January 10, 2020 0 Comment apgov
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House approves measure limiting Trump’s authority to take further military action against Iran

Washington Post – The House voted Thursday to prevent President Trump from taking additional military action against Iran, an opening move in a Democratic-led campaign to reassert congressional authority over the use of force abroad.

The 224-to-194 vote, which came a day after the administration’s senior national security officials briefed lawmakers about the strike that killed a top Iranian commander, fell largely along party lines, with three Republicans and a Republican-turned-independent endorsing the resolution. Eight Democrats opposed the measure, which instructs Trump “to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces to engage in hostilities in or against Iran or any part of its government or military” unless Congress declares war or there is “an imminent armed attack upon the United States.”

The administration, with the help of most Republicans, has argued forcefully against the effort, asserting that Trump, as commander in chief, had undisputed legal justification to kill Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad without Congress’s prior approval. But Democrats and a handful of Republicans were so frustrated by the administration’s resistance to fully involving Congress that the belated effort to engage Capitol Hill largely backfired — fueling momentum for Thursday’s vote.

In the House, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a close Trump ally who has publicly defended last week’s strike on Soleimani, worked with Democrats after Wednesday’s briefings to fine-tune the resolution, ultimately crossing the aisle on Thursday to support it.

“I support the president. Killing Soleimani was the right decision. But engaging in another forever war in the Middle East would be the wrong decision,” Gaetz said, announcing his yes vote.

But the critical forum is the Senate, where Democrats are in the minority and will need the help of at least four Republicans to pass a similar war powers resolution. Put forward by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), the measure could come up for a vote as early as next week.

Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.) have committed to supporting Kaine’s resolution, fuming to reporters Wednesday that administration officials had failed to specify when, if ever, they might seek Congress’s approval for military strikes.

Lee complained that officials had instead communicated that lawmakers “need to be good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public.” He has called that position “absolutely insane” and “unacceptable.”

Kaine said Thursday that he is discussing his resolution with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Todd C. Young (R-Ind.), in addition to Lee and Paul, and selectively changing the text — such as removing language that specifically addresses Trump by name — in hopes that doing so will build enough support to secure Senate approval.

Procedurally, it is likely that the House will have to take up the Senate’s resolution, should it pass in that chamber, in order to send Trump a war powers resolution that has the weight of potential law. It is also extremely likely that, should they succeed, the president will veto it — and that Congress will not be able to muster enough votes to override that veto.

But Kaine sounded undeterred Thursday, arguing that Congress could still influence Trump’s thinking even if supporters cannot override his veto. As evidence, he pointed to when Congress threatened to invoke its war powers to curtail U.S. support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen.

“He stopped doing what we were complaining about. It had an impact,” Kaine said, noting that the administration stopped refueling Saudi jets. “President Trump may not care about Congress, but he does care about the American public . . . and if he sees a strong vote on this, and it goes to him, it’s an expression not just of what we think but of what our constituents think.”

At this point, however, Republicans and Democrats remain bitterly divided over whether Trump’s strike was prudent and justified, or illegal and reckless, with the dispute coming down to whether Soleimani posed such an imminent threat to warrant going after him without the consent of Congress.

The administration insists it had a right to target Soleimani under the Congress’s 2002 authorization for use of military force (AUMF) in Iraq and the president’s constitutional right to self-defense of troops directly and imminently in harm’s way. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that the House would vote to repeal the 2002 AUMF “soon.”

The war powers resolutions going through Congress recognize an exception for an imminent threat, but Democrats do not buy the Trump administration’s argument that one existed — and they are upset with the administration for withholding intelligence from lawmakers that could inform their determination.

“We deserve the respect from the administration, and the Congress deserves by dint of the Constitution, the requirement of the Constitution, to consult Congress,” Pelosi said, arguing that the administration’s justification for the strike should be redacted and made available to the public, as there was “no reason for it to be classified.”

Republicans, meanwhile, have endorsed the administration’s approach, arguing that “this Congress leaks like the Titanic,” as Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) put it, and thus lawmakers could not always be trusted with the most sensitive information.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) argued Thursday that the administration’s briefers had provided lawmakers all the information they needed to support the strike.

“In terms of where there is an imminent threat, General Milley was compelling and chilling about what was going to happen and what had happened,” Graham said, referring to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark A. Milley, who briefed lawmakers Wednesday, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and CIA Director Gina Haspel.

“I think a third-grader could have believed there was an imminent threat coming from the man that we killed,” Graham said.

Republicans are warning their colleagues against voting for the war powers resolutions, arguing they are “only intended to try to undermine the president in the middle of a conflict with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” as House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Thursday.

“How can you sit here and try to apologize for the things that he did by saying taking him out was wrong?” Scalise continued. “This world is a safer place with Soleimani gone.”

House Democrats have been taking pains to condemn Soleimani as they complain that the administration’s moves were illegal for having cut out Congress.

“Qasem Soleimani was a malign force responsible for the death of many Americans,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said, adding that he nonetheless has “no confidence that there is some broad strategy at work, or the policies of the president are doing anything but increasing the dangers to the American people.”

He called the House’s vote the first step “of a broader reassertion of Congress’s war powers. . . . It is past time for Congress to do our job and not simply write the executive a blank check.”

Source: US Government Class

December 11, 2019 0 Comment apgov
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House Dems, White House Clear Path to Pass USMCA

Business Insider – Progressives slam Democrats for announcing their new trade deal with Trump an hour after they said they’re bringing articles of impeachment

By 10 a.m., Speaker Nancy Pelosi had unveiled two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump and announced that Democrats had reached an agreement with the president on a replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Democrats were somber in announcing the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress against the president. But the mood was almost jubilant an hour later when Pelosi praised the White House-led United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which she said Democrats took “great pride in.” Democrats touted their efforts in securing various environmental and labor regulations in the deal, which Mexico and Canada are expected to sign in the coming days.

