Category: Not Factual

Trump, Citing No Evidence, Suggests Susan Rice Committed Crime

President Trump said on Wednesday that he thought that the former national security adviser Susan E. Rice may have committed a crime by seeking the identities of Trump associates who were swept up in the surveillance of foreign officials by American spy agencies and that other Obama administration officials may also have been involved.

The president provided no evidence to back his claim. Current and former intelligence officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations have said that nothing they have seen led them to believe that Ms. Rice’s actions were unusual or unlawful. When Americans are swept up in surveillance of foreign officials by intelligence agencies, their identities are supposed to be obscured, but they can be revealed for national security reasons, and intelligence officials say it is a regular occurrence.

“I think it’s going to be the biggest story,” Mr. Trump said in an interview in the Oval Office. “It’s such an important story for our country and the world. It is one of the big stories of our time.”

He declined to say if he had personally reviewed new intelligence to bolster his claim but pledged to explain himself “at the right time.”

When asked if Ms. Rice, who has denied leaking the names of Trump associates under surveillance by United States intelligence agencies, had committed a crime, the president said, “Do I think? Yes, I think.”

Ms. Rice has denied any impropriety. In an interview on Tuesday with MSNBC, she said: “The allegation is that somehow the Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes. That’s absolutely false.”

Mr. Trump’s comment broke with normal presidential conventions. Presidents traditionally refrain from suggesting that anyone is guilty or innocent of a crime out of concern for prejudicing any potential prosecution or legal proceedings. When they have violated that unwritten rule, defense lawyers have sometimes used a president’s comments to undercut prosecutions.

Mr. Trump did not make clear what crime he was accusing Ms. Rice of committing. It is legal for a national security adviser to request the identities of Americans mentioned in intelligence reports provided to them, and former national security officials said any request Ms. Rice may have made would have been subject to approval by the intelligence agencies responsible for the report.

Leaking classified information could be a crime but no evidence has surfaced publicly indicating that Ms. Rice did that and she flatly denied doing so in the interview with MSNBC. “I leaked nothing to nobody, and never have and never would,” she said.

Mr. Trump criticized media outlets, including The New York Times, for failing to adequately cover the Rice controversy — while singling out Fox News and the host Bill O’Reilly for praise, despite a Times report of several women who have accused Mr. O’Reilly of harassment. The president then went on to defend Mr. O’Reilly, who has hosted him frequently over the years.

“I think he’s a person I know well — he is a good person,” said Mr. Trump, who during the interview was surrounded at his desk by a half-dozen of his highest-ranking aides, including the economic adviser Gary Cohn and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, along with Vice President Mike Pence.

“I think he shouldn’t have settled; personally I think he shouldn’t have settled,” said Mr. Trump. “Because you should have taken it all the way. I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”

Mr. Trump described the chemical attack in Syria as a “horrible thing” and “a disgrace.”

“I think it’s an affront to humanity,” he said, adding it was “inconceivable that somebody could do that, those kids were so beautiful, to look at those, the scenes of those beautiful children being carried out.”

Asked about what it meant for Russia’s role in terms of Syria, Mr. Trump said, “I think it’s a very sad day for Russia because they’re aligned, and in this case, all information points to Syria that they did this. Why they did this, who knows? That’s a level first of all they weren’t supposed to have this.”

Mr. Trump again pointed to President Barack Obama for drawing “the red line in the sand, and it was immediately violated, and it did nothing,” and he suggested reporters won’t focus on it.

The president declined to say whether he would speak personally to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

(h/t New York Times)

Trump Claims Wiretap Tweet ‘Is Turning Out to Be True’

President Donald Trump claimed in an interview Sunday that his unsubstantiated allegation that former President Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower “is turning out to be true.”

Trump launched the explosive claim in a string of March 4 tweets, alleging without evidence that Obama “had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory.” And although no officials have confirmed the veracity of his claims on the record, the president has no regrets.

“I don’t regret anything, because there is nothing you can do about it,” he told Financial Times in an interview published Sunday. “You know if you issue hundreds of tweets, and every once in a while you have a clinker, that’s not so bad.”

Trump said his infamous tweet — “the one about being in quotes wire tapped, meaning surveilled” — “is turning out to be true.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

To date there is still no evidence to back up Donald Trump’s claim that he was surveilled before the election.

Trump Tells NBC to Stop Covering Russia Story

President Trump on Saturday called for NBC News to devote more attention to his unproven claims that President Obama spied on him and stop covering the investigations into Russia’s interference in the election.

