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Jeff Sessions Used Political Funds for Republican Convention Expenses, Where He Talked to Russian Ambassador

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The Trump administration says Attorney General Jeff Sessions was acting as a then-U.S. senator when he talked to Russia’s ambassador at an event during last year’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland, but Sessions paid for convention travel expenses out of his own political funds and he spoke about Donald Trump’s campaign at the event, according to a person at the event and campaign-finance records.

Sessions made comments related to Trump’s presidential campaign at a Heritage Foundation event during the Republican convention in July, when he met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, according to a person at the event in Cleveland.

Sessions on Thursday said he would recuse himself from involvement in any probe related to the 2016 presidential campaign, following disclosures that he met with the Russian ambassador during the convention, and later in his Senate office in Washington.

Sessions on Thursday said he would recuse himself from involvement in any probe related to the 2016 presidential campaign, following disclosures that he met with the Russian ambassador during the convention, and later in his Senate office in Washington.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

(h/t MarketWatch)

Sessions Spoke with Russian Ambassador Twice During Trump’s Campaign

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke twice with Russia’s ambassador to the United States last year, the Washington Post reported Wednesday, raising new questions about contact between Trump campaign officials and the Kremlin.

Sessions, a former Republican senator from Alabama, did not disclose the contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during his confirmation hearings, testifying under oath that he “did not have communications with the Russians.”

The contacts are coming under scrutiny because Sessions endorsed President Trump early in his presidential bid, stumping and introducing him at campaign rallies, and officially joined the Trump campaign last February.

A spokeswoman for Sessions confirmed the contact with Kislyak, saying the attorney general spoke on the phone with the ambassador from his office in September. That conversation took place during the time when intelligence officials assert that Russia was interfering with the U.S. presidential election through a hacking and influence campaign.

In July, Sessions attended a Heritage Foundation event at Republican National Convention that was attended by some 50 ambassadors. A small group of ambassadors, including Kislyak, approached Sessions and talked to him informally, the Justice Department official told the Washington Post.

“It was short and informal,” spokeswoman Sara Isgur Flores told the Wall Street Journal.

Flores said Sessions spoke to Kislyak in his capacity as a member of the Armed Services Committee, not as a Trump surrogate, and was not trying to mislead fellow senators when he said during his confirmation hearing that he had not had contacts with Moscow.

Later Wednesday night, Sessions said in a statement: “I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign. I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”

During his confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked what he would do if he learned a member of Trump’s campaign had communicated with the Russian government over the course of the 2016 campaign. He responded: “I’m not aware of any of those activities. … I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

Officials said Sessions did not consider his conversations with Kislyak relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember the discussion with Kislyak in detail. And as a senior member of the committee, he regularly met foreign ambassadors, his spokeswoman said.

“There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer,” Flores said.

The Post asked the 26 other members of the Senate Armed Services Committee whether they had met with Kislyak last year. Of the 20 who responded, all said no.

Democrats quickly seized on the revelation to amplify their demand that Sessions recuse himself from any federal investigations into contacts between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) went so far as to call for the attorney general to resign.

“When Senator Sessions testified under oath that ‘I did not have communications with the Russians,’ his statement was demonstrably false, yet he let it stand for weeks — and he continued to let it stand even as he watched the President tell the entire nation he didn’t know anything about anyone advising his campaign talking to the Russians,” Cummings said in a written statement.

Democrats had already floated the idea of a special prosecutor to investigate the Trump-Russia ties. Those calls are certain to grow louder now that Sessions has admitted contact with the same Russian official who spoke with Michael Flynn, the former White House national security adviser who resigned after misleading Vice President Pence about discussions with Kislyak.

At least one Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, on Wednesday evening echoed Democrats in saying a special prosecutor might be necessary.

“There may be nothing there,” Graham said in a CNN town hall event. “But if there is something there, that the FBI believes is criminal in nature, then for sure you need a special prosecutor.”

“If there were contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, they may be legitimate; they may be OK. I want to know what happened between the Trump campaign, the Clinton campaign and the Russians.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday evening that the FBI has examined the contacts that Sessions had with Russian officials while he was a Trump campaign adviser. It’s not clear whether the probe of Sessions’s contacts is ongoing or what its outcome was, according to the report.

