Donald Trump, clearly terrified over the direction of the Russia
investigation, is considering to use his pardon powers on himself, his
family members and his aides, according to a stunning new report in The Washington Post.
The Post reports that Trump has asked his advisers about his ability
to pardon himself or others, and another source said that the
president’s lawyers are also discussing the possibility of issuing
pardons.
The president is also reportedly trying to build a case against
Special Counsel Robert Mueller – the man running the wide-ranging
investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and Moscow’s
connections to the Trump campaign.
More from the eye-popping report:
Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways
to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia
investigation, building a case against what they allege are his
conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant
pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.
Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides,
family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according
to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been
discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.
Trump’s legal team declined to comment on the issue. But one
adviser said the president has simply expressed a curiosity in
understanding the reach of his pardoning authority, as well as the
limits of Mueller’s investigation.
With the Russia investigation continuing to widen, Trump’s
lawyers are working to corral the probe and question the propriety of
the special counsel’s work. They are actively compiling a list of
Mueller’s alleged potential conflicts of interest, which they say could
serve as a way to stymie his work, according to several of Trump’s legal
advisers.
It’s hard to be shocked by any news about this president or the
increasingly explosive scandal surrounding his ties to Russia, but this
is a rather incredible development.
The news also comes a day after Trump threatened Mueller in an interview with The New York Times, telling the paper that if Mueller decides to investigate his family’s finances, then he will be crossing a “red line.”
Ultimately, Trump’s efforts to intimidate Mueller in hopes that he
will back off the Russia investigation, while now reportedly considering
whether to pardon himself and those close to him, suggests this is a man running scared.
In a break with his boss, Thomas Bossert said Russian entities clearly tried to meddle in the 2016 race.
By Ali Watkins
07/20/2017 12:49 PM EDT
The hacking and subsequent release of stolen Democratic National Committee emails last year were “unacceptable efforts and behaviors by a foreign nation state,” Thomas Bossert said on Thursday. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
ASPEN, CO — Donald Trump’s chief counter-terrorism adviser said
Thursday that the Russian government clearly tried to manipulate the
2016 election, and declared that the Obama administration’s retaliatory
sanctions didn’t go far enough.
“There’s a pretty clear and easy answer to this and it’s 'yes,'”
Thomas Bossert said when asked whether the Russians worked to manipulate
the U.S. election — a widely held conclusion that his boss in the Oval
Office has repeatedly questioned.
The Obama White House’s response — kicking out 35 diplomats and
closing two Russian diplomatic facilities in December — “wasn’t adequate
in my mind,” Bossert, a top national security aide under former
President George W. Bush, added during a wide-ranging discussion at the
National Security Forum in Aspen.
Trump has repeatedly questioned the U.S. intelligence community’s
conclusion that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election with the intent of
helping Trump win. Trump said he pressed Russian President Vladimir
Putin on the issue during their recent meeting at the G-20 in Germany,
but the two sides offered different accounts, with Russia saying Trump
accepted Putin’s denials.
The hacking and subsequent release of stolen Democratic National
Committee emails last year were “unacceptable efforts and behaviors by a
foreign nation state,” Bossert said on Thursday. He stressed, though,
that there had been no manipulation of ballot counts.
The administration is not yet in a place to crack down harder on
Russia, Bossert said, but is exploring how to deter cyber-attacks.
There’s “no evidence,” he said, that offensive cyber operations deter
foreign hackers, so the White House is exploring more “draconian”
retaliations, like financial penalties.
Those cyber policies are in the works, he said, but their
implementation — including potential responses to aggressive cyber-attacks from countries like Russia — will take longer than most
would prefer.
“We’ll satisfy you, but we won’t satisfy you in enough time,” Bossert said.
The question of Russian interference in the 2016 election — including
whether any of Trump’s associates colluded with the Kremlin — has
clouded Trump’s presidency. Special counsel Robert Mueller and multiple
congressional committees are probing not only the issue of election
meddling, but other related issues — including whether Trump obstructed
justice by firing FBI Director James Comey.
Bossert touched on several other controversial topics, including
Syria, U.S. detention and interrogation policies, and the creation of a bio-defense force.
The administration continues to explore long-term detention
facilities for captured combatants overseas, including the use of the
Guantánamo Bay detention facility, Bossert said. Further, the White
House is keeping “all options open” when it comes to reopening notorious
black site secret prisons overseas, he said.