“When will Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd and @NBCNews start talking about the Obama SURVEILLANCE SCANDAL and stop with the Fake Trump/Russia story?” Trump tweeted just before 9 a.m.

“It is the same Fake News Media that said there is ‘no path to victory for Trump’ that is now pushing the phony Russia story. A total scam!” he added shortly after.

It was not immediately apparent what NBC coverage Trump was taking issue with. Chuck Todd on Friday interviewed top Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell and former Obama press secretary Josh Earnest on “MTP Daily” about the latest Russia developments.

Russian interference in last year’s election is the subject of investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee, House Intelligence Committee and the FBI.

Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn has volunteered to be interviewed by the FBI and congressional committees probing possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

The president has frequently decried coverage of the investigations into Russian meddling as “fake news.”

Trump last month claimed in a series of tweets that Obama “wiretapped” him before the election. He did not supply any evidence.

FBI Director James Comey says he knows of “no information” validating Trump’s accusation. Trump has stood by the allegations, and the White House has said the comment refers to the Obama administration’s surveillance activities more broadly.

(h/t The Hill)

 

 

Trump Tweets House Panel Should Investigate Clinton, Not Me

Amid an expanding chorus of questions about interaction between Russian officials and his own advisers during the presidential campaign, President Donald Trump resurfaced attacks in a set of tweets Monday night alleging improper Russian ties for both former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

On Twitter, Trump wrote: “Why isn’t the House Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech….”

About 10 minutes later, the President completed the message, writing, “…money to Bill, the Hillary Russian ‘reset,’ praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!”

The House Intelligence Committee, as well as its Senate counterpart, are investigating Russia’s alleged attempts to influence the election, including any possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. FBI Director James Comey disclosed publicly last week that the FBI is doing the same.

The evening Twitter references recalled a Clinton controversy documented in The New York Times two years ago. Trump’s campaign made the same claim last fall when he was competing against Clinton to become president.

Nick Merrill, a former Clinton campaign spokesman, immediately refuted Trump on Twitter and linked to a fact-checking website.

The State Department under Clinton was one of several agencies that signed off on a deal that included the Russian atomic energy agency. During the period of the deal, a Russian investment bank tied to the deal paid Bill Clinton for a speech and the Canadian chairman of the entity being sold to Russia moved funding to the Clinton Foundation.

Former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta had been a member of the board of a Russian energy company.

(h/t CNN)

Eric Trump Says He Will Keep Father Updated on Business Despite ‘Pact’

Eric Trump has said he will give his father “quarterly” updates on the family’s businesses – which the president has refused to divest from – in spite of the sons’ promises to separate the private companies from their father’s public office.

In an interview with Forbes magazine, Donald Trump’s middle son at first said the family honored “kind of a steadfast pact we made” not to mix business interests with public ones.

“There is kind of a clear separation of church and state that we maintain, and I am deadly serious about that exercise,” he said. “I do not talk about the government with him, and he does not talk about the business with us.”

But he went on to say that he would keep the president abreast of “the bottom line, profitability reports and stuff like that, but you know, that’s about it”.

He said those reports would be “probably quarterly”.

“My father and I are very close,” he added. “I talk to him a lot. We’re pretty inseparable.”

Since their father handed day-to-day management of the Trump Organization to his adult sons, Eric and Donald Jr, the family has insisted they do not discuss the business with president. Ethics attorneys of both parties and the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics have called the arrangement a failure to prevent potential conflicts of interest – for instance, Trump hotels selling rooms to foreign diplomats.

Eric Trump’s statement alarmed ethics experts, including Lisa Gilbert, a director at the not-for-profit watchdog Public Citizen. “It confirms our worst assumptions about the lack of separation between his business and current office,” she said. “There’s no way to reconcile quarterly updates from your son.”

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Gilbert said there were signs that the Trump family was already profiting from the presidency, including increased business at his golf clubs. His south Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, doubled its entrance fee to $200,000 in January, and in February the first lady, Melania Trump, filed court documents arguing that the White House was an opportunity to develop “multimillion-dollar business relationships”.

“It’s not a single thing,” Gilbert said. “Their businesses are doing better because there is more cachet around them.”

The watchdog released a report this week analyzing the first two months of the Trump presidency. It concluded that Trump had broken several promises to “isolate” himself from the business, that his White House was “clouded by corruption and conflicts”, and that he had surrounded himself “with the same major donors and Wall Street executives he claimed he would fight if elected”.

