Author Archives: News Sources

Trump’s advisers push him to purge Obama appointees

Politico reports: Advisers to President Donald Trump are urging him to purge the government of former President Barack Obama’s political appointees and quickly install more people who are loyal to him, amid a cascade of damaging stories that have put his nascent administration in seemingly constant crisis-control mode.

A number of his advisers believe Obama officials are behind the leaks and are seeking to undermine his presidency, with just the latest example coming from reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met twice last year with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. and apparently misled senators about the interactions during his confirmation hearing.

That was coupled with a New York Times story that Obama appointees spread information about the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia in an attempt to create a paper trail about the probe. Trump’s aides have also blamed Obama appointees for other damaging leaks, like Trump’s erratic phone calls with foreign leaders.

Inside the White House, the chatter about Obama officials in the government has heightened in recent weeks, one administration official said. And advisers are saying it is time to take action.

“His playbook should be to get rid of the Obama appointees immediately,” said Newt Gingrich, a top surrogate. “There are an amazing number of decisions that are being made by appointees that are totally opposed to Trump and everything he stands for. Who do you think those people are responding to?”

“If you employ people who aren’t loyal to you, you can’t be surprised when they leak,” said Roger Stone, another longtime adviser. A third person close to Trump said: “He should have gotten these people who are out to get him out a long time ago, a long, long time ago. I think they know that now.”

The reality, however, is more complicated: The White House has thousands of open jobs across the agencies, many nonpolitical civilian employees are critical of the administration, and some Cabinet secretaries say they need the Obama people during a rocky transition.

Only a few dozen Obama political appointees remain in the federal government apparatus, according to the Partnership for Public Service. Many of them are in crucial positions, including Robert Work, a top official at the Department of Defense, and Thomas Shannon, the acting deputy at the State Department.

Even if Trump were to ax those remaining senior political appointees, he would still have to reckon with the hundreds of thousands of civilian employees, who stay with every administration. Many of them are skeptical of Trump because they resent his assault on Washington and its culture, his impulsive decisions and his seeming lack of intellectual curiosity about their agencies and work. [Continue reading…]

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Jeff Sessions used political funds for RNC convention expenses

ABC News reports: While at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in August, then-U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions — who was confirmed as Attorney General in early February — used political funds from his reelection account to pay for campaign expenses at the RNC, where he met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, ABC News confirmed Thursday. [Continue reading…]

Richard W Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007, writes: The Cold War may be over, but Russia in the past few years has once again sought to destabilize the democratic process not only in the United States, but also in much of Europe. Russian support for Communist parties is gone, but Russian support for far right and nationalist movements globally is on the rise, as is Russian spying.

President Trump has already fired his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for misleading Vice President Pence about his conversations with the Russians. Misleading the United States Senate in testimony under oath is at least as serious. We do not yet know all the facts, but we know enough to see that Attorney General Sessions has to go as well. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: Jeff Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump at a time when few Republican lawmakers supported the candidate. His early and fierce loyalty — and his ability to translate Trump’s nationalist instincts into policy — helped him forge a bond with the president, and he now enjoys access whenever he wants it, a privilege that few get, an official said.

Two of Sessions’s former Senate advisers — Stephen Miller and Rick Dearborn — hold key White House roles, and one official said Sessions still talks to them regularly. The attorney general also is friendly with Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and a powerful player in the administration who promoted Sessions for years on the Breitbart website. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: [Sergey I. Kislyak] was appointed ambassador to Washington in 2008.

“He is a brilliant, highly professional diplomat — affable, pleasant, unbelievably good at arms control and Russian-American relations for decades,” said Sergei A. Karaganov, a periodic Kremlin adviser on foreign policy.

Some Russian foreign policy experts compared him to Anatoly F. Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to Washington from 1962 to 1986 and a political player in both capitals. Until recently, at least, Mr. Kislyak played a more discreet, quiet role in Washington and was even less visible in Moscow.

“I would describe him as Russia’s top authority on the United States,” said Vladimir Frolov, a foreign policy analyst.

The questions about contacts between Mr. Trump’s circle and Russian officials have revealed what both sides presumably knew, that American intelligence agencies closely track Mr. Kislyak’s movements and tap his phone calls. Russian officials on Thursday expressed anger that their ambassador’s actions were being questioned and that some news reports suggested he might be an intelligence operative.

Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, delivered an extended diatribe during her weekly briefing against what she called the low professional standards of the American news media.

“I will reveal a military secret to you: Diplomats work, and their work consists of carrying out contacts in the country where they are present,” she said. “This is on record everywhere. If they do not carry out these contacts, do not participate in negotiations, then they are not diplomats.”

Until Vladimir V. Putin returned to the Russian presidency in 2012 and tensions between Washington and Moscow rose again, Mr. Kislyak was a popular host, especially for weekend events at the estate at Pioneer Point in Maryland, which the Obama administration ordered closed last December over the hacking allegations. He invited the Americans who negotiated the New Start nuclear arms treaty and their families to a party at the estate. Russian security guards took the children of his guests tubing on the ambassador’s boat.

During the treaty negotiations, Mr. McFaul remembered, Mr. Kislyak frequently telephoned the secretary of defense or others involved, thwarting the American desire to limit his channels of communication. “He was actively pushing to try to find fissures and disagreements among us,” Mr. McFaul said.

“He is very smart, very experienced, always well prepared,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a former under secretary of state who negotiated three Iran sanctions resolutions at the United Nations with Mr. Kislyak. “But he could be cynical, obstreperous and inflexible, and had a Soviet mentality. He was very aggressive toward the United States.” [Continue reading…]

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Dreamer arrested after speaking to media will be deported without hearing, attorney says

Huffington Post reports: A 22-year-old undocumented immigrant arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Jackson, Mississippi, on Wednesday after speaking to the media about her family’s detention is set to be deported without a court hearing, her attorney said on Thursday.

Daniela Vargas, who came to the U.S. from Argentina when she was 7 years old, previously had a work permit and deportation reprieve under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Her DACA status expired last November, and because she was saving money for the renewal — which costs $495 — her new application wasn’t received until Feb. 10.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for ICE said Vargas would go through court proceedings to determine whether she is eligible for some type of relief, adding that the agency would take no further action until those proceedings were completed.

But Abby Peterson, Vargas’ attorney, said ICE agents told her on Thursday that they would instead pursue immediate deportation without a court hearing or bond because Vargas entered the country through the visa waiver program, which allows certain foreign nationals to enter the U.S. for under 90 days without a visa. (Argentina was previously part of the program, although it no longer is.) Individuals who use the visa waiver program have no right to a hearing or to contest their removal unless they are seeking asylum. [Continue reading…]

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It’s time to prepare for a second Scottish referendum

Alex Massie writes: On 24 June last year, in the Georgian splendour of her official residence in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square, Scotland’s First Minister offered her reaction to Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. Since Scottish voters endorsed Remain, it was now, Nicola Sturgeon said, ‘highly likely’ there would be another referendum on Scottish independence. Since then that promise — one viewed with dread by the two million Scots who voted to preserve the Union in 2014 — has been variously ‘on the table’, ‘more likely’ than ever and even ‘all but inevitable’. The clock is ticking.

Later this month, Sturgeon will address her party’s annual conference. She is expected to outline the terms and conditions she seeks for another referendum. That begins with a demand that the UK government pass a Section 30 order granting the Scottish parliament the right to hold a second plebiscite. Having granted such an order in 2014, it will be difficult to refuse Ms Sturgeon’s demand for another.

If there is another referendum, Sturgeon says, the fault lies with a Conservative government in London that is ‘dragging’ Scotland kicking and screaming out of the European Union against its will — that Scotland is being bullied by its neighbour and must now make a choice for itself: independence or a Tory-dominated Brexit Britain. [Continue reading…]

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Trump’s alpha male foreign policy

Susan B Glasser writes: Forget America First or the new nationalism or any of the other isms that have been offered as explanations for Donald Trump’s emerging foreign policy.

Want to really understand Trump’s philosophy of international relations?

Just listen to Sebastian Gorka, the Breitbart propagandist and Hungarian ultranationalist turned White House national security aide. He’s been saying it loud and clear for a couple months now whenever he’s asked about Trump’s foreign policy and how the new president will shake things up globally: “The alpha males are back.”