Bossert underscored the Trump administration’s commitment to Syria,
but said Syrian President Bashar Assad’s departure was not a top
priority. The White House has reportedly ended a covert program
dedicated to arming anti-Assad groups.
“It’s not important for us to say Assad must go first,” Bossert said,
but added, “The U.S. would still like to see Assad go at some point.”
The Trump adviser repeatedly chastised his interviewer, New York
Times national security reporter David Sanger, about his newspaper’s
coverage of classified U.S. programs. He also strongly objected to a
Times article that he said unfairly implied the U.S. has responsibility
for the effects of computer vulnerability exploitation programs designed
by the U.S. government which fall into foreign hands and are used for
malicious purposes.
Bossert also said the Trump administration would develop a
comprehensive plan to defend the nation against bio-terrorism, an issue
he said has been dangerously neglected, and which has taken on new
urgency because of rapidly advancing biotechnology that allows for the
creation of synthetic viruses.
Bossert said scientists may now be able to create a synthetic
smallpox virus without access to the only two known laboratory samples
of the deadly disease — a prospect he called terrifying.
MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough announced
on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last week that he was leaving the
Republican Party. I don’t buy it, and you shouldn’t either.
Scarborough wants to capitalize on anti-Trump viewership. He has always
been a loyal Republican, pushing for privatization and elimination of
social safety net programs during his days in Congress, and that’s
exactly what today’s GOP is all about. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins
discusses this.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer returned to the podium on Monday
– though off camera – to address reporters on the first day of “Made In
America Week.” One of the questions asked of Spicer was whether Donald
Trump would begin to manufacture the goods for his brands in the US,
which Spicer deemed an “inappropriate” question. If you can’t ask that
questions during Made In America Week, then when would it be
appropriate? Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
On Monday, the Interceptpublished a classified internal NSA document
noting that Russian military intelligence mounted an operation to hack
at least one US voting software supplier—which provided software related
to voter registration files—in the months prior to last year’s
presidential contest. It has previously been reported that Russia
attempted to hack into voter registration systems, but this NSA document
provides details of how one such operation occurred.
According to the Intercept:
The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided
anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes
intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long
Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the US election
and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most
detailed US government account of Russian interference in the election
that has yet come to light.
While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s
understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the
underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A US
intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against
drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis
is not necessarily definitive.
The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further
into US voting systems than was previously understood. It states
unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military
intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence
Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the
document:
Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed
cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016,
evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and
hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that
operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing
campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.
Let's be clear here: The Republican Party holds the power it does
because it is unafraid to lie. From the overhyped fear of Communism to
the overhyped fear of crime to the overhyped fear of terrorism, the GOP
has jumped from lie to lie to lie in order to maintain power, often
pivoting back to ones that work so well, like welfare fraud and, time
and again, crime. They recovered from their near dismantling in 2006 and
2008, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 washed away the Bush bullshit, by
going big with the lies about Barack Obama and, especially, about the
Affordable Care Act. And as Republican leaders in the Senate desperately
try to come up with a way to squeeze out one more turd of a Trumpcare
bill, they are lying with abandon, and not just about what's in the aforementioned turd.
Obamacare markets aren't "collapsing." They're stabilizing. People on the Medicaid expansion aren't desperate to get rid of it. They are satisfied with the care they are getting. Over two-thirds of the country, including a majority of Republicans, support the birth control mandate in Obamacare, the subject of another fake controversy just to appeal to yahoo religious nutzoids.
And the reason that they've gotten away with lying is that they are so
fucking good at it. They are so fucking good at playing the media,
playing their constituents, playing the Democrats, playing everyone.
They are master bullshitters. They get away with it because conservative
ideas in a political context are so fucking simple to understand.
What's easier on the brain? "We should provide decent education,
housing, job-training, and anti-poverty programs to help combat crime"?
Or "Lock 'em up"? Democrats can't compete until they come up with a
better story than the lies that have worked so well for so long.
It was going along so well for the GOP until the Trumps, this family of
outsiders, came along and fucked it all up. Donald Trump, Jared Kushner,
and Junior have lived on a privileged plane of existence, where having a
cadre of brutish dickhead attorneys on retainer is enough of a
deterrent for anyone who would dare question them or try to get paid
fairly. They could intimidate people into silence or, if that fails,
settle any lawsuits with the handy provisions that they admit no guilt
and the plaintiffs can't talk about it. They could be bumblefuck corrupt
business shitheels and get away with it.
