Tag: transparancy

State Department Bars NPR Reporter from Flying with Pompeo

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The State Department has denied a National Public Radio reporter a seat aboard Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s plane for an upcoming trip to Europe and Central Asia, the decision coming a few days after Pompeo lashed out at another NPR reporter.

NPR said in a statement Monday that correspondent Michele Kelemen wasn’t given a reason for being barred from the flight. The State Department declined to comment.

The State Department Correspondents’ Association said the decision to deny Kelemen a seat on Pompeo’s plane led it to conclude that “the State Department is retaliating” against NPR. The group asked the agency to reconsider and allow Kelemen to join Pompeo.

In an interview Friday, Pompeo responded testily when NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly asked him about Ukraine and, specifically, whether he defended or should have defended Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador in Kyiv whose ouster figured in President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

Kelly said that after the NPR interview she was taken to Pompeo’s private living room, where he shouted at her “for about the same amount of time as the interview itself” and cursed repeatedly.

Pompeo responded Saturday that Kelly had “lied” to him, and he called her conduct “shameful.” NPR said it stood by Kelly’s reporting.

In its statement Monday, the correspondents’ group said Kelemen “is a consummate professional who has covered the State Department for nearly two decades. We respectfully ask the State Department to reconsider and allow Michele to travel on the plane for this trip.”

Ben Wizner, director of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement: “The State Department cannot retaliate against a news outlet because one of its reporters asked tough questions. It is the job of reporters to ask the tough questions, not be polite company.”

[Snopes]

State Department bars press corps from Pompeo briefing, won’t release list of attendees

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The State Department on Monday said it would not be distributing a transcript or list of attendees from a briefing call with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held that evening — a call from which the department’s press corps was excluded and only “faith-based media” allowed.

The afternoon phone briefing was to discuss “international religious freedom” with the secretary — who rarely participates in such calls — ahead of his trip to the Middle East. One member of the State Department press corps was invited, only to be un-invited after RSVPing. That reporter was told that the call was for “faith-based media only.”

CNN also RSVP’d to organizers, asking to be included, but received no reply.Despite repeated inquires and complaints from members of the press corps who are based at the department, the State Department on Monday night said they would not be providing a transcript of the call, a list of faith-based media outlets who were allowed to participate or the criteria to be invited.

Officials would not answer questions about whether a range of faiths was included.A reporter with EWTN Global Catholic Television told CNN they were not originally invited to take part in Monday’s call with Pompeo but had asked the State Department if they could take part. The reporter was then invited to a different call involving faith-based organizations and Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback that took place Tuesday and was organized by an outside group.

An article from Religion News Service — which notes that it “is not a faith-based media organization, but rather a secular news service that covers religion, spirituality and ethics” — said participants in the Pompeo briefing “were not told that the call was limited to faith-based media.””While it was not clear which outlets were part of the call, questions were asked by Religion News Service, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Algemeiner, World Magazine and The Leaven, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. America Magazine also participated in the call,” according to RNS.On Tuesday evening, one of the participants shared a transcript of the call with the press corps. That transcript showed that Pompeo faced questions about the Israeli election, terrorism and the omission of the word “occupied” when describing the Golan Heights and the West Bank.Pompeo did take part in an on-the-record briefing with the traveling press en route to the Middle East, where he was asked similar questions and provided similar responses.The State Department told the press traveling with Pompeo that the department does not release transcripts for print roundtables. However, they typically release transcripts for all of the secretary’s public press engagements. Former State Department spokesperson John Kirby, who is a CNN Global Affairs analyst, said “it is typical practice that any on the record interview in which a Cabinet official participates is transcribed and published at the earliest appropriate opportunity.””These officials are public servants. What they say — in its entirety — is inherently of public interest. It’s inappropriate and irresponsible not to observe that obligation,” he told CNN.Kirby said he has “certainly seen times when particular journalists or columnists have been targeted for inclusion on given topics.” However, “to exclude beat reporters from something as universally relevant as religious freedom in the Middle East strikes me as not only self-defeating but incredibly small-minded,” he said. “It’s perfectly fine to ensure faith-based media have a seat at such a table. But it’s PR malpractice to cut off access to the broader press corps. I wish I could say I expected more from this crowd,” Kirby said.A State Department spokesperson said in a statement that some press engagements — “Department press briefings, teleconferences on a myriad of policy issues, briefings and sprays by the Secretary of State and other officials— are open to any interested domestic or international press.”