Meanwhile, Trump took a break from bashing Democrats over the impeachment charges to promote the deal.

“Looking like very good Democrat support for USMCA. That would be great for our Country!” he tweeted.

Pelosi told reporters on Tuesday that Democrats didn’t have much control over the timing of either development.

The impeachment hearings concluded on Monday, so it only made sense to unveil the articles of impeachment on Tuesday, she said. And US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who has led the USMCA negotiations, wanted to finalize the NAFTA replacement before Congress goes on recess and while Democrats and Republicans remain on the same page.

“It’s not a coincidence — it’s just as we get to the end of a session, there have to be some decisions made,” the speaker told reporters during a press conference, adding, “We didn’t know what day it would be.”

‘A stunning betrayal’

Behind closed doors, Pelosi insisted that Democrats had the upper hand in the trade deal and outstrategized the GOP.

“We ate their lunch,” Pelosi said in a caucus meeting, according to the CNN reporter Manu Raju.

Supporters of Pelosi and more moderate Democrats praised the one-two punch of impeachment and the trade deal, arguing that Democrats needed to prove they can “walk & chew gum at the same time.” But many progressives slammed the strategy, arguing that the USMCA undermined the party’s case for impeachment.

“Congrats to house democrats for handing trump a nice bipartisan victory on the same day they announced their articles of impeachment,” said Jamelle Bouie, a New York Times columnist. “Definitely not a muddled message.”

Critics of the strategy insisted the trade deal also undermined Democrats’ claim that the president is dangerously unfit for office and lent credence to Trump’s argument that he’s getting his job done despite an impeachment process he has called a “coup.”

“House Dems were elected on a wave of anti-Trump sentiment and are now diligently working to ensure his reelection and send the message to the electorate that impeachment is just meaningless partisan theater,” said Adam Serwer, a writer at The Atlantic.

Serwer added: “Either the Republic is in danger and impeachment is necessary, or it’s not that big a deal and congress can do business as usual.”

Some argued that Democrats were fulfilling the “Dems in disarray” stereotype and mistakenly looking to appease voters in swing states.

“Nothing more perfectly embodies the Democratic party than announcing articles of impeachment and a huge deal with the President on his single biggest priority on the same day,” said Chris Hayes, the progressive MSNBC host.

Will Stancil, a researcher at the University of Minnesota Law School, called Pelosi’s strategy “insane.”

“This isn’t 12-dimensional chess, it’s just House Democrats spinning wildly in place, trying to square two incompatible facts: their irresistible desire to look sober and bipartisan by always compromising [and] the absolute objective unacceptability of Trump,” he tweeted. “And the result is lunacy.”

Brian Beutler, the editor-in-chief of the progressive media outlet Crooked Media, called Pelosi’s strategy “a stunning betrayal.”

“If you kill the deal you can say it was a shitty deal, like everything else Trump has done and that you’ll do better,” he tweeted. “If you pass the deal you tell voters yeah president deals actually did a good deal just like he promised. It’s insane.”

Source: US Government Class

December 10, 2019 0 Comment apgov
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ADVERTISEMENT Trump Impeachment Inquiry Published 2 hours ago Democrats unveil impeachment articles, as White House slams ‘baseless and partisan’ effort

FoxNews – House Democrats on Tuesday announced articles of impeachment against President Trump alleging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress regarding his interactions with Ukraine, touching off a rapid-fire sequence that could result in a momentous floor vote in a matter of days.

“The framers of the Constitution prescribed a clear remedy for presidents who so violate their oath of office,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. “No one, not even the president, is above the law.”

The White House swiftly hit back, accusing Democrats of using the Ukraine issue as an excuse for “this partisan, gratuitous, and pathetic attempt to overthrow the Trump Administration and the results of the 2016 election.”

The key Democratic committee leaders, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., outlined their plans in a brief and pointed statement to the media, and left without taking questions.

Nadler said the judiciary panel will introduce two articles “charging the president with high crimes and misdemeanors.” He said the first is dedicated to “abuse of power,” alleging the president has “exercised the powers of his office for his personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the public interest.” Nadler said Trump put himself before country while endangering national security and America’s democracy.

“Trump has engaged in unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of the impeachment inquiry,” Nadler added, as he announced the second article focused on obstruction of Congress.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who has led much of the inquiry, called impeachment “an extraordinary remedy.”

“He has given us no choice,” Schiff said of Trump. “To do nothing would make ourselves complicit in the president’s abuse of his high office.”

Trump fired back minutes later, blasting the entire inquiry as a “WITCH HUNT!” — the same term he used for the Russia investigation.

“Nadler just said that I ‘pressured Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 Election.’ Ridiculous, and he knows that is not true. Both the President & Foreign Minister of Ukraine said, many times, that there ‘WAS NO PRESSURE.’ Nadler and the Dems know this, but refuse to acknowledge!” Trump tweeted.

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham slammed the announcement as part of Democrats’ bid to “overturn the votes” of 63 million Americans who supported Trump in 2016.

“Today, in a baseless and partisan attempt to undermine a sitting President, Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats announced the pre-determined outcome of their sham impeachment – something they have been seeking since before President Trump was inaugurated,” she said in a statement.

While Republicans have blasted the process as partisan, dubbing it the “focus group impeachment” in response to reports that Democrats tested different allegations with focus groups, Democrats are moving swiftly ahead of the holiday break.

