Tag: Russia

Trump Lashes Out Over Russia Allegations

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President Donald Trump couldn’t hold back anymore.

After a weekend of thorny questions and barbed Democratic criticism surrounding ties between his campaign and Moscow, Trump took to his favorite platform Sunday to fight back.

“Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!” the president tweeted.

The tweet marked a departure in tone from the Democratic trolling he had done just a day earlier, mocking the opposing party’s newly elected chairman and attempting to sow discord by speculating that the Democratic National Committee had rigged the election against Bernie Sanders’ preferred candidate.

The White House, however, would have been hard-pressed not to weigh in on the subject of Trump associates’ contacts with Russia. Republicans on Sunday faced endless questions about the ongoing investigation into Russia’s role in the presidential election — especially what role, if any, Attorney General Jeff Sessions should play in overseeing it.

In the wake of allegations that associates of Trump’s campaign were in contact with Russian officials prior to the election, emboldened Democrats increased their calls this weekend for an independent prosecutor to take on the case, arguing that Sessions’ role as a Trump campaign surrogate renders him incapable of handling the case impartially.

Even a vigorous Trump supporter, GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of California, joined the drumbeat on Friday. “You’re right that you cannot have somebody — a friend of mine, Jeff Sessions — who was on the campaign and who is an appointee,” Issa told Bill Maher on HBO. “You’re going to need to use the special prosecutor’s statute.”

Issa’s break with the White House suggested the swirling questions surrounding Trump’s ties to Russia were beginning to singe GOP members of Congress. The former House Oversight chairman — famous for his dogged pursuit of the Obama White House — narrowly won reelection in 2016 with Trump atop the ticket and likely faces a competitive challenge in the midterm election.

He told POLITICO in an interview Saturday that his views about transparency and accountability under Trump are simply an extension of his career-long fight for those issues.

“My view is: It’s extremely important that Congress point the guns at the same direction that they were pointed,” said Issa. Under the Trump White House, Republicans must continue to “demand what we were demanding: transparency, accountability.”

“And this is the best time to show leadership. … We need to seize the opportunity and really push hard to have access so that no sacred cows are protected,” he said. “For credibility, we have to hold this president to the level of transparency that the last president took every effort to thwart.”

Issa remained an outlier among Republicans, however, in his call for a special prosecutor. Responding to calls for an independent investigation into contacts between Trump associates and Russia, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said Saturday that the House would not engage in a “witch hunt.”

“This is almost like McCarthyism revisited,” the California Republican told reporters at the California GOP’s spring convention in Sacramento. “We’re going to go on a witch hunt against, against innocent Americans …?”

“At this point, there’s nothing there,” Nunes insisted. “Once we begin to look at all the evidence, and if we find any American that had any contact with Russian agents or anybody affiliated with the Russian government, then we’ll be glad to, at that point, you know, subpoena those people before the House and let the legislative branch do its oversight and then we would recommend it over to, you know, the appropriate people.”

Still, the topic dominated the Sunday morning news shows, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and newly elected Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez each demanding an independent investigation without Sessions at the helm.

“What we need to be looking at is whether this election was rigged by Donald Trump and his buddy Vladimir Putin,” Perez said.

One day earlier, Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate committee investigating Trump’s ties to Russia, said he had “grave concerns” about the independence of the probe following a Washington Post report that said Nunes and Sen. Richard Burr, the panel’s GOP chairman, helped the White House knock down negative news stories.

Warner said he had called both Burr and CIA Director Mike Pompeo to express his concerns.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump ally whose name is frequently linked to a future role in the White House, was among the Republicans insisting there’s no need for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations about Trump’s relationship with Russia.

“The Justice Department over the course of time has shown itself, with the professionals that are there, to have the ability to investigate these type of things,” Christie told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “This is whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, we’ve seen it happen on both sides, when a special prosecutor gets involved, the thing gets completely out of control. And I think that doesn’t serve anybody’s purposes.”

The attorney general’s former Senate colleague Tom Cotton of Arkansas said Sunday there is “no doubt” that the Senate’s investigation into Russia’s role in last year’s presidential election will be fair. And he insisted it’s far too early to demand that Sessions recuse himself from any investigation into the Russia issue.

“I think that’s way, way getting ahead of ourselves here, Chuck,” Cotton told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press.” “There’s no allegations of any crime occurring. There’s not even indication that there’s criminal investigations under way by the FBI, as opposed to counterintelligence investigations, which the FBI conducts all the time as our main counterintelligence bureau. If we get down that road, that’s a decision that Attorney General Sessions can make at the time.”

