We now know that Trump’s son, son-in-law, and campaign manager tried to work with Russian operatives to win the election for Trump. We also know that Russia conducted a large-scale and successful cyber-espionage effort in favor of Trump (Last week, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians in connection to the effort). What we don't know is exactly what Putin sought to get out of the deal. Here's a plausible quid-pro-quo.
Posted by Robert Reich on Thursday, February 22, 2018
We now know that Trump’s son, son-in-law, and campaign manager tried to work with Russian operatives to win the election for Trump. We also know that Russia con… See More
Why Congress Must Act Now to Protect Robert Mueller
By John Cassidy March 19, 2018
The issue isn’t whether President Trump is thinking about firing Robert Mueller: we can take that as a given. The issue is whether he thinks he would get away with it. Photograph by Stephen Hilger / Bloomberg via Getty
The United States may be on the brink of a constitutional crisis. After three days of Presidential attacks on the investigation being carried out by the special counsel Robert Mueller, it seems clear—despite a public assurance from one of Donald Trump’s lawyers that the President isn’t currently considering firing Mueller—that the Trump-Russia story has entered a more volatile and dangerous phase. As the tension mounts, it’s essential that Congress step in to protect Mueller before it’s too late.
It has been no secret that Trump would dearly love to fire the special counsel, and that he has little or no regard for the legal and constitutional consequences of such an action. It has been reported that, last summer, behind the scenes, he ordered Don McGahn, the White House counsel, to get rid of Mueller, and only backed down after McGahn threatened to resign.
Before this weekend, however, Trump had never explicitly attacked Mueller and his team in public, or called for the Justice Department to shut down the investigation. That uncharacteristic restraint surely reflected the influence of Trump’s legal team, which, for months, had been advising him that Mueller’s investigation would be completed in fairly short order, and that the best course of action was to cooperate.
“I’d be embarrassed if this is still haunting the White House by Thanksgiving and worse if it’s still haunting him by year end,” Ty Cobb, one of Trump’s lawyers, told Reuters, in August. By November, Cobb had modified his timeline slightly. But, according to the Washington Post, he was still optimistic that the investigation would “wrap up by the end of the year, if not shortly thereafter.” The Post story also said that Trump “has warmed to Cobb’s optimistic message on Mueller’s probe.”
It now seems clear that Cobb’s optimism was misplaced, and that Mueller isn’t nearly done. According to Monday’s Times, Trump’s lawyers met with Mueller’s team last week “and received more details about how the special counsel is approaching the investigation, including the scope of his interest in the Trump Organization.” Also last week, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the Times reported that Mueller’s investigators have issued subpoenas to the Trump Organization for business documents, including some related to Russia. “The order is the first known instance of the special counsel demanding records directly related to President Trump’s businesses, bringing the investigation closer to the president,” the Times’ story said.
It is fair to assume that Trump wasn’t pleased with these developments, or with his lawyers. He probably felt that he had been misled. This was the context in which the attacks on Mueller began, starting on Saturday morning, when John Dowd, another of the Trump attorneys, e-mailed the Daily Beast. Referring to the Justice Department’s abrupt firing of Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the F.B.I., which was announced on Friday night, Dowd wrote, “I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier.”
Dowd’s unexpected statement inevitably sparked speculation that Trump might be preparing to order the Justice Department to close down the Mueller investigation. Asked whether he was speaking for Trump, Dowd initially replied, “Yes, as his counsel.” He later backtracked, saying he was speaking on his own behalf.
Later on Saturday, Trump joined the fray, tweeting, “The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime.” On Sunday morning, Trump sharpened his attack, mentioning the special counsel by name for the first time in a tweet: “Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added…does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!” On Monday morning, Trump was at it again: “A total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!”
By that stage, a number of Republicans on Capitol Hill had publicly stated (with varying degrees of conviction) that the Mueller investigation should be allowed to proceed unimpeded. And Cobb, in a statement issued on Sunday night, had sought to dampen down all the speculation, saying, “The White House yet again confirms that the president is not considering or discussing the firing of the special counsel, Robert Mueller.”
