Category Archives: Congress

Senate Russia investigators ask Treasury for Trump team financial information

CNN reports: Senate Russia investigators have sent a request to the Treasury Department’s criminal investigation division for any information related to President Donald Trump, his top officials and his campaign aides, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee told CNN Tuesday.

“We’ve made a request, to FinCEN in the Treasury Department, to make sure, not just for example vis-a-vis the President, but just overall our effort to try to follow the intel no matter where it leads,” Sen. Mark Warner told CNN. “You get materials that show if there have been, what level of financial ties between, I mean some of the stuff, some of the Trump-related officials, Trump campaign-related officials and other officials and where those dollars flow — not necessarily from Russia.”

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FinCEN is the federal agency that has been investigating allegations of foreign money-laundering through purchases of US real estate. [Continue reading…]

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FBI Director Comey’s testimony on Huma Abedin forwarding Hillary Clinton’s emails was inaccurate

By Peter Elkind, special to ProPublica, May 8, 2017

FBI director James Comey generated national headlines last week with his dramatic testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, explaining his “incredibly painful” decision to go public about the Hillary Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

Perhaps Comey’s most surprising revelation was that Huma Abedin — Weiner’s wife and a top Clinton deputy — had made “a regular practice” of forwarding “hundreds and thousands” of Clinton messages to her husband, “some of which contain classified information.” Comey testified that Abedin had done this so that the disgraced former congressman could print them out for her boss. (Weiner’s laptop was seized after he came under criminal investigation for sex crimes, following a media report about his online relationship with a teenager.)

The New York Post plastered its story on the front page with a photo of an underwear-clad Weiner and the headline: “HARD COPY: Huma sent Weiner classified Hillary emails to print out.” The Daily News went with a similar front-page screamer: “HUMA ERROR: Sent classified emails to sext maniac Weiner.”

The problem: Much of what Comey said about this was inaccurate. Now the FBI is trying to figure out what to do about it.

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Yates fuels questions about Trump’s 18-day delay in firing Flynn

 

Bloomberg reports: Eighteen days.

That’s how much time passed from acting Attorney General Sally Yates’s warning to the White House that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn lied to Vice President Mike Pence about contacts with Russian officials to the administration’s decision to fire him.

The White House will be under increasing pressure to explain what it did during that period after Yates’ Senate testimony on Monday, her highest-profile appearance since President Donald Trump fired her Jan. 30 for refusing to enforce his initial travel ban. Her revelations come as FBI and multiple congressional committees intensify their scrutiny of Russia’s meddling in last year’s election and any possible connections to Trump aides or associates.

Yates, an Obama administration holdover, said she reached out to White House Counsel Donald McGahn in late January after noting discrepancies between classified intelligence reports on Flynn’s behavior and Pence’s descriptions of what the national security adviser told him.

In two White House meetings on Jan. 26 and Jan. 27, Yates said she told McGahn that the classified information suggested that Flynn was potentially subject to blackmail because the Russians would know he had misled Pence.

“We felt it was critical we get this information to the White House,” Yates told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee in a hearing alongside former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. “We believed that General Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians. To state the obvious, you don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians.” [Continue reading…]

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Fight brews over push to shield Americans in warrantless surveillance

The New York Times reports: Obscured by the furor over surveillance set off by the investigations into possible Trump campaign coordination with Russia during the election, a major debate over electronic spying that defies the usual partisan factions is quietly taking shape in Congress.

The debate centers on the National Security Agency’s incidental eavesdropping on Americans via its warrantless surveillance program, which spies on foreigners abroad whose communications pass through American phone and internet services. Its legal basis, the FISA Amendments Act, is set to expire at the end of 2017.

A bipartisan coalition of privacy-minded lawmakers has started to circulate draft legislation that would impose new limits on the government’s ability to use incidentally gathered information about Americans who are in contact with foreign targets.

Many of those lawmakers are veterans of a fight two years ago over the U.S.A. Freedom Act, a law that ended an N.S.A. program that gathered Americans’ calling logs in bulk. They won that fight against security hawks because the statute on which the program was based, part of the Patriot Act, was expiring and they were unwilling to extend it without ending the bulk collection.

