Inauguration in sight, Donald Trump continues Twitter assault
His inauguration days away, President-elect Donald Trump is continuing to lash out at critics in the intelligence community and Democrats in Congress who are vowing to skip his swearing-in ceremony. The tough-talking Republican questioned whether the CIA director himself was “the leaker of fake news” in a Sunday night tweet. The extraordinary criticism from the incoming president came hours after CIA chief John Brennan charged that Trump lacks a full understanding of the threat Moscow poses to the United States, delivering a public lecture to the president-elect that further highlighted the bitter state of Trump’s relations with American intelligence agencies. “Now that he’s going to have an opportunity to do something for our national security as opposed to talking and tweeting, he’s going to have tremendous responsibility to make sure that U.S. and national security interests are protected,” Brennan said on “Fox News Sunday,” warning that the president-elect’s impulsivity could be dangerous. Trump shot back in a Twitter post Sunday, saying: “Oh really, couldn’t do much worse – just look at Syria (red line), Crimea, Ukraine and the build-up of Russian nukes. Not good! Was this the leaker of Fake News?” The president-elect remained behind closed doors in his Manhattan high rise for the weekend as his team worked to answer questions about his plans at home and abroad once he’s sworn into office on Friday. Among Trump’s immediate challenges: the United States’ complicated relationship with Russia, crafting an affordable health care alternative that doesn’t strip coverage from millions of Americans and dealing with an assertion by Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon, that his election was not legitimate. Without providing details, Trump promised his plan to replace the nation’s health care law would provide universal coverage, according to a Washington Post interview published late Sunday. “We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” he said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.” In a separate interview with the Times of London, Trump indicated that he could lift sanctions imposed on Russia for its military intervention in Ukraine in exchange for a nuclear arms deal. The suggestion met a frosty reception in Moscow. Meanwhile, a growing number of Democrats in Congress have vowed to skip Trump’s inauguration. “We cannot normalize Donald Trump, and we certainly cannot turn our heads and ignore such a threat to the institutions and values of our democracy,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York said Monday in a statement. Trump’s lieutenants pushed back hard, particularly against Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights legend who said Russian interference in Trump’s election delegitimizes his presidency. “I think it’s incredibly disappointing and I think it’s irresponsible for people like himself to question the legitimacy of the next United States president,” incoming White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said of Lewis on ABC’s “This Week,” insisting that Republicans did not question the legitimacy of President Barack Obama‘s victory eight years ago. Vice President-elect Mike Pence said on “Fox News Sunday” that he hopes Lewis will change his mind and attend. Priebus later acknowledged that conservatives – led by Trump himself – spent years questioning Obama’s eligibility to serve as president, suggesting he was not born in the United States. Trump has done little to encourage unity in recent days, instead inflaming tensions with his critics through a series of tweets. The incoming president tweeted Saturday that Lewis should pay more attention to his “crime ridden” Atlanta-area district, adding that the civil rights leader was “all talk.” Questions about Trump’s relationship with Russia have dominated the days leading up to his inauguration. Michael Flynn, who is set to become Trump’s national security adviser, has been in frequent contact with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. in recent weeks, including on the day the Obama administration hit Moscow with sanctions in retaliation for the alleged election hacking, a senior U.S. official said. After initially denying the contact took place, Trump’s team publicly acknowledged the conversations on Sunday. “The conversations that took place at that time were not in any way related to the new U.S. sanctions against Russia or the expulsion of diplomats,” said Pence. Repeated contacts just as Obama imposed sanctions would raise questions about whether Trump’s team discussed – or even helped shape – Russia’s response. Russian President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly did not retaliate against the U.S. for the sanctions or the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats, a decision Trump quickly praised. Trump has repeatedly called for a better relationship between the U.S. and Putin’s government. He suggested in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday that he’d consider easing the latest sanctions on Russia. “I think he has to be mindful that he does not have a full appreciation and understanding of what the implications are of going down that road,” Brennan said. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Mitch McConnell rejects calls for select panel on Russian meddling
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is rejecting bipartisan calls for a special committee to investigate Russian interference in the U.S. election, which American intelligence says was aimed in part at helping Republican Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. The likely meddling by Russia “is a serious issue, but it doesn’t require a select committee,” said McConnell, R-Ky. The Senate intelligence committee is able to investigate the matter, he added. CIA Director John Brennan has said the intelligence community is in agreement that Russia tried to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, although there’s no evidence Moscow succeeded in helping Trump win. “There’s no question that the Russians were messing around in our election,” McConnell told Kentucky Educational Television on Monday night. “It is a matter of genuine concern and it needs to be investigated.” Still, McConnell said the issue should be investigated in “regular order” by the Senate intelligence panel, which is “fully capable of handling this.” McConnell’s comments put him at odds with Arizona Sen. John McCain and other Republicans who have joined with incoming Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in calling