(h/t Politico)

FBI Refused White House Request to Knock Down Recent Trump-Russia Stories

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The FBI rejected a recent White House request to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump’s associates and Russians known to US intelligence during the 2016 presidential campaign, multiple US officials briefed on the matter tell CNN.

But a White House official said late Thursday that the request was only made after the FBI indicated to the White House it did not believe the reporting to be accurate.

White House officials had sought the help of the bureau and other agencies investigating the Russia matter to say that the reports were wrong and that there had been no contacts, the officials said. The reports of the contacts were first published by The New York Times and CNN on February 14.

The direct communications between the White House and the FBI were unusual because of decade-old restrictions on such contacts. Such a request from the White House is a violation of procedures that limit communications with the FBI on pending investigations.

Late Thursday night, White House press secretary Sean Spicer objected to CNN’s characterization of the White House request to the FBI.

“We didn’t try to knock the story down. We asked them to tell the truth,” Spicer said. The FBI declined to comment for this story.

The discussions between the White House and the bureau began with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on the sidelines of a separate White House meeting the day after the stories were published, according to a US law enforcement official.

The White House initially disputed that account, saying that McCabe called Priebus early that morning and said The New York Times story vastly overstates what the FBI knows about the contacts.

But a White House official later corrected their version of events to confirm what the law enforcement official described.

The same White House official said that Priebus later reached out again to McCabe and to FBI Director James Comey asking for the FBI to at least talk to reporters on background to dispute the stories. A law enforcement official says McCabe didn’t discuss aspects of the case but wouldn’t say exactly what McCabe told Priebus.

Comey rejected the request for the FBI to comment on the stories, according to sources, because the alleged communications between Trump associates and Russians known to US intelligence are the subject of an ongoing investigation.

The White House did issue its own denial, with Priebus calling The New York Times story “complete garbage.”

“The New York Times put out an article with no direct sources that said that the Trump campaign had constant contacts with Russian spies, basically, you know, some treasonous type of accusations. We have now all kinds of people looking into this. I can assure you and I have been approved to say this — that the top levels of the intelligence community have assured me that that story is not only inaccurate, but it’s grossly overstated and it was wrong. And there’s nothing to it,” Preibus said on “Fox News Sunday” last weekend.
CNN has previously reported that there was constant communication between high-level advisers to then-candidate Trump, Russian officials and other Russians known to US intelligence during the summer of 2016.

Several members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees tell CNN that the congressional investigations are continuing into those alleged Russian contacts with the Trump campaign, despite Priebus’ assertion that there is nothing to those reports.

It is uncertain what the committees will eventually find and whether any of the information will ever be declassified and publicly released. But the push to investigate further shows that Capitol Hill is digging deeper into areas that may not be comfortable for the White House.

The Trump administration’s efforts to press Comey run contrary to Justice Department procedure memos issued in 2007 and 2009 that limit direct communications on pending investigations between the White House and the FBI.

“Initial communications between the [Justice] Department and the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal investigations or cases will involve only the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General, from the side of the Department, and the Counsel to the President, the Principal Deputy Counsel to the President, the President, or the Vice President from the side of the White House,” reads the 2009 memo.

The memos say the communication should only happen when it is important for the President’s duties and where appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.

A Department of Justice spokesman said Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reviewing the memos and that “the Department is following the guidelines in its communications with the White House.”

The effort to refute the CNN and New York Times stories came as increasing numbers of congressional members were voicing concern about Russia’s efforts to influence individuals with ties to Trump.

On February 17, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a briefing with Comey. It’s unclear what was said, but senators suggested there was new information discussed about Russia.

“Every briefing we go through we gain new information,” said Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, a member of the committee. Lankford declined to be more specific about the briefing.

Sen. Angus King of Maine also declined to reveal what was discussed during the Comey briefing. In response to a question on Priebus’ strong denial of the claims, King said he was “surprised” that Priebus would be “that categorical.”

Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the goal of his panel’s inquiry is to follow “leads wherever they go even if they may be uncomfortable to Republicans.”

“The American public will want to know if the President had personal or financial ties to the Russian government,” Swalwell said.

(h/t CNN)

Trump Lawyer Pushed Pro-Russia Deal For Ukraine

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The setting was a Manhattan restaurant, and after 25 minutes what allegedly emerged was a pro-Russian peace plan for Ukraine that its author believes may have ended up in the White House.

In a CNN interview, Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Artemenko said he discussed his left-field proposal for Ukraine in January with US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who offered to deliver the plan to the Trump administration.