The privacy advocates in Congress are using that same lesson this time around, hoping to leverage their colleagues’ concerns that the program will lapse if they fail to extend the law.

But the intelligence and law enforcement communities and their allies in Congress appear determined to extend the warrantless surveillance program law, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, without changes. They are framing the debate as being about a program that is too important to be held hostage to any push for changes, lest gridlock kill it. [Continue reading…]

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James Comey ‘mildly nauseous’ over idea he swayed the election

The New York Times reports: James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, sharply defended his rationale for notifying Congress about new emails related to the Hillary Clinton investigation less than two weeks before Election Day, saying Wednesday that any suggestion he affected the vote’s outcome made him “mildly nauseous.”

Mr. Comey’s comments at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing were his first public explanation for his actions, which roiled the presidential campaign in its final days and cast a harsh spotlight on the F.B.I. director.

Mr. Comey said he went public on Oct. 28 because he believed that the emails found by his agents might provide insight into Mrs. Clinton’s reasons for using a private server as secretary of state and might change the outcome of the investigation. Failing to inform Congress, Mr. Comey said, would have a required an “act of concealment.”

“Concealment, in my view, would have been catastrophic,” he said, adding later that he knew the decision would be “disastrous for me personally.”

What Mr. Comey viewed as concealing, Justice Department officials viewed simply as following the rules. The F.B.I. does not normally confirm ongoing investigations. Senior Justice Department officials urged him not to send a letter to Congress informing them that the bureau was examining the new emails. [Continue reading…]

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Budget agreement includes several provisions designed to rein in Trump

Politico reports: Congressional members didn’t just snub Donald Trump on his border wall: They also used the $1 trillion spending deal hatched over the weekend to rein in the president’s powers.

Lawmakers want the Trump administration to lay out a detailed plan to deal with the Islamic State and Syria’s Bashar Assad. So they tucked in a provision in the 1,665-page spending plan to withhold $2.5 billion in defense funds until the proposal to battle ISIS is produced.

Because Republicans and Democrats don’t want Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his Justice Department to muck around with states that allow medical marijuana, they included language in the bill barring the anti-pot attorney general from interfering with those laws.

The measure also contains three separate reminders for Trump, who did not seek congressional approval before launching missile strikes against the Syrian government last month, that he must obey the War Powers Act. That law limits his ability to send U.S. troops into combat without a congressional vote.

“It’s an assertion, I think, of Congress’ power to appropriate and to set the tone,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of the Appropriations Committee. “I don’t see it as a finger in the eye so much as just a reassertion of our ability to put our own imprint on what’s going on.” [Continue reading…]

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‘Mark Green’s naked bigotry disqualifies him for the job of Army Secretary’

The Hill reports: A prominent Muslim civil rights group is joining the growing opposition to President Trump’s Army secretary nominee, Mark Green.

Muslim Advocates on Monday issued a statement calling past rhetoric from Green, a Tennessee state senator, against Muslims and the LGBT community “deplorable.”

“You can’t lead a diverse Army while having contempt for diversity,” said Scott Simpson, the group’s public advocacy director.

“Our armed forces are filled with patriotic Americans of all faiths, races, sexual orientations and gender identities, and Mark Green’s naked bigotry disqualifies him for the job of Army Secretary.” [Continue reading…]

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Turns out Trump does not possess a mysterious idiot-savant ability to get his way

T.A. Frank writes: Let’s forget, for the moment, about whether a border wall between the United States and Mexico would be good or bad. Politically, Donald Trump needs it. No promise gained him more enthusiasm during the primaries. Three quarters of Republicans support it. And his base demands it. In a column written immediately after Trump’s election in November, Ann Coulter laid out a hundred-line daily schedule for Trump’s first hundred days that read, “Day 1: Start building the wall. Day 2: Continue building the wall. Day 3: Continue building the wall. Day 4: Continue building the wall,” and continued in this vein until Day 100, which read, “Report to American people about progress of wall. Keep building the wall.”

By the same token, considering politics alone, Democrats must stop the wall. Thwart Trump and he looks weak. You force him to break his signature promise. His agenda stalls. The Hispanic vote moves even more solidly to the left. The Democratic base gets energized, and Trump’s base gets demoralized and stays home in the next couple of elections. It’s cost-free. That’s why Chuck Schumer has spoken of “shutting down the government” if Trump tries to get the wall going.

