Attorney General Bill Barr said during his confirmation hearings that he doesn’t personally believe Robert Mueller“would be involved in a witch hunt.” He has since said it’s understandable why President Donald Trump would express that frustration.
In his Fox News interview today, Barr was asked by Bill Hemmer if he agrees with the “witch hunt” label.
“He was saying he was innocent and that he was being falsely accused,” Barr said. “And if you’re falsely accused, you would think that something was a witch hunt.”
He said for two and a half years Trump’s been hammered for allegedly “conspiring with the Russians, and we now know that was simply false.”
Hemmer asked again if he’s comfortable with the “witch hunt” label personally. Barr said, “I use what words I use… but I think if I had been falsely accused I’d be comfortable saying it was a witch hunt.”
President Donald Trump wants you to believe that he had no way of knowing about former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s shady dealings with Russia before he made him his first national security adviser. In reality, the president is trying to rewrite history.
On Friday, Trump tweeted his lament that nobody warned him about Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who was dismissed from his job as director of national intelligence by then-President Barack Obama in 2014. After his dismissal, Flynn wasted little time cozying up to the Kremlin, and then spent 2016 as one of Trump’s key campaign surrogates.
“It now seems the General Flynn was under investigation long before was common knowledge,” Trump tweeted. “It would have been impossible for me to know this but, if that was the case, and with me being one of two people who would become president, why was I not told so that I could make a change?”
It now seems the General Flynn was under investigation long before was common knowledge. It would have been impossible for me to know this but, if that was the case, and with me being one of two people who would become president, why was I not told so that I could make a change?
But news reports indicate otherwise. CNN, citing former Obama administration officials, reported on May 17, 2017, that during a White House meeting days after Trump’s election, Obama told him that “given the importance of the [national security adviser] job, the president through there were better people for it, and that Flynn wasn’t up for the job.” But Trump proceeded with hiring Flynn anyway. Former New Jersey governor and longtime Trump confidant Chris Christie has also said he directly advised Trump against hiring Flynn.
“If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn into the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said in 2017.
Flynn soon illustrated why Obama and Christie had concerns about him. During the presidential transition period, he had phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in which he advised Kislyak not to respond to new sanctions the Obama administration placed on Russia for interfering (on Trump’s behalf) in the just-completed presidential election. Not only did Flynn undercut Obama’s foreign policy, but he then lied about it, telling FBI investigators during an interview conducted days after Trump’s inauguration that he and Kislyak did not in fact discuss sanctions.
Flynn’s lies to the FBI prompted officials to warn Trump once again about Flynn. On January 26, 2017, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates personally informed the White House that Flynn lied to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak, and therefore was at risk of being blackmailed by Russia. But instead of immediately taking action against Flynn, the Trump administration fired Yates three days later, after she refused to implement Trump’s executive order barring people from a number of Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the United States.
Flynn was finally fired on February 13, after it emerged that he had also misled Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his phone calls with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition period. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in December 2017, agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller, and is still awaiting sentencing.
Trump, however, has repeatedly tried to blame the whole Flynn debacle on Obama.
General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration – but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that.
Beyond the explicit warnings from Obama and Christie, a number of red flags were raised about Flynn, beginning with his unusual paid trip to Moscow for an RT gala in December 2015 — an event in which he infamously sat directly next to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and continuing throughout 2016.
As the Guardian detailed in March 2017, both US and British intelligence officers were troubled about Flynn’s role in the Trump administration, given his dealings with Russia:
US intelligence officials had serious concerns about Michael Flynn’s appointment as the White House national security adviser because of his history of contacts with Moscow and his encounter with a woman who had trusted access to Russian spy agency records, the Guardian has learned.
US and British intelligence officers discussed Flynn’s “worrisome” behaviour well before his appointment last year by Donald Trump, multiple sources have said.
They raised concerns about Flynn’s ties to Russia and his perceived obsession with Iran. They were also anxious about his capacity for “linear thought” and some actions that were regarded as highly unusual for a three-star general.
Trump, who promised during his campaign to thoroughly vet his appointees, ignored all the red flags and decided to make Flynn his national security adviser anyway. But instead of being accountable for that, he’s now again trying to shift blame.
Trump’s tweet comes amid new revelations that his lawyer tried to dissuade Flynn from cooperating with Mueller
Trump’s tweet comes the day after a federal judge unsealed records suggesting that months after Flynn’s firing, the White House took steps to discourage him from fully cooperating with investigators.
In the filing, members of Mueller’s team write that “[t]he defendant informed the government of multiple instances, both before and after his guilty plea, where either he or his attorneys received communications from persons connected to the Administration or Congress that could’ve affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation.”