The exact details of the plan are unclear, yet reports have suggested it revolves around leasing Crimea — annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014 — to Moscow for 50 to 100 years. In exchange, Russia would withdraw its troops from the separatist regions in Ukraine’s war-torn east.

Artemenko declined to discuss the plan’s details, yet hinted that a lease might be part of the idea.

The lawmaker says Cohen, who has long advised Trump, wanted to take the plan to Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser.

Any suggestion that the White House might consider a plan that formalizes Russia’s control of Crimea would cause consternation in Kiev and among its allies in Europe. The White House has flatly denied any knowledge of the proposal.

In his interview with CNN, Artemenko shines a light on how a key Trump associate was allegedly prepared to push a controversial peace plan that might benefit Russia at a time when questions were being raised about the Trump’s ties to that country.

The Ukrainian member of parliament told CNN he met Cohen through a mutual acquaintance, businessman Felix Sater, and that the three had dinner in a Manhattan hotel in January.

Cohen told CNN in a text message that although he had dinner with Artemenko, they never discussed peace in Ukraine. Other media organizations reported that he offered them a different account. The White House has denied that Cohen delivered any peace plan to Flynn.

Russia and Ukraine have since rejected the plan, and Artemenko has now become the subject of investigation for treason for suggesting it to Cohen.

In a hurried interview in a Kiev hotel, Artemenko said Cohen told him that Flynn — who resigned in mid-February due to a controversy over calls with the Russian ambassador to the US — was his best connection at the White House.

“Michael Flynn is the best person, the best of my connections in the Trump administration, who if he likes [it], it’s going to [get] huge support, huge support,” Cohen said, according to Artemenko.

Flynn did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on this story.

Artemenko knew the proposal would be controversial as it undercuts both the US and Ukrainian diplomatic corps, and he says he knows it angered Kiev, who will have seen it as a pro-Russian proposal.

“That’s why I feel pressure, and for sure today I can see people accusing me, and I see the prosecutor of Ukraine is trying to do something, to open a new case, to do an investigation about me,” he told CNN.

He said of the January meeting that Sater invited Cohen to “a dinner in the hotel in Manhattan, and we probably spoke around 20-25 minutes, where I presented my intentions, my peace plan for the Ukraine, how we can stop the war, how we can stop the killing.”

Artemenko said he had never dreamed that his proposal would be seen by the White House, but he claims Cohen said the plan had “great potential” and wanted to deliver it to the Trump administration.

“It was Michael Cohen’s idea,” he said. “He [Cohen] mentioned his name first in my meetings. And he said ‘listen, Michael Flynn’ — from his personal opinion — ‘is most powerful man who can really support this idea, who can support, who can help you, who can provide this information to President Trump.'”

Flynn resigned 24 days into the job after misleading administration officials regarding his communications with the Russian ambassador to the US before Trump took office.

Flynn made several calls to the ambassador in December, including some on the same day that the outgoing Obama administration placed fresh sanctions on Russia over alleged election meddling.

The Justice Department also warned the Trump administration in January that Flynn could be subject to Russian blackmail, a person familiar with the matter told CNN last month.

In a text message to CNN, Cohen denied delivering any documents to Flynn, and refuted Artemenko’s recollection of their January conversation.

“If this continued fake news narrative wasn’t so ridiculous, I would be angered. Despite the multitude of statements issued denying any nexus between Presidents Trump and [Russian President Vladimir Putin], the main stream media just keeps on trying to perpetuate this lie.

“I acknowledge that the brief meeting took place, but emphatically deny discussing this topic or delivering any documents to the White House and/or General Flynn; something I stated to the New York Times.”

According to the Times, Cohen said he left a sealed envelope with the proposed peace plan in Flynn’s office. Later, Cohen denied delivering a peace plan to Flynn.
Artemenko insists, however, that it was Cohen’s idea to show the peace proposal to the senior White House official. “It was his idea, absolutely his idea,” he said.

After Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, it sent military help to separatists in the country’s east, where violent conflict over disputed territory drags on to this day.

Kiev has refused to discuss the official transfer of the peninsula to Russia, and dismissed Artemenko’s plan as a result.

Moscow considers the peninsula already its territory, after its residents — under a substantial Russian military presence — voted in a 2014 referendum to join the Russian Federation.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov says Russia refuses to discuss the lease of a region it already controls: “How can Russia rent its own region? This question itself is absurd.”