But the war has been postponed. After initially vowing to insert a request for funding of the wall into a stopgap bill that has to pass this April to avoid a government shutdown, Trump has now backed off. Sean Spicer says Trump’s “priorities have not changed,” but the wall does not seem to be among them for the time being. People are now suggesting Trump has given up on the wall in all but rhetoric. And this would be momentous. If Trump’s wall is dead, then Trump’s presidency is dead. Has it come to this? [Continue reading…]

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House Russia investigators optimistic under Conaway’s leadership

Politico reports: Rep. Mike Conaway, the House’s new top Russia investigator, is telling lawmakers on the Intelligence Committee that they should expect to be in Washington more than usual as the beleaguered probe gets a reboot, panel members said after a closed-door meeting Wednesday.

Committee Democrats welcomed Conaway’s remarks, describing the Texas Republican as a “straight-shooter” who was committed to a thorough, bipartisan investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election, including the possibility of collusion with the Trump campaign.

“Mike Conaway told us this morning, expect to be in D.C. a little more than you might’ve anticipated,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) told reporters, adding that Republicans and Democrats had agreed to a witness list “in the neighborhood of three or four dozen.” He and other committee members declined to say who would be interviewed. [Continue reading…]

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White House discovers ‘there are no good military options’ on North Korea

Fred Kaplan writes: If you had started to think that President Trump and his team might know something about diplomacy after all, that their firm talk and shows of strength might finally prod the Chinese and North Koreans to get rid of Kim Jung-un’s nuclear weapons, well, think again. Trump’s holsters are empty, and so is his brain trust. They’ve got nothing, up and down.

In recent days, Trump has sent an aircraft carrier battle group and a guided-missile submarine toward North Korea’s shores. Vice President Mike Pence has gone to the Demilitarized Zone and squinted through the binoculars at the North Korean guards, so they can see his resolve. Pence also declared, “The era of ‘strategic patience’ ”—President Obama’s policy of containment, as opposed to action, toward North Korea—“is over.” To lay the message on thick, Trump summoned all 100 U.S. senators to the Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, on Wednesday, for an urgent briefing on the subject from the secretaries of defense and state, the director of national intelligence, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of State. Buses were even chartered to take the lawmakers on their unusual field trip.

And what did these top advisers and cabinet secretaries say? Apparently, nothing.

Here’s Sen. Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when asked by a reporter about the briefing: “It was an OK briefing.” The reporter asked, “What do you mean, you didn’t really learn much?” Corker replied, “I—it was OK.”

Other senators, from both parties, told reporters the same thing: They learned nothing new, they wondered what the big deal was, why they were dragged down Pennsylvania Avenue for such a waste of time. [Continue reading…]

The Daily Beast reports: It’s not a sonic boom or bunker buster Pyongyang should most fear from the Trump administration. It’s the sound of cash registers falling silent, and doors to the outside world shutting, as the U.S. works to convince China and other allies to cut off the oil, access to money and perhaps even communication links to the outside world.

That was the word from Trump administration officials Wednesday, explaining a multipronged strategy to defang Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program to lawmakers at the White House and on Capitol Hill. Administration officials made clear that open military confrontation or toppling the Kim regime are the least desirable of all possible options—even as China appeared to hint that it wouldn’t oppose certain American military measures against Pyongyang.

“We want to solve this through political or economic measures,” a senior administration official told The Daily Beast. “There are no good military options.” The official said any unilateral strike would likely lead to a North Korean counter-strike on U.S. allies South Korea and Japan—both within artillery or missile range of North Korea—as well as threatening tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed in the Pacific.

“We want to bring Kim Jong-Un to his senses, not to his knees,” said Adm. Harry Harris, Commander of U.S. Pacific Command, at a House Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday. He repeated the administration mantra that “all options are on the table,” but the tone had decidedly shifted from President Donald Trump’s earlier provocative tweets. [Continue reading…]

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Senate confirms Rosenstein as deputy attorney general

Politico reports: Rod Rosenstein was confirmed as the second-ranking official at the Justice Department on Tuesday, giving him the reins of the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election after Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal last month.