Strictly on its face, this statement is not credible. Everything we know about Trump, including his order to McGahn last summer, suggests that the option of axing Mueller is often, if not constantly, on his mind. In an interview with the Times last July, he conveyed this publicly when he said that if Mueller investigated any of his businesses unrelated to Russia, he would have crossed a red line. Now it seems that Mueller has at least stepped on that line by demanding business documents from the Trump Organization, only some of which relate to Russia.
The issue isn’t whether Trump is thinking about firing Mueller: we can take that as a given. The issue is whether he thinks he would get away with it, or whether he takes seriously what the Republican senator Lindsey Graham said on Sunday, that such a move “would be the beginning of the end of his Presidency.” As the special counsel’s investigation approaches its first anniversary and closes in on what may well be Trump’s biggest vulnerability—his business dealings with foreign entities—Trump’s calculus appears to be changing.
In accusing some of Mueller’s team of being “hardened Democrats” and complaining about a “conflict of interest,” Trump appeared to be trying to establish some legal basis for shutting down the investigation. According to the special-counsel statute, “conflict of interest” is one of the grounds on which an attorney general, or acting attorney general, may remove a special counsel. (The others include incapacity, dereliction of duty, and violating Justice Department policies.)
While Trump didn’t identify which members of Mueller’s team he was targeting, some of his supporters have singled out Andrew Weissmann, a former organized-crime prosecutor from the Eastern District of New York, who reportedly made contributions to one of Barack Obama’s election campaigns and attended Hillary Clinton’s election-night party in November, 2016. Weissmann is working on the part of Mueller’s investigation that is looking into money laundering, and he also has a professional tie to the Trump world. In 1998, he signed the cooperation agreement between the government and Felix Sater, the colorful Russian-American businessman who was a U.S. intelligence asset and was also involved in developing the troubled Trump SoHo project and, during the 2016 election, in trying to secure financing for a Trump Tower Moscow.
One can understand why Trump might be nervous about experienced prosecutors like Weissmann digging around in his finances, and that’s why Congress needs to protect the special counsel against the President’s diktats. Under current law, there is no apparent redress if Trump can persuade someone at the Justice Department to fire Mueller for “good cause,” however specious that cause may be. There have been, however, two bipartisan bills put forward in Congress that would allow Mueller to challenge such a dismissal before a federal court consisting of three federal judges.
For months, these bills have been stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is under the chairmanship of Chuck Grassley, of Iowa. Over the weekend, even as a few Republicans, such as Graham and John McCain , emphasized the importance of allowing Mueller to finish his job, there was no sign of Grassley or any other prominent Republican leader agreeing to push through some legislation before Trump can act. The Washington Postreported that G.O.P. leaders “dodged direct questions … about the fate of the bills in light of the president’s Twitter tirade.”
In an informative post devoted to this issue at the Lawfare blog on Monday, Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, noted that, for those Republicans who “actually want to ensure that the special counsel’s investigation continues unimpeded and don’t just want to look good to their constituents, there’s an easy way to do more than just threatening the president in tweets and talk-show interviews: Pass this legislation.” Vladeck’s argument is spot-on. When the history of the Trump era is written, it won’t be kind to this President’s enablers, and that applies to the passive enablers as well as the active ones.
John Cassidy has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. He also writes a column about po0litics, economics, and more for newyorker.com.
EPA chief’s security detail on Italy trip cost $30,000: document
Reuters March 20, 2018
FILE PHOTO: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt attends during a summit of Environment ministers from the G7 group of industrialized nations in Bologna, Italy, June11, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi
(Reuters) – The U.S. government spent over $30,000 on personal security for Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt during his trip last year to Italy, according to documents obtained by a watchdog group that said the spending was irresponsible at a time of budget cuts.