The biggest problem in getting into the public arena is that, all of a
sudden, the Trumps have to deal with the federal government, an entity
that doesn't just have lawyers but entire goddamned bureaus devoted to
investigating just the kind of fuckery that the Trumps have regularly
been involved in. Throw in a media that realizes it had better make
itself relevant again or just fucking give up, and a group of people as
boisterously, unashamedly moronic as the Trumps don't stand a chance.
You don't want to be probed and pilloried? Then either don't be corrupt
(except in the usual way of sucking up to Wall Street and other rich
fucks - that's just sadly acceptable now), like Obama, who could take
all the shit and toss it back, or don't fucking run for office.
We'll never know what toxic combination of hubris, narcissism, and
lickspittlism got Donald Trump to run for president to win. But we do
know that another toxic combination got him elected, and one of the
primary ingredients in that poison was the interference of the Russian
government. We also know that we are learning all this because the Trump
family was too fucking dumb to cover it up well. They're shitty liars
as well as being shitty human beings.
You can imagine Karl Rove slapping his bloated forehead when he saw the
emails between cartoon louche Richie Gallstone or whatever the fuck that
guy's name is and Donald Trump, Jr. You can imagine Rove getting on the
phone with John Boehner and the two of them, liars of the first order,
screaming with laughter, "The subject
line...the subject line is 'Russia-Clinton.'" You can imagine them both
calling Mitch McConnell and taunting him about having to deal with this
shit. You can imagine McConnell slowly cursing the fact that he worked
so hard to get all these lies working, all the cocksucking and
ratfucking that went into them, and now they're being brought down by
these Trump assholes.
You can be corrupt. You can be stupid. You can't be stupid and corrupt.
Otherwise, you don't know when to shut the fuck up. You don't know when
to keep your head down. You don't know when to not fucking tweet out the
evidence that, at the very least, reveals the very thing everyone has
been trying to pin on you.
So now it falls to the professional liars, the liars with experience, to
try to unfuck this fucked up situation. You are going to see a
hard-press from the right-wing attack dogs about how this is nothing,
how the Democrats are more corrupt and destructive, how it was just a
Washington naif's error. It's happening already,
and they're saying that it's essentially treasonous to not support the
president, a hypocrisy that they have no problem with. They'll say it's
about bringing down the great man Trump, it's about sour grapes over the
failure in the election, and it's about the mighty flag-waving patriots
who don't want to see the country dragged down by what they don't even
see as a scandal.
Which brings us back to the top of this here post. The Trump lies and
power-at-any-cost actions are part and parcel of what the Republican
Party does. The GOP is filthy with masterful sleaze merchants. They can
fuck your ears and tell you it was God's blessing. It's going to be up
to the Democrats to come up with a simple, straightforward narrative
here that can slap the Republicans down until they scurry back to the
gutter.
How this turns out will reveal who gives a shit about the nation. Who is
enraged that this has happened. Who the real patriots are.
(Note: Sure, Democrats went along some of the time with GOP lies because
they can get swept up in a lie as much as anyone, but they rarely have
been the originators of a big lie in the last 50 years. And, yeah, the
country ain't perfect. No shit. Patriots work to make it better.)
Over
the weekend, as the import of the Donald Trump Jr meeting became clear,
but before this morning’s emails release, I started going back through
my notes to piece together the timeline of events and whether they
looked different in the light of the new revelations. And? Good guess!
They look a lot different. For the moment, look at the timeline after
the jump starting in April and running through August. That is the
critical part. The critical addition of the Don Jr meeting fits right
into a critical period when what we understand were Russian intelligence
operatives were trying various vehicles to surface emails that were
stolen during the spring. Look at the timeline after the jump – again,
go ahead to April 2016.
June 16th, 2015: Donald Trump announces his candidacy for President of the United States.
Circa Summer 2015: The US government alleges that Russian hackers first gain access to DNC computer networks.
Circa August 2015: Trump staff arranges first meeting between Trump and General Flynn, according to Flynn’s account in an August 2016 interview
with The Washington Post. “I got a phone call from his team. They asked
if he would be willing meet with Mr. Trump and I did. … In late summer
2015.”
August 8th, 2015: Roger Stone leaves formal role
in Trump campaign. Whether he quits or was fired is disputed. Stone
will continue as a key, albeit informal advisor, for the remainder of
the campaign.
December 10th, 2015: Michael Flynn attends conference and banquet
in Moscow to celebrate the 10th anniversary of RT (formerly Russia
today). Flynn is seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the
concluding banquet.
March 19th, 2016: Hackers successfully hack into Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta’s email.
