Category Archives: Trump administration

With U.S. general under fire, Afghans fear being abandoned by Trump

The Washington Post reports: Afghans are alarmed by widespread reports that President Trump has threatened to fire Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the highly regarded U.S. military commander in this war-torn country, and that Trump has also delayed deciding on a new military and political strategy Afghans have awaited anxiously for the past six months.

Nicholson, 61, the top U.S. military official in Afghanistan for the past 16 months, has become the best-known face of Washington here, working closely with Afghan military and civilian officials, and vocally advocating expanded U.S. military engagement, while the Taliban and other insurgents continue aggressive attacks across the country.

Now, with two U.S. servicemen killed in the past week, Trump’s attack on Nicholson for failing to “win” the 16-year war has stunned Afghan officials and political leaders. They said a clear signal of continued support from Washington is urgently needed to keep the fragile Kabul government on its feet amid an explosion of public unrest and organized opposition from a variety of groups.

“Our biggest immediate worry is the lack of an American strategy,” said Omar Daudzai, a former senior Afghan official. “We are facing political turmoil and a security crisis. Neighboring governments are meddling. We need an American commitment to support the defense forces, elections and democratic institutions. America’s reputation is at stake in Afghanistan, and if this all goes bad, America will lose its credibility.” [Continue reading…]

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Far-right Bannon affiliates attack McMaster for being ‘controlled by Jews’ and ‘hostile to Israel’

Haaretz reports: President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser General H. R. McMaster is being targeted in recent days by a far-right campaign that is accusing him, simultaneously, of being controlled by rich Jews and of harming the state of Israel. The campaign is coming from media outlets and writers affiliated with Steve Bannon, President Trump’s senior political adviser, who has been accused in the past of making anti-Semitic comments.

The campaign against McMaster intensified after he fired a number of mid-level officials from the National Security Council, who were considered loyal to Bannon and to the former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The latter was forced to resign after less than a month in office because he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his ties to Russia. The driving force behind the campaign has been far-right blogger Mike Cernovich, who started sharing links to a website called, McMaster Leaks, which is devoted to attacks on McMaster, on social media.

The website featured a brazen anti-Semitic caricature depicting McMaster and retired General David Petraeus, who is considered close to a number of senior NSC officials – as two puppets being controlled by Jewish billionaire George Soros, who himself is being controlled by “the Rothschilds,” the famously rich Jewish family of bankers. After the caricature was mocked on social media, the website edited it, replacing the word “Rothschilds” on the top of the pyramid with the word “Saudis,” but keeping in Soros depiction in place.

Yet McMaster, according to his rivals on the far-right, isn’t only being controlled by the Rothschilds – it turns out he is also “hostile to Israel,” according to articles that have been published in recent days on Breitbart, the far-right website formerly edited by Bannon, and on the Conservative Review. These articles, quoting “administration officials” and a Facebook post by Israeli journalist Caroline Glick, accuse him of such “sins” as opposing an Israeli request to include Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Trump’s visit to the Western Wall during his visit in Israel earlier this year. [Continue reading…]

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Mueller seeks White House documents on Flynn

The New York Times reports: Investigators working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, recently asked the White House for documents related to the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, and have questioned witnesses about whether he was secretly paid by the Turkish government during the final months of the presidential campaign, according to people close to the investigation.

Though not a formal subpoena, the document request is the first known instance of Mr. Mueller’s team asking the White House to hand over records.

In interviews with potential witnesses in recent weeks, prosecutors and F.B.I. agents have spent hours poring over the details of Mr. Flynn’s business dealings with a Turkish-American businessman who worked last year with Mr. Flynn and his consulting business, the Flynn Intel Group.

The company was paid $530,000 to run a campaign to discredit an opponent of the Turkish government who has been accused of orchestrating last year’s failed coup in the country.

Investigators want to know if the Turkish government was behind those payments — and if the Flynn Intel Group made kickbacks to the businessman, Ekim Alptekin, for helping conceal the source of the money.

The line of questioning shows that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry has expanded into a full-fledged examination of Mr. Flynn’s financial dealings, beyond the relatively narrow question of whether he failed to register as a foreign agent or lied about his conversations and business arrangements with Russian officials. [Continue reading…]

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Trump defends McMaster as conservatives seek his dismissal

The New York Times reports: President Trump defended Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, his embattled national security adviser, on Friday in the face of a full-bore campaign by the nationalist wing of his political coalition accusing him of undermining the president’s agenda and calling for his dismissal.

