Category: Breaking the Law

White House: ESPN anchor that called Trump racist should be fired

An ESPN anchor who called President Trump a white supremacist should be fired, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday.

“That is one of the more outrageous comments that anybody could make and certainly is something that is a fireable offense by ESPN,” Sanders said.

ESPN has reprimanded Jemele Hill, an African-American woman who co-hosts a show called “SC6 with Michael and Jemele,” for a string of tweets sent out over the weekend calling Trump and his supporters white supremacists.

An ESPN anchor who called President Trump a white supremacist should be fired, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday.

“That is one of the more outrageous comments that anybody could make and certainly is something that is a fireable offense by ESPN,” Sanders said.

ESPN has reprimanded Jemele Hill, an African-American woman who co-hosts a show called “SC6 with Michael and Jemele,” for a string of tweets sent out over the weekend calling Trump and his supporters white supremacists.

In a statement, ESPN sought to distance itself from Smith’s remarks.

“The comments on Twitter from Jemele Hill regarding the president do not represent the position of ESPN,” the network said. “We have addressed this with Jemele and she recognizes her actions were inappropriate.”

But many on the right are fuming, believing that it is the latest in a string of incidents that reveal ESPN’s liberal bias.

Sanders on Tuesday defended Trump, saying that he had met recently with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is black, and other “highly respected leaders in the African-American community” and that he is “committed to working with them to bring the country together.”

“That’s where we need to be focused, not on outrageous statements like this one,” Sanders said.

[The Hill]

Reality

You know who else thinks Donald Trump is a white supremacist? Congress. Who a few days after passed a resolution forcing Trump to officially denounce white supremacy.

In any event, Sarah Huckabee Sanders at best was highly inappropriate to user her federal position to influence private employment decisions, and at worse she may have broken the law.

This law essentially states certain government employees — including the president, vice president and “any other executive branch employee” — are prohibited from influencing the employment decisions or practices of a private entity (such as ESPN) “solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation.”

Breaking this law can lead to a fine or imprisonment up to 15 years — possibly both — and could lead to disqualification from “holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”

 

Sessions Discussed Trump Campaign-Related Matters with Russian Ambassador, U.S. Intelligence Intercepts Show

Russia’s ambassador to Washington told his superiors in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, contrary to public assertions by the embattled attorney general, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s accounts of two conversations with Sessions — then a top foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump — were intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, which monitor the communications of senior Russian officials in the United States and in Russia. Sessions initially failed to disclose his contacts with Kislyak and then said that the meetings were not about the Trump campaign.

One U.S. official said that Sessions — who testified that he had no recollection of an April encounter — has provided “misleading” statements that are “contradicted by other evidence.” A former official said that the intelligence indicates that Sessions and Kislyak had “substantive” discussions on matters including Trump’s positions on Russia-related issues and prospects for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration.

Sessions has said repeatedly that he never discussed campaign-related issues with Russian officials and that it was only in his capacity as a U.S. senator that he met with Kislyak.

“I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign,” Sessions said in March when he announced that he would recuse himself from matters relating to the FBI probe of Russian interference in the election and any connections to the Trump campaign.

Current and former U.S. officials said that that assertion is at odds with Kislyak’s accounts of conversations in two encounters during the campaign, one in April ahead of Trump’s first major foreign policy speech and another in July on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.

The apparent discrepancy could pose new problems for Sessions as his position in the administration appears increasingly tenuous.

Trump, in an interview this week, expressed frustration with Sessions’s recusing himself from the Russia probe and indicated regret at making the lawmaker from Alabama the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Trump also faulted Sessions as giving “bad answers” during his confirmation hearing about his Russia contacts during the campaign.

Officials emphasized that the information contradicting Sessions comes from U.S. intelligence on Kislyak’s communications with the Kremlin, and they acknowledged that the Russian ambassador could have mischaracterized or exaggerated the nature of his interactions.

“Obviously I cannot comment on the reliability of what anonymous sources describe in a wholly uncorroborated intelligence intercept that the Washington Post has not seen and that has not been provided to me,” said a Justice Department spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, in a statement. She reasserted that Sessions did not discuss interference in the election.

Russian and other foreign diplomats in Washington and elsewhere have been known, at times, to report false or misleading information to bolster their standing with their superiors or to confuse U.S. intelligence agencies.

But U.S. officials with regular access to Russian intelligence reports say Kislyak — whose tenure as ambassador to the United States ended recently — was known for accurately relaying details about his interactions with officials in Washington.