According to the document, obtained by the Environmental Integrity Project through a Freedom of Information Act request and shown to Reuters, Pruitt’s personal security detail racked up $30,553.88 in travel costs from June 5 through June 12, 2017, when Pruitt was in Italy for meetings at the Vatican and to attend a summit of foreign energy ministers.
Previous documents released by EIP showed the cost of Pruitt’s trip to Italy at $43,000, not including the security detail. The new documents, which include airfare and expenses for Pruitt, his career and political staff, and his security detail, put the cost over $80,000, EIP calculated.
“Mr. Pruitt’s trip to Rome last summer cost the taxpayers over $84,000,” said Eric Schaeffer, EIP’s director. “That’s a lot of money for Mr. Pruitt to tour the Vatican, pose for photos, and tell his European counterparts that global warming doesn’t matter,” he said.
Spending by top officials in the Trump administration has come under more scrutiny by critics at a time when federal agencies have been making sharp budget cuts. Lawmakers have also criticized Pruitt for frequently flying first-class, and for spending tens of thousands of dollars on a secure sound-proof telephone booth for his office.
EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said the security detail “followed the same procedures for the G7 environmental meeting in Italy that were used during EPA Administrators Stephen Johnson, Lisa Jackson, and Gina McCarthy’s trips to Italy. EPA’s security procedures have not deviated over the past 14 years.”
It was unclear from looking at the document how many members were in the security detail, and no breakdown of the spending was provided.
EIP has been critical of Pruitt’s statements questioning the causes of global climate change and his efforts to roll back environmental protections.
EPA has said Pruitt has flown first-class as a security measure, and that the administrator does not make decisions relating to his security detail.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by David Gregorio)
Federal judge doesn’t hold back on Kris Kobach’s deceit of Kansas voters
“You are under ethical obligation to tell me the truth,” the judge said. “That’s why lawyers are licensed.”
By Kira Lerner March 20, 2018
Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach (left) and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, attend the first meeting of the presidential advisory commission on election integrity in the Eisenhower Executive office building, on July 19, 2017 in Washington, DC. Credit: Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
A Kansas federal judge had sharp words for Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach during a contempt hearing Tuesday, accusing him of misleading the court and failing to inform voters whose registrations were previously suspended that they are eligible to vote.
In May 2016, Judge Julie Robinson issued a preliminary injunction ordering Kobach “to register for federal elections all otherwise eligible motor voter registration applicants,” whether or not they have shown a documentary proof of citizenship. The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit challenging Kobach’s proof of citizenship law, argued that Kobach was failing to add voters to the rolls, making eligible voters cast provisional ballots, and failing to send voters affected by the preliminary injunction a postcard that would notify them of their registration status.
After seven days of trial, the court held a hearing on contempt Tuesday in which Judge Robinson repeatedly chastised Kobach when he argued that he did not violate the order.
“You have a duty to tell them that and to assure me that they complied,” the judge told Kobach about his obligation to tell counties to register all eligible voters. “It’s your duty to make sure they do what they are supposed to do and abide by the law.”
Bryan Lowry: Judge tells Kobach he had no problem making sure counties adhered to his proof of citizenship policy, but not her order. #ksleg#ACLUvKobach
In a telephone conference in October 2016, roughly five months after the injunction, Kobach made a verbal promise that counties would send postcards to voters who had previously been on the suspense list for not showing proof of citizenship, but became registered because of the court’s order, informing them of their registration status.
In court Tuesday, Kobach and his attorneys claimed the judge never ordered them to send those postcards to voters, but the judge didn’t buy that argument.
“Why would I order something you told me you’d take care of?” the judge said, according to ProPublica’s Jessica Huseman, who was in the courtroom. “You are under ethical obligation to tell me the truth… that’s why lawyers are licensed.”
At another point, Kobach grew exasperated, telling Judge Robinson: “I certainly would have no interest in failing to comply with any court’s order.” Last June, the court upheld a $1,000 fine against Kobach for intentionally misleading the court about a document he was photographed carrying into a November 2016 meeting with Trump.
In its motion for contempt, the ACLU had previously argued that Kobach’s violation of the preliminary injunction was already affecting elections.
