out how he uses terms such as "wacky" and "liddle" for elected officials.

Asked by CNN if the first lady feels the need to reconcile that irony with what she's trying to accomplish, Trump's communications director Stephanie Grisham said flatly, "no."

"Mrs. Trump is independent and acts independently from her husband," Grisham told CNN at the time. "She does what she feels is right and knows that she has a real opportunity through her role as first lady to have a positive impact on the lives of children. Her only focus is to effect change within our next generation."

The statement is clearly meant to separate the first lady from the orbit of her husband, which is fundamentally different than first ladies of recent memory. But the idea that Trump is doing things her own way shouldn't come as a surprise, said Anita McBride, who served as chief of staff to first lady Laura Bush.

"A first lady gets to rewrite the position and the job description any way she wants to, and Melania has, from Day 1, really, been charting her own course," McBride said. "From the beginning, by saying she wasn't even going to move down to Washington right away, she has been very open and honest about doing things on her own time, in her own way."

McBride pointed to how the first lady has staffed her office with just nine members, as opposed to the 20 or so that predecessors Michelle Obama and Laura Bush each had.

"It's not the way it's been done in the past, but this is a first lady who said she was interested in quality and not quantity," she said.

But part of Melania Trump's unique path is born of necessity.

A former Obama White House official said Michelle Obama, who did pursue an agenda independent of her husband, would never have needed to distance herself so explicitly from him.

"There would never have been anything similar to that (statement from Grisham) because it wasn't an issue for the Obamas," the official told CNN. "Michelle Obama had her own agenda — Let Girls Learn, Let's Move, Joining Forces — but at no point did any of those conflict with the President's words, actions, or policies," the source said.

Spousal support

A recent CNN poll found Melania Trump is the most popular member of the first family. About 44% of respondents had a favorable view of her, compared with 41% for her husband. The President, however, seems comfortable with that.

At a private dinner for the White House Historical Association, Trump told the audience that America is enamored with the first lady.

"They love her out there ... they're loving Melania," he said, calling her the "star of the Trump family."

Still, there are high-profile times the couple appeared out of step.

In August, after a spate of national and international crises, from the Barcelona terror attacks to the Charlottesville, Virginia, riots, it became apparent that the first lady's voice of support and condolence, through her social media accounts, was far more timely and compassionate than that of her husband.

A White House official said the first lady does not check in with her husband before posting.

"She is her own person," the official told CNN. "She operates the account herself and pays close attention to which events warrant comment, and which do not."

The divide in approach again points to a first couple unlike those that came before.

"Mrs. Bush would always say, 'I'm not here for myself, I'm here for George and because of George,' and that was the prism and the filter she used for her platform," said McBride.

Literacy, the cause she championed, fit well into the President's overarching initiatives, so the melding was relatively seamless.

"The East Wing definitely has some independence, but not this kind of independence," said the Obama White House official, referring to the Trumps' differing philosophies. "It hasn't before been as though there's a completely different view of the world from one side than the other."

The same could be said of how previous first ladies got in the trenches with their husbands when the heat was on. McBride pointed to Hurricane Katrina as an example of the Bushes having each other's back.

"There were things like that which were controversial for him, but that didn't stop her from being there, from her going down to New Orleans 26 times after the storm and working on behalf of the administration, even when the administration wasn't necessarily in good standing down there," McBride said.

McBride, who also worked in the Reagan administration as director of White House personnel, said Nancy Reagan would speak up quite frequently to West Wing staff when it came to President Ronald Reagan's policies and positions.

"She always had her antenna up, and in her mind she was doing what she felt best served the President," said McBride. "She did it because she 100 percent was trying to protect him and shape how he was remembered by history."

The Trump dynamic doesn't appear to operate in the same manner, at least not on the surface. The first lady rarely gets involved with her husband's scuffles, or his bruising responses to those who oppose him.

In an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" shortly after the election, Melania Trump said she sometimes tries to help contain her husband, but it didn't appear to be a priority.

"I think he hears me. But he will do what he wants to do on the end. He's an adult. He knows the consequences. And I give him my opinion. And he could do whatever he likes with it," Trump told "60 Minutes."

In June, after the President tweeted harsh words at MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, Grisham was asked if the first lady had anything to say about the dispute.

"As the first lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder," was all the statement said.

Outside perceptions vs. reality

The observations about the first lady having her own independent methodology does not, however, seem to imply the couple doesn't get along. In fact, one observer who has spent time with them lately says she has seen the President be "very affectionate" with Melania at times, and that he is "differential to her."

"I can appreciate how perceptions of the first couple on the outside are generally wrong," said McBride, who witnessed both the public and private sides of both the Bushes and the Reagans.

"For President Bush and the first lady, their lives were so completely intertwined, they didn't even have to speak a word, they could merely be in the same room to know what the other was thinking or feeling, so demonstrating that closeness just wasn't necessary — and that could sometimes be perceived as a coldness or as trouble. But it wasn't," she said.

A current White House official said the first lady's primary objective right now has little to do with how her relationship with the President is perceived by White House observers.

"She wants to establish herself as a first lady who helps children, that's her mission while her husband is in office," the official told CNN.

Next week, the first lady will accompany her husband to Asia, where she is expected to attend ceremonies and dinners with him, standing by his side, as she is often seen doing. But CNN has learned Melania Trump also has a number of solo events on the itinerary, too. They are likely to showcase the burgeoning independence that's happening not because of, but perhaps in spite of, her husband's tumultuous presidency.