for a special committee to investigate efforts by Russia, China and Iran to interfere in U.S. elections. A select committee is a high-profile panel created by congressional leaders that taps lawmakers from a variety of committees to focus on a single issue, such as Watergate or the Iran-contra arms deal. McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Russian interference in the election threatens to “destroy democracy,” adding that a select committee is needed to find out exactly what Russia did and what effect it had on the election. “We need to get to the bottom of this,” McCain said. “We need to find out exactly what was done and what the implications of the attacks were, especially if they had an effect on our election.” He said: “There’s no doubt they were interfering and no doubt that it was cyberattacks. The question now is how much and what damage and what should the United States of America do? And so far, we have been totally paralyzed.” Trump has called reports of Russian hacking “ridiculous,” and his transition team dismissed the CIA assessment, saying it was the work of the same people who claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invaded. Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement that the investigation must be bipartisan. “We don’t want this investigation to be political like the Benghazi investigation,” he said. “We don’t want it to just be finger pointing at one person or another.” Schumer added: “We want to find out what the Russians are doing to our political system and what other foreign governments might do to our political system. And then figure out a way to stop it.” McCain, Schumer and other senators say a select committee is needed to “reconcile contradictory information” and give the issue needed focus. In the interview with KET’s Bill Goodman, McConnell spoke of his surprise at the election’s outcome. “I thought we’d come up short” in the Senate, McConnell said. “And I didn’t think President Trump had a chance of winning.” Trump won in part because he was able to connect with rural voters in states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that had previously voted for Democrats, McConnell said. “Trump was able to convey – oddly enough a message from a billionaire who lives in Manhattan – a genuine concern for people who felt kind of left off, who felt offended by all the political correctness they see around them,” he said. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Donald Trump picks Rex Tillerson to lead State Department
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday he has picked ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state, calling him “among the most accomplished business leaders and international dealmakers in the world.” “Rex Tillerson’s career is the embodiment of the American dream. Through hard work, dedication and smart deal making, Rex rose through the ranks to become CEO of ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest and most respected companies,” the billionaire real estate mogul said in a pre-dawn news release from Trump Tower in New York. Tillerson “knows how to manage a global enterprise, which is crucial to running a successful State Department,” Trump said. In a tweet, Trump added that Tillerson “has vast experience at dealing successfully with all types of foreign governments.” In an accompanying statement, Tillerson said he was “honored” by his selection and shares Trump’s “vision for restoring the credibility of the United States’ foreign relations and advancing our country’s national security.” But Tillerson has close ties to Russia and President Vladimir Putin, which is certain to draw scrutiny and fuel a potential Senate confirmation fight. Leading Republicans have already expressed anxieties as they contend with intelligence assessments saying Russia interfered with the U.S. presidential election to help Trump. Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that will hold confirmation hearings in January, called Tillerson “a very impressive individual” with “an extraordinary working knowledge of the world.” Corker, who had been considered for the secretary of state job, said Trump called him Monday to inform him of the pick. Reince Priebus, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, said Tuesday that Tillerson was chosen because he is “a diplomat that happens to be able to drill oil.” Tillerson has “had to maintain relationships across the world in many places that aren’t the easiest places to have relationships,” Priebus said on MSNBC. “The good Lord didn’t put oil in all freedom-loving democracies across the world and yet Rex Tillerson was able to make this work. Donald Trump and Rex Tillerson, they hit it off, and they have a similar vision of how to get things done,” Priebus said. Trump has made it clear he sees Tillerson’s deep relations with Moscow as a selling point. As ExxonMobil’s head, Tillerson maintained close ties with Russia and was awarded by President Vladimir Putin with the Order of Friendship in 2013, an honor for a foreign citizen. For weeks, Trump has teased out the secretary of state decision process publicly, often exposing rifts in his organization. Besides Corker, he also considered former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a one-time vocal Trump critic. Romney wrote on Facebook Monday that it “was an honor to have been considered” for the job. Trump’s unconventional Cabinet vetting procedures are in keeping with his presidential style thus far, unconcerned with tradition or business as usual. In recent weeks, he’s attacked CIA intelligence, spoken to the leader of Taiwan — irritating China — and has continued his late-night Twitter tirades. Beijing is looking forward to working with the new secretary of state “to push forward greater progress of the bilateral relationship on a new starting point,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, said Tuesday. In Washington, a congressional investigation is in the works over a CIA assessment that Russia interfered in the November election on his behalf, a conclusion Trump has called “ridiculous.” The issue is raising red flags among lawmakers concerned about the sanctity of the U.S. voting system and potentially straining relations at the start of Trump’s administration. On Twitter Monday, Trump pushed back, saying: “Can you imagine if the election results were the opposite and WE tried to play the Russia/CIA card. It would be called conspiracy theory!” Putin, meanwhile, said he was ready to meet with Trump “at any moment.” In the transcript of his interview with journalists which was released Tuesday in Moscow, Putin said “it’s widely known that the elected president of the United States has publicly called for the normalization of the Russian-American relationship. We cannot but support this.” Putin added that he thought a meeting with Trump would be more likely after Trump’s January inauguration. “We understand it will not be a simple task considering the extent of degradation of the Russian-American relationship,” he said. “But we are prepared to do our bit.” If confirmed, Tillerson would face immediate challenges in Syria, where a civil war rages on, and in China, given Trump’s recent suggestions that he could take a more aggressive approach to dealing with Beijing. A native of Wichita Falls, Texas, Tillerson came to ExxonMobil Corp. as a production engineer straight out of the University of Texas at Austin in 1975 and never left. Groomed for an executive position, Tillerson came up in the rough-and-tumble world of oil production, holding posts in the company’s central United States, Yemen and Russian operations. Early in the company’s efforts to gain access to the Russian market, Tillerson cut a deal with state-owned Rosneft. The neglected post-Soviet company didn’t have a tremendous amount to offer, but Exxon partnered with it “to be on the same side of the table,” Tillerson said, according to “Private Empire,” an investigative history of Exxon by Steve Coll. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Donald Trump taps conservative Kansas congressman for CIA
Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump‘s pick to be director of the CIA, is a hard-line Republican congressman who shares the president-elect’s pugnacious worldview and, like Trump, spent years as a businessman before becoming a politician. Pompeo has heavily criticized the landmark Iran nuclear deal, blasted Hillary Clinton over the attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya and her use of a private email server, and believes Edward Snowden is a traitor who deserves a death sentence. He also supports restoring the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone metadata, a contentious terror-fighting tool Congress eliminated after Snowden’s revelations. Before taking over the spy agency, the Kansas lawmaker has to be confirmed by the GOP-led Senate. One issue that could dominate the confirmation hearing is Pompeo’s view on using harsh interrogation techniques on detainees. Trump has backed these techniques, saying, “We should go tougher than waterboarding,” which simulates drowning. During the campaign, Trump suggested that he would push to change laws that prohibit waterboarding and other harsh techniques. He said that banning those methods puts the U.S. at a strategic disadvantage against Islamic State militants. Pompeo two years ago rejected accusations that U.S. intelligence and military personnel were “torturers” for harshly interrogating terror suspects captured after 9/11. “These men and women are not torturers, they are patriots,” Pompeo said in 2014 after the Senate released its report on the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA. In a statement Friday, Pompeo said he was “honored and humbled” to accept Trump’s nomination. He called the decision to leave Congress difficult but said the “opportunity to lead the world’s finest intelligence warriors” is a call to service that he could not ignore.” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, who will be the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence committee beginning in January, said in a statement that he would vigorously oversee the CIA to ensure it adheres “to America’s principles and international obligations.” Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, said Friday he was “heartened” by Trump’s decision to pick Pompeo, calling him a “serious man.” Pompeo, 52, was elected to Congress during the tea party wave of 2010. He served on the House Select Benghazi Committee to probe the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The panel’s final report this summer sharply criticized the Obama administration for a series of mistakes but produced no new evidence pointing to wrongdoing by Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time. Pompeo and fellow Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio, however, issued a separate report slamming Clinton and the administration. Pompeo called the former first lady and senator “morally reprehensible.” He also has been a fierce critic of the nuclear deal with Iran that President Barack Obama has championed. The accord granted Tehran sanctions relief for rolling back its nuclear weapons program. Pompeo has said Muslim leaders are “potentially complicit” in terrorist attacks if they do not denounce violence carried out in the name of Islam. “They must cite the Quran as evidence that the murder of innocents is not permitted,” he said in a 2013 House floor speech. A member of the House intelligence committee, Pompeo denounced Snowden, a former NSA contractor who stole and leaked highly classified documents to journalists, revealing the agency’s program for gathering the phone records of millions of Americans. During an appearance on C-SPAN in February, Pompeo said Snowden should receive the death penalty for his actions. “He should be brought back from Russia and given due process and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence,” Pompeo said. Snowden, who spoke Friday from Moscow via a video link during an event of the Norwegian chapter of PEN in Oslo, Norway, criticized Pompeo’s selection to lead the spy agency. “In my country, the new CIA director believes dissidents should be put to death,” Snowden said. Pompeo also has fought against Obama’s attempts to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and opposed moving prisoners to the U.S., including Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. He has maintained the detainees at Guantánamo are well taken care of and in May 2013 downplayed the extent of a hunger strike by prisoners. Pompeo, appearing on MSNBC, said it looked to him like they had put on weight. Pompeo was born in Orange, California, and lives in Wichita, Kansas. He enrolled as a teenager at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and graduated first in his class in 1986. According to biographical information on his House website, Pompeo served as a “cavalry officer patrolling the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Berlin Wall.” He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and was editor of the Harvard Law Review. After college, he set up Thayer Aerospace and was its chief executive officer for more than 10 years. Later he was president of Sentry International, a company that sold equipment for oil fields and manufacturing. Republished with permission of The Associated Press