Flores said Sessions was not aware his communications had been subject to FBI scrutiny.

As attorney general, Sessions oversees the FBI.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who asked Sessions about Russia connections during his confirmation hearings, said he was “troubled” by the report.

“If it’s true that Attorney General Sessions met with the Russian ambassador in the midst of the campaign, then I am very troubled that his response to my questioning during his confirmation hearing was, at best, misleading,” Franken told the Washington Post in a statement on Wednesday.

The new report comes on the heels of the Flynn controversy and continued concerns over potential connections between Trump allies and Russia.

Flynn stepped down after it was reported that he had discussed U.S. sanctions with Kislyak in December of 2016, ahead of Trump’s inauguration, and misled top officials including Vice President Mike Pence about the details.

Trump has repeatedly denied that his campaign staff was in contact with Russian officials, calling it “fake news.”

“I have nothing to do with Russia. I told you, I have no deals there, I have no anything,” Trump said at a press conference last month.

(h/t The Hill)

FCC Puts Data Security Protections on Hold

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As expected the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday voted 2-1 along party lines to stop a new data security rule from taking effect.

The rule would have required internet service providers to take “reasonable” measures to protect consumers’ personal data.

It was part of a bigger set of privacy regulation, approved by the FCC in October, that’s supposed to protect consumers’ sensitive personal information online. The rules have been controversial because they establish stricter requirements for broadband and wireless companies than they do for other internet companies, such as Google or Facebook, which also collect user information and are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai signaled last week his intention for the full FCC to vote on pausing the rollout of the rule. He and acting Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Maureen Ohlhausen issued a joint statement arguing that the FTC, and not the FCC, should regulate all privacy and data security and privacy practices online.

“All actors in the online space should be subject to the same rules, enforced by the same agency,” they said in the statement.

In January, several telecom and cable industry groups filed petitions challenging the rules. The data security rule was supposed to go into effect on March 2. Today’s vote puts the new rules on hold until the FCC votes on a reconsideration of them.

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, the only Democrat on the commission, criticized the move in a statement. She called the move a “proxy” for gutting the FCC’s full set of privacy regulation, and stated that consumers would be left vulnerable.

“If a provider simply decides not to adequately protect a customer’s information and does not notify them when a breach inevitably occurs, there will be no recompense as a matter of course,” Clyburn wrote.

This is the latest move by the Republican-led FCC to kill controversial regulations pushed by former Democratic Chairman Tom Wheeler. Pai has already closed consideration of rules to reform the cable set-top box market. He also reversed several other consumer-protection orders, reports and proceedings that were adopted in the final weeks of Wheeler’s FCC. This included telling nine companies they won’t be allowed to participate in the federal Lifeline program. Lifeline’s purpose is to provide low-cost broadband access to low-income consumers. Pai wants to reverse these orders and reports because they were decreed at the last minute by a departing administration.

Meanwhile, Pai has already begun to take steps to dismantle net neutrality. At the FCC’s open meeting last week, he led the vote to expand the number of companies that receive exemptions to parts of the net neutrality rules.

In opposition, Democrats in the Senate, including Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Al Franken of Minnesota, have vowed to fight to protect the privacy and net neutrality rules. In a statement, Markey said this was just the beginning of Pai’s efforts to dismantle many consumer protections.

“Chairman Pai has fired his opening salvo in the war on the Open Internet Order, and broadband privacy protections are the first victim,” he said. “This carve out for the broadband industry will make consumers’ information more vulnerable to breaches and unauthorized use.”

(h/t CNet)

Trump Suggests Jewish Center Threats Are ‘To Make People Look Bad’

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President Trump reportedly told state attorneys general that bomb threats to Jewish community centers and other anti-Semitic attacks may be coming from the “reverse.”

In interviews with Buzzfeed and Billy Penn, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said that the president told the officials on Tuesday that the threats could be “to make people … look bad.”

Shapiro, a Democrat, noted that Trump denounced the threats in general, calling them “reprehensible.”