“The clock and the calendar should not be the basis for impeachment,” House Judiciary Ranking Member Doug Collins, R-Ga., told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” minutes before the announcement.

It is unclear, at this point, whether Democrats’ articles focused on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress will reach beyond the Ukraine controversy and into former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The lawmakers did not mention such a step on Tuesday morning save for a Russia reference from Nadler.

“The integrity of our next election is at risk from our president who already sought foreign interference in the 2016 and now 2020 elections,” Nadler said.

Mueller found no evidence of conspiracy or coordination between members of the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election but left the door open to whether the president obstructed the federal probe — a point that Democrats have made in the public hearing phase of the House impeachment inquiry.

Absent from the planned charges is a “bribery” count, which Democrats have repeatedly accused the president of in regards to his highly controversial July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — in which he pressured him to launch an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine.

Pelosi held a meeting in her office Monday night with Nadler, Schiff, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., after a hearing held by Nadler’s committee that featured lawyers laying out the evidence for and against impeachment.

In drafting the articles of impeachment, Pelosi is facing a legal and political challenge of balancing the views of her majority while hitting the Constitution’s high bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

At the center of the impeachment inquiry is Trump’s efforts to press Zelensky to launch politically related investigations—regarding Joe Biden’s effort to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor who had been looking into the natural gas firm where his son Hunter served on the board.

The president’s request came after millions in U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been frozen, which Democrats have argued shows a “quid pro quo” arrangement. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

Source: US Government Class

December 9, 2019 0 Comment apgov
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Barr slams FBI as he and Durham contradict watchdog

(CNN) – Attorney General William Barr and the US attorney he picked to lead a probe into the origins of the Russia investigation criticized the FBI on Monday and contradicted some of the key findings of a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

Barr excoriated the FBI for launching what he called an “intrusive investigation” into a presidential campaign based on the “thinnest of suspicions.”
The Justice Department’s inspector general found that the FBI properly opened its investigation into Russian election interference but said there were major errors in how the agency conducted the probe.
The distance between Barr and the inspector general on one of the report’s most critical findings marked a striking contrast, and appeared to create space for President Donald Trump and his defenders to argue that the Russia investigation and the special counsel investigation it spawned were fundamentally flawed. The move is reminiscent of Barr’s actions around the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report when the attorney general sought to frame the results of that investigation in the best light possible for Trump.
The report released Monday by Inspector General Michael Horowitz did not find “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions” to open investigations that initially focused on Trump campaign advisers Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
John Durham, the US attorney who was handpicked by Barr to lead the separate probe, said that while he has the “utmost respect” for the inspector general’s office, he disagreed with some of the report’s findings.
“I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff,” Durham said in a statement.
“However, our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department. Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S. Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

Read Barr’s full statement below:

“Nothing is more important than the credibility and integrity of the FBI and the Department of Justice. That is why we must hold our investigators and prosecutors to the highest ethical and professional standards. The Inspector General’s investigation has provided critical transparency and accountability, and his work is a credit to the Department of Justice. I would like to thank the Inspector General and his team.
The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory. Nevertheless, the investigation and surveillance was pushed forward for the duration of the campaign and deep into President Trump’s administration. In the rush to obtain and maintain FISA surveillance of Trump campaign associates, FBI officials misled the FISA court, omitted critical exculpatory facts from their filings, and suppressed or ignored information negating the reliability of their principal source. The Inspector General found the explanations given for these actions unsatisfactory. While most of the misconduct identified by the Inspector General was committed in 2016 and 2017 by a small group of now-former FBI officials, the malfeasance and misfeasance detailed in the
Inspector General’s report reflects a clear abuse of the FISA process.
FISA is an essential tool for the protection of the safety of the American people. The Department of Justice and the FBI are committed to taking whatever steps are necessary to rectify the abuses that occurred and to ensure the integrity of the FISA process going forward.
No one is more dismayed about the handling of these FISA applications than Director Wray. I have full confidence in Director Wray and his team at the FBI, as well as the thousands of dedicated line agents who work tirelessly to protect our country. I thank the Director for the comprehensive set of proposed reforms he is announcing today, and I look forward to working with him to implement these and any other appropriate measures.
With respect to DOJ personnel discussed in the report, the Department will follow all appropriate processes and procedures, including as to any potential disciplinary action.”

 

CNN’s David Shortell contributed to this report.

Source: US Government Class

December 9, 2019 0 Comment apgov
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Inspector general: Start of FBI Russia probe was justified and unbiased but investigation had significant errors

(CNN) – The Justice Department’s inspector general found that the FBI properly opened its investigation into Russian election interference but said there were major errors in how the agency conducted the probe.