Top secret Hillary Clinton emails include drone talk
The two emails on Hillary Rodham Clinton‘s private server that an auditor deemed “top secret” include a discussion of a news article detailing a U.S. drone operation and a separate conversation that could point back to highly classified material in an improper manner or merely reflect information collected independently, U.S. officials who have reviewed the correspondence told The Associated Press. The sourcing of the information in the emails could have significant political implications as the 2016 presidential campaign heats up. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, agreed this week to turn over to the FBI the private server she used as secretary of state, and Republicans in Congress have seized on the involvement of federal law enforcement as a sign that she was either negligent with the nation’s secrets or worse. On Monday, the inspector general for the 17 spy agencies that make up what is known as the intelligence community told Congress that two of 40 emails in a random sample of the 30,000 emails Clinton gave the State Department for review contained information deemed “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information,” one of the government’s highest levels of classification. The two emails were marked classified after consultations with the CIA, which is where the material originated, officials said. The officials who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity work in intelligence and other agencies. They wouldn’t detail the contents of the emails because of ongoing questions about classification level. Clinton did not transmit the sensitive information herself, they said, and nothing in the emails she received makes clear reference to communications intercepts, confidential intelligence methods or any other form of sensitive sourcing. The drone exchange, the officials said, begins with a copy of a news article that discusses the CIA drone program that targets terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere. While a secret program, it is well-known and often reported on. The copy makes reference to classified information, and a Clinton adviser follows up by dancing around a top secret in a way that could possibly be inferred as confirmation, they said. Several officials, however, described this claim as tenuous. But a second email reviewed by Charles McCullough, the intelligence community inspector general, appears more suspect. Nothing in the message is “lifted” from classified documents, the officials said, though they differed on where the information in it was sourced. Some said it improperly points back to highly classified material, while others countered that it was a classic case of what the government calls “parallel reporting” – different people knowing the same thing through different means. The emails came to light Tuesday after Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, reported that McCullough found four “highly classified” emails on the unusual homebrew server that Clinton used while she was secretary of State. Two were sent back to the State Department for review, but Grassley said the other two were, in fact, classified at the closely guarded “Top Secret/SCI level.” In a four-page fact sheet that accompanied a letter to Clinton supporters, Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri stressed that Clinton was permitted to use her own email account as a government employee and that the same process concerning classification reviews would still be taking place had she used the standard “state.gov” email account used by most department employees. The State Department, meanwhile, stressed that it wasn’t clear if the material at issue ought to be considered classified at all. Still, the developments suggested that the security of Clinton’s email setup and how she guarded the nation’s secrets will remain relevant campaign topics. Even if the emails highlighted by the intelligence community prove innocuous, she will still face questions about whether she set up the private server with the aim of avoiding scrutiny, whether emails she deleted because she said they were personal were actually work-related, and whether she appropriately shielded such emails from possible foreign spies and hackers. Clinton says she exchanged about 60,000 emails in her four years as secretary of state. She turned over all but what she said were personal emails late last year. The department has been making those public as they are reviewed and scrubbed of any sensitive data. The State Department advised employees not to use personal email accounts for work, but it wasn’t prohibited. But Clinton’s senior advisers at the State Department would have been briefed upon basic protocol for handling classified information and retaining government records. In Clinton’s time, most officials saved their emails onto a separate file or printed them out when leaving office. Only recently has the department begun automatically archiving the records of dozens of senior officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry. In the emails, Clinton’s advisers appear cognizant of secrecy protections. In a series of August 2009 emails, Clinton aide Huma Abedin told Clinton that the U.S. point-man for Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, and another official wanted “to do a secure” conversation to discuss Afghan elections. Clinton said she could talk after she received a fax of a classified Holbrooke memo, also on a secure line. Later, Abedin wrote: “He can talk now. We can send secure fax now. And then connect call.” But other times, the line was blurred. Among Clinton’s exchanges now censored as classified by the State Department was a brief exchange in October 2009 with Jeffrey Feltman, then the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East. Both Clinton and Feltman’s emails about an “Egyptian proposal” for a reconciliation ceremony with Hamas are marked B-1.4, classified for national security reasons, and completely blacked out from the email release. A longer email the same day from Clinton to former Sen. George Mitchell, then Mideast peace envoy, is also censored. Mitchell responds tersely and carefully that “the Egyptian document has been received and is being translated. We’ll review it tonight and tomorrow morning, will consult with the Pals (Palestinians) through our Consul General, and then I’ll talk with Gen. S again. We’ll keep you advised.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
