Category Archives: 2016 President Election

How Trump energized the extremists who dream of making America white again

Southern Poverty Law Center reports: After half a century of being increasingly relegated to the margins of society, the radical right entered the political mainstream last year in a way that had seemed virtually unimaginable since George Wallace ran for president in 1968.

A surge in right-wing populism, stemming from the long-unfolding effects of globalization and the movements of capital and labor that it spawned, brought a man many considered to be a racist, misogynist and xenophobe into the most powerful political office in the world. Donald Trump’s election as president mirrored similar currents in Europe, where globalization energized an array of extreme-right political movements and the United Kingdom’s decision to quit the European Union.

Trump’s run for office electrified the radical right, which saw in him a champion of the idea that America is fundamentally a white man’s country.

He kicked off the campaign with a speech vilifying Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers. He retweeted white supremacist messages, including one that falsely claimed that black people were responsible for 80% of the murders of whites. He credentialed racist media personalities even while barring a serious outlet like The Washington Post, went on a radio show hosted by a rabid conspiracy theorist named Alex Jones, and said that Muslims should be banned from entering the country. He seemed to encourage violence against black protesters at his rallies, suggesting that he would pay the legal fees of anyone charged as a result.

The reaction to Trump’s victory by the radical right was ecstatic. “Our Glorious Leader has ascended to God Emperor,” wrote Andrew Anglin, who runs the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website. “Make no mistake about it: we did this. If it were not for us, it wouldn’t have been possible.” Jared Taylor, a white nationalist who edits a racist journal, said that “overwhelmingly white Americans” had shown they were not “obedient zombies” by choosing to vote “for America as a distinct nation with a distinct people who deserve a government devoted to that people.”

Richard Spencer, who leads a racist “think tank” called the National Policy Institute, exulted that “Trump’s victory was, at its root, a victory of identity politics.”

Trump’s election, as startling to extremists as it was to the political establishment, was followed by his selection of appointees with anti-Muslim, anti-LGBT and white nationalist sympathies. To lead his domestic transition team, he chose Kenneth Blackwell, an official of the virulently anti-LGBT Family Research Council. As national security adviser, he selected retired Gen. Mike Flynn, who has described Islam as a “malignant cancer” and tweeted that “[f]ear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” His designated CIA director was U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), who is close to some of the country’s most rabid anti-Muslim extremists.

Most remarkable of all was his choice as chief strategic adviser of Stephen Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, a far-right media outlet known for promoting the so-called “alternative right” — fundamentally, a recent rebranding of white supremacy for public relations purposes, albeit one that de-emphasizes Klan robes and Nazi symbols in favor of a more “intellectual” approach. With Bannon’s appointment, white nationalists felt they had a man inside the White House. [Continue reading…]

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Why Flynn’s resignation matters

David Frum writes: Stop talking about the Logan Act.

It was not the violation of this antique and ignored piece of anti-Jacobin legislation that has touched off the biggest foreign-policy scandal since Watergate.

Nobody would care if an incoming national security adviser had confidential conversations with an ambassador of a hostile foreign government before Inauguration Day, if it were believed that the conversations served a legitimate and disinterested public purpose.

But that is exactly what is doubted in this case.

To put the story in simplest terms:

1) Russian spies hacked Democratic Party communications in order to help elect Donald Trump.

2) Donald Trump welcomed the help, used it, publicly solicited more of it—and was then elected president of the United States.

3) President Obama sanctioned Russia for its pro-Trump espionage.

4) While Russia considered its response, its ambassador spoke with the national security adviser-designate about the sanctions

5) The adviser, Flynn, reportedly asked Russia not to overreact, signaling that the new administration would review the sanctions; Russia did not respond.

6) As president-elect and then president, Donald Trump has indicated that he seeks to lift precisely those sanctions caused by Russia’s espionage work on his behalf.

All of this takes place against the background of Donald Trump’s seeming determination to align U.S. foreign policy ever closer to Russia’s: endorsing the annexation of Crimea, supporting Russia’s war aims in Syria, casting doubt on the U.S. guarantee to NATO allies, cheering on the breakup of the European Union. [Continue reading…]

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Trump campaign aides had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence

The New York Times reports: Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time that they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.

But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.