The report released Monday by inspector general Michael Horowitz did not find “documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions” to open investigations that initially focused on campaign advisers Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
While rebutting President Donald Trump’s claims that the FBI illegally spied on his campaign, Horowitz’s 435-page report criticized the FBI leaders and employees for how they handled four applications for surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act targeting Page.
Horowitz opened the probe early last year, and his office has reviewed more than 1 million records and conducted more than 100 interviews as part of its review, including a number of current and former law enforcement officials at the center of “deep state” conspiracies.
But Attorney General William Barr disputed Horowitz’s finding that the FBI properly opened a full investigation, called Crossfire Hurricane, based on the evidence it had in July 2016.
“The inspector general’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a US presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions, that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Barr said in a statement Monday. “It is also clear that, from its inception the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.”
Veteran prosecutor John Durham, who is conducting a larger investigation of the Russia probe, also disputed the IG’s findings.
The inspector general’s report details 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the four Page FISA applications, but the inspector general’s report doesn’t support Barr’s suggestion that the entire investigation lacked merit.
Horowitz said his report only examined the opening of the investigation and the Page surveillance along with the use of confidential human sources.
Horowitz found that the FBI followed existing rules, but Horowitz recommended that changes be made, including that the FBI consult top Justice officials before more intrusive investigative steps are taken in investigations dealing with major political campaigns.
The report is certain to be weaponized by Republicans who have been battling back weeks of bad headlines about the President’s pressure campaign against the Ukrainians and an ongoing impeachment inquiry.
Trump claimed victory Monday, calling the FBI investigation an “attempted overthrow” and an “embarrassment.”
“The IG report just came out and I was just briefed on it and it’s a disgrace what’s happened with respect to the things that were done to our country,” Trump said during a roundtable on school choice at the White House. “It is incredible, far worse than I would’ve ever thought possible.”

FISA surveillance

Horowitz’s investigation centered on a series of warrants that the FBI filed with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as they sought to investigate Page, a one-time foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.
The warrants were signed by top Justice Department officials, including former FBI Director James Comey, and stated that the FBI believed that Page “has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government,” according to redacted copies released last year.
To bolster their request to the surveillance court, the FBI relied at times on claims about the Trump campaign collected in a dossier of unverified intelligence reports by former British spy Christopher Steele.
The FBI wrote in the applications that Steele had a history of providing reliable information to the FBI and that they believed that the reporting of his that they cited was “credible.” But FBI investigators noted in later iterations of the warrant that they had severed their relationship with Steele because he shared some of his findings with news organizations.
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee who released findings on a study of the FISA warrants have accused the FBI of improperly withholding information from the surveillance court about Steele’s political beliefs, as well as the fact that his work was backed financially at one point by the Democratic National Committee and the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Horowitz’s office interviewed Steele as part of its investigation.
Horowitz, who took office in 2012 after an appointment from President Barack Obama, has built a reputation as a thorough investigator who has the ability to rankle Democrats and Republicans alike.
His office’s blockbuster report into the FBI’s handling of the investigations of Hillary Clinton, released in 2018, excoriated Comey for “extraordinary and insubordinate” moves that, along with the revelation of Strzok and Pages text messages, did lasting damage to the FBI’s reputation, although ultimately concluded that their actions were not motivated by political bias.
Horowitz also released a report in August finding that Comey violated FBI policies when he retained and leaked a set of memos he took documenting meetings with Trump in 2017.
The inspector general is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Conclusions

The report accused a former FBI lawyer of altering a document related to the Page surveillance That lawyer is under criminal investigation.
While it’s unclear how significant a role the altered document played in the FBI’s investigation of Page, Horowitz did not determine that it undermined the overall validity of the surveillance, sources said.
T
he report concluded that officials at the FBI had enough information to properly launch the investigation in 2016, and dispel the claim that US intelligence agencies tried to plant spies in the Trump campaign.
Trump has boosted that narrative without evidence for months and popularized the term “Spy-gate.” The conspiracy is a frequent topic in the conservative media and often revolves around Joseph Mifsud, a secretive Maltese professor who played a role in the origins of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation.
Mifsud had interactions with George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser who pleaded guilty in 2017 to making false statements to the FBI.
US intelligence agencies were said to have told Horowitz that Misfud was not an asset for Western intelligence agencies, which is a claim spread by Papadopoulos and other conservative figures.
FBI Director Christopher Wray touted the inspector general’s claim that the Russia investigation was opened properly in an interview with ABC News on Monday.
“I think it’s important that the Inspector General found that in this particular instance the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization,” Wray said, a reaction that puts him at odds with Barr, his boss.

Lisa Page and Peter Strzok

Horowitz’s report also explores the specific roles of a number of controversial FBI officials involved in the early days of the Russia probe, including Peter Strzok, a former senior counterintelligence officer, Lisa Page, an attorney, Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director, and Comey, the former director, who have since left the law enforcement agency under a pall.
Strzok, who had an extramarital affair with Page and exchanged anti-Trump messages with her on an FBI phone, was fired, as was McCabe, who had been accused of lying about contacts with a reporter in a separate investigation by Horowitz’s office. Both men have sued the agency in relation to their departures.
Horowitz specifically said Strzok and Page did not affect the start of the investigation or didn’t act out of political bias.
“While Lisa Page attended some of the discussions regarding the opening of the investigations, she did not play a role in the decision to open Crossfire Hurricane or the four individual cases,” Horowitz wrote.
“We further found that while Strzok was directly involved in the decisions to open Crossfire Hurricane and the four individual cases, he was not the sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker as to any of those matters,” the IG added.
The decision to open the investigation was made by Bill Priestap, who was Strzok’s supervisor, after he spoke with the FBI director, general counsel and other top agency leaders.
“We concluded that Priestap’s exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision,” the report states.
Lisa Page tweeted in response: “The sum total of findings by IG Horowitz that my personal opinions had any bearing on the course of either the Clinton or Russia investigations? Zero and Zero. Cool, cool.”