The Senate backed the veteran federal prosecutor as the nation’s deputy attorney general with a 94-6 vote. The chief complaint among the small group of Democrats who opposed Rosenstein was his reluctance to promise to appoint an independent prosecutor to lead the Russia probe.

“He is, in some senses, what we value in the Department of Justice: someone committed to the rule of law,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the most vocal critic of Rosenstein’s nomination. “That’s why I have been surprised and disappointed that he has failed to heed my request.”

Though the duties of the deputy attorney general are broad, Rosenstein was catapulted into the spotlight after Sessions — a top ally of President Donald Trump — stepped aside from any federal probe of Trump’s campaign. Sessions had not disclosed previous communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak despite testifying that he “did not have communications with the Russians” during his confirmation hearing in January. [Continue reading…]

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Flynn may have broken law by not disclosing Russia dealings, lawmakers aay

The New York Times reports: Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser, may have violated federal law by not fully disclosing his business dealings with Russia when seeking a security clearance to work in the administration, the top oversight lawmakers from both parties in the House said Tuesday.

The troubling finding came after Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and chairman of the House oversight committee, and other lawmakers on the panel reviewed classified documents related to Mr. Flynn, including the form he filled out in January 2016 to renew his security clearance, known as a SF-86.

As part of the review, Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the committee’s senior Democrat, said Mr. Flynn did not disclose in those documents payments totaling more than $45,000 he received from the Russian government for giving a speech in Moscow in 2015.

Mr. Chaffetz also said Mr. Flynn appeared to have inappropriately accepted payments from companies linked to Russia without first getting required approval from the Pentagon and the State Department.

“As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else,” Mr. Chaffetz said. “And it appears as if he did take that money. It was inappropriate, and there are repercussions for a violation of law.”

The development shows that Mr. Flynn’s short time as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser continues to be a distraction for the White House, months after he was fired for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey I. Kislyak. In March, Mr. Flynn filed papers acknowledging that he worked as a foreign agent last year representing the Turkish government, causing another uproar.

Mr. Chaffetz and Mr. Cummings also said White House officials refused their request to turn over other internal documents related to the hiring and firing of Mr. Flynn.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday that “to ask for every call or contact that a national security adviser made is pretty outlandish, if you will.”

In a letter to the lawmakers, the White House cited concerns about disclosing classified information with regard to Mr. Flynn’s interactions as national security adviser — adding it simply does not possess the information predating his time in the administration.

“In short, the White House has refused to provide this committee with a single piece of paper in response to our bipartisan request, and that is unacceptable,” Mr. Cummings said.

Mr. Chaffetz said he did not think it would be necessary to subpoena the documents, calling the administration “cooperative” so far. [Continue reading…]

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Congress is trying to give even more power to Hollywood

Mike Masnick writes: On March 23rd, Reps. Bob Goodlatte and John Conyers introduced a controversial bipartisan bill with over 100 years of history behind it, though you wouldn’t know it from its boring name and seemingly boring topic. It’s called the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act of 2017 — the key part is that it makes the Register of Copyright a political position appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. That’s in contrast to the current state of affairs, which has been in existence since the creation of the Copyright Office in 1897.

Right now, the Copyright Office is a part of the Library of Congress, and the head of the office — known as the Register of Copyrights — is appointed by the Librarian of Congress, who, in turn is appointed by the president, and approved by the Senate.

Who cares? Well, you should. This seemingly small change could have a big impact on a variety of different issues concerning how the internet functions. The simple version is that the music and movie industries have always had an uneasy relationship with the internet, and they worry that the Library of Congress might appoint a Register of Copyrights who thinks expanding copyright protections might not be the best thing for the public or individual creators. And one of the best ways to prevent that from happening is to have much more control over who will be in charge of the Copyright Office. The new bill gives the copyright industry the means to do that by lobbying the president and Congress directly.

The long version is a fascinating glimpse at the collision of politics, the internet, and history. [Continue reading…]

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Entire U.S. Senate to go to White House for North Korea briefing

Reuters reports: Top Trump administration officials will hold a rare briefing on Wednesday at the White House for the entire U.S. Senate on the situation in North Korea, senior Senate aides said on Monday.