“Hopefully, he’ll clarify a bit more about what he means about the reverse possibly being true,” Shapiro said, according to Philly.com.

Shapiro later said in a statement that he didn’t know what the president meant by the “reverse” statement.

“But I am grateful that the president took the time to meet with the attorney generals and was willing to take questions from us,” he said. “I asked my question because we need a strong commitment that the U.S. Department of Justice will work with the states to help find and prosecute the individuals responsible for these acts of hate.”

More than 100 Jewish sites have received threats this year. On Monday alone, there were bomb threats to 23 community centers and eight Jewish day schools, according to the JCC Association of North America.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci, tweeted, “It’s not yet clear who the #JCC offenders are.” He then pointed to a Breitbart News story from 2016 that claimed Democrats were inciting violence at Trump campaign rallies.

The Democratic National Committee said in a statement that the president questioning the threats was “beyond the pale.”

The president is expected to address anti-Semitism during his joint address to Congress on Tuesday night, CNN reported.

(h/t USA Today)

Betsy DeVos Press Release Celebrates Jim Crow Education System as Pioneer of “School Choice”

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Donald Trump met Monday at the White House with the leaders of a number of historically black colleges and universities. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos commemorated the meeting with one of the more bonkers statements you will ever see a 21st century politician make, somehow twisting an attempt to bring up her pet issue of school choice into praise for the segregated higher education system of the Jim Crow South:

First of all, it sounds like a seventh-grader wrote this, which is perhaps what happens when you put someone who has never really had a real job in charge of the Department of Education. Second, this official 2017 federal government press release celebrates legal segregation (!!!) on the grounds that the Jim Crow education system gave black students “more options,” as if there was a robust competition between HBCUs and white universities for their patronage. (When black Mississippian James Meredith chose the “option” of enrolling at the University of Mississippi in 1962, a massive white mob formed on the campus; two people were shot to death and hundreds injured in the ensuing battle/riot, during which federal marshals came under heavy gunfire, requiring the ultimate intervention of 20,000 U.S. soldiers and thousands more National Guardsmen.)

DeVos is delivering the keynote address Tuesday at an HBCU event at the Library of Congress. Should be interesting.

(h/t Slate)

 

Trump Signs Executive Order to Roll Back Clean Water Rule

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President Trump’s newest executive orders target a water-protection rule and elevate an initiative on historically black colleges and universities into the White House.

Trump signed the executive orders in back-to-back signing ceremonies at the White House on Tuesday. The first seeks to undo the Waters of the United States Rule, an Obama administration regulation that sought to reinterpret the Clean Water Act to extend federal protections to smaller rivers and streams.

In a Roosevelt Room ceremony with farmers and lawmakers, Trump called the rule “one of the worst examples of federal regulation” and said “it has truly run amok.”

At issue: the definition of “navigable waters” under the Clean Water Act. Under the 2015 Obama rule, those waters could include, for example, anything within a 100-year floodplain or within 4,000 feet of a high-tide mark. “A few years ago, the EPA decided that ‘navigable waters’ can mean nearly every puddle or every ditch on a farmer’s land, or anyplace else that they decide — right? It was a massive power grab,” Trump said.

Trump’s plan of attack is similar to his earlier order aimed at a consumer-protection regulation called the Fiduciary Duty rule. Because the rule was finalized in 2015, the Trump administration will have to start the regulatory process from the beginning to remove it from the books. The executive order instructs the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do just that, asking them to reconsider whether federal jurisdiction extends to non-navigable streams.

But unlike the Fiduciary Duty Rule, which was scheduled to go into effect April 10, the Waters of the United States rule has already been blocked by a federal appeals court in Cincinnati. The executive order also asks the Justice Department to put that appeal on hold while the administration reconsiders the rule.

And it gives direct advice to agencies about how Trump would like to see the term “navigable waters” defined. In a 2005 Supreme Court decision, Justice Antonin Scalia defines them “only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water forming geographic features that are described in ordinary parlance as streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes.”

Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, did not sound optimistic that the rule would survive.

“If this were an objective review, I think that would be fine,” he said. “If this is a review that the Trump administration has already decided what the outcomes going to be, that’s not good.”