March 21st, 2016: In a meeting with The Washington Post
editorial board, Trump provides a list of five foreign policy advisors.
The list includes Carter Page but not Michael Flynn. The list is Walid
Phares, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Joe Schmitz, and ret. Lt. Gen.
Keith Kellogg.
March 28th, 2016: Trump campaign hires Paul Manafort to oversee delegate operations for campaign. Manafort becomes the dominant figure running the campaign by late April and takes over as campaign manager on June 21st with the firing of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
February-April 2016: Flynn advisory relationship with Trump appears to have solidified over the Spring of 2016. In late January Flynn is mentioned as an advisor who has “regular interactions” with Trump. There are similar mentions in February and March. Yet as late as mid-March, Flynn appeared to downplay his ties to Trump. By May Flynn is routinely listed as an advisor and by late May is even being mooted as a possible vice presidential pick.
April 2016: DNC network administrators first notice suspicious activity on Committee computer networks in late April, 2016, according to The Washington Post. The DNC retains the services of network security firm Crowdstrike which expels hackers from the DNC computer network. Crowdstrike tells The Washington Post it believes hackers had been operating inside the DNC networks since the Summer of 2015.
April 19th, 2016: “DCLeaks.com” url/address registered.
May 3rd, 2016: Donald J. Trump becomes becomes presumptive nominee after Ted Cruz and John Kasich withdraw from race.
May 26th, 2016: Donald J. Trump officially secure majority of GOP delegates, officially clinching the nomination of the Republican party.
June 3rd, 2016:
First email contact between Rob Goldstone and Donald Trump Jr. about
meeting with “Russian government lawyer” with damaging information about
Hillary Clinton.
June 7th, 2016: Donald J Trump gives speech in which he promises
a major speech about Hillary Clinton’s crimes on June 13th. “I am going
to give a major speech on … probably Monday [June 13th] of next week
and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place
with the Clintons. I think you’re going to find it very informative and
very, very interesting.”
June 8th, 2016: First tweet posted to “DCLeaks” Twitter account.
June 9th, 2016:
Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort meet with Natalia
Veselnitskaya. Trump agreed to take the meeting after being told by
Trump associate Rob Goldstone that Veselnitskaya had damaging
information about Hillary Clinton which came from a Russian government
operation to help his father Donald J. Trump.
June 12th, 2016: Julian Assange first announces
that Wikileaks has Clinton emails which are soon to be released.
“Wikileaks has a very big year ahead … We have emails related to Hillary
Clinton which are pending publication.”
June 14, 2016: Washington Postpublishes first account of hacking of the DNC computer networks, allegedly by hackers working on behalf of the Russian government.
June 15th, 2016:
“Guccifer 2.0”, later identified by US government officials and other
private sector analysts as a fictive persona created by Russian
intelligence operatives, contacts The Smoking Gun to take credit for hacking the DNC.
July 12th, 2016: Official publication date, The Field of Fight by Michael Flynn and Michael Ledeen.
July 22, 2016: Wikileaks releases first tranche of DNC emails dating from January 2015 to May 2016.
July 27th, 2016:
Donald Trump asks Russia to hack Clinton’s email to find 33,000 alleged
lost emails: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you can find the
33,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded
mightily by our press.”
August 1st, 2016: Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort denies Trump campaign changed GOP platform on Russia and Ukraine.
August 8th, 2016: Trump Advisor Roger Stone tells
Southwest Broward Republican Organization “I actually have communicated
with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to
the Clinton Foundation but there’s no telling what the October surprise
may be.”
August 14th, 2016: The New York Times publishes
story detailing handwritten ledgers showing “$12.7 million in
undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr.
Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to
Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau.”
August 19, 2016: Paul Manafort resigns from Trump campaign.
August 21, 2016: Trump advisor Roger Stone tweets: “Trust me, it will soon [sic] the Podesta’s time in the barrel.”
September 26th, 2016: Trump Russia-Europe Policy Advisor Carter Page steps down from campaign
while disputing allegations that he engaged in private communications
with Russian government officials. A Yahoo News article from three days
earlier reported that US intelligence officials were probing whether he
met privately with Russian officials in Moscow in July, including an
alleged meeting with close Putin ally Igor Sechin, Chairman of Russian oil company Rosneft.
September 26th, 2016: At first presidential debate, Donald Trump casts doubt
on Russian role in hacking campaign: “It could be Russia, but it could
also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be
somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”
October 7, 2016: A “Joint Statement from the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence” officially accuses the Russian government of being behind hacking of the DNC “to interfere with the US election process.”