The filing doesn’t contain additional information about which members of Congress were involved, but according to the Mueller report, Trump’s then-personal attorney — the Washington Post reports the attorney is John Dowd — left a voicemail for Flynn’s attorney in November 2017 and said, “[I]t wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve gone on to make a deal with … the government.”
Dowd went on to ask Flynn’s attorney for any information they might have had implicating the president, and also seemingly alluded to the possibility of a pardon.
“[I]f… there’s information that implicates the President, then we’ve got a national security issue [so] … we need some kind of heads-up. Just for the sake of protecting all our interests if we can …. [R]emember what we’ve always said about the President and his feelings toward Flynn and, that still remains,” the voicemail said.
The public should learn more about Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak and the voicemail Dowd left for Flynn’s lawyer soon. According to the Post, the judge ordered prosecutors to make public a transcript of both, and they will be posted on a court website by May 31.
While Mueller concluded that Dowd’s voicemail didn’t rise to the level of prosecutable obstruction of justice — he cited the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) guidance that a sitting president cannot be indicted — the new revelations suggest the White House was worried about Flynn might tell investigators, and was taking steps to dissuade him from spilling.
So now, ahead of what could end up being more damaging revelations about his relationship with Flynn, Trump is again trying to distance himself from his former national security adviser, and throwing Obama under the bus in the process.
During a speech to realtors on Friday, President Donald Trump swung at the “fake news” and called “bullshit” on stories about his administration that are based on anonymous sources.
Earlier Friday, the president railed on Twitter against “fraudulent and highly inaccurate coverage of Iran,” all while simultaneously saying it could be a good thing if causes Tehran to become confused. During a part of his speech in which he denied a conflict between him and his advisers on how to deal with Iran, Trump mocked media reports by remarking on how they rely on confidential sources.
“There is no source, the person doesn’t exist, the person’s not alive,” Trump said. “It’s bullshit.”
But Maggie Haberman of The New York Times wasted little time calling out the president:
We can ask the officials in his White House who asked to be quoted anonymously just two days ago how they feel about it. https://t.co/KSyGk2KIuF
President Donald Trump expressed frustrations against his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, for questioning the prospects of striking a deal with Democrats on an infrastructure plan, placing doubt on whether Mulvaney actually criticized the plan even though his comments were captured on camera.
In a newly released clip of a Fox News interview airing Sunday, Trump was asked whether he still wants to pursue a large infrastructure plan with Democrats even though Mulvaney threw cold water on the idea.
“Yeah, if Mick Mulvaney said that, then he has no right to say that. He tells me he didn’t say that and he didn’t mean it. He said it’s going to be hard to finance,” the President told “The Next Revolution” host Steve Hilton.
However, despite the President’s claim that Mulvaney hadn’t cast doubts on the plan, he did so on camera last month.
“Is this a real negotiation? I think it remains to be seen,” Mulvaney said at the Milken Institute in Beverly Hills referring to the infrastructure deal, adding, “I think there’s a much better chance of getting NAFTA passed than getting an infrastructure deal passed.”
The comment came as Democrats met with Trump and administration officials at the White House to discuss a potential infrastructure plan. Both parties suggested the meeting went well, but there hasn’t been much news on where the negotiations will go next.
Pressed further during the Fox News interview whether he’d still like to pursue an infrastructure plan with Democrats, Trump said he does want to move forward, but worried about raising taxes.
“I do, but I also think we’re being played by the Democrats a little bit,” he said.
“You know, I think what they want me to do is say, ‘well what we’ll do is raise taxes, and we’ll do this and this and this,’ and then they’ll have a news conference — see, Trump wants to raise taxes. So it’s a little bit of a game.”
President Donald Trump on Thursday took a swipe at the newest candidate in the Democratic primary pool: Mayor Bill de Blasio, a fellow New Yorker.
The New York City mayor announced his presidential bid in a three-minute videoThursday morning, about half of which was dedicated to attacking Trump and presenting de Blasio as the Democrat best positioned to challenge the president’s hold on the White House in 2020.
“I’m a New Yorker. I’ve known Trump’s a bully for a long time. This is not news to me or anyone else here,” de Blasio said. “And I know how to take him on.”
Hours after the mayor’s campaign launched, the president weighed in on de Blasio’s candidacy on Twitter.
“The Dems are getting another beauty to join their group,” Trump wrote. “Bill de Blasio of NYC, considered the worst mayor in the U.S., will supposedly be making an announcement for president today. He is a JOKE, but if you like high taxes & crime, he’s your man. NYC HATES HIM!”