A Washington DC wine bar sued Trump and his new hotel this month, alleging that his ownership provides an illegal competitive advantage. The president still holds direct ties to his businesses, DC liquor board documents show, as the sole beneficiary of a revocable trust.

The White House and Department of Homeland Security have declined to answer questions about whether taxpayer dollars have profited the Trump family, for instance through Secret Service rental payments to Trump properties.

“Eric Trump and his father the president are doing what we thought they would do all along,” said Richard Painter, who served as chief ethics attorney for George W Bush. “This of course makes no difference for conflict of interest purposes because it is his ownership of the businesses that creates conflicts of interest, regardless of who manages them.”

Painter added that Trump’s remarks show that “the businesses is an important concern for the president”.

Gilbert compared the arrangement to other possible conflicts in the White House. Trump has appointed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior adviser, despite anti-nepotism laws, and the president’s daughter, Ivanka, has acquired a security clearance and an office in the White House, although she has no official role. In November, Trump denied that he had sought security clearances for his children.

“We don’t really have a mechanism to enforce the ethics rules,” Gilbert said. “It’s left us without a lot of ground to stand on.”

Like the president, Kushner and his wife have said they will separate themselves from their family businesses, but have only done so partially, if at all. Kushner retains parts of his billionaire family’s real estate empire, White House documents show, and Ivanka Trump has so far failed to resign, as promised, from the family business, according to documents acquired by ProPublica.

Possible conflicts have already arisen for both of the president’s family confidantes: Kushner’s family is negotiating a $400m deal with a Chinese firm connected to Beijing’s leadership, and one of Ivanka Trump’s brands was promoted, in violation of ethics rules, on national television by another of the president’s advisers.

In Dallas this month, Donald Jr told Republican fundraisers that he had “basically zero contact” with his father. His brother, similarly, told Forbes that he tries to “minimize fluff calls that you might otherwise have because I understand that time is a resource”.

But he also echoed an earlier boast about the family brand being “the hottest it has ever been”.

“We’re doing great in all of our assets,” he said, before arguing that being the family in the White House also entailed “great sacrifices” for the business, especially “when you limit an international business to only domestic properties, when you put hundreds of millions of dollars of cash into a campaign, when you run with very, very tight and strict rules and the things that we do every single day in terms of compliance.

“I don’t know,” he concluded. “You could look at it either way.”

(h/t The Guardian)

Trump Accuses Clinton Campaign of Russia Ties

President Trump on Monday questioned the Clinton campaign’s alleged Russia ties less than an hour before the House Intelligence Committee held its first public hearing on the Kremlin’s involvement in the 2016 election.

“What about all of the contact with the Clinton campaign and the Russians? Also, is it true that the DNC would not let the FBI in to look?” Trump said in a Monday morning tweet.

FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers were testifying on the issue Monday morning on Capitol Hill. They were also to be asked about allegations Trump made that President Obama tapped Trump Tower during the 2016 election.

With Trump’s latest tweet, it appears he’s hoping to influence what questions the witnesses will be asked at the briefing, as he tries to turn attention away from his campaign toward his vanquished rival, Hillary Clinton.

In other tweets Monday, Trump denied that he colluded with Russia during the presidential election — calling the allegations “made up” by Democrats and “FAKE NEWS.”

“James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia. This story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!” Trump said in a tweet, referring to statements made two weeks ago by the former director of national intelligence during the Obama years.

He added, “The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign. Big advantage in Electoral College & lost!”

The former top spy told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on March 5, “We had no evidence of such collusion.”

On Sunday, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), claimed, contrary to Clapper, that there is evidence of collusion.

“I was surprised to see Director Clapper say that because I don’t think you can make that claim categorically as he did. I would characterize it this way at the outset of the investigation: There is circumstantial evidence of collusion. There is direct evidence, I think, of deception and that’s where we begin the investigation,” Schiff said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“There is certainly enough for us to conduct an investigation,” he added.

(h/t New York Post)

Reality

An article in Breitbart News, the online news organization that has been run by Steven Bannon, before he became one of Trump’s top advisers, claims that mainstream media are ignoring damning evidence that Clinton benefitted from Russian involvement and are too focused on a “so-called scandal” surrounding the Trump administration.

An article dated March 4 listed five “bombshells” deals linking Clinton and Russia. Here’s one:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman’s Joule energy company bagged $35 million from Putin’s Rusnano.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta sat on the executive board of an energy company, Joule Unlimited, which received millions from a Putin-connected Russian government fund.