Sater, who attended the dinner with Artemenko, did not respond to emailed questions, yet he emphatically denied any links between the Trump camp and Russia in an interview with Fox News: “What could be wrong in helping stop a war and trying to achieve peace? I have done so much for my country and thought that promoting peace was a good thing. People are getting killed, it’s a war.”

A White House spokesman offered this statement in response to CNN’s request for comment: “No one in the White House — including the President, Vice President and senior members of the NSC — has spoken to Mr. Cohen about any Russia-Ukraine peace proposal, and no one has spoken to Andrii Artemenko at all about any matter.

“In addition, the NSC keeps comprehensive records of documents received, and we have no record of receiving any proposal from Mr. Cohen. This is another absurd, misleading attempt to distract from the real reform taking place under President Trump.”

Artemenko left the interview with CNN to attend what he said was a meeting with the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, although the presidential administration denied such a meeting took place.

Yet moments after leaving the interview, Ukrainian prosecutors announced he would be investigated for “treason” over the deal.

(h/t CNN)

Trump Associates Communicated With Russian Intelligence Officials Before Election

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A number of associates linked to President Trump’s campaign and business interests are part of the federal inquiry into communications with Russian government officials who sought to meddle in the November election, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

The extent and purpose of those alleged contacts continue to be weighed, including whether the associates were aware they were communicating with Russian intelligence officials or those working on behalf of the Russian government, said the official who is not authorized to comment publicly. The official added that there was no evidence of collusion to tilt the election.

TheNew York Times reported Wednesday that phone records and intercepted calls show Trump campaign officials spoke last year with people in Russian intelligence.

Though national security adviser Michael Flynn was fired this week for lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States, the official said the course of the months-long inquiry — which has amassed intercepts of telephone calls, business records and subject interviews — has not been significantly altered.

Flynn was interviewed by FBI agents following last month’s inauguration after public statements by top administration officials, including Vice President Pence, about Flynn’s pre-inaugural discussions with the Russian ambassador did not track the contents of the intercepted telephone calls. The administration officials had strongly refuted claims that Flynn had discussed sanctions imposed against Russia by the Obama administration.

The transcripts of the calls proved otherwise, prompting then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates to alert White House counsel Donald McGahn that Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail as a result of his misrepresentations to senior officials.

Amid the renewed questions and investigations about contacts between his associates and Russia over last year’s election, President Trump on Wednesday denounced “conspiracy theories” about his relationship with the Russians and said “illegal” news leaks brought down Flynn.

“It’s a criminal act, and it’s been going on for a long time — before me, but now it’s really going on,” Trump said during a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Though aides said Trump demanded Flynn’s resignation Monday over lying about his talk with the Russian ambassador, the president praised his former aide as “a wonderful man” who has been treated “very unfairly” by what he called the “fake media, in many cases.”

Trump’s comments came as congressional Democrats, and some Republicans, served notice that the Russia story is not going away, especially in light of Flynn’s resignation and reports that Trump campaign aides had contacts with Russian operatives during the election in which Russian hackers were accused of sabotaging the Democrats.

“It is now readily apparent that Gen. Flynn’s resignation is not the end of the story but only the beginning,” said Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York.

Schumer called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia inquiry, saying the former Alabama Republican senator’s close ties to Trump and the campaign disqualified him.

During confirmation hearings last month, Sessions said he was not aware of conflicts that would force his recusal and a close aide to the attorney general said Wednesday that position had not changed. The aide, who is not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, said the attorney general’s oversight of the inquiry would be re-evaluated if developments warranted.

In a morning tweet storm, Trump denounced the media and critics over Russia.

“The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred,” Trump said. “@MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great!”

In another tweet, Trump accused his critics of scandal-mongering out of deference to defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

“This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign,” Trump wrote.

Trump complained about news leaks in a third tweet: “Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?).Just like Russia.”

He added, “The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by ‘intelligence’ like candy. Very un-American!”

(h/t USA Today)

Flynn Resigns Amid Controversy Over Russia Contacts

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Embattled White House national security adviser Michael Flynn resigned Monday night, an abrupt end to a brief tenure.

His departure came just after reports surfaced that the Justice Department warned the Trump administration last month that Flynn misled administration officials regarding his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States and was potentially vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.

“I inadvertently briefed the Vice President-elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian ambassador. I have sincerely apologized to the President and the Vice President, and they have accepted my apology,” Flynn wrote, according to a copy of his resignation letter obtained by CNN.

“I am tendering my resignation, honored to have served our nation and the American people in such a distinguished way,” he wrote. “I know with the strong leadership of President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and the superb team they are assembling, this team will go down in history as one of the greatest presidencies in US history.”