FBI interactions with Trump campaign

Horowitz also revealed new interactions between FBI investigators and the Trump campaign that are certain to inflame Republicans who have claimed Trump’s team was spied on.
In August 2016, just months before the presidential election, an FBI supervisor who oversaw the burgeoning counterintelligence investigation attended a briefing that intelligence officials were giving to the Trump campaign, in part so that the FBI supervisor could observe Michael Flynn, a former general who had taken on a leading national security role in the campaign.
The agent later wrote a memo recording his observations at the meeting of Flynn, who at the time had fallen under scrutiny of FBI investigators.
Horowitz found that the interaction didn’t violate Justice Department regulations, but said that it had the potential to undermine the trust in future such campaign briefings.
Overall, Horowitz determined that the President’s campaign was not improperly “spied” on, but the report does document multiple interactions between members of the Trump campaign and FBI sources.
One of the FBI covert interactions involved a high-ranking Trump campaign official who was not under investigation at the time, Horowitz wrote. The campaign official is not named in the report.

More to come

The report will not be the final word on the Russia investigation’s legitimacy, and Trump has already foreshadowed a separate investigation being conducted out of the Justice Department by Durham.
That probe was launched earlier this year by Attorney General William Barr, a longtime skeptic of the Russia probe. People familiar with Barr’s thinking have told CNN that despite the conclusions in the Horowitz report, Barr still has questions about some of the intelligence and other information the FBI used to pursue the Russia investigation, and he has been telling allies to wait for
Durham, who he thinks will provide a more complete accounting.
In a statement, Durham said he has the “utmost respect” for the inspector general, but noted his investigation will be more comprehensive.
“Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the US and outside of the US,” Durham said.
This story is breaking and will be updated.

CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed to this report.

Source: US Government Class

December 4, 2019 0 Comment apgov
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Trump calls Trudeau ‘two-faced’ after world leaders appear to joke about US President

London (CNN) – US President Donald Trump called Justin Trudeau “two-faced” Wednesday after Canada’s Prime Minister was caught on camera appearing to joke about Trump with other world leaders at a Buckingham Palace event the night before.

“He’s two-faced,” Trump said, adding, “honestly with Trudeau, he’s a nice guy.”
The video appeared to show British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte having a laugh about Trump’s behavior during the summit.
The 25-second clip, which has gone viral and was first reported by CBC, begins with Johnson asking Macron why he was late.
“Is that why you were late?” Johnson asked.
Macron nodded, as Trudeau replied, “He was late because he takes a … 40-minute press conference at the top.”
At no time in the video do the leaders mention Trump by name, but Trudeau’s comment appeared to reference Trump’s lengthy remarks to the press during their earlier meeting on Tuesday.
None of them seemed to be aware that the conversation was being recorded, although they were talking openly and loudly enough to be heard by others.
“You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor,” Trudeau also appears to say at one point, though it’s not clear which team he was referring to.
Microphones could only pick up snippets of the conversation at the reception, which the press was given limited access to.
Trump also criticized Trudeau over the fact Canada does not currently meet NATO’s 2% defense spending target.
“The truth is I called him out on the fact that he’s not paying 2% and I guess he’s not very happy about it,” Trump said, adding that “he should be paying 2%” and that Canada “has money.”
“I can imagine he’s not that happy, but that’s the way it is,” Trump said.
A spokeswoman for Macron at the Elysée Palace told CNN they had “no comment. This video does not say anything special.” A spokesman for Trudeau told CNN they also had no comment to make, and a spokesperson for Rutte also told CNN they do not comment on closed-door sessions.

Clash with Macron

Trump spent Tuesday in meetings in London headlined by a clash with a key ally, France. He met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Macron and Trudeau, making extended remarks and taking questions from the press on each occasion.
Trump’s one-on-one meeting with Macron was remarkably tense as the French President refused to back down from remarks that Trump called “nasty” and “insulting.” Last month, Macron had described NATO as suffering from “brain death” caused by American indifference to the long-time alliance.
But the two leaders appeared to be on good terms as they walked onto the road leading to 10 Downing Street together for another reception following the gathering at the palace. It appeared that Trump had given Macron a lift in his motorcade vehicle commonly referred to as “the beast.”

 

CNN’s Richard Greene, Saskya Vandoorne, Kaitlan Collins and Paula Newton contributed to this report

Source: US Government Class

December 2, 2019 0 Comment apgov
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Trump campaign bans Bloomberg News from events over ‘troubling and wrong’ decision

FoxNews – President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign will no longer issue credentials to Bloomberg News because of its decision to investigate Trump, but not his political opponents, campaign manager Brad Parscale announced Monday.

Bloomberg News announced last week that it wouldn’t investigate its namesake owner, Mike Bloomberg, while he runs for president, or any other Democratic presidential candidate for that matter, but would continue to investigate President Trump.

“The decision by Bloomberg News to formalize preferential reporting policies is troubling and wrong,” Parscale wrote in a statement. “Bloomberg News has declared that they won’t investigate their boss or his Democrat competitors, many of whom are current holders of high office, but will continue critical reporting on President Trump.”

Parscale said he is “accustomed to unfair reporting practices” but Bloomberg News’ decision takes it too far because “most news organizations don’t announce their biases so publicly.”

Bloomberg launched his 2020 campaign last week with a one-minute ad, which was posted on social media. Along with the video, Bloomberg posted a written statement on his campaign website in which he laid out why he was the best candidate to defeat President Trump next November.

“Since they have declared their bias openly, the Trump campaign will no longer credential representatives of Bloomberg News for rallies or other campaign events,” Parscale wrote. “We will determine whether to engage with individual reporters or answer inquiries from Bloomberg News on a case-by-case basis. This will remain the policy of the Trump campaign until Bloomberg News publicly rescinds its decision.”

“The accusation of bias couldn’t be further from the truth. We have covered Donald Trump fairly and in an unbiased way since he became a candidate in 2015 and will continue to do so despite the restrictions imposed by the Trump campaign,” Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait told Fox News.