General McMaster has angered the political right by pushing out several conservatives on the national security staff and cautioning against ripping up the nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated by President Barack Obama without a strategy for what comes next. His future has been in doubt amid speculation that Mr. Trump might send him to Afghanistan.

But after two days of unrelenting attacks on General McMaster by conservative activists and news sites, complete with the Twitter hashtag #FireMcMaster, the president weighed in to quash such talk. “General McMaster and I are working very well together,” he said in a statement emailed to The New York Times. “He is a good man and very pro-Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country.”

A senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the president’s views, added that Mr. Trump has “total confidence” in his national security adviser. [Continue reading…]

Politico reports: National security adviser H.R. McMaster, who has waged a pitched battle with other senior staff for control over policy and personnel on the National Security Council, is taking advantage of the shield offered by the arrival of his old military colleague John Kelly as White House chief of staff.

Kelly told McMaster this week that he wanted him to remain as national security adviser, said two senior White House aides, and has encouraged him to make any staffing changes he deems necessary. McMaster took that as a green light this week to oust top intelligence aide Ezra Cohen-Watnick — a Michael Flynn hire who has a warm relationship with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law — after months of trying.

Kelly’s arrival did not lead directly to Cohen-Watnick’s dismissal, officials said, but was months in the making.

McMaster, a three-star general who was enlisted by Trump to replace Flynn in February, has been an increasingly volatile presence in the West Wing, operating under a cloud of rumors that Trump, with whom he is said to have a testy relationship, was considering reassigning him to another post, possibly sending him to oversee the war in Afghanistan.

In recent weeks, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials who have had direct interaction with him, McMaster has bristled at White House aides close to Trump whom he perceives as undercutting his authority. He seethes over every national security leak and lashes out over negative news stories he thinks are spread by his enemies. And McMaster, whose temper is legendary, frequently blows his top in high-level meetings.

“He can be very intense,” a McMaster confidant who speaks with him regularly and is a major supporter, told POLITICO Thursday. “Some find that difficult.”

McMaster is fiercely at odds with Steve Bannon, the Trump strategist who was removed from the principals committee of the National Security Council in April after McMaster’s appointment. [Continue reading…]

The Atlantic reports: A top official of the National Security Council was fired last month after arguing in a memo that President Trump is under sustained attack from subversive forces both within and outside the government who are deploying Maoist tactics to defeat President Trump’s nationalist agenda.

His dismissal marks the latest victory by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in the ongoing war within Trump’s White House between those who believe that the president is under threat from dark forces plotting to undermine him, and those like McMaster who dismiss this as conspiratorial thinking.

Rich Higgins, a former Pentagon official who served in the NSC’s strategic-planning office as a director for strategic planning, was let go on July 21. Higgins’s memo describes supposed domestic and international threats to Trump’s presidency, including globalists, bankers, the “deep state,” and Islamists. The memo characterizes the Russia story as a plot to sabotage Trump’s nationalist agenda. It asserts that globalists and Islamists are seeking to destroy America. The memo also includes a set of recommendations, arguing that the problem constitutes a national-security priority. [Continue reading…]

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Sessions’ broad attack on leaks aimed at an audience of one: Trump

Politico reports: Dozens of reporters and a horde of photographers turned out for Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ news conference Friday to announce a crackdown on leaks, but the most important target for his message wasn’t in the room: President Donald Trump.

Sessions’ eight-minute broadside against leaks and his stern warning to leakers seemed to be aimed at trying to repair his badly frayed relationship with Trump, who has expressed regret for selecting Sessions and who has specifically complained that he was doing too little to fight the tidal wave of leaks that have swamped the Trump White House.

“First, let me say that I strongly agree with the president and condemn in the strongest terms the staggering number of leaks undermining the ability of our government to protect our country,” Sessions declared. “We are taking a stand. This culture of leaking must stop. … Cases will be made and leakers will be held accountable.”

If Sessions’ desire to address the leaks of most concern to Trump wasn’t sufficiently apparent, the attorney general offered unsolicited outrage toward the leak that roiled the West Wing this week: the publication of transcripts of Trump’s confidential conversations with Mexico’s president and Australia’s prime minister earlier this year.

“Just yesterday, we saw media reports about conversations the president had with foreign leaders,” Sessions said. “No one is entitled to surreptitiously fight to advance battles in the media by revealing sensitive government information.”