Sessions removed himself from direct involvement in the Russia investigation after it was revealed in The Washington Post that he had met with Kislyak at least twice in 2016, contacts he failed to disclose during his confirmation hearing in January.

“I did not have communications with the Russians,” Sessions said when asked whether anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign had communicated with representatives of the Russian government.

He has since maintained that he misunderstood the scope of the question and that his meetings with Kislyak were strictly in his capacity as a U.S. senator. In a March appearance on Fox television, Sessions said, “I don’t recall any discussion of the campaign in any significant way.”

Sessions appeared to narrow that assertion further in extensive testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June, saying that he “never met with or had any conversation with any Russians or foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States.”

But when pressed for details during that hearing, Sessions qualified many of his answers by saying that he could “not recall” or did not have “any recollection.”

[Washington Post]

Trump Son Met With Russian Lawyer Who Promised Info Helpful to Campaign

Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of the president, acknowledged Sunday that he met with a woman who turned out to be a Kremlin-connected lawyer during the 2016 presidential election — after being told she allegedly had information that could help his father’s presidential campaign.

The New York Times first reported on Saturday that Donald Trump Jr. met with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, prompting him to respond with a short statement confirming that the meeting occurred.

He said he attended “a short introductory meeting” with Veselnitskaya, where the topic of conversation was primarily about adoption. He added that the topic was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow-up conversation.

“I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting beforehand,” he added in Saturday’s statement. According to Donald Trump Jr., the meeting occurred in June 2016 and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended.

Then on Sunday, The Times reported that Donald Trump Jr. attended the meeting after being told that the person there had information that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Times article, which was based conversations with three anonymous White House advisers, said news of the meeting represented the first public indication that members of the 2016 Trump campaign were willing to accept Russian help.

Donald Trump Jr. then released a more detailed statement after the Sunday report.

“I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign,” Trump Jr. said in Sunday’s statement. “I was not told her name prior to the meeting.”

He added that he asked Kushner and Manafort to attend but that they knew “nothing of the substance.”

“After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton,” he said. “Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense.”

Donald Trump Jr. said that Veselnitskaya did not provide any details or information that related to Hillary Clinton and that the topic of conversation turned to American adoption of Russian children.

He claimed that the conversation continued to revolve around adoption and the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that barred Russian human rights abusers from entering the country. In response, the Russian government stopped American families from adopting Russian children.

“It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting,” Donald Trump Jr. said in Sunday’s statement. “I interrupted and advised her that my father was not an elected official, but rather a private citizen, and that her comments and concerns were better addressed if and when he held public office.”

The meeting took about 20 to 30 minutes, he added.

The Times had previously identified the lawyer as Veselnitskaya, a Russian national known to push the Kremlin’s agenda and its continued battle against the Magnitsky Act.

Donald Trump Jr. said his father did not know about the meeting.

“The President was not aware of and did not attend the meeting,” President Trump’s legal team said in a statement.

Manafort and Kushner did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment, though Kushner’s attorney confirmed on Saturday that the meeting did occur.

Kushner did not initially include the meeting on his national security questionnaire that his lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said was filed prematurely.

“Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included, out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr.,” Gorelick said. “As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows.”

The United States intelligence community has concluded that Russia was the mastermind behind a series of hacks and propaganda campaigns in an effort to interfere with the 2016 election. NBC News has reported that senior intelligence officials believe — with a “high degree of confidence — that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved.

On “Fox News Sunday,” White House Chief of Staff Rience Priebus called the meeting a “big nothing-burger.”

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is leading a team of investigators that is looking into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government’s campaign. The House and Senate intelligence committees are also looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Trump and his campaign have maintained that there was no collusion.

President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the 2017 G-20 Hamburg Summit on Friday where they discussed the 2016 election and Russian-linked cyber-attacks.

Lavrov told reporters after the bilateral meeting that Trump had accepted Russia’s denial of interfering in the 2016 election, which would differ from the consensus reached in the U.S. intelligence community.

[NBC News]

Trump Accidentally Confesses to Blackmail Scheme Against Morning Joe Hosts

President Donald Trump on Friday fired back at the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe program.

Specifically, the president responded to allegations that the White House asked co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski to apologize personally to Trump for their negative coverage of him in exchange for him telling the National Enquirer to back off of a negative story planned about the couple.

“Watched low rated Morning Joe for first time in long time,” Trump said. “FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show.”