October 30th, 2016:
In response to FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress about new
developments in the Clinton email server probe, Senate Minority Leader
Harry Reid writes a public letter to Comey
in which he claims: “In my communications with you and other top
officials in the national security community, it has become clear that
you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination
between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government.”
December 29th, 2016: Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov vows retaliation for sanctions.
December 29th, 2016: Incoming National Security Michael Flynn has multiple phone conversations with Russian Sergey Kislyak. It is later reported
that the calls covered US sanctions and suggestions that Obama’s
punitive actions could be undone in a matter of weeks. Trump
administration officials had repeatedly denied that the conversations
involved more than pleasantries and logistics about future meetings.
January 19th, 2017: The New York Times reports
that the FBI is leading an interagency task force probing ties between
Russia and three close Trump associates: Paul Manafort, Carter Page and
Roger Stone.
January 26th, 2017: Acting Attorney General
Sally Yates and a senior intelligence official visit to White House
Counsel Donald McGahn to deliver the message that National Security
Advisor Flynn has deceived the Vice President about the subject matter
of his calls and may be subject to Russian blackmail.
February 13th, 2017: Michael Flynn resigns as National Security Advisor.
Conway alleged that the “New Day” co-host was attempting to go viral,
but it was Conway that lit up the Internet with commentary.
The interviews caught her in a series of awkward pivots and obvious
hypocrisy, namely that she mentioned a report about former FBI director
James Comey that cited anonymous sources. Trump and his White House has
notoriously criticized the media for using anonymous sources.
Twitter users weren’t having any of it. They attacked Conway for both
interviews and heralded Cuomo’s dogged attempts to get Conway to
understand Donald Trump Jr. accepting a meeting with a Russian lawyer is
an admission of guilt.
A meeting arranged by Donald
Trump Jr. was held at Trump Tower in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer who
has connections to the Kremlin.Credit
Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton
before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during
the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House
briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.
The
meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J.
Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr.
Kushner only recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in
confidential government documents described to The New York Times.
The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it.
The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trumpclinched the Republican nomination
— points to the central question in federal investigations of the
Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump
campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting
represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign
were willing to accept Russian help.
And
while Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed
meetings between his associates and the Russians, the episode at Trump
Tower is the first such confirmed private meeting involving members of
his inner circle during the campaign — as well as the first one known to
have included his eldest son. It came at an inflection point in the
campaign, when Donald Trump Jr., who served as an adviser and a
surrogate, was ascendant and Mr. Manafort was consolidating power.
It
is unclear whether the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually
produced the promised compromising information about Mrs. Clinton. But
the people interviewed by The Times about the meeting said the
expectation was that she would do so.
In
a statement on Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. said he had met with the
Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance. “After pleasantries
were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information
that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic
National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were
vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information
was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no
meaningful information.”
He
said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children
and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian
human rights abusers. The law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian
children.
“It
became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the
claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the
meeting,” Mr. Trump said.
When
he was first asked about the meeting on Saturday, he said only that it
was primarily about adoptions and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton.
President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also attended the meeting last year at Trump Tower.Credit
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Mark
Corallo, a spokesman for the president’s lawyer, said on Sunday that
“Trump was not aware of and did not attend the meeting.”
Lawyers
and spokesmen for Mr. Kushner and Mr. Manafort did not immediately
respond to requests for comment. In his statement, Donald Trump Jr. said
he asked Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner to attend, but did not tell them
what the meeting was about.
American intelligence agencies have concluded
that Russian hackers and propagandists worked to tip the election
toward Donald J. Trump, in part by stealing and then providing to
WikiLeaks internal Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails that
were embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton. WikiLeaks began releasing the
material on July 22.
A
special prosecutor and congressional committees are now investigating
the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russians. Mr. Trump has
disputed that, but the investigation has cast a shadow over his
administration.
Mr.
Trump has also equivocated on whether the Russians were solely
responsible for the hacking. On Sunday, two days after his first meeting
as president with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post:
“I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our
election. He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion.....”
He also tweeted that
they had “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that
election hacking, & many other negative things, will be
guarded...””
On
Sunday morning on Fox News, the White House chief of staff, Reince
Priebus, described the Trump Tower meeting as a “big nothing burger.”
“Talking
about issues of foreign policy, issues related to our place in the
world, issues important to the American people is not unusual,” he said.
But
Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the leading Democrat on
the House Intelligence Committee, one of the panels investigating
Russian election interference, said he wanted to question “everyone that
was at that meeting.”