All 100 senators have been asked to the White House for the briefing by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the aides said.

While top administration officials routinely travel to Capitol Hill to address members of Congress on foreign policy and national security matters, it is unusual for the entire 100-member Senate to go to such an event at the White House, and for those four top officials to be involved. [Continue reading…]

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Senate Trump-Russia probe has no full-time staff, no key witnesses

The Daily Beast reports: The Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe into Russia’s election interference is supposedly the best hope for getting the public credible answers about whether there was any coordination between the Kremlin and Trump Tower.

But there are serious reasons to doubt that it can accomplish this task, as currently configured.

More than three months after the committee announced that it had agreed on the scope of the investigation, the panel has not begun substantially investigating possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, three individuals with ties to the committee told The Daily Beast.

The investigation does not have a single staffer dedicated to it full-time, and those staff members working on it part-time do not have significant investigative experience. The probe currently appears to be moving at a pace slower than prior Senate Intelligence Committee investigations, such as the CIA torture inquiry, which took years to accomplish.

No interviews have been conducted with key individuals suspected of being in the Trump-Russia orbit: not Michael Flynn, not Roger Stone, not Carter Page, not Paul Manafort, and not Jared Kushner, according to two sources familiar with the committee’s procedures. [Continue reading…]

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Mike Conaway emerges from relative obscurity to lead House Russia inquiry

The New York Times reports: President Trump does not know Mike Conaway.

A Republican congressman from a long brush stroke of West Texas, Mr. Conaway recalled meeting with him at the White House with other House Republicans. And he has shaken hands with Mr. Trump, a “standard, 500-people-on-a-rope-line, shaken-hand kind of thing.”

“He wouldn’t know me from third base,” Mr. Conaway said.

Whether he has exchanged pleasantries with the president may not have mattered before, but it does now. Mr. Conaway is taking over the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election. He is replacing Representative Devin Nunes, the California Republican whose suspiciously cozy relationship with Mr. Trump derailed the inquiry before he was ultimately forced to step aside.

Mr. Nunes’s missteps have thrust Mr. Conaway, a low-profile, old-guard Republican, into the spotlight as the accidental heir to a potentially explosive investigation swirling around a president from his own party. He said he would dutifully pursue an extraordinary allegation that he appears to find dubious: that Mr. Trump’s associates may have worked with Russian officials to disrupt the election.

The vow of a vigorous investigation may be reassuring to some, but in Mr. Conaway’s district, many dismiss it as an effort to disparage Mr. Trump. On top of that, Mr. Conaway has never been under the glare of national scrutiny. [Continue reading…]

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Lawmakers demand review of Saudi bombings before massive arms sale

BuzzFeed reports: A bipartisan group of lawmakers is demanding that the Trump administration provide a detailed account of Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign in Yemen, including instances of potential war crimes, before approving the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of precision-guided bombs, BuzzFeed News has learned.

The request, detailed in a letter signed by 31 members of the House of Representatives, could push the United States to disclose sensitive details about when and where the Saudi military ignored Washington’s instructions to avoid targets that resulted in civilian casualties.

Congress must “ensure that the [Royal Saudi Air Force] has the ability to avoid civilian casualties before the U.S. sells them any additional air-to-ground munitions,” said a draft of the letter addressed to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis.

The demand follows a decision by the State Department to resume the sale of precision-guided weapons to Saudi Arabia as the Trump administration beefs up support for the Arab monarchy’s military campaign in Yemen. [Continue reading…]

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Classified docs contradict Nunes surveillance claims, GOP and Dem sources say

CNN reports: After a review of the same intelligence reports brought to light by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal, multiple sources in both parties tell CNN.

Their private assessment contradicts President Donald Trump’s allegations that former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice broke the law by requesting the “unmasking” of US individuals’ identities. Trump had claimed the matter was a “massive story.”

However, over the last week, several members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees have reviewed intelligence reports related to those requests at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

One congressional intelligence source described the requests made by Rice as “normal and appropriate” for officials who serve in that role to the president.

And another source said there’s “absolutely” no smoking gun in the reports, urging the White House to declassify them to make clear there was nothing alarming in the documents. [Continue reading…]

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