The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian side, the contacts also included members of the Russian government outside of the intelligence services, the officials said. All of the current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the continuing investigation is classified.

The officials said that one of the advisers picked up on the calls was Paul Manafort, who was Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman for several months last year and had worked as a political consultant in Russia and Ukraine. The officials declined to identify the other Trump associates on the calls. [Continue reading…]

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Trump knew Flynn misled officials on Russia calls for ‘weeks,’ White House says

The Washington Post reports: President Trump was aware for “weeks” that his national security adviser Michael Flynn had misled White House officials and Vice President Pence about his talks with the Russian ambassador before Flynn was forced to resign on Monday night.

During a briefing with White House Counsel Don McGahn late last month, Trump learned that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak despite his claims to the contrary. The briefing came “immediately” after McGahn was informed about the discrepancy by the Department of Justice, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday.

Sally Yates, the acting attorney general at the time, and a senior career national security official at the Justice Department had informed McGahn at his office about their concerns on Jan. 26, according to a person familiar with the briefing. Spicer said that the president and a small group of senior aides were briefed by McGahn about Flynn that same day. [Continue reading…]

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Top Republican senators say Congress should probe Flynn situation

The Washington Post reports: Top Republican senators said Tuesday that Congress should probe the circumstances leading up to the resignation of Michael Flynn as President Trump’s national security adviser, opening a new and potentially uncomfortable chapter in the uneasy relationship between Trump and congressional Republicans.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), vice chairman of the Senate GOP Conference and a member of the Intelligence Committee, said lawmakers ought to look at the matter as part of an existing probe into Russian meddling in the United States political system — a sensitive topic that has lingered over Republicans since Trump’s election win.

“I think in all likelihood it should be part of the intel committee’s review of what’s happened with Russia, yes,” said Blunt. He added that he “certainly wasn’t kept informed” about the situation surrounding Flynn.

Blunt’s comments came at a tense moment when congressional Republicans are finding it increasingly difficult to defend Trump after a tempestuous start to his term has stoked frustration, fatigue and fear on Capitol Hill. [Continue reading…]

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Trump kept Flynn close even after warning that his national security adviser was vulnerable to blackmail

The Washington Post reports: The acting attorney general informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail, current and former U.S. officials said.

The message, delivered by Sally Q. Yates and a senior career national security official to the White House counsel, was prompted by concerns that ­Flynn, when asked about his calls and texts with the Russian diplomat, had told Vice ­President-elect Mike Pence and others that he had not discussed the Obama administration sanctions on Russia for its interference in the 2016 election, the officials said. It is unclear what the White House counsel, Donald McGahn, did with the information.

Flynn resigned Monday night in the wake of revelations about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, shared Yates’s concerns and concurred with her recommendation to inform the Trump White House. They feared that “Flynn had put himself in a compromising position” and thought that Pence had a right to know that he had been misled, according to one of the officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

A senior Trump administration official said before Flynn’s resignation that the White House was aware of the matter, adding that “we’ve been working on this for weeks.”

The current and former officials said that although they believed that Pence was misled about the contents of Flynn’s communications with the Russian ambassador, they couldn’t rule out that Flynn was acting with the knowledge of others in the transition. [Continue reading…]

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Russians and alt right call Flynn’s forced resignation a ‘coup’ undermining Russia-U.S. relations

IBT reports: The resignation of President Trump’s pro-Russia National Security Adviser has sent a shudder through Russia’s political class who are commenting that the move will damage already fragile US-Russia relations further.

“This is kind of a negative signal for the establishment of the Russian-American dialogue,” said Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the lower committee on international affairs in Russia’s parliament. Trump’s adviser, retired general Michael Flynn resigned late on Monday just three weeks into the new administration.

“It’s obvious that Flynn was forced to write the letter of resignation under a certain amount of pressure,” Slutsky told Russian state newswire TASS.

Slutsky called the forced resignation “provocative” and that Flynn had been targeted to harm “Russia-US relations, undermining confidence in the new US administration,” he said. [Continue reading…]

RT reports: The GOP elite, the Democrats and mainstream media couldn’t stop Donald Trump from becoming president, so now they have a coup, says lawyer and filmmaker Mike Cernovich. Michael Flynn’s resignation is a huge victory for them, he adds. [Continue reading…]

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Stephen Miller: ‘the powers of the president … will not be questioned’

 

Univision News: Some of the students who knew Miller in high school said he had no interests other than radical politics, and that he always seemed unhappy.