The two New Yorkers’ relationship dates to before the president left the Empire State for Washington. The pair exchanged volleys while both were on the campaign trail in 2016. Trump was seeking the White House that year, while de Blasio was trying to hold on to his seat in City Hall in 2017.
With momentum sagging during his first term in office, de Blasio adopted a campaign strategy based partially on an opportune moment: the rise of Trump. After the president was elected, the mayor pledged to protect the people of New York and resist any moves by the Trump administration to “undermine” his constituents.
De Blasio’s message Thursday echoed this rallying cry, albeit with a more national focus. The mayor detailed efforts to combat climate change, protect families separated at the border and take the Trump administration to court over security funding.
“Donald Trump must be stopped,” de Blasio said. “I’ve beaten him before, and I will beat him again.”
The mayor responded to Trump’s tweet on Thursday less than an hour after it was posted with a link to his campaign site and his own nickname for the president known for belittling his opponents with various monikers.
“NYC has record low crime & record high jobs,” de Blasio wrote. “We’re investing in working families with free Pre-K & guaranteed health care. #ConDon taking advantage of working families is no joke.”
President Trump on Friday asserted that his 2016 campaign had been “conclusively spied on” by the Obama administration while calling the charge akin to “treason” and demanding jail time for those behind it.
In a tweet, the president said “nothing like this has ever happened” while calling for prison sentences.
“A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!” he continued.
My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!
The president’s tweet comes days after Attorney General William Barrannounced the appointment of a U.S. attorney to review the decisions that led to the establishment of an investigation into Trump’s campaign and Russian election interference.
The attorney general infuriated many Democrats on Capitol Hill earlier this year when he asserted that “spying” on the Trump campaign had occurred in 2016, while declining to take a position on its legality. His choice of language has earned rebukes from former members of the Justice Department including former FBI chief James Comey.
Barr told The Wall Street Journaland Fox News in interviews published Friday that he had received insufficient answers from Justice Department personnel about the reasons why an investigation had been launched into the Trump campaign in the first place.
“Government power was used to spy on American citizens,” Barr told the Journal on Friday. “I can’t imagine any world where we wouldn’t take a look and make sure that was done properly.”
“I’ve been trying to get answers to the questions and I’ve found that a lot of the answers have been inadequate and some of the explanations I’ve gotten don’t hang together, in a sense I have more questions today than when I first started,” Barr added in his interview with Fox.
“People have to find out what the government was doing during that period. If we’re worried about foreign influence, for the very same reason we should be worried about whether government officials abuse their power and put their thumb on the scale.”
President Donald Trump‘s plans to send potentially hundreds of undocumented immigrants each month to the Democratic strongholds of Broward and Palm Beach counties ignited a torrent of criticism from local Florida officials who called the move political.
“The blatant politics, sending them to the two most Democratic Counties in the state of Florida, is ridiculous,” said state Sen. Gary Farmer, a Democrat who represents portions of Broward County. “You can’t make this stuff up.”
Broward County officials described the plans Thursday in a press release, saying the Trump administration plans to release asylum seekers caught along the southern U.S. border into the county. A month earlier, Trump floated the idea of shipping undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities that limit their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Neither Palm Beach nor Broward counties fit that description, but politically they’re enemy territory for Trump and Republicans.
“That is so typically Trump,” Farmer said. “When the facts don’t fit the narrative, you slightly adjust the narrative.”
Broward County state Rep. Evan Jenne, opposed the move but said the county will do what it can to help those sent its way.
“He has been threatening this for a while, and I’m sure his voters will think it’s a great idea,” said Jenne (D-Dania Beach). “We will do what we can to help them, I’m sure with no help from the federal government.”
Jenne called the Trump policy a form of “fiscal punishment,” a sentiment shared by other regional officials.
A statement from Broward County said Trump “has threatened to send people who illegally cross the border to communities that are considered immigrant friendly.”
“This is a humanitarian crisis. We will do everything possible to help these people,” Broward County Mayor Mark Bogen, a Democrat, said in the statement. “If the President will not provide us with financial assistance to house and feed these people, he will be creating a homeless encampment.”
Adding to the political intrigue, the Trump administration has not said whether it will send immigrants to the state’s most-populous county that’s also a liberal bastion — Miami-Dade, which has Florida’s largest Spanish-speaking and foreign-born population.
Miami-Dade has a large base of support for Trump among Cuban-Americans, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, a Republican and early backer of some of the president’s detention policies. The mayor’s son has also lobbied for Trump in prior years.
Immigration and Border Patrol spokesperson Kaitlyn Pote referred questions to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which did not respond to requests for comment.
Rubio said the counties will be getting a big influx of undocumented immigrants from the border.