A second executive order moves the federal initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, into the White House from the Department of Education, where it was housed under the Obama administration.

Trump’s executive order establishes a President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs, but still leaves much of the budgeting and administration of the initiative in the Department of Education.

“With this executive order, we will make HBCUs a priority in the White House — an absolute priority,” Trump said. “A lot of people are going to be angry that they’re not a priority, but that’s O.K.”

Grambling State University Richard Gallot, one of 80 college presidents who met with Trump Monday, welcomed moving the HBCU initiative back to the White House. “It does makes sense,” he said. “When an agency receives something from the White House suggesting action on HBCUs it has a different tone than three layers down from the Department of Education.”

Since President Jimmy Carter in 1980, every president has signed an executive order reorganizing the initiative. But Trump said moving the initiative into the White House will make it “an absolute priority.”

The HBCU order comes the day after Trump hosted the presidents of historically black colleges at the White House — cramming 64 of them into the Oval Office for a meeting. “I don’t think we’ve ever had this many people in the Oval Office,” Trump said to laughter. “This could be a new record, forever.

(h/t USA Today)

Reality

According to Vox, there is a catch: Rolling back this rule won’t be easy to do. By law, Pruitt has to go through the formal federal rulemaking process and replace Obama’s regulation with his own version — and then defend it in court as legally superior. And, as Pruitt’s about to find out, figuring out which bodies of water deserve protection is a maddeningly complex task that could take years.

Trump Signed Off on Checking White House Staffers’ Phones

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President Donald Trump signed off on press secretary Sean Spicer’s decision to check aides’ cell phones to make certain they weren’t communicating with reporters by text message or through encrypted apps, multiple sources confirmed to CNN on Monday.

The decision sent a signal across the administration that Trump is furious at leaks from inside the White House. The sources also said the President gave his blessing before Spicer blocked reporters from the briefing last Friday.

When reached by CNN, Spicer denied that Trump was involved in either decision.

“(Trump) did not sign off or even know what I did. That is not accurate,” he said, later adding, “I don’t believe he even knew there was a gaggle and in no way was it discussed with him or any other staffer.”

On Friday, CNN and other news outlets were blocked from attending an off-camera White House press briefing that other reporters were hand-picked to attend.

And Politico reported on Sunday that Spicer was cracking down on leaks coming out of the White House, where at one point staffers were asked to dump their phones on a table for a “phone check.”

The sources also told CNN that Trump and his top advisers also knew of the contacts Spicer and others made to intelligence chairmen and other government officials, hoping to push back on news accounts of Russian links.

The sources added that Spicer is on higher standing inside the West Wing than he has been in earlier weeks. He has been eager to prove his loyalty but has also not pushed back on carrying out any orders or requests from the Oval Office.

One person close to the situation described Spicer as the “enforcer.”

(h/t CNN)

Trump Says Obama Behind Leaks

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President Donald Trump said he believes former President Barack Obama has been behind the leaks within his administration and the sizable, angry town hall crowds Republicans have faced across the country.

Trump was asked in an interview on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” if he believed Obama was responsible for the town hall protests against Republicans this month.

“It turns out his organization seems to do a lot of these organizing to some of the protests that these Republicans are seeing around the country against you. Do you believe President Obama is behind it and if he is, is that a violation of the so-called unsaid presidents’ code?” Trump was asked.

“No, I think he is behind it. I also think it is politics, that’s the way it is,” Trump replied.

Trump then discussed the leaks that have disrupted his first month in office.

“You never know what’s exactly happening behind the scenes. You know, you’re probably right or possibly right, but you never know,” Trump said in the interview, a clip of which was released Monday night. “No, I think that President Obama is behind it because his people are certainly behind it. And some of the leaks possibly come from that group, which are really serious because they are very bad in terms of national security. But I also understand that is politics. In terms of him being behind things, that’s politics. And it will probably continue.”

Trump did not offer any evidence for his claim in the clip released by Fox Monday night. CNN has reached out to Obama’s office for comment.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to expand Tuesday on Trump’s claim that Obama was behind the protests, telling reporters that she would let the comments stand by themselves.