“Our foreign policy has been a disaster,” Gorka told Fox’s Sean Hannity before the inauguration. “We’ve neglected and abandoned our allies. We’ve emboldened our enemies. The message I have — it’s a very simple one. It’s a bumper sticker, Sean: The era of the Pajama Boy is over January 20th, and the alpha males are back.”

He’s repeated the phrase several times since, and it strikes me as perhaps unintentionally helpful in trying to sort through Trump’s largely unformed and at times outright contradictory foreign policy views. [Continue reading…]

Politico reports: Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis wants to tap the former U.S. ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, as his undersecretary of defense for policy, but the Pentagon chief is running into resistance from White House officials, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

If nominated and confirmed, Patterson would hold the fourth most powerful position at the Pentagon – and would effectively be the top civilian in the Defense Department, since both Mattis and his deputy, Robert Work, were military officers.

As ambassador to Egypt between 2011 and 2013, Patterson worked closely with former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist government. She came under fire for cultivating too close a relationship with the regime and for discouraging protests against it—and White House officials are voicing concerns about those decisions now.

The skirmish surrounding Patterson’s nomination is the latest in a series of personnel battles that have played out between Mattis and the White House, with each side rejecting the names offered up by the other while the Pentagon remains empty. The White House has yet to nominate a single undersecretary or deputy secretary to the Defense Department, while Work, Mattis’s deputy, is an Obama administration holdover who only agreed to stay on until the secretary taps a deputy of his own.

A similar tug of war has played out between the White House and other agency chiefs, most notably Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whom the president denied his top choice for deputy secretary of state last month. [Continue reading…]

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U.S., Hezbollah and Russia operate in de facto alliance as Assad’s forces retake Palmyra

The Washington Post reports: Syrian government forces recaptured the historic city of Palmyra from the Islamic State on Thursday, aided by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Russian military and, indirectly, U.S. airstrikes.

The government victory came nearly three months after the Islamic State marched back into the town in a surprise assault that appeared to have taken the Syrian army unawares.

The Syrian army announced in a statement read on state television Thursday evening that its forces were in complete control of Palmyra after a push on the town in recent days that saw Islamic State defenses rapidly collapse. [Continue reading…]

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Russia heats up its infowar with the West

Ilan Berman writes: When it comes to Russian propaganda, we haven’t seen anything yet.

Over the past several months, Americans have become acutely aware of a phenomenon that Europeans were already all too familiar with: the pervasive, corrosive nature of Russian propaganda. Russia’s purported attempts to meddle in the U.S. presidential election remain a major topic of national debate—one that could, even now, lead to fresh Congressional investigations and a political showdown between Capitol Hill and the new White House.

Yet the scope of Russia’s propaganda machine is still poorly understood by most Americans. Many may by now be familiar with Moscow’s highest profile media outlets, like television channel RT (which the Russian government funds to the tune of some $250 million annually) and the flashy Sputnik “news” multimedia website (which is likewise lavishly bankrolled by the Kremlin). But the full range of Russia’s information operations are still truly appreciated only by the small cadre of foreign policy and national security professionals who have been forced to grapple with their far-reaching and negative effects.

That effort is enormous, encompassing billions of dollars and dozens of domestic and international media outlets in an architecture that dwarfs the disinformation offensive marshaled against the West by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. [Continue reading…]

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White House destroys its own justification for the travel ban

David J Bier writes: President Trump may roll out a revised executive order temporarily banning immigration from six or seven majority Muslim countries this week. When a federal judge held up enforcement of the original order last month, his administration argued in court (PDF) that any delay in implementation — even for a few days — would “irreparably harm” America. But now the administration’s own actions have thoroughly undermined this line. It is clear that the administration itself doesn’t even buy its own argument for the order.

The government has not only refused to provide any evidence of a threat from these countries while defending its order in court, but the Department of Homeland Security itself has found these countries are not a unique threat. Since the order was halted, top administration have repeatedly delayed implementing a new one that corrects the old one’s legal defects.

None of these actions are consistent with an urgent threat to America. [Continue reading…]

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Jeff Sessions recuses himself from Russia inquiry

The New York Times reports: Contacts with Russian officials have become a persistent distraction for the Trump administration. Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, was forced to resign over his conflicting statements about conversations with Mr. Kislyak. Now Mr. Sessions was forced to use his first news conference as attorney general to address questions about his impartiality.