The move comes less than a month into the job, making him one of the shortest-serving senior presidential advisers in modern history.

Gen. Keith Kellogg will be the interim national security adviser, multiple sources tell CNN. He most recently served as National Security Council chief of staff.

A senior administration official said Kellogg, retired Gen. David Petraeus and former Vice Admiral Bob Harward are possible replacements for Flynn. Another senior official told CNN Tuesday that Harward is considered the top contender for the job.

Petraeus is going to the White House Tuesday, according to sources inside and close to the administration.

“He is making a run” for the job, one source said, but noted “he has a lot of baggage.”

Pressure building

The sudden exit marks the most public display yet of disarray at the highest levels of the new administration, which has faced repeated questions over a slew of controversies and reports of infighting among senior aides during its first three weeks.

The resolution had been heading this way for three days, an administration source told CNN.

More than whether he really had a conversation with the Russians about sanctions, the key issue internally was whether he told the truth to Pence, the source said.

The White House concluded at the very least, Flynn didn’t mean to mislead the vice president, but may have because he couldn’t remember what he said to the Russians.
“Not remembering is not a quality we can have for the national security adviser,” the source said.

An administration source said that Trump “hung in there” when it came to Flynn, but there was a “flood of information” that finally made it clear he had to resign.

Asked if Trump is disappointed, another administration official said: “He’s moving on.”

‘Full classified briefing’

A pair of Democratic lawmakers — Reps. John Conyers, Jr., top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on the House oversight Committee — sent a request for a “full classified briefing” on the circumstances surrounding Flynn to the Justice Department and FBI Monday night following Flynn’s resignation.

“We in Congress need to know who authorized his actions, permitted them and continued to let him have access to our most sensitive national security information despite knowing these risks. We need to know who else within the White House is a current and ongoing risk to our national security,” they wrote in a statement.

They added: “This new disclosure warrants a full classified briefing by all relevant agencies, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, as soon as possible and certainly before Thursday, February 16. We are communicating this request to the Department of Justice and FBI this evening.”

Aftermath

The shakeup now leaves Trump without one of his closest and longest-serving advisers. Flynn had counseled Trump on foreign policy and national security matters since early in the 2016 presidential race.

Flynn was not able to definitively refute a Washington Post story late last week that his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak included communication about the sanctions. It is illegal for unauthorized private citizens to negotiate with foreign governments on behalf of the US.

The controversy intensified after the report put Vice President Mike Pence and several senior White House advisers in an uncomfortable position, as they had denied in TV interviews weeks earlier that Flynn discussed sanctions with the ambassador. Some administration officials said Flynn must have misled Pence and others.

“The knives are out,” a White House official told CNN on Friday, noting that “there’s a lot of unhappiness about this.”

Concerns

Many expressed concern at the idea that Flynn, a retired lieutenant general who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency, would discuss sanctions with a foreign official whose calls are regularly monitored by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

A US official confirmed to CNN on Friday that Flynn and Kislyak did speak about sanctions, among other matters, during a December call.

But after the call was made public, Pence told CBS News on January 15 that Flynn did not talk with Kislyak about the sanctions, which the Obama administration recently levied due to Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 elections.

“They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia,” Pence told CBS News.

On Friday, an aide close to the national security adviser told CNN that Flynn could not rule out that he spoke about sanctions on the call.

The White House official blamed much of the outcry against Flynn on a Washington culture always in search of a scalp, but people within Trump’s orbit did little to defend Flynn during appearances on Sunday news shows.

Stephen Miller, White House policy director, was asked directly about Flynn’s future on a number of Sunday talk shows. Miller responded by saying he was not the appropriate official to ask.

“I don’t have any answers today,” Miller said in response to questions about whether Flynn misled the vice president. “I don’t have any information one way or another to add anything to the conversation.”

(h/t CNN)

Despite Denials, Russians Were in Contact with Trump Campaign

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Weeks before President Trump’s inauguration, his national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, discussed American sanctions against Russia, as well as areas of possible cooperation, with that country’s ambassador to the United States, according to current and former American officials.

Throughout the discussions, the message Mr. Flynn conveyed to the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak — that the Obama administration was Moscow’s adversary and that relations with Russia would change under Mr. Trump — was unambiguous and highly inappropriate, the officials said.

The accounts of the conversations raise the prospect that Mr. Flynn violated a law against private citizens’ engaging in diplomacy, and directly contradict statements made by Trump advisers. They have said that Mr. Flynn spoke to Mr. Kislyak a few days after Christmas merely to arrange a phone call between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Trump after the inauguration.

