Category Archives: US government

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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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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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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Sessions is flagrantly lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador

The New York Times reports: Democrats escalated their demands late Wednesday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions recuse himself from overseeing an investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government after a disclosure that Mr. Sessions himself spoke with the Russian ambassador last year, seemingly contradicting his testimony at his confirmation hearing.

And some Democrats went further, suggesting that Mr. Sessions had perjured himself and demanding that he resign.

“Sessions is not fit to serve as the top law enforcement officer of our country and must resign,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader. “There must be an independent, bipartisan, outside commission to investigate the Trump political, personal and financial connections to the Russians.”

But the Trump administration rejected the accusations as partisan attacks, and Mr. Sessions said in a statement issued shortly before midnight that he had not addressed election matters with the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak.

“I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign,” Mr. Sessions said. “I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.” [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports, “Officials said Sessions did not consider the conversations relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in detail what he discussed with Kislyak.”

This is the definition of obfuscation.

Sessions claims to have a clear recollection of what was not spoken about yet doesn’t recall the actual content of the conversations.

Moreover, his denial of discussing “issues of the campaign” is narrowly circumscribed.

When he says, “I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign,” he appears to be referring to the prearranged purpose of such meetings since it’s reasonable to assume that such officials would not show up unannounced.

Once face to face, however, whether the conversation in parts then pertained to the campaign, that’s a possibility Sessions leaves open and also conveniently obscures with his blanket failure of recollection.

This morning, he continued attempting to weasel his way out of the corner he’s in, mindful perhaps that even inside the Trump administration — but outside the Oval Office — publicly exposed liars can be forced to resign.

NBC News reports:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions denied meeting with any Russian officials during the course of the presidential election to talk about politics, he told NBC News in exclusive remarks early Thursday.

“I have not met with any Russians at any time to discuss any political campaign,” he said, “and those remarks are unbelievable to me and are false. And I don’t have anything else to say about that.”

When asked about the calls by Democrats to recuse himself from investigating any alleged ties between Trump’s surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, Sessions added: “I have said whenever it’s appropriate, I will recuse myself. There’s no doubt about that.”

Since Sessions and his staff claim they’re having trouble piecing together the details about these conversations, perhaps the FBI can help them out through the findings of its counterintelligence investigation on contacts between Russian officials and Sessions.

At the end of the day, what may prove more consequential than the conversations themselves was that then-Senator Sessions, testifying under oath, purposefully misled his fellow Senators.

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Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he later did not disclose

The Washington Post reports: Then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Justice Department officials said, encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign and representatives of Moscow during Sessions’s confirmation hearing to become attorney general.

One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.

The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself. [Continue reading…]

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White House staff told to preserve Russia-related materials

The Associated Press reports: The White House counsel’s office has instructed the president’s aides to preserve materials that could be connected to Russian interference in the 2016 election and related issues, three administration officials said Wednesday.

The memo, sent to White House staff on Tuesday, follows a request from Senate Democrats last week asking the White House — as well as law enforcement agencies — to keep all materials involving contacts that Trump’s administration, campaign and transition team — or anyone acting on their behalf — have had with Russian government officials or their associates. The Senate Intelligence Committee also made a similar request to the White House and agencies.

The three administration officials who confirmed that White House staffers were instructed to comply did so on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the counsel’s office memo publicly. [Continue reading…]

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Much more to the story of the fallen Navy SEAL Trump praised in his speech to Congress

Yochi Dreazen writes: The simmering controversy over the raid flared up again on Tuesday when Trump broke with decades of presidential precedent and blamed the military for the failed operation — and for Owens’s death — rather than taking responsibility himself.

“This was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something they wanted to do,” Trump said. “They came to me, they explained what they wanted to do ― the generals ― who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan.”

As Phillip Carter wrote for Vox, most presidents of both parties have stepped up and accepted blame for failed military operations, regardless of whether they were their fault. Trump, Carter wrote, took a very different path:

Still, Trump’s blunt refusal to accept personal responsibility for the Yemen raid burns because it marks such an incredible betrayal of his office and the awesome responsibility that our president must shoulder, especially in the national security sphere. A president who passes the buck is not one we can trust to lead our military or keep us safe.