Joe Scarborough quickly shot back at Trump on Twitter — and claimed that he had a paper trail to back up his version of events.

“I have texts from your top aides and phone records,” he wrote. “Also, those records show I haven’t spoken with you in many months. Why do you keep lying about things that are so easily disproven? What is wrong with you?”

In a Washington Post editorial published Friday, Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed that the White House earlier this year contacted them about a purportedly scandalous story that would soon be published in the National Enquirer, whose boss David Pecker is a longtime Trump ally.

“This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked,” they revealed. “We ignored their desperate pleas.”

[Raw Story]

Intel Chiefs Tell Investigators Trump Suggested They Refute Collusion with Russians

Two of the nation’s top intelligence officials told Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and Senate investigators, in separate meetings last week, that President Donald Trump suggested they say publicly there was no collusion between his campaign and the Russians, according to multiple sources.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers described their interactions with the President about the Russia investigation as odd and uncomfortable, but said they did not believe the President gave them orders to interfere, according to multiple sources familiar with their accounts.

Sources say both men went further than they did in June 7 public hearings, when they provided little detail about the interactions.

The sources gave CNN the first glimpse of what the intelligence chiefs said to Mueller’s investigators when they did separate interviews last week. Both men told Mueller’s team they were surprised the President would suggest that they publicly declare he was not involved in collusion, sources said. Mueller’s team, which is in the early stages of its investigation, will ultimately decide whether the interactions are relevant to the inquiry.

Coats and Rogers also met individually last week with the Senate intelligence committee in two closed briefings that were described to CNN by Democratic and Republican congressional sources. One source said that Trump wanted them to say publicly what then-FBI Director James Comey had told the President privately: that he was not under investigation for collusion. However, sources said that neither Coats nor Rogers raised concerns that Trump was pushing them to do something they did not want to do. They did not act on the President’s alleged suggestion.

Trump has said repeatedly that no collusion occurred. “After 7 months of investigations & committee hearings about my ‘collusion with the Russians,’ nobody has been able to show any proof. Sad!” he tweeted June 16. The White House did not comment for this story. The DNI, NSA and Mueller’s office also did not comment.

Because the meetings were classified, sources shared limited details. But they said the two intelligence leaders recounted conversations that appeared to show the President’s deep frustration that the Russia allegations have continued to cloud his administration. The question of what the President said to Coats and Rogers has been hanging over the administration since The Washington Post reported the interactions in late May.

CNN has confirmed the March interactions between the intelligence chiefs and the President in which he made the requests. These came a few days after Comey publicly confirmed for the first time the existence of the federal investigation of potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In a public Senate intelligence hearing earlier this month in which both men testified, senators in both parties grew frustrated and angry after neither would agree to clear up exactly what the President said to them. Rogers and Coats said they did not feel pressured to do anything but would not describe any details of their conversations with Trump.

“In the three-plus years that I have been the director of the National Security Agency, to the best of my recollection, I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate, and to the best of my recollection during that same period of service I do not recall ever feeling pressured to do so,” Rogers said during the public hearing.

Coats offered a similar response. “In my time of service, which is interacting with the President of the United States or anybody in his administration, I have never been pressured — I have never felt pressured — to intervene or interfere in any way with shaping intelligence in a political way or in relation to an ongoing investigation,” he said.

The reason for their public reticence, one congressional source told CNN, is that Coats and Rogers had asked the White House for guidance on whether their conversations with the President were protected by executive privilege, which meant they would not be allowed to discuss it. They did not get an answer from the White House before testifying and did not know how to answer the committee. The result was an awkward and contentious public hearing.

In classified follow-up meetings with the Senate intelligence committee, they were more forthcoming, according to sources familiar with the closed-door session.

One congressional source expressed frustration that Coats and Rogers didn’t answer the questions in public, especially since what they ended up expressing in private was that they did not feel that the President pressured either of them to do anything improper.

Rogers’ interaction with the President is also documented in a memo written by his deputy at the NSA, Richard Ledgett.

One congressional source who has seen the memo tells CNN that it is one page and, unlike memos written by former FBI Director James Comey, does not have many details of the conversation. Instead, it simply documents that the interaction occurred — and makes clear that Rogers thought it was out of the ordinary.

Coats did not document his conversations with the President about the issue, the source said.

[CNN]

Trump Profited From Kids Cancer Charity

The Trump Organization took in healthy profits in recent years for hosting a charity golf event to benefit children’s cancer research, despite claiming the use of the course had been donated Forbes reported Tuesday.