But current and former American officials said that conversation — which took place the day before the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia over accusations that it used cyberattacks to help sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor — ranged far beyond the logistics of a post-inauguration phone call. And they said it was only one in a series of contacts between the two men that began before the election and also included talk of cooperating in the fight against the Islamic State, along with other issues.

The officials said that Mr. Flynn had never made explicit promises of sanctions relief, but that he had appeared to leave the impression it would be possible.

Mr. Flynn could not immediately be reached for comment about the conversations, details of which were first reported by The Washington Post. Despite Mr. Flynn’s earlier denials, his spokesman told the Post that “while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.”

During the Christmas week conversation, he urged Mr. Kislyak to keep the Russian government from retaliating over the coming sanctions — it was an open secret in Washington that they were in the works — by telling him that whatever the Obama administration did could be undone, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified material.

Days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Vice President-elect Mike Pence also denied that Mr. Flynn had discussed sanctions with Mr. Kislyak. He said he had personally spoken to Mr. Flynn, who assured him that the conversation was an informal chat that began with Mr. Flynn extending Christmas wishes.

“They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia,” Mr. Pence said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

Some officials regarded the conversation as a potential violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in disputes involving the American government, according to one current and one former American official familiar with the case.

Federal officials who have read the transcript of the call were surprised by Mr. Flynn’s comments, since he would have known that American eavesdroppers closely monitor such calls. They were even more surprised that Mr. Trump’s team publicly denied that the topics of conversation included sanctions.

The call is the latest example of how Mr. Trump’s advisers have come under scrutiny from American counterintelligence officials. The F.B.I. is also investigating Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign; and Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative.

Prosecutions in these types of cases are rare, and the law is murky, particularly around people involved in presidential transitions. The officials who had read the transcripts acknowledged that while the conversation warranted investigation, it was unlikely, by itself, to lead to charges against a sitting national security adviser.

But, at the very least, openly engaging in policy discussions with a foreign government during a presidential transition is a remarkable breach of protocol. The norm has been for the president-elect’s team to respect the sitting president, and to limit discussions with foreign governments to pleasantries. Any policy discussions, even with allies, would ordinarily be kept as vague as possible.

“It’s largely shunned, period. But one cannot rule it out with an ally like the U.K.,” said Derek Chollet, who was part of the Obama transition in 2008 and then served in senior roles at the State Department, White House and Pentagon.

“But it’s way out of bounds when the said country is an adversary, and one that has been judged to have meddled in the election,” he added. “It’s just hard to imagine anyone having a substantive discussion with an adversary, particularly if it’s about trying to be reassuring.”

(h/t New York Times)

CEO of Russia’s State Oil Company Offered Trump Adviser, Allies a Cut of Huge Deal If Sanctions Were Lifted

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A dossier with unverified claims about President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia contained allegations that Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russia’s state oil company, offered former Trump ally Carter Page and his associates the brokerage of a 19% stake in the company in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on Russia.

The dossier says the offer was made in July, when Page was in Moscow giving a speech at the Higher Economic School. The claim was sourced to “a trusted compatriot and close associate” of Sechin, according to the dossier’s author, former British spy Christopher Steele.

“Sechin’s associate said that the Rosneft president was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered Page and his associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft,” the dossier said. “In return, Page had expressed interest and confirmed that were Trump elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted.”

Four months before the intelligence community briefed Trump, then-President Barack Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, and the nation’s top lawmakers on the dossier’s claims — most of which have not been independently verified but are being investigated by US intelligence agencies — a US intelligence source told Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff that Sechin met with Page during Page’s three-day trip to Moscow. Sechin, the source told Yahoo, raised the issue of the US lifting sanctions on Russia under Trump.

Page was an early foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign. He took a “leave of absence” in September after news broke of his July trip to Moscow, and the campaign later denied that he had ever worked with it.

Page, for his part, was “noncommittal” in his response to Sechin’s requests that the US lift the sanctions, the dossier said. But he signaled that doing so would be Trump’s intention if he won the election, and he expressed interest in Sechin’s offer, according to the document.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump suggested the sanctions could be lifted if Moscow proved to be a useful ally. “If you get along and if Russia is really helping us,” Trump asked, “why would anybody have sanctions if somebody’s doing some really great things?”

Page has criticized the US sanctions on Russia as “sanctimonious expressions of moral superiority.” He praised Sechin in a May 2014 blog post for his “accomplishments” in advancing US-Russia relations. A US official serving in Russia while Page worked at Merrill Lynch in Moscow told Isikoff that Page “was pretty much a brazen apologist for anything Moscow did.”