The president’s decision to lavish so much attention on Carryn Owens, meanwhile, sparked a torrent of angry responses on Twitter, with critics arguing that he was trying to use her grief for political gain. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian peace talks flounder as participants ask: Where is America?

The Washington Post reports: The vacuum in U.S. policy on Syria is being keenly felt at the latest round of peace talks aimed at negotiating a political solution to the Syrian war — talks that seem destined to wind down this week without meaningful progress.

Five days into a round of discussions intended to take place between delegations representing the Syrian government and the opposition, government and opposition negotiators still have not met. Instead, the talks, due to end Friday, have become snarled in debates about procedures and process without yet addressing the major issues surrounding the remote possibility of finding a political solution to the nearly six-year-old war.

These talks, known as Geneva IV because they represent the fourth round of discussions aimed at securing a political settlement on the basis of a communique drafted in Geneva by the United States and Russia in 2012, are taking place against the backdrop of a new regional balance of power in which Russia has the leading role in Syria.

For the first time, the United States is not taking the initiative in pushing for a negotiated settlement. The rout of rebels from their stronghold in eastern Aleppo in December was a defeat for U.S. policy as well as for the Syrian opposition, and it effectively left a vacuum of U.S. decision-making on Syria that has yet to be filled by the new Trump administration. [Continue reading…]

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The Trump presidency ushers in a new age of militarism

Ishaan Tharoor writes: There’s a facile contention that President Trump — hostile to free trade pacts and skeptical of grand military alliances — is an isolationist, an advocate of American retreat and retrenchment on the global stage. This is not quite true: As Cambridge historian Stephen Wertheim noted earlier this month, “Trump isn’t an isolationist. He is a militarist, something far worse.”

Throughout the election campaign, Trump proclaimed that he would be the military’s president. He repeatedly summoned the ghosts of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and George Patton and spoke in their name. Dumping even more money into defense spending was a key plank of his platform to Make America Great Again, and Trump followed through this week by announcing plans to expand the Pentagon’s already enormous budget by $54 billion — at the apparent expense of other federal agencies, including the State Department.

“Hopefully we’ll never have to use it, but nobody is going to mess with us. Nobody,” Trump said last week. “It will be one of the greatest military buildups in American history.” [Continue reading…]

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In his first address to Congress, Trump demonizes immigrants — with a smile

Betsy Woodruff writes: Donald Trump’s first joint address to Congress was bursting with hope, optimism, and good feelings — except toward immigrants. The president laid out a vision of a country that would be free from vice, crime, poverty, and all other ailments, if only there weren’t so many foreigners.

It was a distillation of one core view Trump has held ever since that fateful escalator ride two summers ago: that immigrants in the U.S. are a net negative, and that the way the U.S. government treats them needs to change, and fast. The media and the “special interests,” he hinted darkly, are conspiring to keep Americans from knowing the truth about the threat immigrants pose. But soon, things will be different.

“I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American Victims,” he said. “The office is called VOICE — Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests.” [Continue reading…]

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Passing the buck, Trump blames SEAL’s death on military: ‘They lost Ryan’

Huffington Post reports: President Donald Trump on Tuesday dodged responsibility for a botched mission he ordered in Yemen last month, placing the onus on the military and Barack Obama’s administration instead.

Bill Owens, the father of Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens, the Navy SEAL who died in the operation, demanded an investigation into his son’s death over the weekend. Owens further revealed he couldn’t bear to meet Trump at the airport as Ryan’s casket was carried off the military plane last month.

Asked about the matter during an interview with Fox News’ “Fox ‘n’ Friends,” Trump repeatedly said “they” were responsible for the outcome of the mission, in reference to the military.

“This was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something they wanted to do,” he said. “They came to me, they explained what they wanted to do ― the generals ― who are very respected, my generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan.

“I can understand people saying that. I’d feel ― ‘What’s worse?’ There’s nothing worse,” he added. “This was something that they were looking at for a long time doing, and according to [Defense Secretary Jim] Mattis it was a very successful mission. They got tremendous amounts of information.”