[CNN]

White House, Ethics Office Feud Escalates

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An escalating feud between the White House and the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) has boiled over, with the Trump administration refusing to produce waivers it has granted to lobbyists that allow them to work in government agencies.

Walter Shaub, the office’s director, wants to review the waivers and make them public to ensure the Trump administration is adhering to publicly stated policies and an executive order signed by the president.

That would bring the Trump administration in line with practices followed under former President Barack Obama, who appointed Shaub to his current role.

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney is refusing to turn over the waivers. He wants time to consult with the Justice Department about the scope of Shaub’s authority.

In a letter to Shaub, which Mulvaney distributed widely throughout the government, the budget director called the request burdensome and questioned whether the OGE had the power to obtain the waivers. Republicans have in the past bristled at Shaub’s tactics and believe he is politicizing his office.

Shaub went public on Monday with the administration’s refusal to turn the waivers over.

In a blistering 10-page letter sent to Congress and Mulvaney — and subsequently tweeted out through the official OGE account — Shaub told Mulvaney that he has the authority to “institute corrective action proceedings” against individuals who “improperly prevent” ethics officials from doing their jobs.

“OGE declines your request to suspend its ethics inquiry and reiterates its expectation that agencies will fully comply with its directive by June 1, 2017,” Shaub wrote. “Public confidence in the integrity of government decision-making demands no less.”

It’s just the latest fight between the Trump administration and Shaub, whose five-year term will end early next year if he is not fired or doesn’t resign first.

Shortly after the election, Shaub used his office’s Twitter account to urge then-President-elect Donald Trump to divest himself from his business holdings. The tweets were written in Trump’s vernacular and viewed as mocking by many Republicans.

In January, after Trump announced he would hand his business empire over to his adult sons, Shaub publicly rebuked the president at a Washington forum for not putting his assets in a blind trust.

And in February, Shaub recommended disciplinary action for White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway after she urged viewers to buy first daughter Ivanka Trump’s products during a television interview from the briefing room.

Republicans say Shaub is politicizing his position to make a name for himself as part of the Trump “resistance.”

“Walter Shaub has acted like a partisan candidate for office and not like the director of a government ethics office,” said conservative lawyer Charlie Spies. “He’s brought discredit to what the office does through totally inappropriate tweets and press conferences and clear bias against the Trump administration.

“There may be legitimate issues that need to be addressed, but those are totally overshadowed by Shaub’s grandstanding.”

Trump signed an executive order in January that indicated the new administration would follow practices established during the Obama administration. Lobbyists hired into the government would be prohibited from working with former clients or on issues they had been involved with unless they received a waiver.

The Trump administration’s refusal to comply with the request has raised suspicions among government watchdogs over how many waivers the Trump administration is handing out and to whom.

Democrats in Congress have said they’ll seek the waivers directly if the Trump administration doesn’t turn them over. Government watchdog groups are suing for the records.

Legal and ethics experts interviewed by The Hill were flabbergasted that the administration would break with precedent by refusing to comply with the request for the documents.

“The Trump administration is going to lose this fight,” said Richard Painter, the White House ethics lawyer for former President George W. Bush. “The Office of Government Ethics is not a political agency and Walter Shaub is not a political guy. Picking a fight with the OGE is the dumbest thing the administration can do at this juncture. Just give them the stupid waivers.”

Even some of Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill are standing with Shaub.

In 2009, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote a letter to the OGE asking the Obama administration to “live up to its word” by being “open, transparent and accountable” about the government employees that received waivers.