Page is also believed to have met with senior Kremlin internal affairs official Igor Diveykin while he was in Moscow last July, according to Isikoff’s intelligence sources. The dossier separately claimed that Diveykin — whom US officials believe was responsible for the intelligence collected by Russia about the US election — met with Page and hinted that the Kremlin possessed compromising information about Trump.

It is unclear whether Isikoff’s reporting is related to the dossier, which has been circulating among top intelligence officials, lawmakers, and journalists since mid-2016.

A scramble for a foreign investor

After mid-October, the dossier said, Sechin predicted that it would no longer be possible for Trump to win the presidency, so he “put feelers out to other business and political contacts” to purchase a stake in Rosneft.

Rosneft then scrambled to find a foreign investor, holding talks with more than 30 potential buyers from Europe, the US, Asia, and the Middle East. The company signed a deal on December 7 to sell 19.5% of shares, or roughly $11 billion, to the multinational commodity trader Glencore Plc and Qatar’s state-owned wealth fund. Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund is Glencore’s largest shareholder.

The “11th hour deal” was “so last minute,” Reuters reported, “that it appeared it would not close in time to meet the government’s deadline for booking money in the budget from the sale.”

The purchase amounted to the biggest foreign investment in Russia since US sanctions took effect in 2014. It showed that “there are some forces in the world that are ready to help Russia to circumvent the [West’s] sanction regime,” said Lilia Shevtsova, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House.

“In Russia we have a marriage between power and business, and that is why all important economic deals need approval and the endorsement of the authorities,” Shevtsova said. “This was a very serious commercial deal that hardly could have succeeded without the direct involvement of the Kremlin.”

The privatization deal was funded by Gazprombank, whose parent company is the state-owned Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Page holds investments in Gazprom, though he claimed in a letter to FBI Director James Comey in September that he sold his stake in the company “at a loss.” His website says he served as an adviser “on key transactions” for the state-owned energy giant before setting up his energy investment fund, Global Energy Capital, in 2008 with former Gazprom executive Sergei Yatsenko.

There is no evidence that Carter played any role in the Rosneft deal. But he was back in Moscow on December 8 — one day after the deal was signed — to “meet with some of the top managers” of Rosneft, he told reporters at the time. Page denied meeting with Sechin, Rosneft’s CEO, during that trip but said it would have been “a great honor” if he had.

The Rosneft deal, Page added, was “a good example of how American private companies are unfortunately limited to a great degree due to the influence of sanctions.” He said the US and Russia had entered “a new era” of relations but that it was still “too early” to discuss whether Trump would be easing or lifting sanctions on Moscow.

Page’s extensive business ties to state-owned Russian companies were investigated by a counterintelligence task force set up last year by the CIA. The investigation, which is reportedly ongoing, has examined whether Russia was funneling money into Trump’s presidential campaign — and, if it was, who was serving as the liaison between the Trump team and the Kremlin.

The dossier claims that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort asked Page to be the liaison. That claim has not been verified. Manafort served as a top adviser to a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine from 2004 to 2012 and emerged as a central figure in both the dossier and the intelligence community’s early inquiries into Trump’s ties to Russia.

(h/t Business Insider)

Tape Shows Trump Contradicting Himself (Again) on Putin Meeting

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President-elect Donald Trump told a radio interviewer in October 2015 that he had met Vladimir Putin “one time … a long time ago” and that he “got along with him great” — a statement that conflicts with his later denials during the campaign that he had ever met or spoken with the Russian president.

The newly surfaced audiotape, uncovered by a political opposition-research group, could fuel new questions about the precise nature of Trump’s past relations with the Russian president — a subject about which he has made multiple contradictory comments. It was released just hours after Putin, speaking from Moscow, denounced officials in the Obama administration as “worse than prostitutes” for circulating “nonsense” personal allegations about Trump that were allegedly collected by Russian intelligence.

On the newly uncovered audiotape, released by the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, Trump discusses Putin with conservative radio host Michael Savage, telling him “it’s wonderful” that the Russians were “really hitting ISIS hard” in Syria.

“Have you ever met Vladimir Putin?” Savage asks.

“Yes,” Trump answers, emphatically.

“You have?” Savage follows up.

“Yes, a long time ago. We got along great, by the way.”

Savage then asked, “If you win the presidency, do you feel you can do business with Vladimir?”