“Unlawful arrivals are overwhelming our system,” Rubio wrote on Twitter. “Now I have just been informed by #PalmBeach Sheriff that starting next week Border Patrol will begin transporting 500 migrants a month from border to #Broward & PalmBeach #Florida, & releasing them pending an asylum hearing.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), said he has reached out to the White House and DHS to get additional information. He said Democrats “refuse to help fix” the federal immigration policy.
“There were almost 99,000 apprehensions at the southern border in April, more than double the number of apprehensions in January,” Scott spokesperson Chris Hartline said. “It’s a crisis and needs to be fixed.”
Bogen, the Broward mayor, suggested a place to house the hundreds of undocumented immigrants: Trump-owned properties.
“In my opinion, the people that we can’t find shelter for and will become homeless, I would suggest that we bring them to the Trump hotels and ask the President to open his heart and home as well,” Bogen said.
During Florida’s recently-adjourned legislative session, one of the most divisive issues was legislation outlawing sanctuary cities. Democrats and immigration activists flooded the Capitol in protest, but the bill easily passed the Legislature and is supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a longtime Trump political ally.
In a statement after the bill cleared the Legislature, DeSantis said he would sign the proposal.
“We are a stronger state when we protect our residents, foster safer communities and respect the work of law enforcement at every level,” he said.
President Donald Trump has pardoned a media mogul who just so happened to author a book gushing about the Trump presidency.
.@WhiteHouse says that POTUS pardoned Conrad Black, a newspaper publisher charged with mail fraud and obstruction in 2007, who ALSO wrote a book about the president last year: pic.twitter.com/VJnIBrlXTC
Conrad Black‘s international media empire once included the Chicago Sun-Times, Britain’s Daily Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post.
He was also found guilty of taking money from the newspapers’ profits.
Reuters reports:
“[Black]was found guilty in the United States in 2007 of scheming to siphon off millions of dollars from the sale of newspapers owned by Hollinger Inc, where he was chief executive and chairman.
Two of his three fraud convictions were later voided, and his sentence was shortened. He was released from a Florida prison in May 2012 and deported from the United States.
Black was born in Canada and is a British citizen.
The White House’s statement refers to Black with his courtesy title of Lord and claims high-profile people “vigorously vouched” for Black, including Rush Limbaugh.
“Lord Black’s case has attracted broad support from many high-profile individuals who have vigorously vouched for his exceptional character” the White House statement read.
The statement continued on: “This impressive list includes former Secretary of State Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, Sir Elton John, Rush Limbaugh, the late William F. Buckley, Jr., and many additional notable individuals.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday declared a national emergency over threats against American technology, the White House said.
The move, done via executive order, authorized the Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, in consultation with other top officials, to block transactions that involve information or communications technology that “poses an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States.”
Following the order, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced the addition of Huawei Technologies and its affiliates to the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Entity List, making it more difficult for the Chinese telecom giant to conduct business with U.S. companies.
The addition means that U.S. companies cannot sell or transfer technology to Huawei without a license issued by the BIS. That could make it harder for Huawei to do business, as it depends on some U.S. suppliers for parts.
President Donald Trump backed the decision, which will “prevent American technology from being used by foreign owned entities in ways that potentially undermine U.S. national security or foreign policy interests,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement.
The announcement has been under discussion for a year. It comes as the U.S and China remain locked in a trade dispute and could escalate tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
The order had been opposed by small rural carriers, who continued to rely on Huawei equipment even after it was largely dropped by the larger telecommunications companies.
In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote that the administration will “protect America from foreign adversaries who are actively and increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in information and communications technology infrastructure and services in the United States.”
The Trump administration has pushed allies around the world not to adopt the company’s next generation 5G network technology, which American officials have warned could be used for spying by the Chinese. Those efforts have had mixed results in Europe, where several countries declined to stop doing business with the company.
Huawei has forcefully denied allegations that it is not independent from the Chinese government.
In recent months, the U.S. has taken a number of steps against the firm.
In January, the Department of Justice announced a slew of charges against two units of the company, including for stealing trade secrets from T-Mobile USA. And both Huawei and ZTE, another Chinese technology firm, were barred from most U.S. government contract work by the 2019 Defense Authorization Act.
In December, Canadian authorities arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to serve an extradition request from the U.S. government, which has alleged that the company defrauded several banks by concealing payments from Iran in violation of sanctions against that country.
Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the executive order. Earlier Wednesday, David Wang, an executive at the company, told The Wall Street Journal that such an order would be misguided.