Congressional Republicans began breaking ranks to join Democrats in demanding that Mr. Sessions recuse himself from overseeing an investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Those calls came after the disclosure that Mr. Sessions himself spoke with the Russian ambassador last year, in seeming contradiction to his testimony at his confirmation hearing. [Continue reading…]

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Meet the Trump pick who could lead Russia probe

The Hill reports: President Trump’s deputy attorney general nominee has just been catapulted into the national spotlight.

With Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision Thursday to recuse himself from any investigations into Russia’s connections to President Trump’s campaign, focus is turning to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) secondary leaders.

Sessions’s recusal comes just a few days ahead of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing for deputy attorney general pick Rod Rosenstein – who may ultimately make decisions about a DOJ probe into Russia.

The U.S. attorney for Maryland is a George W. Bush appointee who was confirmed by a voice vote in the Senate in 2005 and was one of only three Bush-appointed U.S. attorneys — out of 93 nationwide — kept on by the Obama administration, according to the Washington Post.

Rosenstein is also the nation’s longest serving U.S. attorney. [Continue reading…]

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The huge problem with appointing special prosecutors

Peter Zeidenberg writes: Prosecutors are not journalists, and their job is not to inform the public of the results of their investigations. Rather, their mission is to gather all of the relevant facts and determine whether a crime was committed and, if so, whether it can be proved in court beyond a reasonable doubt. Their work, when done properly, is done in secret. Indeed, violations of grand jury secrecy can result in serious sanctions from the court.

If, after a full criminal investigation, it was determined that a crime occurred but the critical evidence was not obtainable — say, for purposes of argument, that this evidence was in Russia, unobtainable by subpoena — then it would be improper to seek an indictment. Critically, the entire investigation would then remain secret. It would be a violation of law for a prosecutor to make public the results of a grand jury investigation that did not result in an indictment.

Further, it is entirely possible that there could have been improper or inappropriate contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence without U.S. laws having being broken. If, for example, a Trump campaign operative actively coordinated with WikiLeaks the release of Clinton campaign emails — originally hacked by the Russians — the public would be justifiably outraged. But that does not necessarily mean the conduct was illegal. Were a special prosecutor to reach such a conclusion, the public would remain entirely in the dark. All they would know is that, after many months — or, more likely, years — of investigation, the special prosecutor had packed up his or her bags and gone home. No special reports. No Comey-style news conferences. Just radio silence.

Needless to say, this would be highly unsatisfactory. The public has a right to know, conclusively, whether their president’s campaign coordinated in any fashion with a foreign power — even if that coordination did not amount to a violation of U.S. law. Conduct can be wrongful — even reprehensible — and still not necessarily be criminal. The remedy for such conduct should be political. [Continue reading…]

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Kushner and Flynn met with Russian envoy in December, White House says

The New York Times reports: Michael T. Flynn, then Donald J. Trump’s incoming national security adviser, had a previously undisclosed meeting with the Russian ambassador in December to “establish a line of communication” between the new administration and the Russian government, the White House said on Thursday.

Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and now a senior adviser, also participated in the meeting at Trump Tower with Mr. Flynn and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. But among Mr. Trump’s inner circle, it is Mr. Flynn who appears to have been the main interlocutor with the Russian envoy — the two were in contact during the campaign and the transition, Mr. Kislyak and current and former American officials have said.

But the extent and frequency of their contacts remains unclear, and the disclosure of the meeting at Trump Tower adds to the emerging picture of how the relationship between Mr. Trump’s incoming team and Moscow was evolving to include some of the president-elect’s most trusted advisers. [Continue reading…]

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Donald Trump’s eldest son was likely paid at least $50,000 for an appearance late last year before a French think tank whose founder and wife are allies of the Russian government in efforts to end the war in Syria.