Even Sessions’ thinly veiled threat toward the press seemed intended to curry favor with the occupant of the Oval Office, who regularly castigates the news media on Twitter over “FAKE NEWS.” [Continue reading…]

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Trump administration delivers notice U.S. intends to withdraw from Paris climate deal

Politico reports: The Trump administration outlined the United States’ intention to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement in an official notice delivered to the United Nations on Friday.

It was the first written notice to the U.N. that the administration plans to pull out of the 2015 pact, which has won the support of nearly 200 nations.

In a statement, the State Department said the administration will nonetheless continue participating in international climate change negotiations, including talks aimed at implementing the Paris climate deal, “to protect U.S. interests and ensure all future policy options remain open to the administration.”

Trump announced in June that the U.S. will leave the agreement.

Under the terms of the Paris deal, the U.S. can’t fully withdraw until Nov. 4, 2020 — one day after the next presidential election. The next president could decide to rejoin the agreement if Trump doesn’t win a second term. [Continue reading…]

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Rouhani 2.0 vs. the hawks in Washington and Tehran

Ali Vaez writes: The inauguration of Hassan Rouhani on Saturday as president of Iran for a second term may be a bittersweet moment for him.

He appears at once stronger and weaker: His 19-point margin of victory in May after a bruising campaign against hard-line opponents surely increased his confidence. Yet, perhaps for that very reason, the conservative establishment, led by Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is trying to stymie his efforts to translate his electoral mandate into policies aimed at opening Iran economically and politically. This augurs trying times, made more difficult by the belligerent stance of President Trump toward Iran.

History suggests that Mr. Rouhani has reason for concern. All his predecessors over the past three decades suffered gradual obsolescence in their second terms. Without the option of a consecutive third term, they all followed the same script: an initial forceful push of their agenda, followed by a clash with the Iranian system’s custodians and the frustration of becoming premature lame ducks.

In some ways, though, 2017 seems different. This is no ordinary moment in Iran’s history. The men who led the revolution to victory in 1979 are dying off, and Ayatollah Khamenei, who is 78, has suggested that he may soon need a successor. Two competing visions are vying for the Islamic Republic’s future: that of the principlists, who seek to preserve its revolutionary nature, and that of the more pragmatic elements, who want the revolution to mellow. [Continue reading…]

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The staggering scale of Trump’s ignorance about the world

Robin Wright writes: Six months into the Trump era, foreign-policy officials from eight past Administrations told me they are aghast that the President is still so witless about the world. “He seems as clueless today as he was on January 20th,” [Max] Boot, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said. Trump’s painful public gaffes, they warn, indicate that he’s not reading, retaining, or listening to his Presidential briefings. And the newbie excuse no longer flies.

“Trump has an appalling ignorance of the current world, of history, of previous American engagement, of what former Presidents thought and did,” Geoffrey Kemp, who worked at the Pentagon during the Ford Administration and at the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration, reflected. “He has an almost studious rejection of the type of in-depth knowledge that virtually all of his predecessors eventually gained or had views on.”

Criticism of Donald Trump among Democrats who served in senior national-security positions is predictable and rife. But Republicans—who are historically ambitious on foreign policy—are particularly pained by the President’s missteps and misstatements. So are former senior intelligence officials who have avoided publicly criticizing Presidents until now.

“The President has little understanding of the context”—of what’s happening in the world—“and even less interest in hearing the people who want to deliver it,” Michael Hayden, a retired four-star general and former director of both the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, told me. “He’s impatient, decision-oriented, and prone to action. It’s all about the present tense. When he asks, ‘What the hell’s going on in Iraq?’ people around him have learned not to say, ‘Well, in 632 . . . ’ ” (That was the year when the Prophet Muhammad died, prompting the beginning of the Sunni-Shiite split.*)

“He just doesn’t have an interest in the world,” Hayden said. [Continue reading…]

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The ugly history of Stephen Miller’s ‘cosmopolitan’ epithet

Jeff Greenfield writes: When TV news viewers saw Trump adviser Stephen Miller accuse Jim Acosta of harboring a “cosmopolitan bias” during Wednesday’s news conference, they might have wondered whether he was accusing the CNN White House reporter of an excessive fondness for the cocktail made famous on “Sex and the City.” It’s a term that’s seldom been heard in American political discourse. But to supporters of the Miller-Bannon worldview, it was a cause for celebration. Breitbart, where Steve Bannon reigned before becoming Trump’s chief political strategist, trumpeted Miller’s “evisceration” of Acosta and put the term in its headline. So did white nationalist Richard Spencer, who hailed Miller’s dust-up with Acosta as “a triumph.”