“The current state of the Department of Veterans Affairs is
absolutely unacceptable,” presidential candidate Donald Trump said when
speaking at a rally on Oct. 31, 2015, in front of the retired battleship
USS Wisconsin in Norfolk, Va.
“Over 300,000 — and this is hard to believe, and it’s
actually much more than that now — over 300,000 veterans died waiting
for care,” said Trump.
Trump’s strong condemnation of the Obama administration’s
handling of the backlog of hundreds of thousands of veteran benefits
claims made him the overwhelming choice for many veteran voters in 2016.
But after two years in the White House, the Trump
administration has decided to execute a plan to purge 200,000
applications for VA healthcare caused by known administrative errors
within VA’s enrollment process and enrollment system — problems that had already been documented by the Office of the Inspector General in 2015 and 2017.
In purging this massive backlog of applications, the VA is
declaring the applications to be incomplete due to errors by the
applicants, despite the OIG findings and in violation of the promise
Trump made to fix the system. This purge has the dual effect of letting
the VA avoid the work of processing the applications and absolving the
agency of any responsibility for veterans’ delayed access to health and
disability benefits.
Under the supervision of Dr. Richard Stone, the executive in charge
of the Veterans Health Administration, VHA managers last November
instructed the agency’s IT staff members to purge over 200,000 pending
healthcare applications.
Such a profound decision to deny veterans benefits should
have to come from someone higher up — the president or the Secretary of
Veterans Affairs — not from a career bureaucrat who has not been elected
or confirmed by the Senate.
This purge flies in the face of previous guidance provided by
lawmakers. On March 3, 2017, Senate and House Veterans Affairs committee
members sent a joint letter to the VA,
instructing the agency to delay its plans to purge these records. The
committees wanted the VA to send new letters to veterans, informing them
of their application status and potential equitable relief or financial
reimbursement for service-connected health expenses caused by
enrollment system errors, as prescribed by law.
Currently, VA is skirting this provision of the law by
blaming veteran applicants for the agency’s own mistakes processing
health and disability claims. As a result, to win benefits wrongfully
denied due to VA’s administrative errors, veterans are forced to go to
court and pay legal fees out of whatever benefits they ultimately win.
The Trump administration’s decision opens the door to the
agency purging any future backlog of veteran claims for benefits by
falsely declaring the applications incomplete due to veteran error.
This is the second time the VA has been caught using its IT
department to adjudicate benefits for veterans. In January 2017, the IT
department auto-enrolled over 70,000 Iraq and Afghanistan combat
veterans whose applications had erroneously been held up until they
could meet a “means test” — that is, prove their income level. This
mass-approval of applications was done in preparation for then-Under
Secretary David Shulkin’s confirmation hearing.
They did this without bothering to fix the systemic error
that required proof of income from combat veterans, who aren’t required
to provide it. As a result, there are still more than 20,000 Iraq and
Afghanistan combat veterans being denied healthcare benefits due to an
erroneous means-test requirement.
Moreover, the means test error in the enrollment system not
only affects veteran access to healthcare benefits, but it also causes
billing errors for thousands of veterans each year.
The Veterans Health Administration’s Member Services
office, which manages the enrollment system, had to reexamine over 6,000
veteran income verification cases, because veterans were overbilled for
medical copays ranging from $200 to $3,000. About 1,000 veterans are
believed to receive fraudulent bills from the VA every month due to this
known system error.
Despite being aware of these systemic issues for years, VA
has not initiated an outreach campaign to educate the veteran community
about what to do if their application is in a pending status or if they
get a fraudulent bill due to missing means-test information.
Instead, the agency has chosen a policy of sending a single
notification letter for pending applications, despite knowing that 25%
of the letters mailed to veterans are returned or placed on hold due to
bad address information in the enrollment system.
Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans routinely have
incorrect address information in the enrollment system because they do
not have permanent non-military addresses at the time of enrollment
during the demobilization process.
The VA could resolve this problem through its data-sharing
agreement with the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security
Administration, to get current addresses for veterans in the pending
backlog. But unfortunately for veterans, it is the VA’s practice to use
information from the IRS and SSA only for the purposes of billing and
verifying veterans’ dates of death.
All of these issues could be easily fixed. This is why
President Trump’s reversal on this issue is so disappointing to the
veteran community. Many veterans are asking why the enrollment system
was not included in the President’s VA information technology
modernization plan.
As a result, 200,000 applications have been purged,
violating Trump’s promise. Currently, over 300,000 additional veteran
healthcare applications remain in a pending status and will most likely
be purged in the near future.
In the absence of executive leadership from the White
House, veterans will continue to be denied access to their healthcare
benefits at a rate of nearly 5,000 new pending healthcare applications
per month.