“There’s
no reason for this Russian government advocate to be meeting with Paul
Manafort or with Mr. Kushner or the president’s son if it wasn’t about
the campaign and Russia policy,” Mr. Schiff said after the initial Times
report.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer invited to the Trump Tower meeting,
is best known for mounting a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky
Act.
The
adoption impasse is a frequently used talking point for opponents of
the act. Ms. Veselnitskaya’s campaign against the law has also included
attempts to discredit the man after whom it was named, Sergei L.
Magnitsky, a lawyer and auditor who died in 2009 in mysterious
circumstances in a Russian prison after exposing one of the biggest
corruption scandals during Mr. Putin’s rule.
Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, at the Republican National Convention in July 2016 in Cleveland.Credit
Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
Ms.
Veselnitskaya’s clients include state-owned businesses and a senior
government official’s son, whose company was under investigation in the
United States at the time of the meeting. Her activities and
associations had previously drawn the attention of the F.B.I., according
to a former senior law enforcement official.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya said in a statement on Saturday that “nothing at all
about the presidential campaign” was discussed. She recalled that after
about 10 minutes, either Mr. Kushner or Mr. Manafort walked out.
She
said she had “never acted on behalf of the Russian government” and
“never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the
Russian government.”
The
Trump Tower meeting was disclosed to government officials in recent
days, when Mr. Kushner, who is also a senior White House aide, filed a
revised version of a form required to obtain a security clearance.
The Times reported in April
that he had failed to disclose any foreign contacts, including meetings
with the Russian ambassador to the United States and the head of a
Russian state bank. Failure to report such contacts can result in a loss
of access to classified information and even, if information is
knowingly falsified or concealed, in imprisonment.
Mr.
Kushner’s advisers said at the time that the omissions were an error,
and that he had immediately notified the F.B.I. that he would be
revising the filing.
In
a statement on Saturday, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said:
“He has since submitted this information, including that during the
campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with
representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during
transition. Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included,
out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person,
which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law Donald
Trump Jr. As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to
cooperate and share what he knows.”
Mr.
Manafort, the former campaign chairman, also recently disclosed the
meeting, and Donald Trump Jr.’s role in organizing it, to congressional
investigators who had questions about his foreign contacts, according to
people familiar with the events. Neither Mr. Manafort nor Mr. Kushner
was required to disclose the content of the meeting.
A spokesman for Mr. Manafort declined to comment.
Since
the president took office, Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric have
assumed day-to-day control of their father’s real estate empire. Because
he does not serve in the administration and does not have a security
clearance, Donald Trump Jr. was not required to disclose his foreign
contacts.
Federal and congressional investigators have not publicly
asked for any records that would require his disclosure of Russian
contacts.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya is a formidable operator with a history of pushing the
Kremlin’s agenda. Most notable is her campaign against the Magnitsky
Act, which provoked a Cold War-style, tit-for-tat dispute with the
Kremlin when President Barack Obama signed it into law in 2012.
Under
the law, about 44 Russian citizens have been put on a list that allows
the United States to seize their American assets and deny them visas.
The United States asserts that many of them are connected to the fraud
exposed by Mr. Magnitsky, who after being jailed for more than a year
was found dead in his cell. A Russian human rights panel found that he
had been assaulted. To critics of Mr. Putin, Mr. Magnitsky, in death,
became a symbol of corruption and brutality in the Russian state.
An
infuriated Mr. Putin has called the law an “outrageous act,” and, in
addition to banning American adoptions, he compiled what became known as
an “anti-Magnitsky” blacklist of United States citizens.
Among
those blacklisted was Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney in
Manhattan, who led notable convictions of Russian arms and drug
dealers. Mr. Bharara was abruptly fired in March, after previously being asked to stay on by President Trump.
One
of Ms. Veselnitskaya’s clients is Denis Katsyv, the Russian owner of
Prevezon Holdings, an investment company based in Cyprus. He is the son
of Petr Katsyv, the vice president of the state-owned Russian Railways
and a former deputy governor of the Moscow region. In a civil forfeiture
case prosecuted by Mr. Bharara’s office, the Justice Department alleged
that Prevezon had helped launder money linked to the $230 million
corruption scheme exposed by Mr. Magnitsky by putting it in New York
real estate and bank accounts. Prevezon recently settled the case for $6
million without admitting wrongdoing.