Micklethwait is the same editor who sent a memo to staffers, obtained by The Washington Post, in which he declared the newsroom will “continue our tradition of not investigating Mike (and his family and foundation)” and that it would extend the same policy to his opponents in the Democratic primaries, but not to President Trump.

Micklethwait added that “if other credible journalistic institutions” publish investigative work regarding the former New York City mayor, Bloomberg News will either publish or summarize it for readers. The decision to avoid investigating 2020 Democratic presidential candidates sparked backlash and confusion, including former Bloomberg Washington D.C. bureau chief Megan Murphy, who slammed the organization in a series of tweets.

“It is truly staggering that *any* editor would put their name on a memo that bars an army of unbelievably talented reporters and editors from covering massive, crucial aspects of one of the defining elections of our time. Staggering,” Murphy wrote. “This is not journalism.”

Source: US Government Class

November 25, 2019 0 Comment apgov
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It’s Time for Term Limits on the Supreme Court

National Review – OPINION – Murmurs of concern swept through Washington, D.C., Friday night as news broke that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a four-time cancer survivor, was back in the hospital.

Luckily, doctors said it was only because of chills and fever, and she went home Sunday. But Ginsburg’s health remains a topic of discussion in D.C. She missed a day of oral argument last week owing to stomach pain, less than three months after completing treatment for her fourth bout with cancer. She missed two weeks of oral argument earlier this year because of lung cancer surgery, and then in August endured three weeks of radiation treatment for pancreatic cancer.

It’s time to end the unseemly position that the anachronism of life tenure for Supreme Court justices has put the country in. It’s a good thing that modern medicine is extending the lives of everyone, including Supreme Court justices. But the time has come to remove the incentives that make justices serve until they drop dead or are gaga. It’s time to put term limits on the Supreme Court.

Our Founding Fathers granted life tenure to Supreme Court justices to ensure their independence. But that’s a relic of a day when the average life expectancy was 38. Today, it is more than twice that.

Life tenure “is undemocratic by nature,” Gabe Roth, the executive director of the reform group Fix the Court, told The Atlantic magazine in 2015. “It sounds more like an oligarchy or a feudal system.”

Fix the Court has come up with a bipartisan proposal for 18-year term limits for the Supreme Court. A vacancy would come up every two years, meaning that every president would have at least two appointments in each term.

The proposal could be enacted without amending the Constitution. Article III, Section 1 states that “Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior.” This has been interpreted to mean that Supreme Court justices have a life tenure. But the Constitution is silent on what is meant by “Offices.” Nothing is said about judges remaining at their original posts for life.

So the Fix the Court plan would preserve the Constitution’s guarantee of tenure during “good Behavior” by having departing Supreme Court justices serve on one of the nation’s eleven appeals courts.

Naturally, some younger justices would opt out of continued judicial service and return to the private sector. For them ethics regulations would have to be crafted to protect against conflicts of interest. Retired judges might be barred from working for corporations or other entities that were a part of any case they had heard while they were on the Supreme Court.

As with the existing term limit for the president and the idea of term limits for Congress, the notion of pumping fresh judicial blood into the current system is popular with the public. A 2018 Morning Consult poll found that 61 percent of registered voters favored Supreme Court term limits (67 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of Republicans).

Chief Justice John Roberts (appointed by George W. Bush) and Justice Stephen Breyer (appointed by Bill Clinton) have both indicated support for the idea. In a 1983 memo written when he served in the Reagan White House, Roberts wrote: “Setting a term of, say, 15 years would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence.”

Sadly, one hoped-for benefit of an 18-year nonrenewable Supreme Court term might not materialize in practice. In theory, an orderly changing of the guard on the Supreme Court should turn down the temperature of our current heated confirmation battles. The stakes, the theory goes, wouldn’t be as great if every senator knew that the justice they were voting on could serve a maximum of 18 years.

But the real reason confirmations are such brutal battles is that the Supreme Court plays too large a role in our society, as more and more issues fall under the scope of the Court. As the conservative Federalist Society recently noted:

The abundance of judges who do not view themselves as limited by constitutional or statutory text also drives the politicization of the confirmation process. By adding to the content of laws, they are acting as politicians rather than judges, and should expect a political selection process to match.

Returning our courts to their proper place in our constitutional framework is a tall order, and not one to be solved by abandoning life tenure for Supreme Court justices. But the idea is a sensible step, enjoys support from both conservative and liberal legal scholars, and just might give Congress the opportunity to prove to the American people that it’s still capable of bipartisan action.

Source: US Government Class

November 22, 2019 0 Comment apgov
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The Trump administration is dialing up efforts to ‘build that wall,’ records show

CNN – Three years after chants of “build that wall” became a rallying cry for the candidacy of Donald Trump, his administration is engaged in an increasingly aggressive land grab along the Southwest border to make a new wall a reality, a CNN review of federal court filings shows.