“These are not merely technical violations of the order; they have real consequences for all affected Kansans,” the ACLU wrote. “The refusal to register the plaintiffs deprives them of the most basic protections afforded to registered voters… Because of the Secretary’s defiance of the Order, covered voters have received no assurance that they may participate in the upcoming election or that their votes will be counted.”
The ACLU claimed that Kobach’s actions could have a “chilling effect,” suppressing turnout in upcoming elections.
“It’s an election year this year, and there’s no more time for games,” Dale Ho, lead attorney for the ACLU, told the judge Tuesday.
Kobach helped draft and enact the documentary proof of citizenship law, which took effect in January 2013, requiring all Kansas residents to show a document like a birth certificate or passport when they registered to vote. The law was in place for more than three years until the court issued the preliminary injunction order before the 2016 presidential election.
The contempt hearing came on the eighth day of a trial that was originally supposed to last just four days, but ended up stretching for far longer because Kobach’s legal team struggled to cross-examine witnesses and follow basic rules of evidence. At the start of Tuesday’s hearing, Ho apologized to the judge for having to address the motion for contempt.
Celia Llopis-Jepsen: ACLU (Dale Ho): Apologizes to judge to spend time on this. Says Kobach could have very easily complied with judge’s preliminary injunction, but he failed to update the online elections manual & to send postcards to voters with info including their polling place. #ACLUvKobach
Ho told the judge that Kobach is refusing to update the online elections manual until the U.S. Supreme Court issues a final judgement on this case, which could take years. “Incorrect information is continually distributed to the general public,” he said.
Sue Becker, an attorney for Kobach, claimed that the secretary of state’s office put the required information on its website and emailed counties with the notice to begin registering voters without documentary proof of citizenship. If individual counties misunderstood the directive, Becker argued, it was not Kobach’s fault.
Judge Robinson said she was not going to take Becker’s word that her office sent notices to the counties. “You’re going to present evidence to that effect or am I supposed to accept your statement?” she said. “I want evidence… In light of everything that’s happened.”
“You all have engaged in gamesmanship with this court,” she said.
Later in the hearing, Kansas Director of Elections Bryan Caskey testified that the state was equipped to register all eligible voters before the 2018 election. But during cross-examination, Caskey admitted to failures by the state in the past.
Bryan Lowry: Judge gets Caskey to definitively say that he does not remember Kobach telling him to tell the counties to send out postcards to these voters. #ksleg#ACLUvKobach
At the end of the hearing Tuesday, Judge Robinson said she will issue a written opinion in the case and on the motion for contempt — the second time the ACLU has sought to hold Kobach in contempt in this trial. Kobach has already indicated his intentions to appeal an unfavorable ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
BUSTED: Trump-linked Cambridge Analytica caught on camera boasting about bribing politicians
Brad Reed March 19, 2018
Alexander Nix (YouTube)
Executives at Cambridge Analytica, the data firm used by President Donald Trump during his presidential campaign, have been caught on camera bragging about their efforts to entrap politicians using methods such as offering bribes and liaisons with sex workers.
“In an undercover investigation by Channel 4 News, the company’s chief executive Alexander Nix said the British firm secretly campaigns in elections across the world,” the station reports. “This includes operating through a web of shadowy front companies, or by using sub-contractors. In one exchange, when asked about digging up material on political opponents, Mr. Nix said they could ‘send some girls around to the candidate’s house,’ adding that Ukrainian girls ‘are very beautiful, I find that works very well.’”
Nix also talked about setting up their candidates’ political rivals by giving them bribes that they would record and release on the internet.
“We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance, we’ll have the whole thing recorded, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet,” he said.
Cambridge Analytica didn’t use its own employees to entrap politicians, however, as Nix said in the exchanges that they prefer to hire third-party operatives to do the work for them.
If anyone’s still hoping trump will somehow become “Presidential,” they’re as delusional as he exhibits daily.