Why does it matter? Because it reflects a central premise of one key element of President Donald Trump’s constituency—a premise with a dark past and an unsettling present.

So what is a “cosmopolitan”? It’s a cousin to “elitist,” but with a more sinister undertone. It’s a way of branding people or movements that are unmoored to the traditions and beliefs of a nation, and identify more with like-minded people regardless of their nationality. (In this sense, the revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine might have been an early American cosmopolitan, when he declared: “The world is my country; all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”). In the eyes of their foes, “cosmopolitans” tend to cluster in the universities, the arts and in urban centers, where familiarity with diversity makes for a high comfort level with “untraditional” ideas and lives.

For a nationalist, these are fighting words. Your country is your country; your fellow citizens are your brethren; and your country’s traditions—religious and otherwise— should be yours. A nation whose people—especially influential people—develop other ties undermine national strength, and must be repudiated.

One reason why “cosmopolitan” is an unnerving term is that it was the key to an attempt by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to purge the culture of dissident voices. In a 1946 speech, he deplored works in which “the positive Soviet hero is derided and inferior before all things foreign and cosmopolitanism that we all fought against from the time of Lenin, characteristic of the political leftovers, is many times applauded.” It was part of a yearslong campaigned aimed at writers, theater critics, scientists and others who were connected with “bourgeois Western influences.” Not so incidentally, many of these “cosmopolitans” were Jewish, and official Soviet propaganda for a time devoted significant energy into “unmasking” the Jewish identities of writers who published under pseudonyms.

What makes this history relevant is that, all across Europe, nationalist political figures are still making the same kinds of arguments—usually but not always stripped of blatant anti-Semitism—to constrict the flow of ideas and the boundaries of free political expression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, has more and more embraced this idea that unpatriotic forces threaten the nation. [Continue reading…]

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So many leaks, so much to leak

The New York Times reports: Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Friday that the Justice Department was pursuing three times as many leak investigations as were open at the end of the previous administration, a significant devotion of law enforcement resources to hunt down the sources of unauthorized disclosures of information that have plagued the Trump administration.

Mr. Sessions vowed that the Justice Department would not hesitate to bring criminal charges against people who had leaked classified information. He also announced that the F.B.I. had created a new counterintelligence unit to manage these cases.

“I strongly agree with the president and condemn in the strongest terms the staggering number of leaks undermining the ability of our government to protect this country,” he said. The announcement by Mr. Sessions comes 10 days after President Trump publicly accused his attorney general of being “very weak” on pursuing these investigations. [Continue reading…]

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The U.S. government’s fight against violent extremism loses its leader

Peter Beinart writes: George Selim, the federal counterterrorism official who works most closely with the organized American Muslim community, tendered his resignation on Friday [July 28]. His ouster is a victory for Trump officials like Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, who see mainstream Muslim organizations as Islamist fronts, and for those American Muslims who oppose any counterterrorism cooperation with Washington. “There were clearly political appointees in this administration who didn’t see the value of community partnerships with American Muslims,” Selim told me. It is the clearest sign yet that government cooperation with Muslim communities, which has proved crucial to preventing terrorist attacks, is breaking down.

The news was first reported on Sunday afternoon by The Conservative Review, a journal edited by the talk-show host Mark Levin, citing a senior administration official. It called Selim “a prominent Obama administration holdover known for engaging fringe Islamic radicals.”

But Selim, who confirmed to me on Sunday night that this will be his last week on the job, is not a Democrat with Islamist sympathies. He’s a conservative Republican who many Muslim activists viewed with suspicion. For the past two years, he’s been the founding director of the Office of Community Partnerships in the Department of Homeland Security, and the leader of the federal Countering Violent Extremism Task Force.

Selim’s biography evokes a bygone era. He’s an Arab American—his family is of Egyptian and Lebanese descent. Early in his career, he worked at the Arab American Institute, which advocates for Arab American civil rights, and in 2004 served as an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention. Soon after that, he joined the Bush administration. [Continue reading…]

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One year into the FBI’s Russia investigation, Mueller is on the Trump money trail

CNN reports: Federal investigators exploring whether Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian spies have seized on Trump and his associates’ financial ties to Russia as one of the most fertile avenues for moving their probe forward, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The web of financial ties could offer a more concrete path toward potential prosecution than the broader and murkier questions of collusion in the 2016 campaign, these sources said.