Through November 15, the Trump administration had filed 29 eminent domain suits tied to border-wall construction this year, up from 11 each of the past two years, according to federal court records. All but four of this year’s suits were filed in Texas. Eminent domain is the right of a government to seize private land for public use, while providing compensation.
Last month, in the Rio Grande Valley, construction began on the first new barriers along the border since Trump took office. US Customs and Border Protection expects to build about three miles of new wall over the next few months, an agency official recently told CNN. Mark Morgan, CBP’s acting commissioner, has said the agency wants to build 450 miles of new wall by the end of 2020.
Approximately 1,300 miles of the 1,950 mile US-Mexico border do not have fencing; these areas often are treacherous terrain or privately owned.
A conservation group, Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, is among the landowners now in court. The US government filed an eminent domain suit in July over a 72-acre parcel the group owns on the banks of the Rio Grande. For more than two decades, the group has worked to try to create a wildlife corridor along the winding river, and its members had planned to sell the 72 acres to the US Fish and Wildlife Service to connect two existing wildlife refuges, said board member and attorney Paul Gaytan. But the new border wall has bulldozed that effort.
“Unfortunately, the bottom line with this litigation is the government has a right to take the land,” said Gaytan. “The only question is: What’s fair compensation? What’s the value of that land?… How do you put a price on this native habitat and the purpose for which it was to be used?”
Federal law requires the government to offer “just compensation” based on fair market value, typically established through appraisals. In some suits, the disputes are based on competing appraisals and disagreements over the market value or on the likely impact of the wall on the land’s value, attorneys said. In Cameron County, for example, the government has offered landowners from $14,775 an acre to $67,405 an acre, according to federal court filings in current cases.
The eminent domain suits are the tip of a much broader effort to take private land, say attorneys representing landowners.
“The lawsuits are only a fraction of the condemnations that have been settled outside of litigation,” said Ricky Garza, a staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, which is representing some landowners.
Since 2017, the US government has also filed at least 35 notices — called “declarations of taking” — in Starr and Cameron counties, confirming that federal authorities have acquired land or easements to property through the process of eminent domain.
While CBP leaders have called acquiring land “a challenge,” neither CBP nor the Department of Justice responded to repeated CNN requests for comment on the lawsuits or on condemnations settled out of court.
Internal CBP emails, obtained by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act request and shared with CNN, show that in February 2018 the agency identified more than 1,100 land parcels of interest along the path of the proposed border wall in South Texas.
The process typically begins with CBP sending so-called “right of entry” letters asking landowners voluntarily to grant the government the right to access their land to conduct surveying and soil testing as a prerequisite to possibly taking the land, said Garza.
The Trump administration has sent letters to dozens of private landowners in Texas and other border states in order to survey their land for future border barriers, according to two US defense officials.
“The Right of Entry letter grants the government permission to enter specified private lands to conduct environmental assessments, property surveys, appraisals, geotechnical, and other exploratory work to facilitate future land acquisition and construction of a border barrier on those lands,” US Army spokesperson Cheryle Rivas told CNN in an email.
The Texas Civil Rights Project has run radio and newspaper ads and sent out mass mailings in various places along the border to try to reach landowners who may be receiving the letters, Garza said.
“If you don’t answer the letter, you get a home visit from a Border Patrol vehicle, pulling up to the house with an officer with the Army Corps of Engineers, an armed Border Patrol agent and often someone from the Department of Justice as well,” he said. Several landowners described similar visits to CNN.
Karla Vargas, a senior attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said many landowners don’t understand they have a right not to sign the request for entry.
Nayda Alvarez, a schoolteacher in Rio Grande City, is one landowner who refused to sign. She said she has just under an acre of land, adjoining a more than six-acre parcel still in her grandfather’s name. She is adamantly opposed to the new barriers.
“Once, maybe twice, they called saying they wanted to come in and survey. It (the letter) also said they could ingress and egress into any property I had, and I said, ‘No, I’m not signing; I don’t like the wording,’” she said.
CNN spoke to several landowners and attorneys who gave similar accounts of the right-of-entry letter, which requests temporary access to privately owned land but doesn’t disclose the consequences of not doing so.
“People don’t know the reality of it and the severity of what’s going on,” Alvarez said. “They waived environmental laws that will affect us; they even waived the Clean Water Act. The river is right there. Where are we going to get our clean water from?”
In October 2018, then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen waived more than two dozen laws to expedite border wall construction in Texas, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, among others.
As of Tuesday, the government hadn’t filed an eminent domain suit against Alvarez’s property.
Members of the Cavazos family, which own 64 acres near Mission, Texas, were sued by the government for their land on November 5, 2018. They are worried about losing a big chunk of that land, roughly 27 acres, to wall construction, said Baudilia Cavazos Rodriguez.
The land has been in her family since the 1950s, she said. Her brother and sister have more than 30 renters living on their part of the property.
“My grandmother bought the land; she had my dad and uncle sign for it. After World War II, we planted cotton and had cattle, all kinds of vegetables, we had a boat ramp,” she said. “We’re devastated because this is something my grandmother worked for her whole life.”
She said her siblings rely on the rent, and “make only about $30,000 a year. My sister Eloisa is a retired teacher, my brother is handicapped in a wheelchair. If they put in a wall, we’re thinking those renters will want to leave,” said Cavazos.
On October 10, after 11 months of legal wrangling, the government agreed to pay the Cavazos family $350 for access to survey their property, instead of the $100 it originally offered. As of Tuesday, the case hadn’t moved to the acquisition phase.
There is relatively little dispute over the government’s right to use eminent domain to acquire private property, especially when it cites national security as a justification, said Texas Civil Rights Project staff attorney Emma Hilbert.
“A lot of times, delay is the name of the game,” for the landowners, she said. With a presidential election next year, there’s always the chance that a change in administration could mean a change in border policy. In any event, Hilbert said, delay “is good for them as landowners, regardless of what the administration looks like now or a year from now.”
Scott Nicol, a longtime Sierra Club volunteer in South Texas, said the first round of border wall construction just over a decade ago offers an important lesson for landowners now facing land seizures.
“When the walls were built under the (George W.) Bush administration, if you took the first offer, you came out really bad. The landowners that fought invariably got more money,” he said.
A CNN analysis of 442 lawsuits from that earlier round of border wall construction found that property owners often were offered much less than their land was worth and that at least one-fourth of those who challenged the government’s initial offers received more money. That figure doesn’t include out-of-court settlements. Some of the suits also stalled construction at times, CNN found.
“Land acquisition is going to continue to be a challenge,” Morgan, the acting CBP commissioner, said at a November 14 news conference, “You could have a mile of land — again, on the southwest border — where it goes back in time, and you could have multiple owners, from 10 to 100 owners, that have a piece of that land. Sometimes the records go way back; the records weren’t that great. And it’s a challenge to go through that process … but again, I still think that we’re on track to get the land we need for 450 miles.”
Jim Chapman, vice president of the Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, said his group planned to fight from the moment they knew the government had its sights on their property.
“While a lot of people are consenting because they don’t see any way to fight it, you can certainly slow the process down; that’s what we’re doing,” he said.
Chapman said that because of agricultural development, very little of the brush and natural habitat along the river remains. Those few areas become magnets for hundreds of migrating bird and butterfly species and those that live in the Rio Grande Valley year-round, along with endangered animals such as ocelots and jaguarundi.
“What is left is extremely valuable,” he said. “That’s why saving 72-acre parcels matters, because there’s so little of it left.”