If anything, he’s doubling down on pandemonium, by orchestrating chaotic episodes of the “Apprentice,” where at the end of the week, someone’s summarily canned and sent down the elevator to a waiting limo.
Unfortunately the impact of such fantasy playing out in the West Wing is not as benign as trump’s inconsequential reality show. Dedicated career employees like James Comey and Sally Yates, fired for refusing blind loyalty to king Donald, just fired Andrew McCabe, who backed up Comey’s narrative of his disputed encounters with trump, eminently respected business executive Rex Tillerson, unceremoniously fired by tweet after criticizing the Russians for dastardly deeds in Syria and in London last week, fired high level State Department official Steven Goldstein, who authored an official State Department statement that conflicted with White House accounts of how Mr. Tillerson was jettisoned, and countless additional federal career employees who’ve been fired, or have resigned like Gary Cohn, or retired in the face of trump administration discombobulation, are the intended consequences of trump’s scripted, bizarre notions of “Presidential” decorum.
trump’s done more damage to our institutions and governing infrastructure than any president in history and couldn’t care less about the human flotsam.
We’ve witnessed an unprecedented (40%) turnover in trump administration employees. Granted, many of these employees should never have been allowed near the West Wing or even through the front gate of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, considering dozens couldn’t qualify for security clearances, but this isn’t normal by anyone’s standards.
trump hired Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, even though Pruitt spent decades opposing the Environmental Protection Agency’s mandate to protect America’s air, water and land; hired Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, even though she’s been described as the strongest opponent of public education; hired Rick Perry for Secretary of Energy, even though he hadn’t a clue of what that job entailed; hired Ben Carson for Secretary of HUD because he once lived in an apartment; hired Wilber Ross for Secretary of Commerce apparently because he’s an expert at laundering Oligarchs money, hired Steven Munchin for Secretary of Treasury because he made a fortune foreclosing on Veterans and middle class mortgagees in distress after the financial collapse, hired Mick Mulvaney because he routinely railed against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and middle class entitlement programs; hired Tom Price, a staunch opponent of Obamacare and social safety net programs, for Secretary of Health and Human Services, before he was fired for insider trading in health stocks and squandering taxpayers money on extravagant travel expenses; hired Ryan Zinke for Secretary of the Interior because he, like trump, is bound and determined to turn over America’s National Parks and public lands to fossil fuel and mining interests.
I could go on and on but the point is, trump’s idea of “Best and Brightest” is in stark contrast to the Obama administration, who actually hired experts qualified and eager to improve their departments, not destroy them.
With a few exceptions, like Gary Cohn and Rex Tillerson, and probably Generals Mattis and McMaster, would any respectable major corporation or organization hire for department level positions, any of the unqualified and flawed characters trump hired as his “best and brightest?”
We soon learned, trump’s main focus was not to find and assign the “Best People,” who might exhibit expertise for a particular position in his administration, but to appoint someone keen on undermining the basic institutions America relies on to effectively govern in a democratic society. Sadly, Democratic principles are foreign to trump’s business and ethical sensibilities.
Is it any wonder this cast of political misfits have run amuck. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show struggles to keep a running list of all the casualties of trump’s administration. The show had to reconfigure her set so that all three columns showing more than 50 names could fit in the screen.
Most of the people brought into trump world seem to have one thing in common. They’re either adept at sycophancy or are tarnished individuals previously engaged in all sorts of dubious or criminal conduct. Fraud, money laundering, insider trading, domestic abuse, tax fraud, gambling, unbound avarice, no holds barred self dealing, back stabbing, or any form of anti social behavior is a plus on their resumes.
In any other administration in America’s history, these tarnished miscreants would have never been considered, let alone employed. But trump views their moral character flaws as a badge of courage, examples of business genius and resourcefulness. Winning at all costs is integral to trumps idea of fairness and proof of a persons ideological bona fides.
Bad conduct seems a pre-requisite for entering trumps world, and unquestioned loyalty is required for staying there.
Once that loyalty fades for even a moment, the king issues the decree; “you’re fired!”