Since 2007, President Trump’s son Eric Trump has held an annual charity golf event at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, N.Y., to raise money for the Eric Trump Foundation on behalf of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Forbes reported. To date, Eric Trump has raised more than $11 million — including $2.9 million last year — for the hospital’s research, most of it through the golf tournaments, according to Forbes.

The costs for the tournaments averaged $50,000 during the first four years, which is about what other charities pay for events at Trump courses. But the expenses quickly began to rise, reaching $322,000 by 2015, Forbes reported, citing IRS filings.

If accurate, these figures are hard to reconcile with Eric Trump’s claims that the charity is able to use the course for free and that many other expenses are donated. “We get to use our assets 100% free of charge,” the president’s son told Forbes.

“In reviewing filings from the Eric Trump Foundation and other charities, it’s clear that the course wasn’t free — that the Trump Organization received payments for its use, part of more than $1.2 million that has no documented recipients past the Trump Organization,” Forbes reported. “Golf charity experts say the listed expenses defy any reasonable cost justification for a one-day golf tournament.”

In addition, more than $500,000 in donations were given to other charities, “many of which were connected to Trump family members or interests, including at least four groups that subsequently paid to hold golf tournaments at Trump courses,” the magazine reported.

According to Forbes, the spike in costs for the tournament started in 2011 when Donald Trump insisted the charity begin paying the Trump Organization for the events.

Ian Gillule, who worked as a membership and marketing director at the Westchester course, told Forbes that Donald Trump was not happy with the expenses the charity wasn’t being billed for.

“Mr. Trump had a cow,” Forbes quoted Gillule as saying. “He flipped. He was like, ‘We’re donating all of this stuff, and there’s no paper trail? No credit?’ And he went nuts. He said, ‘I don’t care if it’s my son or not — everybody gets billed.'”

The Donald J. Trump Foundation gave $100,000 to the Eric Trump Foundation to help offset the increase in costs, Gillule told Forbes. That means donors to the Donald J. Trump Foundation — the Trump family had not given money to that foundation for several years — saw $100,000 of their donations pass on as revenue to the Trump Organization by way of charges to the Eric Trump Foundation.

Eric Trump announced he would stop fundraising in December and is now acting as co-head of the Trump Organization during his father’s presidency. The Eric Trump Foundation changed its name to Curetivity and plans to continue to hold charity golf events for St. Jude, Forbes reported.

[USA Today]

 

 

Trump Campaign Likely Didn’t Save Key Documents Related to Russia

The Trump campaign likely did not preserve documents and communications key to the law enforcement investigation into possible collusion between President Trump’s associates and the Kremlin, Politico reported Saturday.

Political campaigns, Politico noted, are typically not required to preserve emails on their private server for long windows of time, and most messages are deleted within 30 to 90 days, unless steps are taken to preserve them.

What’s more, the Trump campaign did not do much to establish a plan to maintain those communications, according to a former campaign aide.

“You’d be giving us too much credit,” the former aide told Politico. “The idea of document retention did not come up. The idea of some formal structure did not come up.”

The White House itself is subject to more rigorous recordkeeping rules, and White House counsel Don McGahn directed staffers in February to preserve documents and other records that could be requested or used in ongoing federal investigations into Russian election meddling.

But at issue for some White House staffers is the existence of encrypted apps, such as Signal and Confide, that automatically delete messages. Failure to maintain certain records, according to Politico, could potentially lead to legal trouble.

U.S. law requires individuals to preserve documents, emails and other records once they become aware that such material could be pertinent to an investigation, regardless of whether they are formally notified by investigators.

The Justice Department earlier this month appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the law enforcement investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. At least four congressional committees are also probing the matter.

Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion between his campaign and Moscow, and has called the allegations a “witch hunt.” Still, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a report made public in January that the Kremlin had sought to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump, and the FBI has been probing the matter quietly since last summer.

[The Hill]

Jared Kushner Reportedly Tried to Set Up a Secret Trump-Russia Back Channel

Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top White House adviser, was willing to go extraordinary lengths to establish a secret line of communication between the Trump administration and Russian government officials, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

During the presidential transition period leading up to Trump’s inauguration, Kushner held a series of meetings with the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, and the head of a Moscow bank that was under US sanctions.

In talks with Kislyak in December, Kushner floated the possibility of setting up a secure line of communication between the Trump transition team and Russia — and having those talks take place in Russian diplomatic facilities in the US, essentially concealing their interactions from US government scrutiny, The Post wrote, citing US intelligence officials briefed on the matter.