“Yes, I do. I think I would get along very well. I had the Miss Universe pageant, believe it or not, in Moscow two years ago. I got many of the Russian leaders, the top people in Russia, honestly. … These are people, they are looking to do things.”

Trump’s responses to Savage add to the confusing, flatly contradictory comments the president-elect has made about his past dealings with the Russian president. While in Moscow during the Miss Universe content, Trump gave an interview to MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts — who was co-hosting the event — in which, when asked whether he had a “relationship” with Putin, he replied: “I do have a relationship, and I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today.” He later said in a National Press Club speech in November 2015 that while in Moscow for the Miss Universe contest: “I spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer.”

But later, when repeatedly pressed last July 31 by ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, Trump gave a very different answer about Putin. “I’ve never met him,” Trump said then. “I have no relationship with Putin. I don’t think I’ve ever met him. I never met him. … I mean if he’s in the same room or something. But I don’t think so.”

“You’ve never spoken to him on the phone?” Stephanopoulos followed up.

“I have never spoken to him on the phone, no,” Trump replied. “Well, I don’t know what it means by having a relationship. I mean, he was saying very good things about me, but I don’t have a relationship with him. I didn’t meet him. I haven’t spent time with him. I didn’t have dinner with him. I didn’t go hiking with him. I don’t know — and I wouldn’t know him from Adam, except I see his picture and I would know what he looks like.”

During the Stephanopoulos interview, Trump sought to clarify comments he made about Putin during a November 2015 debate on the Fox Business channel. In the debate, when discussing Putin and the Ukraine crisis, Trump said, “I got to know him [Putin] very well because we were both on 60 Minutes. We were stablemates, and we did very well that night.”

In the Stephanopoulos interview, Trump explained what he meant. “We did ’60 Minutes’ together,” Trump said. “By the way, not together-together, meaning he was probably shot in Moscow. … And I was shot in New York.”

Trump’s comments prompted Politifact, the fact-checking website, to give Trump a “full flop” last August for his comments about Putin. The surfacing of the Savage audio seemingly adds to the confusion. Its discovery comes just a few days after the Senate Intelligence Committee announced it will be conducting a full-scale investigation — including the use of subpoenas — into the Russian hacking of the election, including “any intelligence” about “links” between the Russian government and any political campaigns in the United States.

A spokesman for the Trump transition did not respond to a request for comment.

(h/t Yahoo News)

Trump: Only ‘Stupid People’ Don’t Want a Good Relationship With Russia

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President-elect Donald Trump is hitting Twitter hard on Saturday, one day after the release of an intelligence report that concluded Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election with the intention of helping him win.

After two earlier tweets that criticized Democrats and downplayed Russia’s role in the election, Trump tweeted that “only ‘stupid’ people” do not want a good relationship with Russia, adding that the United States has “enough problems around the world.”

“Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only ‘stupid’ people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We have enough problems around the world without yet another one. When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!” the president-elect wrote on Twitter early Saturday.

On Friday, the Intelligence Community released a declassified report that concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign to help Trump win the White House.

“Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” the report said.

Trump, who signaled throughout his presidential campaign that he was open to warmer relations with the Kremlin, has criticized United States intelligence agencies over reports about Russia’s cyber activity.

Earlier on Saturday, the president-elect said that there is “no evidence” Russia’s cyber activities affected the election outcome.

“Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results. Voting machines not touched!” he wrote on Twitter.

The Intelligence Community’s report notes that it did not analyze the impact of Russia’s actions.

“We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion,” the report said.

(h/t The Hill)

Trump Goes on Hours-Long Tweetstorm Over Russian Hacking

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Twitter

President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday that the only reason the hacking of the Democratic National Committee is discussed is because Democrats are “totally embarrassed” about their election loss, and he urged friendlier relations with Russia.

“Only reason the hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed!” Trump said as part of a Saturday morning tweetstorm.

His comments came a day after the declassification of a US intelligence report that concluded Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, ordered a campaign to influence the US election and hurt Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning.

Trump pointed to “gross negligence” by the DNC as the reason the hacking took place.

He also denied suggestions that the Russian hacking could have affected the election results, saying “there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results” because voting machines weren’t “touched.”

The US intelligence community’s report concluded that Russia — led by Putin — developed a “clear preference for President-elect Trump. But it did not assess the impact that Russian activities had on the election outcome, as Business Insider’s Pamela Engel reported.

The president-elect further touched on his relationship with Russia, saying that only “stupid people” and “fools” would think that having a good relationship with Russia is “bad.”

“When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now, and both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some fo the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!” he tweeted.

Here are the tweets:

(h/t Business Insider)

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