Given the close ties between what Trump tweets and conservative media reports, it’s likely that story is the root of his tweet. But there’s been no formal evidence offered of ties between Clinton and the Russians.

Trump’s official POTUS Twitter Account Completely Misrepresented the FBI Director’s Testimony on Russia

Donald Trump (more likely, his staff) spent the morning live tweeting the Russia hearing from the official @POTUS Twitter account, including videos with misleading captions seemingly designed to shift blame off him and his administration.

“FBI Director Comey refuses to deny he briefed President Obama on calls made by Michael Flynn to Russia,” the president tweeted.

The tweet implies Obama was the source of the Flynn leak. But Comey repeatedly told legislators in the hearing that he would not be able to comment on specific investigations and warned them not to read into his refusal to confirm or deny certain questions.

“Our ability to share details with the Congress and the American people is limited when those investigations are still open, which I hope makes sense,” Comey said. “We need to protect people’s privacy. We need to make sure we don’t give other people clues as to where we’re going. We need to make sure that we don’t give information to our foreign adversaries about what we know or don’t know.”

The president’s account also tweeted a similarly misleading caption and video combination featuring National Agency director Adm. Mike Rogers. He was responding to questions from Republican Rep. Devin Nunes about the NSA’s knowledge of Russian tampering in specific state vote tallies.

Rogers also offered this caveat: “I would highlight we are a foreign intelligence organization, not a domestic intelligence organization.”

The president seems unable to stop himself from composing tweets a reasonable person would understand to be false. The line of questioning occurred at all because Trump sent a series of tweets accusing President Obama of wiretapping his office at Trump Tower, an allegation the DOJ, FBI and NSA have all denied.

(h/t Vice News)

 

 

Trump Tweets Suggest President (Still) Doesn’t Understand How NATO Works

Less than 24 hours after a very awkward and frosty meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to blast Germany for failing to pay enough to NATO and the United States for security. First though, the president began with a conciliatory message, writing that the meeting with Merkel went great. “Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel,” he wrote Saturday morning. But then the president added: “Nevertheless, Germany owes vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!”

That statement echoed what Trump said during his joint news conference with Merkel on Friday, when he called on NATO members to contribute their “fair share,” saying that “many nations owe vast sums of money from past years and it is very unfair to the United States.” Although that could be open to interpretation, the commander in chief’s tweets on Saturday, though, seem to suggest Trump doesn’t really understand how NATO is funded. The New York Times explains:

The message was misleading because no nation actually “owes” money to NATO; its direct funding is calculated through a formula and paid by each of the 28 nations that are members.

Mr. Trump may have been referring to the fact that Germany, like most NATO countries, falls short of the alliance’s guideline that each member should allocate 2 percent of its gross domestic product to military spending, but that money is not intended to be paid to NATO or to the United States.

Ivo Daalder, the former U.S. permanent representative on NATO, called out Trump’s seeming mistake in a series of tweets that begin, “Sorry Mr President, that’s not how NATO works.”

“The US decides for itself how much it contributes to defending Nato. This is not a financial transaction, where Nato countries pay the US to defend them,” Daalder wrote. Although it’s true that only five of 28 NATO countries spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense, many are now increasing their defense budgets. “That’s a good thing,” he added. But even when they do increase their defense budgets, “no funds will be paid to the US … Europe must spend more on defense, but not as favor (or payment) to the US. But because their security requires it.”

These mistakes on Trump’s end are hardly new. During the presidential campaign, Trump frequently talked about NATO in a confusing way that left his statements open to interpretation.

(h/t Slate)

 

 

US Will ‘Not Repeat’ Claims GCHQ Wiretapped Donald Trump

The US has agreed not to repeat claims the UK’s communications intelligence agency wiretapped Donald Trump during the presidential election campaign.

GCHQ rejected allegations made by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, that it spied on Mr Trump, as “nonsense”.

No. 10 has been assured by Mr Spicer he would not repeat the claims, which he cited from US TV channel Fox News.

The White House has said that Mr Spicer was “simply pointing to public reports, not endorsing any specific story”.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said it had been made clear to US authorities the claims were “ridiculous and should have been ignored”.

Former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said it was not enough to promise not to repeat the allegation.

“That’s not the same as saying it was rubbish in the first place,” he told the BBC.

GCHQ rejected the allegations as “utterly ridiculous”. The unusual move by the agency to comment on the news came after Mr Spicer cited claims first made on Fox News earlier this week.