Kislyak reportedly passed along that request to Moscow. The Post’s Ellen Nakashima, Adam Entous, and Greg Miller reported that the Russian ambassador was “taken aback” by Kushner’s request, because it posed significant risks for both the Trump team and the Kremlin.

Kushner, who did not disclose the meeting on his security clearance form, is now a subject in the FBI’s investigation of Russia’s election interference, and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow to undermine Hillary Clinton.

He also had two previously undisclosed phone calls with Kislyak between April and November of last year, according to Reuters. Kushner’s attorney Jamie Gorelick responded to the Reuters story Friday evening via CNN, saying “Mr. Kushner participated in thousands of calls in this time period. He has no recollection of the calls as described. We have asked (Reuters) for the dates of such alleged calls so we may look into it and respond, but we have not received such information.”

“GOOD GRIEF. This is serious,” said Bob Deitz, a veteran of the NSA and the CIA who worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations.

“This raises a bunch of problematic issues. First, of course, is the Logan Act, which prohibits private individuals conducting negotiations on behalf of the US government with foreign governments,” Deitz said. “Second, it tends to reinforce the notion that Trump’s various actions about [fired FBI Director James] Comey do constitute obstruction.”

“In other words, there is now motive added to conduct,” Deitz noted. “This is a big problem for the President.”

Kushner did not previously disclose the December meetings to US officials during his background check, and the White House only acknowledged them after news outlets reported on it. It follows a pattern among key Trump advisers that unfolded during and after the 2016 election.

“If you are in a position of public trust, and you talk to, meet, or collude with a foreign power” while trying to subvert normal state channels, “you are, in the eyes of the FBI and CIA, a traitor,” said Glenn Carle, a former top counterterrorism official at the CIA. “That is what I spent my life getting foreigners to do with me, for the US government.”

Carle noted that, if the Kushner-Kislyak meeting and reported discussion were an isolated incident, then it could be spun as “normal back-channel communication arrangements among states.”

“If Jared Kushner was trying to set up a back channel with the Russians, doesn’t that mean he wasn’t colluding with them?” a White House official said in response to the story, according to CNN.

But Kislyak and the Trump campaign interacted extensively, and Trump associates either kept those interactions secret from US officials or misrepresented them, as was the case with Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign in February for similar reasons.

Reuters reported earlier this month that Flynn and Kislyak also spoke about setting up a secret back channel during the transition between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin “that could bypass the US national security bureaucracy.”

“We know about the multiple meetings of Trump entourage members with Russian intel-related individuals,” Carle said. “There will be many others that we do not know about.” He noted that while this reported back channel is “explosive,” it is worth questioning who planted the story — The Post reportedly received an anonymous letter in December tipping them off to the Kushner-Kislyak meeting.

Additionally, as a longtime diplomat, Kislyak would have known that his communications were being monitored. So the possibility remains, Carle said, that the Russians used the meeting with Kushner to distract the intelligence community and the public from potentially more incriminating relationships between the campaign and Moscow.

Indeed, Kushner also met with the CEO of Russia’s state-owned Vnesheconombank, Sergey Gorkov, in December 2016, The New York Times reported in late March. The meeting — which had not previously been disclosed and came on the heels of Kushner’s meeting with Kislyak at Trump Tower — caught the eye of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and whether any members of Trump’s campaign were complicit.

Kislyak reportedly orchestrated the meeting between Kushner and Gorkov, who was appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in January 2016 as part of a restructuring of the bank’s management team, Bloomberg reported last year.

The Kremlin and the White House have provided conflicting explanations for why Kushner met with Gorkov.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, in testimony Tuesday before the House Intelligence Committee, said that he was concerned by some of the “interactions” between Russian officials and members of the Trump campaign that took place during the election last year.

Republican Rep. Tom Rooney asked Brennan if he ever found “any direct evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Putin in Moscow” while he was the CIA director.

Brennan replied that “there was intelligence that the Russian intelligence services were actively involved in this effort … to try to get individuals to act on their behalf either wittingly or unwittingly.” He added that he was “worried by the contacts that the Russians were having with US persons” and “had unresolved questions” by the time he left office about whether” the Russians had succeeded in getting Americans to do their bidding.

Pressed further, Brennan said that “the information and intelligence revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind about whether the Russians were able to gain the cooperation of such individuals.”