“Senator Grassley stands by his letter from 2009 calling for greater government transparency of ethics waivers, and is grateful to see that, eight years later, the Office of Government Ethics now explicitly agrees with his assessment of its authority,” a Grassley spokesperson told The Hill. “He’s also been exploring the matter with Democrat colleagues in the last few weeks, and welcomes their newfound interest in improving this transparency.”

The controversy has raised questions about Shaub’s future eight months before his term ends.

The administration is frustrated by what it views as lifelong bureaucrats within the government that refuse to accept the legitimacy of the new regime.

Trump has already fired FBI Director James Comey and acting Attorney General Sally Yates.

And in a television appearance earlier this year, Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, warned Shaub to “be careful.”

Still, firing an ethics watchdog who is ostensibly fighting for greater transparency could backfire at a time when Trump is dealing with blowback for firing Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into whether Trump campaign officials colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

“The outcry would be tremendous, and it would only raise further questions about what they’re hiding,” said Larry Noble, senior director at the Campaign Legal Center. “You can’t just keep firing everyone for looking into what you’re doing.”

[The Hill]

Trump Sued for Not Releasing White House Visitor Logs

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Three organizations are suing the Trump administration for not making public the logs that show who is visiting the White House.

The National Security Archive, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University have all filed a suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) calling for the release of the logs.

The suit has formally been filed against the Department of Homeland Security, as the organizations say the Secret Service has not provided the log information despite FOIA requests.

We hoped that the Trump administration would follow the precedent of the Obama administration and continue to release visitor logs, but unfortunately they have not,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement.

“Given the many issues we have already seen in this White House with conflicts of interest, outside influence, and potential ethics violations, transparency is more important than ever, so we had no choice but to sue.”

The three groups are asking not only for the records of who is visiting the White House, but for records that show who is meeting the president at his private properties in New York and Florida.

President Trump has frequently met with world leaders at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, most recently when he conferred with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week.

The Obama administration said in September 2009 that it would begin releasing the logs after CREW filed multiple lawsuits, the organization said.

“President Obama routinely released the data we’re seeking with no damage to presidential privilege, and this information is central to the Secret Service mission and thus clearly agency records subject to FOIA,” Tom Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, said in a statement.

Another employee of the National Security Archive said it filed the first FOIA related to Trump on Jan. 23.

(h/t The Hill)

Tillerson plans to travel without press

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Veteran journalists who cover the State Department say they’ve never seen anything like it.

The new secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has been all but silent in his first month on the job. And he is planning on traveling to Asia next week without the traditional coterie of traveling press with him.

Journalists are strenuously objecting to the plan. But there is no indication that Tillerson is going to reverse course. The State Department may allow one hand-picked journalist to tag along, but the details are unknown.

On Friday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that Tillerson was looking to save money by taking a smaller plane without room for reporters.

However, news outlets normally pay for their reporters’ seats, compensating the government for the expenses.

Past secretaries normally flew with the so-called press “pool” as a matter of course, but the Trump administration seemingly wants that to stop.

Tillerson was similarly press-averse while running ExxonMobil, according to Steve Coll, who authored “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.” Tillerson never granted him an interview for the book.

Now, as secretary of state, Tillerson has not given any interviews. He has appeared in photo ops with visiting dignitaries, but he has ignored the questions that reporters have tried to ask.

“Still no answers from secretary of state Rex Tillerson,” NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell said after one of her attempts.

“It’s not that previous secretaries didn’t sometimes duck questions. But Mr. Tillerson has been shockingly inaccessible since he was sworn in last month. On top of questionless photo ops, there have been no news conferences and no Sunday talk show appearances,” former Reuters diplomatic corespondent Carol Giacomo, now a member of the New York Times editorial board, wrote on Friday.

Coll called Tillerson’s silent approach to the job “strange.”

“It’s such a departure of the life of the State Department,” he said. “The secretary of state is the most important voice, after the president, representing the United States.”