“He had a lot of grudges. He didn’t go out of his way to go to dances or to have girlfriends,” de la Torre said. “I don’t remember ever seeing him smile.”

The Atlantic: “Miller had two very well earned reputations: as an aggressive self-promoter and as a bomb thrower,” said one friend of Miller’s from Duke who holds him in high regard and requested anonymity for professional reasons. “He was extremely effective at both. He sustained himself on liberal tears and hysteria. Some Duke [College Republicans] used to call him the ‘Miller Outrage Machine.’ You might say he was the Trump campaign 10 years before the Trump campaign.”

 

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Will Flynn go quietly?

The New York Times reports: These are chaotic and anxious days inside the National Security Council, the traditional center of management for a president’s dealings with an uncertain world.

Three weeks into the Trump administration, council staff members get up in the morning, read President Trump’s Twitter posts and struggle to make policy to fit them. Most are kept in the dark about what Mr. Trump tells foreign leaders in his phone calls. Some staff members have turned to encrypted communications to talk with their colleagues, after hearing that Mr. Trump’s top advisers are considering an “insider threat” program that could result in monitoring cellphones and emails for leaks.

The national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, has hunkered down since investigators began looking into what, exactly, he told the Russian ambassador to the United States about the lifting of sanctions imposed in the last days of the Obama administration, and whether he misled Vice President Mike Pence about those conversations. His survival in the job may hang in the balance.

Although Mr. Trump suggested to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday that he was unaware of the latest questions swirling around Mr. Flynn’s dealings with Russia, aides said over the weekend in Florida — where Mr. Flynn accompanied the president and Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe — that Mr. Trump was closely monitoring the reaction to Mr. Flynn’s conversations. There are transcripts of a conversation in at least one phone call, recorded by American intelligence agencies that wiretap foreign diplomats, which may determine Mr. Flynn’s future. [Continue reading…]

Increasingly, the question seems not to be if Flynn will go, but how he will go?

As a top official dumped by two administrations, he’s quite likely to feel victimized and thus bitter — and perhaps therefore sooner or later willing to go public with a damning and detailed portrait of the dysfunctionality of the Trump administration.

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‘The knives are out for Flynn,’ says Trump administration official

The Washington Post reports: White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is under increasing political pressure and risks losing the confidence of some colleagues following reports that he misled senior administration officials about his discussion of sanctions with a Russian envoy shortly before President Trump took office.

As White House aides scramble to get their stories straight about the exact nature of those communications and as Democrats call for Flynn’s security clearance to be suspended or revoked, neither Trump nor his advisers have publicly defended Flynn or stated unequivocally that he has the president’s confidence.

Privately, some administration officials said that Flynn’s position has weakened and support for him has eroded largely because of a belief that he was disingenuous about Russia and therefore could not be fully trusted going forward.

“The knives are out for Flynn,” said one administration official who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly.

On Sunday, the top White House aide dispatched to represent the administration on the political talk shows pointedly declined to defend Flynn. [Continue reading…]

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Michael Flynn’s deceptions present bigger problem than violation of the Logan Act

David Ignatius writes: Michael Flynn’s real problem isn’t the Logan Act, an obscure and probably unenforceable 1799 statute that bars private meddling in foreign policy disputes. It’s whether President Trump’s national security adviser sought to hide from his colleagues and the nation a pre-inauguration discussion with the Russian government about sanctions that the Obama administration was imposing.

“It’s far less significant if he violated the Logan Act and far more significant if he willfully misled this country,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, in a telephone interview late Friday. “Why would he conceal the nature of the call unless he was conscious of wrongdoing?”

Schiff said the FBI and congressional intelligence committees should investigate whether Flynn discussed with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in late December the imminent imposition of sanctions, and whether he encrypted any of those communications in what might have been an effort to avoid monitoring. Schiff said that if some conversations were recorded by U.S. intelligence agencies, “we should be able to rapidly tell if Gen. Flynn was being truthful” when he told Vice President Pence and other colleagues that sanctions weren’t discussed. [Continue reading…]

Flynn’s ongoing obfuscation around the content of his conversations would appear to be a delaying tactic driven by the fact that he doesn’t know how much more detail in his exchanges might soon be leaked.