Mr Trump said Trump Tower in New York was under surveillance, but has provided no evidence for the claim.

The allegations of GCHQ involvement were initially made by former judge Andrew Napolitano.

Mr Spicer quoted Mr Napolitano as saying: “Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command.”

He said Mr Obama “didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI and he didn’t use the Department of Justice, he used GCHQ.

“What the heck is GCHQ? That’s the initials for the British spying agency. They have 24/7 access to the NSA database.”

A GCHQ spokesman said: “Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense.

“They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.”

It’s a bad day for the transatlantic intelligence community when Britain’s largest and best funded spy agency – GCHQ – has to come out and publicly contradict a claim made by its closest ally.

GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 rarely, if ever, comment on ongoing intelligence stories in the news.

But the allegation made by Mr Spicer was seen as so potentially damaging – as well as being untrue – that it was decided to make an exception.

The BBC understands that a discussion was held earlier this week in No 10 on whether and how to respond.

When Mr Spicer repeated his claim of GCHQ collusion on Thursday the strongly-worded denial was written and published.

Career intelligence officers on both sides of the Atlantic will now be at pains to protect their historically-close relationship from any further perceived gaffes coming out of the White House.

(h/t BBC News)

Trump: Don’t Blame Me When I Quote Fox News

Donald Trump does not like taking responsibility for White House screw-ups. He’ll blame anyone else he can think of—even his friends at Fox News.

On Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer set off an international incident when he suggested that British intelligence might have spied on Trump during the campaign in response to a request from President Barack Obama. Spicer made this remark while once again trying to defend his boss, who two weeks ago tweet-claimed—without offering any evidence—that Obama had “wiretapped” him at Trump Tower during the 2016 election. Since then the GOP chairs of the congressional intelligence committees (and many others) have declared there is no proof to back up Trump’s reckless charge, which apparently was based on a Breitbart news story that itself was based on a statement (or rant) by right-wing radio talker Mark Levin.

The obvious conclusion is that an angry Trump had tweeted out fake news falsely accusing his predecessor of criminal activity. But Spicer has continued to contend that Trump’s allegations had a factual basis of some sort. And at the Thursday briefing he cited Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano, who claimed on that network that Obama had used the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)—the British NSA— to eavesdrop on Trump with “no American fingerprints on this.” (Napolitano is no credible source. Like Trump, he has appeared on the radio show of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. In 2010, Napolitano told Jones’ audience that it’s “hard for me to believe” that World Trade Center Building 7 “came down by itself” and that the 9/11 attacks “couldn’t possibly have been done the way the government told us.”)

Yet here was the White House depending upon a conspiracy theorist to charge that Obama enlisted the Brits to conduct illegal surveillance against Trump. The GCHQ went into a tizzy. Breaking with its tradition of almost always staying silent on public controversies, the British spy agency released a statement that said, No way! It called the allegation Spicer embraced “ridiculous.”  (British journalists were shocked to see any response from the super-secretive GCHQ.) And British officials told reporters they had privately received some form of apology from White House officials.

Yet on Friday afternoon, at a short press conference with German leader Angela Merkel, Trump indicated that he believed there was nothing to apologize for. Asked by a German reporter about the wiretapping allegation, he made a reference to “fake news” without addressing the matter. When a second German reporter pressed Trump on the issue, Trump first made a joke that he had something in common with Merkel. (The NSA had listened in on her cell phone.) Then he dismissed the significance of Spicer’s citation of the Fox News report: “We said nothing. All we did was quote…a talented lawyer on Fox.” The German reporter, Trump said, “shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”

Fox News, for its part, wasn’t sticking to Napolitano’s crazy story. Following the press conference, Fox anchor Shep Smith reported the network “has no evidence of any kind” to support the notion that Obama (with or without the Brits) had spied on Trump.

To sum up, the White House was citing phony information from Fox that Fox wouldn’t stand by. And now Trump was basically saying, You can’t hold me and my White House accountable for what we say. If someone says it on Fox News, that’s good enough for us. In other words, they report, we repeat.

This is a stunning statement and admission from a president: There is no need for me to confirm anything before tossing it out from the bully pulpit. It may not be a big news flash at this point, but Trump was eschewing any responsibility for White House statements. This is apparently Trump’s standard: If an assertion appears on Breitbart or on Fox News—if a conspiracy theory is spouted by a right-wing talk show—then it can be freely cited by the president of the United States without any consequence. With this stance, Trump has fully embraced his position as fake-newser-in-chief.

(h/t Mother Jones)

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