One year after the FBI opened an investigation, the probe is now managed by special counsel Robert Mueller. Sources described an investigation that has widened to focus on possible financial crimes, some unconnected to the 2016 elections, alongside the ongoing scrutiny of possible illegal coordination with Russian spy agencies and alleged attempts by President Donald Trump and others to obstruct the FBI investigation. Even investigative leads that have nothing to do with Russia but involve Trump associates are being referred to the special counsel to encourage subjects of the investigation to cooperate, according to two law enforcement sources.

The increased financial focus hasn’t gone unnoticed by Trump, who warned Mueller, via an interview with The New York Times, that his financial dealings were a red line that investigators shouldn’t cross. But the order establishing the special counsel makes clear Mueller is authorized to investigate any matters that “arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” [Continue reading…]

The Hill reports: The Senate blocked President Trump from being able to make recess appointments on Thursday as lawmakers leave Washington for their summer break.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), doing wrap up for the entire Senate, locked in nine “pro-forma” sessions — brief meetings that normally last roughly a minute.

The move, which requires the agreement of every senator, means the Senate will be in session every three business days throughout the August recess.

The Senate left D.C. on Thursday evening with most lawmakers not expected to return to Washington until after Labor Day. [Continue reading…]

James Hohmann writes: If President Trump ever lost the support of Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), he just might be doomed. A former state House speaker, Tillis is a reliable Republican apparatchik whose vote party leadership can count on. So it was a big deal yesterday when he introduced legislation with a Democratic colleague, Chris Coons (Del.), to prevent Trump from firing Mueller without cause.

Tillis, known as a savvy political strategist, is clearly thinking ahead to what he realizes will be a very difficult reelection campaign in 2020. “It is critical that special counsels have the independence and resources they need to lead investigations,” he said in a news release. [Continue reading…]

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Mueller is using a grand jury. Here’s what it means

Renato Mariotti writes: A grand jury, which consists of 16 to 23 people, is an important tool that allows prosecutors to issue subpoenas that require people to produce documents and other evidence. Subpoenas can also be used to compel people to testify under oath before the grand jury. You can expect Mueller and his team to issue many subpoenas in the months ahead.

Because grand jury subpoenas are an important prosecutorial tool, typically a grand jury is impaneled at the very beginning of an investigation, not at the end. Indictments are usually sought at the very end of an investigation, after all of the witnesses are questioned and all of the documents are obtained. So despite all the punditry on cable news, there’s no suggestion here that Mueller is closing in on any particular target, such as the president. In all likelihood, he’s just getting started.

It is possible, though, that as a starting point Mueller will eventually seek an indictment of a lower-level figure in or around Trump’s campaign. Sometimes, when prosecutors are facing obstacles in obtaining evidence, they seek an indictment of one individual or a group of individuals prior to completing their investigation, if they believe that those individuals might cooperate with the government and provide evidence. Otherwise, decisions about who to charge are left to the very end of the investigation.

The work that grand juries do is secret, which means that grand jurors—who are ordinary citizens chosen at random and vetted by the federal district court—cannot share what is happening before the grand jury. Federal rules also prevent prosecutors from disclosing what happens before the grand jury. But those same rules permit witnesses to disclose what happened, and people who receive grand jury subpoenas are usually not prohibited from disclosing their contents. That means that we will likely continue to hear media reports about witnesses and documents sought by Mueller and his team, as we did on Thursday. [Continue reading…]

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Kushner companies said to be under investigation over visa program

The New York Times reports: Federal prosecutors are investigating Kushner Companies, the real estate firm owned by the family of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, over its use of a program that grants visas to wealthy overseas investors.

The authorities, in part, are looking into the role of Mr. Kushner’s sister, Nicole Meyer, according to a person familiar with the matter who confirmed the inquiry.

The investigation centers on the real estate company’s use of the so-called EB-5 program, which offers visas to foreigners in exchange for a $500,000 investment. Critics say the program has weak oversight and lax rules.

At a marketing event in May, Ms. Meyer promoted the company’s connections to the Trump administration as she courted Chinese investors for a pair of luxury apartment towers being built by the Kushner Companies in New Jersey. The project “means a lot to me and my entire family,” she told prospective investors at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Beijing.

Mr. Kushner gave up his role running the family company in January. He still owns a significant piece of the business. [Continue reading…]

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Fewer immigrants mean more jobs? Not so, economists say

The New York Times reports: When the federal government banned the use of farmworkers from Mexico in 1964, California’s tomato growers did not enlist Americans to harvest the fragile crop. They replaced the lost workers with tomato-picking machines.