Source: US Government Class

November 18, 2019 0 Comment apgov
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Northwestern student paper faces nationwide fallout after apologizing for news coverage

 

Protesting students interrupted a speech by former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Nov. 5 at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

That a conservative speaker linked to the Trump administration was greeted by grievance on a college campus was no surprise, given the tribal rifts in American politics.

The real twist occurred afterward, when editors of the student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, issued apologies for engaging in the standard journalistic practices of disseminating photos of the event and attempting to contact the protesters for interviews.

Newspaper staff members then endured a blazing meteor storm on social media from incensed professional journalists. And a backlash to the backlash followed, as defenders rallied around the beleaguered student reporters.

This is playing out at a time when American journalists are facing declining print readership, continuing job cuts, and a U.S. president who denigrates their work as fake and antagonistic.

And now, some veteran journalists are saying “the young people in the profession appear to be letting them down,” said Barbara Allen, an expert in student media at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism education and training center in St. Petersburg, Fla.

It all combines to make reporters feel that “the future of journalism is in trouble,” she added.

‘We contributed to the harm’

The Northwestern apology was written by the eight-member editorial board that runs the paper, an independent entity not funded by the university or overseen by its faculty.

According to the board’s statement, the paper was wrong to tweet out pictures its photographer took of the protesters, and use a student directory to text and call the demonstrators for interviews.

The statement continued: “We contributed to the harm students experienced, and … apologize for and address the mistakes we made.” Some protesters found the tweeted photos “traumatizing and invasive,” it said. Further, the act of looking up phone numbers to contact the protesters was “an invasion of privacy.”

Asked to comment, Daily Northwestern editor-in-chief Troy Closson declined to be interviewed for this article, saying he needed to “focus on taking care of myself.”

‘A travesty’

After the apology, it was open season on the Evanston kids.

“Apologizing for the sin of committing journalism,” wrote New York Times commentator Bari Weiss. “This is chilling and a sign of more to come.”

Washington Post columnist Glenn Kessler called it “a travesty and an embarrassment.”

The student editors’ reaction was a “reflection of our polarized society,” said Hadar Harris, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, a Washington nonprofit that defends the First Amendment rights of high school and college journalists. “Student journalists mistakenly feel pulled by all political sides.”

Those young reporters forgot that their job was not to appease interest groups and campus peers, but simply to report, said Gene Foreman, retired deputy editor of The Inquirer and author of The Ethical Journalist: Making Responsible Decisions in the Pursuit of News.

The protesters, who chose to be at Sessions’ speech, were in a public place and fair game for the college photographer’s lens, he added.

Further, it wasn’t an invasion of privacy to contact protesters, Foreman said: If a person doesn’t want to talk to a reporter, “say, ‘No comment.’”

‘A culture of censorship’

When they apologized, the Northwestern journalists demonstrated an all-too-common characteristic of student reporting, Harris said. “A culture of censorship and self-censorship is seeping into student journalism. Journalists are second-guessing how to do a story for readers who are not understanding the fundamental role of journalists.”

At the heart of this shift in standards, Harris said, is the Hazelwood decision of 1988, in which the U.S. Supreme Court decided that student journalists could be subject to censorship by school administrators for “any legitimate pedagogical concern.”

Harris said the ruling has allowed school officials to limit or cut stories that reflect poorly on the school, such as articles about teacher misconduct or financial mismanagement.

Hazelwood has led to student journalists being trained for 30 years under a limiting standard that leads to self-censorship of the type demonstrated at Northwestern, Harris said.

Student journalists are also subject to the real-time critiques of peers with whom they sit in class, Harris and others said, and that can be daunting.

All this can lead to flaps such as the event last month involving the Crimson, the Harvard University newspaper, in which student reporters were excoriated by campus activists merely for calling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for comment on a story about an “Abolish ICE” protest at the school.

“Students may not have the training on how to cover those stories, and how to take into account the critiques from other students,” Harris concluded.

‘Subject to criticism from all directions’

The Northwestern editorial board statement sparked “lots of conversation” among staffers at the Temple News, said the paper’s editor-in-chief, Kelly Brennan.

“I don’t agree with the editors’ decisions” to retract the photos of protesters and apologize for phoning people, said Brennan, 21, a senior and journalism major from Reading.

She said that Temple reporters have never been censored by the school administration and have not backed away from reporting a story.

But, Brennan added, she feels “passionately about not condemning these journalists.”

 

Source: US Government Class