The raid yielded no significant intelligence, U.S. officials told NBC News on Monday. Earlier this month, however, Pentagon officials said it produced “actionable intelligence.” So, too, did White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who initially called the raid “highly successful.” [Continue reading…]

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FBI had an agreement to compensate former British spy whose investigations resulted in the Trump dossier

The Washington Post reports: The former British spy who authored a controversial dossier on behalf of Donald Trump’s political opponents alleging ties between Trump and Russia reached an agreement with the FBI a few weeks before the election for the bureau to pay him to continue his work, according to several people familiar with the arrangement.

The agreement to compensate former MI6 agent Christopher Steele came as U.S. intelligence agencies reached a consensus that the Russians had interfered in the presidential election by orchestrating hacks of Democratic Party email accounts.

While Trump has derided the dossier as “fake news” compiled by his political opponents, the FBI’s arrangement with Steele shows that bureau investigators considered him credible and found his line of inquiry to be worthy of pursuit.

Ultimately, the FBI did not pay Steele. Communications between the bureau and the former spy were interrupted as Steele’s now-famous dossier became the subject of news stories, congressional inquiries and presidential denials, according to the people familiar with the arrangement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. [Continue reading…]

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Democrats invite immigrants and refugees to Trump’s first speech to Congress

McClatchy reports: It took Sil Ganzo a moment to grasp what Rep. Alma Adams was saying.

Ganzo, founder and executive director of ourBRIDGE for kids, thought that Adams’ telephone call was an inquiry to learn more about the organization that provides an after-school program a welcoming environment to immigrant and refugee children from around the globe.

But it was about her background and history.

“I am what it means to be an immigrant,” she said. “I was born and raised in Argentina and I came here with nothing more than a dream. There were people who encouraged me to go for it. I improved my English and, here I am, doing what I always wanted to do. And now I feel it’s my responsibility to do that for others.”

Adams, D-N.C., invited Ganzo to be her guest inside the House of Representatives chamber Tuesday night for President Donald Trump’s first address to Congress.

Adams joins other congressional Democrats in bringing immigrants, refugees or advocates to Trump’s speech to protest his actions on immigration. Rep. Marc Veasey of Fort Worth, Texas, has invited two Syrian refugees in a show of defiance against Trump’s temporary ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.

And freshman Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California has invited Yuriana Aguilar – a Mexican-born University of California, Merced, alumnus, who was brought to the U.S. when she was a child – to be her guest for Trump’s prime-time speech. Aguilar is now an instructor in the department of physiology and biophysics at Rush Medical College in Chicago. Her research focuses on the human heart. [Continue reading…]

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He’s a local pillar in a Trump town. Now he could be deported

The New York Times reports: Ask residents of this coal-mining crossroads about President Trump’s decision to crack down on undocumented immigrants and most offer no protest. Mr. Trump, who easily won this mostly white southern Illinois county, is doing what he promised, they say. As Terry Chambers, a barber on Main Street, put it, the president simply wants “to get rid of the bad eggs.”

But then they took Carlos.

Juan Carlos Hernandez Pacheco — just Carlos to the people of West Frankfort — has been the manager of La Fiesta, a Mexican restaurant in this city of 8,000, for a decade. Yes, he always greeted people warmly at the cheerfully decorated restaurant, known for its beef and chicken fajitas. And, yes, he knew their children by name. But people here tick off more things they know Carlos for.

How one night last fall, when the Fire Department was battling a two-alarm blaze, Mr. Hernandez suddenly appeared with meals for the firefighters. How he hosted a Law Enforcement Appreciation Day at the restaurant last summer as police officers were facing criticism around the country. How he took part in just about every community committee or charity effort — the Rotary Club, cancer fund-raisers, cleanup days, even scholarships for the Redbirds, the high school sports teams, which are the pride of this city.

“I think people need to do things the right way, follow the rules and obey the laws, and I firmly believe in that,” said Lori Barron, the owner of Lori’s Hair A’Fairs, a beauty salon. “But in the case of Carlos, I think he may have done more for the people here than this place has ever given him. I think it’s absolutely terrible that he could be taken away.” [Continue reading…]

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