Ms. Veselnitskaya was also deeply involved in the making of a film that disputes the widely accepted version
of Mr. Magnitsky’s life and death. In the film and in her statement,
she said the true culprit of the fraud was William F. Browder, an
American-born financier who hired Mr. Magnitsky to investigate the fraud
after three of his investment funds companies in Russia were seized.
Mr. Browder called the film a state-sponsored smear campaign.
“She’s not just some private lawyer,” Mr. Browder said of Ms. Veselnitskaya. “She is a tool of the Russian government.”
John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director, testified in May
that he had been concerned last year by Russian government efforts to
contact and manipulate members of Mr. Trump’s campaign. “Russian
intelligence agencies do not hesitate at all to use private companies
and Russian persons who are unaffiliated with the Russian government to
support their objectives,” he said.
Among those now under investigation is Michael T. Flynn, who was forced to resign as
Mr. Trump’s national security adviser after it became known that he had
falsely denied speaking to the Russian ambassador about sanctions
imposed by the Obama administration over the election hacking.
Congress
later discovered that Mr. Flynn had been paid more than $65,000 by
companies linked to Russia, and that he had failed to disclose those
payments when he renewed his security clearance and underwent an
additional background check to join the White House staff.
In May, the president fired the F.B.I. director,
James B. Comey, who days later provided information about a meeting
with Mr. Trump at the White House. According to Mr. Comey, the president
asked him to end the bureau’s investigation into Mr. Flynn; Mr. Trump
has repeatedly denied making such a request. Robert S. Mueller III, a
former F.B.I. director, was then appointed as special counsel.
The
status of Mr. Mueller’s investigation is not clear, but he has
assembled a veteran team of prosecutors and agents to dig into any
possible collusion.
Follow Jo Becker, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman on Twitter.
Maggie Haberman, Sophia Kishkovsky and Eric Lipton contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
We
can scoff and sneer at those images of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
on his beachfront imperium, or we can learn from them. As he took in the
sun, he doled out a lesson, the same one that Donald Trump is
delivering on a daily basis and in a grander fashion:
Beware
the politician who doesn’t give a damn for decorum. What he markets as
irreverence can be something coarser and more perverse.
It can lead to ruin. Christie’s approval rating from New Jersey voters was just 15 percent — the lowest for any current governor in the country and the worst in his state’s history
— before his weekend repose on what turned out to be quicksand. He
could sink into single digits after this. Negative integers aren’t
entirely out of the question.
I
hope Trump is watching, but I have my doubts. The Christie family’s
swimwear pageant isn’t the kind that he’s known to ogle. Plus, he surely
turns the channel when the visage on the screen isn’t his own.
The
stories of the disgraced New Jersey governor and the disgraceful
American president overlap.
Christie was “Trump before Trump,” Michael
Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, told The
Washington Post’s Robert Costa in an article
published late Monday. “He does what he wants to do, and his success
can be traced to that. But there are consequences, of course, when you
work that way.”
Steele
could as easily have been talking about Trump, and when Costa referred
to the “defiance that has both lifted and hobbled Christie’s political
career,” he brought to mind Trump’s temperament and trajectory, whether
he meant to or not.
The
twins of tantrum, Christie and Trump had almost identical political
appeals. They mocked propriety. They broke rules. They assertively
peddled the impression that as happy as they were to make friends, they
were even happier to make enemies, because that meant that they were
fully in the fight.
In
an era of resentment and anger, many voters thrilled to the spectacle.
The problem with other politicians, these voters legitimately reasoned,
was too much indulgence of vested interests and too cowardly an
obeisance to convention. If you didn’t slaughter the sacred cows, you’d
never get to the tastiest filet.
But
Christie and Trump proved to be butchers of a more indiscriminate and
self-serving sort, and both demonstrated that there’s a short leap from
headstrong to hardheaded and from defiant to delusional. Bold
nonconformity can be the self-indulgent egotist’s drag.
Yes,
Christie called out fools in certain circumstances where they deserved
it and steamrolled opponents who stood in the way of some plans that
were wholly defensible. And he was seemingly immune to any of the
subsequent caricatures of him as a bully.
But he was also deaf to inevitable and entirely fair questions about his behavior. As Nick Corasaniti noted
in The Times this week, he was caught “using a state helicopter paid
for by taxpayers to attend his son’s baseball game.” He let King
Abdullah of Jordan treat him and his family to a $30,000 weekend in a posh hotel.
He
was blind to how he would come across when, in his speech at the 2012
Republican National Convention, he took such a gaudy star turn that the
party’s presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, was reduced to a cameo. Christie bucked traditional manners, all right. He bucked them all the way to jaw-dropping megalomania.