The list of casualties grows daily and is too numerous to mention here. But after the firing dust settles, trump moves people around like pieces on a chess board, not with any consideration of talent or fitness for the job but with the main goal of securing loyalty.
trump’s only left with rearranging the human deck chairs on the Titanic because most potential qualified applicants have enough sense to steer clear of this toxic environment.
No one’s surprised trump’s engulfed in the Stormy Daniels reality show scandal. No one’s surprised he cheated on his wife while she was carrying his child, or that he tried to cover it up. We’re no longer surprised when the daily calamity and sleaze oozes from the White House.
No one’s surprised trump’s looking for his 5th communications director. Lying to the public and the press is the primary prerequisite. No one’s surprised he fired Rex Tillerson with a Tweet, or that he lied to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then bragged about it during a campaign stop, or that he’s been trying to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions for months, or that he browbeat Sessions into firing Andrew McCabe a day before he was to retire and collect a pension, or that he’s chomping at the bit, to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Special Investigator Robert Mueller, National Security Advisor McMaster and probably at lease a half dozen other employees Fox News implores him to ditch and demean.
trump now claims “he’s almost got the cabinet he’s always wanted.” Wow! Wow!
trump is the ultimate tarbaby, the pre-eminent Brer Rabbit like trickster, who schemes and connives and creates havoc all along his gold plated career paths and in every situation he engages, but then wriggles free at the last minute by turning the tables on acquaintances, employees and business partners. He employs the Midas touch in reverse. Yet he seems to escape every self imposed calamity unscathed, while those who pledged their allegiance, believed in his shtick, who fell for his cons, have crashed and burned.
trump lives to denigrate anyone and everyone at one time or another, except for the Russians and Vladimir Putin, who if you watch late night talk show satire and Saturday Night Live skits, would be an easy target for trump’s particular form of belittlement.
But trump refuses to criticize the Russians and quickly fires anyone, including Tillerson and maybe soon McMasters, when they speak out publically about Russian transgressions. Why isn’t trump troubled by Russian threats to world stability, to our democratic institutions, our critical infrastructure and our national security? It begs the question, what are the Russians holding over our Demeaner in Chief?
Progressive Americans yearns for normal, for a social community where folks sit down together, using facts and principles, and applies logic and critical thinking to solve problems. We now realize that’s foreign to trump’s realm of thought. He disregards most expert advise, embraces wild conspiracy theorists, promotes controversy, exacerbates solvable problems and takes delight in White House employee infighting.
What would trump’s unflinching base of enablers say if President Obama had done a fraction of what trump calls winning? When will the Republi-con controlled congress decide they’ve had enough?
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Is Fired 2 Days Before Retirement
Carla Herreria March 16, 2018
Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI and a frequent target of President Donald Trump, was fired Friday, days before his formal retirement. The firing of McCabe, a civil servant who has been at the bureau for more than two decades, could significantly affect his pension.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions made the decision to oust McCabe after the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommended he be fired for his alleged lack of candor during an internal review of how the FBI and Justice Department handled an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. McCabe and his attorney met Thursday with Scott Schools, the highest-ranking career employee of the Justice Department, in an attempt to prevent the firing or at least save his ability to begin collecting a pension estimated at $60,000 a year.
McCabe, a lifelong Republican, had officially stepped down from his post in late January but was using accrued leave to stay on the FBI’s payroll until his retirement date on Sunday, his 50th birthday. Being fired before his birthday means he’d have to wait several more years before he can draw a pension.
Sessions said late Friday in a statement:
“After an extensive and fair investigation and according to Department of Justice procedure, the Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) provided its report on allegations of misconduct by Andrew McCabe to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).
“The FBI’s OPR then reviewed the report and underlying documents and issued a disciplinary proposal recommending the dismissal of Mr. McCabe. Both the OIG and FBI OPR reports concluded that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor ― including under oath ― on multiple occasions.
The FBI expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and accountability. As the OPR proposal stated, “all FBI employees know that lacking candor under oath results in dismissal and that our integrity is our brand.”