It’s also, no doubt, a product of the reliable expectation that in a political climate flooded with too many controversies for the media to closely track, the Flynn story is likely to get overshadowed by yet another drama.

The 24/7 Trump soap opera is effective in both sickening and exhausting an audience that will soon transition from interminable distraction to mass catatonia.

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White House rocked by Flynn’s overtures to Russia

Foreign Policy reports: Bombshell revelations about National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s potentially illegal conversations with the Russian ambassador have sullied his credibility, jeopardized his status in the White House, and fueled suspicions that the Trump administration is intent on appeasing a resurgent Moscow.

The episode — in which Flynn reportedly chatted with the Russian ambassador about the possibility of lifting sanctions on Moscow before President Donald Trump took office — reinforces growing concerns among lawmakers in Congress and European allies about Trump’s apparently unshakable affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

With Flynn already mired in a power struggle with the president’s chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, and other officials, the embarrassing incident threatens to further undercut his influence and bolster Bannon’s role. [Continue reading…]

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CIA freezes out top aide as Flynn seen waging ‘a jihad against the intelligence community’

Politico reports: A top deputy to National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was rejected for a critical security clearance, effectively ending his tenure on the National Security Council and escalating tensions between Flynn and the intelligence community.

The move came as Flynn’s already tense relationships with others in the Trump administration and the intelligence community were growing more fraught after reports that Flynn had breached diplomatic protocols in his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

On Friday, one of Flynn’s closest deputies on the National Security Council, senior director for Africa Robin Townley, was informed that the Central Intelligence Agency had rejected his request for an elite security clearance required for service on the NSC, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

That forced Townley, a former Marine intelligence officer who had long maintained a top secret-level security clearance, out of his NSC post, explained the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.

One of the sources said that the rejection was approved by Trump’s CIA director Mike Pompeo and that it infuriated Flynn and his allies. [Continue reading…]

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Flynn holds call with Pence amid calls for national security adviser’s resignation

The Washington Post reports: National security adviser Michael Flynn spoke privately with Vice President Pence on Friday in an apparent attempt to contain the fallout from the disclosure that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with that country’s ambassador and then allowed Pence and other White House officials to publicly deny that he had done so, an administration official said.

The conversations took place as senior Democrats in Congress called for existing investigations of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to expand in scope to scrutinize Flynn’s contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak weeks before the Trump administration took office.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that if the allegations are proved, Flynn should step down. [Continue reading…]

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On Air Force One, Trump flies into the cloud of unknowing

Trump didn’t know about Flynn’s conversations about sanctions with Russia’s ambassador and neither did Pence. Flynn himself can’t remember, and the FBI and intelligence agencies listening in couldn’t decipher the true significance of what may or may not have been said. It’s all a deep, deep, mystery.

It’s Friday. Surely by Monday the media will also have forgotten about this story.

CNN reports: President Donald Trump said Friday afternoon he was unaware of reports that his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, may have spoken about sanctions with the Russian ambassador before the inauguration.

Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, said he will “look into that.”

A US official confirmed to CNN late Friday afternoon that Flynn and the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, did speak about sanctions, among other matters, during the call.

The context of Flynn’s side of the conversation wasn’t clear, even to the FBI and intelligence agencies that reviewed the content, and there’s nothing to indicate that Flynn made any promises or acted improperly in the discussion.

Flynn cannot rule out that he spoke to Kislyak about sanctions, an aide close to the national security adviser said earlier Friday.

Flynn, the aide said, has “no recollection of discussing sanctions,” but added that the national security adviser “couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

Earlier Friday, a senior White House adviser told CNN that Vice President Mike Pence did not know that Flynn may have discussed sanctions in the December conversation and believes “it’s a problem.”

Three administration officials said Pence only knew what Flynn told him — that he had not talked about sanctions — before Pence stood before cameras last month and vouched for Flynn. One official said Pence was trying to “get to the bottom of it,” and two senior administration officials said Pence was “very intentional” in asking Flynn about his communication with the Russians before speaking to the media.