Donald Trump Jr. addressed a dinner on Oct. 11 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, hosted by the Center of Political and Foreign Affairs. Its president, Fabien Baussart, and his Syrian-born wife, Randa Kassis, have cooperated with Russia in its drive to end the Syrian civil war, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. In December, Mr. Baussart formally nominated Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mrs. Kassis is a leader of a political faction endorsed by Russia in negotiations to end the war in Syria. The couple said they don’t represent Russia and are solely focused on ending the Syrian conflict. [Continue reading…]

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The state of Trump’s State Department

Julia Ioffe writes: The flags in the lobby of the State Department stood bathed in sunlight and silence on a recent afternoon. “It’s normally so busy here,” marveled a State Department staffer as we stood watching the emptiness. “People are usually coming in for meetings, there’s lots of people, and now it’s so quiet.” The action at Foggy Bottom has instead moved to the State Department cafeteria where, in the absence of work, people linger over countless coffees with colleagues. (“The cafeteria is so crowded all day,” a mid-level State Department officer said, adding that it was a very unusual sight. “No one’s doing anything.”) As the staffer and I walked among the tables and chairs, people with badges chatted over coffee; one was reading his Kindle.

“It just feels empty,” a recently departed senior State official told me.

This week began with reports that President Donald Trump’s budget proposal will drastically slash the State Department’s funding, and last week ended with White House adviser and former Breitbart head Stephen Bannon telling the attendees of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that what he and the new president were after was a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” At the State Department, which employs nearly 70,000 people around the world, that deconstruction is already well underway. [Continue reading…]

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The vote that could wreck the European Union

An editorial in The Economist says: It has been many years since France last had a revolution, or even a serious attempt at reform. Stagnation, both political and economic, has been the hallmark of a country where little has changed for decades, even as power has rotated between the established parties of left and right.

Until now. This year’s presidential election, the most exciting in living memory, promises an upheaval. The Socialist and Republican parties, which have held power since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958, could be eliminated in the first round of a presidential ballot on April 23rd. French voters may face a choice between two insurgent candidates: Marine Le Pen, the charismatic leader of the National Front, and Emmanuel Macron, the upstart leader of a liberal movement, En Marche! (On the Move!), which he founded only last year.

The implications of these insurgencies are hard to exaggerate. They are the clearest example yet of a global trend: that the old divide between left and right is growing less important than a new one between open and closed. The resulting realignment will have reverberations far beyond France’s borders. It could revitalise the European Union, or wreck it.

The revolution’s proximate cause is voters’ fury at the uselessness and self-dealing of their ruling class. [Continue reading…]

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UN details Assad and Putin’s war crimes in Aleppo

Michael Weiss reports: In a report released today on the recapture of East Aleppo by pro-Syrian government forces, the United Nations Human Rights Council concludes that the much-touted “evacuation” of civilians from the rebel-enclave last year was actually a “war crime of forced displacement” because it was carried out for strategic reasons rather than any regard for protecting non-combatants or for military necessity. The population transfer had in fact been overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The 37-page report, based on the work of a Commission of Inquiry, lays blame on both sides of the conflict for failing to take sufficient safeguards against against the loss of life or the destruction of vital infrastructure, although it finds that the Syrian and Russian air forces wrought a particularly devastating toll.

Warplanes targeted hospitals, bakeries and schools in a non-stop bombing campaign that lasted for months, beginning in September 2016. ”Approximately 300 people — including 96 children — were killed in the first four days of the offensive alone,” the report states. [Continue reading…]

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This Muslim Marine is offering to stand guard for Jewish cemeteries, synagogues in Chicago

Mic reports: After a wave of anti-semitic violence, particularly the vandalism of two Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia and St. Louis, Tayyib Rashid knew it was time to step up.

Rashid, a veteran, who calls himself as the “Muslim Marine,” sent out a tweet on Monday offering to stand guard for any Jewish synagogue, cemetery or organization.


Rashid knew he had to do more to help out his Jewish neighbors and that’s why he fired off his now-viral tweet.

“As I watch this horrible thing unfold here, I felt terrible about what happened in St. Louis and this heinous event in Philadelphia,” Rashid, 40, said in a phone interview. “I was moved to tears. This is absolutely not right.” [Continue reading…]

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Obama administration rushed to preserve intelligence of Russian election hacking

The New York Times reports: In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.

American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence.

Separately, American intelligence agencies had intercepted communications of Russian officials, some of them within the Kremlin, discussing contacts with Trump associates. [Continue reading…]

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