Make
no mistake: For all their flamboyant pugnaciousness, the Christies and
Trumps of the political world are chasing adulation every bit as much as
their peers are — maybe more so. They’re just taking a deliberately
muddier route, and if they don’t get there, they’re more likely to wear
their failure as a badge of honor and to dig in with a destructive
arrogance.
When
Christie was asked whether, despite a shutdown of the state government,
he would steal away to the manse on the shore that’s a perk of his
office, he unabashedly answered yes.
“That’s just the way it goes,” he said. “Run for governor, and you can have a residence.”
Translation: I’m governor and you’re not. Where have we heard a formulation like that before?
Trump
and Christie somehow decided that you have to govern by middle finger
if you want to avoid governing by pinkie finger. But there’s a digit in
between: a middle ground. It’s where real leadership and true
effectiveness lie.
Christie’s
disrepute and dashed ambitions confirm as much. So does the ongoing
insult of Trump’s presidency. They show that if you embrace a politician
who talks too frequently and proudly about not caring what anyone
thinks, you’ll wind up in the clutch of a politician whose last refuge
is not caring what anyone thinks. That’s a dangerous place to be.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 5, 2017, on Page A19 of the New York Times edition with the headline: Chris Christie’s Tutorial In Hubris. Today's Paper|Subscribe
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams abruptly pleaded guilty
Thursday, nearly two weeks into a federal bribery trial that dragged
embarrassing details about his messy personal life and financial
struggles out into open court.
Williams will resign as the city’s top prosecutor as part of a deal
under which he pleaded guilty to one count related to accepting a bribe
from Bucks County businessman Mohammad Ali.
Asked by U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond whether he intended to
follow through with his resignation, Williams choked up and answered,
“humbly, sincerely and effective immediately.”
Diamond said he wanted Williams’ resignation letter couriered to Mayor Kenny’s office as soon as the hearing was over.
Williams remained somber looking throughout the guilty plea hearing.
“I’m just very sorry for all of this, your honor,” he said.
At a followup hearing to determine whether Williams should be jailed
immediately, defense attorney Thomas F. Burke argued the disgraced
prosecutor was not a flight risk.
“He has no means as the court can see to go anywhere. He has no
support. He’s deeply in debt and he doesn’t even have a car,” Burke
said.
Taking the witness stand to plead with a judge not to send him
directly to prison before sentencing, tears welled up in Williams’ eyes
while discussing his daughters.
He acknowledged he was broke, saying he had “probably about $150 to $200” in his bank account.
In addition to accepting that he could face a maximum 5 year term
when he is sentenced Oct. 24, Williams agreed to forfeit $64,878.22
While the 28 remaining counts against Williams were dismissed, he
“admits that he committed all of the conduct in those 29 counts,”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Zauzmer said.
“Williams took benefits repeatedly from Mr. Ali knowing that those
benefits were offered – at least in part – to influence him to take
official actions,” said Zauzmer.
Williams notified prosecutors he wanted to take the plea deal at 1 a.m.Thursday, said Zauzmer.
Sources close to the case say the deal is similar to one Williams was
offered – and turned down – one day before his indictment earlier this
year on 29 corruption-related counts including bribery, extortion and
honest services fraud.
Prior to his admission, prosecutors and Williams’ defense lawyers –
Thomas F. Burke and Trevan Borum – spent more than an hour huddled in
quiet conversation in the courtroom, while the district attorney was
nowhere to be seen.
His decision came after weeks of damaging testimony in which
government witnesses characterized him a shameless beggar who repeatedly
turned to the money of others to fund a lifestyle he couldn’t afford.
Two wealthy businessmen testified that they had showered the district
attorney with gifts of all-expenses-paid travel, luxury goods and even
cash in anticipation of the legal favors they might need from him.
And prosecutors had alleged that Williams delivered for them –
writing letters to throw his weight into their legal problems and
promising in one instance to intervene in a drug case brought by his
office.
Additionally, Williams was accused of misspending thousands of
dollars from his campaign fund on memberships to exclusive Philadelphia
social clubs, misusing city vehicles as if they were his own and
misappropriating money intended to fund his mother’s nursing home care.
Read a recap of Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams’ trial with our day-by-day updates and learn more with our explainer on everything you need to know about the case.
The hacking and subsequent release of stolen Democratic National Committee emails last year were “unacceptable efforts and behaviors by a foreign nation state,” Thomas Bossert said on Thursday. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