The Trump administration on Wednesday embraced a proposal to sharply reduce legal immigration, which it said would preserve jobs and lead to higher wages — the same argument advanced by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations half a century ago.

But economists say the tomato story and a host of related evidence show that there is no clear connection between less immigration and more jobs for Americans. Rather, the prevailing view among economists is that immigration increases economic growth, improving the lives of the immigrants and the lives of the people who are already here.

“The average American worker is more likely to lose than to gain from immigration restrictions,” said Giovanni Peri, an economist at the University of California, Davis. [Continue reading…]

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Special Counsel Robert Mueller impanels Washington grand jury in Russia probe

The Wall Street Journal reports: Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury in Washington to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, a sign that his inquiry is growing in intensity and entering a new phase, according to people familiar with the matter.

The grand jury, which began its work in recent weeks, signals that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry will likely continue for months. Mr. Mueller is investigating Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign or associates colluded with the Kremlin as part of that effort.

A spokesman for Mr. Mueller, Joshua Stueve, declined to comment. Moscow has denied seeking to influence the election, and Mr. Trump has vigorously disputed allegations of collusion. The president has called Mr. Mueller’s inquiry a “witch hunt.”

Ty Cobb, special counsel to the president, said he wasn’t aware that Mr. Mueller had started using a new grand jury. “Grand jury matters are typically secret,” Mr. Cobb said. “The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly.…The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller.”

Before Mr. Mueller was tapped in May to be special counsel, federal prosecutors had been using at least one other grand jury, located in Alexandria, Va., to assist in their criminal investigation of Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser. That probe, which has been taken over by Mr. Mueller’s team, focuses on Mr. Flynn’s work in the private sector on behalf of foreign interests.

Grand juries are powerful investigative tools that allow prosecutors to subpoena documents, put witnesses under oath and seek indictments, if there is evidence of a crime. Legal experts said that the decision by Mr. Mueller to impanel a grand jury suggests he believes he will need to subpoena records and take testimony from witnesses.

A grand jury in Washington is also more convenient for Mr. Mueller and his 16 attorneys—they work just a few blocks from the U.S. federal courthouse where grand juries meet—than one that is 10 traffic-clogged miles away in Virginia.

“This is yet a further sign that there is a long-term, large-scale series of prosecutions being contemplated and being pursued by the special counsel,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas. “If there was already a grand jury in Alexandria looking at Flynn, there would be no need to reinvent the wheel for the same guy. This suggests that the investigation is bigger and wider than Flynn, perhaps substantially so.” [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: A grand jury has issued subpoenas in connection with a June 2016 meeting that included President Donald Trump’s son, his son-in-law and a Russian lawyer, two sources told Reuters on Thursday, signaling an investigation is gathering pace into suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. [Continue reading…]

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Mueller’s job would be protected by bipartisan Senate bill

CBS News reports: Two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are moving to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s job, putting forth legislation that aims to ensure the integrity of current and future independent investigations.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware plan to introduce the legislation Thursday. The bill would allow any special counsel for the Department of Justice to challenge his or her removal in court, with a review by a three-judge panel within 14 days of the challenge.

The bill would be retroactive to May 17, 2017 – the day Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties to Donald Trump’s campaign. [Continue reading…]

The Hill reports: President Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow said Thursday that Trump is not considering firing special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In an interview Thursday with Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto, Sekulow dismissed rumors that Trump is considering firing Mueller. [Continue reading…]

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Mexicans react to transcript of Trump call with their president

The Washington Post reports: The leaked transcript of a phone call between President Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto published Thursday by The Washington Post left some Mexicans flabbergasted, even in a country where politics is commonly called surreal and where embarrassing phone calls by politicians are often filtered to the press.

One popular Mexican radio host compared the January phone call to a “Saturday Night Live” skit. Others complained that Trump was using tough talk to threaten the Mexican leader as if he were a Trump employee.

Peña Nieto appeared patient throughout the call, winning some rare praise from a population unhappy with his presidency. He politely told Trump — again — that Mexico would not pay to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.

“My position has been and will continue to be very firm, saying that Mexico cannot pay for the wall,” Peña Nieto told Trump.

“You cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that, and I cannot live with that,” Trump replied. Later in the call he said, “If you’re not going to say that Mexico is going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that.” Trump also boasted that he could make Peña Nieto so popular that he could get lawmakers to change the Mexican constitution so that he could seek reelection. [Continue reading…]

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