Pursuant to Department Order 1202, and based on the report of the Inspector General, the findings of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility, and the recommendation of the Department’s senior career official, I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately.
McCabe responded to the firing in a lengthy statement.
“The investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has to be understood in the context of the attacks on my credibility,” McCabe wrote.
He continued:
The investigation flows from my attempt to explain the FBI’s involvement and my supervision of investigations involving Hillary Clinton. I was being portrayed in the media over and over as a political partisan, accused of closing down investigations under political pressure. The FBI was portrayed as caving under that pressure, and making decisions for political rather than law enforcement purposes. Nothing was further from the truth. In fact, this entire investigation stems from my efforts, fully authorized under FBI rules, to set the record straight on behalf of the Bureau, and to make clear that we were continuing an investigation that people in DOJ opposed.
McCabe had been with the bureau since 1996 and served a short stint as the acting FBI director after President Donald Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey last May. After the U.S. Senate confirmed Christopher Wray as the bureau chief, McCabe returned to his original role as deputy director.
McCabe abruptly announced he was leaving the bureau at the end of January while tangled in an internal investigation of his handling of the FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton. The Justice Department’s inspector general has been investigating how officials handled the Clinton investigation since just before Trump took office.
While Trump has accused McCabe of having a political bias in favor of Clinton, the Justice Department’s forthcoming internal review suggests he may have actually authorized the disclosure of information that was damaging to the Clinton campaign.
The report evidently says that McCabe authorized a discussion involving one of his top aides, the FBI’s chief spokesman and a Wall Street Journal reporter for a story, published Oct. 30, 2016, that included details of McCabe pushing back on Obama appointees in the Justice Department to continue an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
FBI officials are barred from disclosing information about ongoing criminal investigations. The Justice Department’s inspector general recommended that Sessions fire McCabe as a result of the internal review, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
McCabe has been at odds with Trump in recent months, with the president apparently trying to undermine McCabe and the FBI’s credibility.
In one of his tweets, Trump claimed that McCabe received a campaign donation of $700,000 from “Clinton Puppets,” apparently referencing a donation to Jill McCabe’s campaign totaling up to $675,000 from former Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee.
The donation was made before Andrew McCabe was promoted to deputy director and headed the FBI’s Clinton investigation. McAuliffe is an ally to both Hillary and Bill Clinton.
Trump also reportedly called McCabe into his office for a meeting, then asked him which candidate he voted for in the 2016 presidential election, The Washington Post reported in January.
David Bowdich, the FBI’s associate deputy director, is expected to replace McCabe as deputy director, according to The Washington Post. Bowdich has been with the FBI since 1995.
Trump White House Worked with Newt Gingrich on Political Purge at State Department, Lawmakers Say
Trump officials called civil servants “turncoat” and “Obama/Clinton loyalists.”
Dan Friedman March 15, 2018
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich on March 16, 2017. Melanie Rogers/Cox/Planet Pix via Zuma Wire
White House and State Department officials conspired with prominent conservatives, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to purge the State Department of staffers they viewed as insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump, two top House Democrats allege in a letter released Thursday.
The letter states that an unidentified whistleblower shared documents with Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees showing that a group of White House officials pressed political appointees at the State Department to oust career civil service employees they described with terms like “Turncoat,” “leaker and a troublemaker,” and “Obama/Clinton loyalists not at all supportive of President Trump’s foreign policy agenda.”
As described in the letter, those actions would likely violate federal laws protecting federal civil servants from undue political influence.
In the letter to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and State Department Deputy Secretary John Sullivan, Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Eliot Engel of New York, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees, cite an email forwarded by Gingrich to Trump appointees in the State Department (the Democrats released a summary of the leaked documents, rather than the original emails). In an undated email, David Wurmser, who advised former Vice President Dick Cheney and former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, wrote, “Newt: I think a cleaning is in order here. I hear [Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson has actually been reasonably good on stuff like this and cleaning house, but there are so many that it boggles the mind.” (Trump fired Tillerson earlier this week.)