A source with knowledge of the situation told CNN the only reason Flynn hasn’t been fired is that the White House doesn’t want to look bad. Adding to Flynn’s problems, the source said, is that this latest revelation reflects poorly on Pence. [Continue reading…]

Indeed, it is of the utmost importance that Trump and those around him maintain their flawless reputations.

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The man who could make Marine Le Pen president of France

Angelique Chrisafis writes: On the night of the US election, Florian Philippot, the closest adviser to the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, was watching the results from his apartment on the Left Bank in Paris. Before dawn, when Donald Trump’s victory was not yet official but the liberal establishment was beginning to panic, he tweeted: “Their world is crumbling. Ours is being built.”

Around 8am, Philippot phoned Le Pen to discuss the good news. She was in a jubilant mood at the headquarters of her party – the nationalist, anti-immigration Front National – preparing to deliver a speech congratulating Trump. His victory, on promises of trade protectionism and the closing of borders, looked like a major boost to her presidential campaign. Meanwhile, a car arrived to take Philippot, the party’s vice-president, to the village of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, 250km from Paris, to lay a wreath at the tomb of France’s great postwar leader, General Charles de Gaulle.

Trump’s victory happened to coincide with the anniversary of the death of de Gaulle, who led the French resistance against Nazi Germany. Philippot idolises de Gaulle: his office, which adjoins Le Pen’s, is plastered with de Gaulle memorabilia – one of many things that sets him apart as an oddity in a party that has long regarded de Gaulle as a traitor for allowing the former French colony of Algeria its independence.

Philippot’s elite credentials should have been another strike against him within a party that proclaims its loathing of the establishment. A graduate of the exclusive Ecole Nationale d’Administration, which produces presidents and prime ministers, Philippot didn’t start out in the Front National in the traditional way – driving around the countryside sticking election posters to fences. Philippot is also gay, in a party whose co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen once called homosexuality “a biological and social anomaly”. And yet, at 35, he has become the voice of the party, its media star, and the first to claim Trump’s victory as a sign of a new world order. [Continue reading…]

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Moscow spy scandal snowballs: What we know

RFE/RL reports: The murky investigation of Russian intelligence officers reportedly facing treason charges has taken a fresh turn, with the Interfax news agency quoting unnamed sources as saying that two suspects are accused of collaborating with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The news, unverified and uncorroborated, is the latest in a growing number of remarkable leaks that hint at possible struggles and hidden agendas inside Russia’s formidable security apparatus.

To date, not a single Russian official or law enforcement agency has commented on the record about the reported case against the Federal Security Service (FSB) officers, identified as Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitry Dokuchayev, and other alleged accomplices.

Instead, numerous Russian media citing anonymous sources have reported the suspects may be tied to hackers targeting the Russian elite and may have disclosed information related to cyberattacks targeting the U.S. election system.

These reports come on the heels of an assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies in early January concluding that Russia orchestrated a hacking campaign aimed at helping President Donald Trump defeat his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in the election.

The anonymous sources have not expressly linked the reported accusations against Mikhailov and Dokuchayev to the breaches of Democratic Party servers, though the Novaya Gazeta newspaper has reported there may be links to attacks on U.S. state-electoral systems. [Continue reading…]

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Top Russian cybercrimes agent arrested on charges of treason

The New York Times reports: A senior official in the Russian cyberintelligence department that American officials say oversaw last year’s election hacking has been arrested in Moscow on charges of treason, a Russian newspaper reported Wednesday.

The arrest of Sergei Mikhailov, a senior officer of the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., the main successor agency to the K.G.B., is a rare instance of turmoil in the country’s usually shadowy cybersecurity apparatus slipping into public view.

Mr. Mikhailov served in the F.S.B.’s Center for Information Security, the agency’s cyberintelligence branch, which has been implicated in the American election hacking. But it is not clear whether the arrest was related to those intrusions.

He was detained along with one of Russia’s leading private-sector cybersecurity experts, Ruslan Stoyanov, the head of computer incident response investigations at the Kaspersky Lab, which makes antivirus programs.

The company confirmed in a statement that Mr. Stoyanov had been arrested, but said his arrest “has nothing to do with Kaspersky Lab and its operations.”

Still, the arrests of the men, who had cooperated in Russia to prosecute cybercriminals, shed light on the intersection of cybercrime, private antivirus companies and the Russian security services. [Continue reading…]

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