[Business Insider]

Reality

According to the Washington Post, most analysts agree that it’s appropriate for presidents and their senior aides to use secret contacts to advance U.S. foreign policy goals. And it’s fairly routine for incoming administrations to have get-acquainted talks with foreign governments, too. Such back channels can add stability and predictability in foreign relations.

What’s not okay is when an incoming administration seeks to undermine the policies of the incumbent. We have “one president at a time.” That’s not just a political truism but a matter of law, enunciated back in 1799 in the Logan Act, which prohibits private meddling with official policy during a dispute. The fact that this statute has never been enforced criminally doesn’t blunt its importance.

And it’s not okay, either, for any citizen, even the son-in-law of the president-elect, to propose contacts that would use the communications tools of a foreign intelligence service to evade detection.

Trump Reportedly Asked Intelligence Chiefs to Publicly Push Back Against FBI Probe

A new report states that President Trump asked top intelligence leaders to join him in publicly denying that his presidential campaign coordinated with the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.

The Washington Post reports that Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and Michael S. Rogers, Director of the National Security Agency, were both asked by Trump to “push back” against the FBI after James Comey announced that a collusion investigation was underway. Trump’s request reportedly came after the former FBI director confirmed the probe before the House Intelligence Committee, and both Coats and Rogers declined Trump’s requests.

From WaPo:

Trump made his appeal to Coats days after Comey’s testimony, according to officials.

That same week, Trump telephoned Rogers to make a similar appeal.

In his call with Rogers, Trump urged the NSA director to speak out publicly if there was no evidence of collusion, according to officials briefed on the exchange.

Rogers was taken aback but tried to respectfully explain why he could not do so, the officials said. For one thing, he could not comment on an ongoing investigation. Rogers added that he would not talk about classified matters in public.@realDonaldTrump asked intel. chiefs to publicly deny #TrumpRussia and obstruct the @FBI investigation.

Intelligence officials have expressed that complying with the Trump Administration’s request would have had a major, negative impact on the credibility for their agencies.

“The problem wasn’t so much asking them to issue statements,” said one source who knew of Trump’s request for Coats. “It was asking them to issue false statements about an ongoing investigation.

The report also states that senior White House officials spoke with other intelligence officials, asking if there was a way for them to intervene or “shut down” Comey’s investigation:

In addition to the requests to Coats and Rogers, senior White House officials sounded out top intelligence officials about the possibility of intervening directly with Comey to encourage the FBI to drop its probe of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, according to people familiar with the matter. The officials said the White House appeared uncertain about its power to influence the FBI.

“Can we ask him to shut down the investigation? Are you able to assist in this matter?” one official said of the line of questioning from the White House.

The report comes nearly a week after it was reported that Comey kept a memo about how Trump asked him to cease his investigation into Michael Flynn.

In the past, there have been stories about how the Trump Administration was asking high-ranking intelligence officials and Congressional figures to denounce news stories about about how Trump’s staffers were connected to Russia. Trump fired Comey from his position approximately two week ago, and the resulting political storm still looms over the White House.

Trump has previously indicated that the Russia investigation was a motivating factor in his decision to fire Comey. During a recent meeting with Russian officials, Trump not only shared classified intelligence with them, he also called Comey a “nut job” and said his departure would alleviate pressure from the investigation.

Update

NBC national security reporter Ken Dilanian has corroborated WaPo‘s report.

 

Trump Refused to Turn Over Giuliani Travel Ban Memo by Court-Ordered Deadline

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Saturday blasted President Trump for ignoring a court order demand to release a memo drafted under former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s guidance that outlined a plan to implement a travel ban without making it seem as if it was directly aimed at Muslims.

A federal judge in Detroit ordered the Trump administration to turn over the memo by May 19, according to reports. The ACLU said Saturday that Trump did not meet the deadline on Friday.

“If, as the administration claims, the Executive Order is not a Muslim Ban, then why is the administration refusing to turn over the Giuliani memo? What is in that document that the government doesn’t want the court to see?” Miriam Aukerman, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Michigan, said in a statement.

The ACLU along with Arab American Civil Rights League (ACRL) challenged the president’s travel ban on nationals from several Muslim-majority countries in federal court earlier this year.

According to the statement, both groups will not hesitate to “return to court to compel production of the memo.”

Nabih Ayad, founder of the ACRL, argued that the memo will help “shed light on the intentions behind the President’s Executive Order.”

“And if those intentions support the public statements that Mr. Giuliani made about looking for a legal explanation for a ban on Muslims, the court needs to know this,” Ayad added.

[The Hill]

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