Cummings and Engel say they are “particularly concerned” about documents showing an effort to drive out Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career civil servant at the State Department assigned to the policy planning staff. The letter notes that Brian Hook, the director of that division, forwarded an email from Nowrouzzadeh in which she defended herself against an attack that had been published in a conservative publication. The officials then discussed whether she was too supportive of the nuclear deal with Iran negotiated by President Barack Obama. Several of the officials discussed ousting Nowrouzzadeh. Julia Haller, a White House liaison to the State Department, wrote that Nowrouzzadeh “was born in Iran and upon my understanding cried when the President won.” Nowrouzzadeh was born in Connecticut. Haller did not cite the basis of her claim about Nowrouzzadeh’s election reaction.
Nowrouzadeh was removed from her post on the Policy Planning Staff three months earlier than scheduled in a manner she said violated a memorandum of understanding governing her assignment.
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Trump’s Personal Assistant Fired Over Security Issue
Problems related to online gambling and mishandling taxes prevented John McEntee from gaining necessary security clearance
By Michael C. Bender and Rebecca Ballhaus March 13, 2018
John McEntee, the personal aide to President Donald Trump, was fired Monday after being denied a security clearance over financial problems. PHOTO: RON SACHS/ZUMA PRESS
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s personal assistant, John McEntee, was fired and escorted from the White House on Monday after being denied a security clearance over financial problems in his background, according to senior administration officials and people close to the former aide.
People close to Mr. McEntee said problems related to online gambling and mishandling of his taxes prevented him from gaining the clearance necessary for the role. The Secret Service is investigating Mr. McEntee for those issues, according to a law enforcement official.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said, “We don’t comment on personnel issues.” Mr. McEntee didn’t return a call seeking comment.
On Tuesday morning, less than a day after Mr. McEntee’s ouster from the White House, the Trump presidential campaign announced he would join the 2020 effort as a senior adviser for campaign operations.
Mr. McEntee had joined the campaign in 2015 a few years after graduating college.
In additional staff turnover, Mr. Trump on Tuesday said Rex Tillerson was out as secretary of state, after months of speculation over his fate, and that Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo would be nominated to lead the State Department.
A tally of senior officials and aides who have left the administration
Mr. McEntee wasn’t as well known as the others, but had been a constant presence at Mr. Trump’s side for the past three years. He made sure Mr. Trump had markers to sign autographs, delivered messages to him in the White House residence and, over the weekend, ensured that the clocks in the White House residence were adjusted for daylight-saving time.
“It’s not going to be great for morale,” one White House official said about Mr. McEntee’s departure.
Mr. McEntee was removed from the White House grounds on Monday afternoon without being allowed to collect his belongings, a White House official said. He left without his jacket, a second White House official said.
Mr. Kelly told reporters earlier this month that when he joined the White House as chief of staff this summer, he realized a large number of staffers still held interim clearances after more than seven months in the administration.
His review turned up “a couple spreadsheets worth of people” at the White House operating with interim security clearance after the first nine months of the Trump administration. He also found at least 35 officials who were inappropriately given top secret clearance.
The issue isn’t whether President Trump is thinking about firing Robert Mueller: we can take that as a given. The issue is whether he thinks he would get away with it. Photograph by Stephen Hilger / Bloomberg via Getty
FILE PHOTO: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt attends during a summit of Environment ministers from the G7 group of industrialized nations in Bologna, Italy, June11, 2017. REUTERS/Max Rossi
Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach (left) and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, attend the first meeting of the presidential advisory commission on election integrity in the Eisenhower Executive office building, on July 19, 2017 in Washington, DC. Credit: Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
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Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich on March 16, 2017. Melanie Rogers/Cox/Planet Pix via Zuma Wire
John McEntee, the personal aide to President Donald Trump, was fired Monday after being denied a security clearance over financial problems. PHOTO: RON SACHS/ZUMA PRESS