Secretaries normally see interviews and press conferences as ways to articulate foreign policy to external audiences and address internal audiences at the same time.

“Kerry, Clinton, Rice, Powell, Albright — all very formidable public figures — gained influence inside the administration by taking advantage of their own bully pulpit,” Coll said.

But Tillerson’s approach has been different in many ways. Keeping his distance from the press is just one example.

A dozen Washington bureau chiefs and editors, including representatives from CNN, sent a letter to the State Department earlier this week urging the secretary to make arrangements for “pool” travel.

“Not only does this situation leave the public narrative of the meetings up to the Chinese foreign ministry as well as Korea’s and Japan’s, but it gives the American people no window whatsoever into the views and actions of the nation’s leaders,” the editors wrote. “And the offer to help those reporters who want to travel unilaterally is wholly unrealistic, given the commercial flight schedules, visa issues and no guarantee of access once they are there.”

CNN anchor Jake Tapper commented on the matter on Twitter: “Not bringing press on a trip like that is unusual & insulting to any American who is looking for anything but a state-run version of events.”

MSNBC anchor Greta Van Susteren also weighed in: “Tillerson should take media on trip to Asia — Americans want to know and we pay his salary and his staff and plane.”

Voice of America correspondent Steve Herman replied to her tweet and added: “And it’s not a free ride for media. We reimburse government for the travel costs.”

Up until this week, the State Department had not held an on-camera briefing since inauguration day — a highly unusual break from tradition.

The briefings are normally another way for the State Department to inform the public about foreign policy. This week, there were two on-camera briefings and two off-camera conference calls.

Tillerson has yet to name a press secretary.

(h/t CNN)

Trump Signs Repeal of Transparency Rule for Oil Companies

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President Trump signed legislation Tuesday to repeal a controversial regulation that would have required energy companies to disclose their payments to foreign governments.

The legislation is the first time in 16 years that the Congressional Review Act (CRA) has been used to repeal a regulation, and only the second time in the two decades that act has been law. It is the third piece of legislation Trump has signed since taking office three weeks ago.

It is the start of one front in an aggressive deregulatory effort that the Trump administration and the GOP Congress are undertaking to roll back Obama-era rules on fossil fuel companies, financial institutions and other businesses that they say have suffered for the last eight years.

The resolution repeals a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule written under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

It was meant to fight corruption in resource-rich countries by mandating that companies on United States stock exchanges disclose the royalties and other payments that oil, natural gas, coal and mineral companies make to governments.

At a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, Trump said the legislation is part of a larger regulatory rollback that he and congressional Republicans are undertaking with the goal of economic and job recovery.

“This is a big signing, very important signing,” Trump said, flanked at his desk by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and other lawmakers.

“We’re bringing back jobs big league. We’re bringing them back at the plant level, we’re bringing them back at the mine level. The energy jobs are coming back,” he continued. “A lot of people going back to work now.”

Trump then asked Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), the measure’s lead sponsor, to speak about it and regulatory reform in general.

“Over 20 years, there’s been 56,000 rules that have been put in place, with very little legislative input or oversight, and it’s time that changed,” he said.

The administration and congressional allies say the SEC rule imposes massive, unnecessary costs on United States oil, natural gas and mining companies, putting them at a significant competitive disadvantage to foreign companies that do not have to comply.

“Misguided federal regulations such as the SEC rule addressed by H.J.R. 41 inflict real cost on the American people and put our businesses, especially small businesses, at a significant disadvantage,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said earlier Tuesday.

“It’s a priority for the Trump administration to fix our broken regulatory system so that it enhances American productivity and well-being without imposing unnecessary costs and burdens,” he said.

“Signing this joint resolution is one more step toward achieving this goal.”

The House passed the repeal measure earlier this month, followed shortly by the Senate.

Democrats and supporters of the SEC rule see the rollback as a victory for corruption.

“The rule they’re trying to repeal protects U.S. citizens and investors from having millions of their dollars vanished into the pockets of corrupt foreign oligarchs,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said earlier this month. “This kind of transparency is essential to combating waste, fraud, corruption and mismanagement.”