When asked if the White House believes Obama is behind the protests, Sanders added, “I think the bottom line here is we all have condemned the protests. I think that is the bigger story here, and the focus we should be talking about that this isn’t something that helps and moves us forward and that is what we are focused on right now.”

A broad coalition of groups, including Organizing For Action, the SEIU, MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress have been working to help with grassroots organizing around GOP town halls.

Organizing for Action, the group formed from Obama’s campaign organization, has 14 professional organizers, for example, who are involved in teaching local activists skills to effectively vocalize opposition to the GOP’s top agenda items.

Earlier this month, Trump told Fox News that reports of his calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia were caused by leaks from “Obama people.”

Trump’s administration has been beset by leaks within his administration to the media, and he has continually railed against those doing the leaking and the media since taking office. He has said the leaks are damaging to national security.

Approval ratings for the President’s job performance have been at historic lows. A recent Quinnipiac University survey found that 55% of American voters disapprove of Trump’s performance.

But the President said he would give himself an “A” in achievement but in messaging a “C or C plus.”

“In terms of messaging, I would give myself a C or a C plus,” Trump said. “In terms of achievement I think I’d give myself an A. Because I’ve done great things, but I don’t think we’ve explained it well enough to the American people.”

The President also gave himself an “A” for “effort.”

(h/t CNN)

Media

Donald Trump Made 61 Statements in His Joint Session Speech. 51 Were False

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United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday delivered his first address to Congress, and event fact checkers were watching like hawks.

Given the 45th President’s well-documented and open attitude to proliferating myths and false statements, the stage was set for a night of disproving the President.

Politifact listed a number of points of inaccuracy and contention – largely criticising the president for not providing context to remarks or for taking credit for pre-existing policy points.

The Center for American Progress claimed that he made 51 incorrect statements, crowdsourcing factcheckers in a Google doc:

The full document (which cannot be edited), a copy of which is embedded below, can be accessed here.

(h/t Independent.uk)

 

 

AG Sessions Says DOJ to ‘Pull Back’ on Police Department Civil Rights Suits

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Donald Trump’s attorney general said Tuesday the Justice Department will limit its use of a tactic employed aggressively under President Obama — suing police departments for violating the civil rights of minorities.

“We need, so far as we can, to help police departments get better, not diminish their effectiveness. And I’m afraid we’ve done some of that,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“So we’re going to try to pull back on this,” he told a meeting of the nation’s state attorneys general in Washington.

Sessions said such a move would not be “wrong or insensitive to civil rights or human rights.” Instead, he said people in poor and minority communities must feel free from the threat of violent crime, which will require more effective policing with help from the federal government.

While crime rates are half of what they were a few decades ago, recent increases in violent crimes do not appear to be “an aberration, a one-time blip. I’m afraid it represents the beginning of a trend.”

Sessions said he will encourage federal prosecutors to bring charges when crimes are committed using guns. Referring local drug violations that involve the use of a firearm, for example, to federal court can result is often a stiffer sentence than would be imposed by state courts.

“We need to return to the ideas that got us here, the ideas that reduce crime and stay on it. Maybe we got a bit overconfident when we’ve seen the crime rate decline so steadily for so long,” he said.

Under the Obama Administration, the Justice Department opened 25 investigations into police departments and sheriff’s offices and was enforcing 19 agreements at the end of 2016, resolving civil rights lawsuits filed against police departments in Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore, New Orleans, Cleveland and 15 other cities.

On Monday, Sessions said he is reviewing the Justice Department’s current policy toward enforcing federal law that prohibits possession of marijuana, but has made no decision about whether to get tougher.

His opposition to legalization is well known, and he emphasized it during an informal gathering of reporters . “I don’t think America will be a better place when more people, especially young people, smoke pot.”

States, he said, can pass their own laws on possession as they choose, “but it remains a violation of federal law.”

The current policy, spelled out in a 2013 memo from former deputy attorney general James Cole, said federal prosecutions would focus on distribution to minors, involvement of gangs or organized crime, sales beyond a state border, and growing marijuana plants on federal land.

(h/t NBC News)

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