Supports argued in part that if the United States takes a leading role on foreign payment transparency, other major nations would follow.

Exxon Mobil Corp., whose former CEO Rex Tillerson is now secretary of State, was one of the most vocal opponents of the rule, along with other major oil companies.

The SEC is still obligated under the Dodd-Frank law to write some form of a transparency rule for extractive industries.

But under the CRA, the agency can never publish any rule that is “substantially the same” as the one that has now been overturned.

Both chambers of Congress have also passed a CRA resolution to overturn the Interior Department’s stream protection rule for coal mining, and Trump supports the repeal.

The House has passed numerous other regulatory repeal measures under the CRA, including ones on methane pollution and gun ownership, and the Senate is likely to take up at least some of them.

(h/t The Hill)

Trump Staffers Using App That Deletes Their Messages

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Trump administration staffers are reportedly communicating by using an encrypted messaging app that erases messages shortly after they have been received.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that officials were using the app, called Confide, to avoid being caught talking to the media, as President Trump moves to crack down on leaks.

The Post report followed a report from Axios last week that reported Confide had become a favorite app for Republican staffers.

Staffers may also be concerned about being hacked after high-profile cyber attacks on Democratic groups during the election.

“We do see a spike in across the board metrics when there is a major news cycle about the vulnerability of digital communications,” Jon Brod, Confide’s president, told Axios.

The reports raise questions though about the possible violation of federal records keeping laws that require certain government employees to use their official email address for communications.

“The whole f—ing campaign was about Hillary’s emails and now Trump’s team is violating the Presidential Records Act by using Confide,” tweeted former Obama staffer Tommy Vietor.

A White House spokeswoman did not immediately respond when asked to comment on the reports.

(h/t The Hill)

Trump Hides Fundraising By Mega-Donors

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Donald Trump has always insisted his campaign is self funded (it’s not) so he can’t be bought, but he has been accepting large donations from mega-donors while refusing to disclose who they are.

Over the weekend Trump attended two “high-dollar soirees” in Nantucket and Cape Cod, including one at the home of a Koch brother, William, where the co-hosts received six tickets to a VIP reception and photograph with the Republican nominee as thanks for raising at least $100,000. Because there is a $2,700 limit on contributions to political campaigns, fundraisers, referred to as “bundlers,” who can tap networks of friends and business associates for money are very valuable—individual contributions must be disclosed, but the only bundlers who must be identified are those who are also registered as federal lobbyists.

Outside of this being a major flip-flop on a key selling point to his supporters of self-funding, is the issue of a complete lack of transparency compared to his Democratic rival when it comes to fundraising bundlers.

Trump had not disclosed any such bundlers through June—or, actually, any at all. Clinton, meanwhile, has named 499 bundlers (including lobbyists) who have raised at least $100,000 for her campaign.

From Politico:

So far, Clinton’s political operation has outraised Trump, announcing a $90 million haul in July between her campaign and the Democratic Party. But Trump said last week that he had raised about $80 million between his campaign and various GOP committees, boasting, in particular, about the $64 million in smaller digital and direct-mail donations.

But despite Trump’s rhetorical focus on small-dollar contributors, he is still dependent on bundlers and six-figure political donors.

In his Trump Victory joint fundraising account, which raised $25 million from late May through the end of June, roughly half the funds came from only 25 families.

Throughout primary season, Trump boasted that he was “self-funding” his campaign, a claim that was only ever partially true, and to the extent that was true was only so because he couldn’t get the big establishment backers—at least at first—to support him.

Last year, when he was still working to denigrate Florida senator Marco Rubio, Trump tweeted, “Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!” But in May, Trump ate dinner with the conservative financier and his wife in Manhattan, and last month at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland he made sure to stop by their private suite at the Quicken Loans Arena.

“She’s totally controlled by the special interests,” Trump said of Clinton last week. Maybe so! But if she is, then so is he.

(h/t Gawker, Politico)