The following article by Aaron Rupar was posted on the ThinkProgress website February 6, 2018:
Ryan ended the news conference within 20 seconds.
During a news conference on Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) was asked to defend his own comments from last week about how he doesn’t think the Nunes memo has anything to do with President Trump’s efforts to undermine the Mueller investigation.
The following article by Avi Selk was posted on the Washington Post website February 4, 2018:
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) touted the new GOP tax reform law and outlined his party’s agenda ahead of the new year. (Reuters)
Never mind all the Democrats who call the GOP’s tax bill a deficit-busting giveaway to the rich; House Speaker Paul D. Ryan has been enthusiastically promoting it as a middle-class tax windfall.
The following article by Dan Balz was posted on the Washington Post website February 3, 2018:
President Trump appears to have won over the Republican establishment, as shown in its blessing of the release of a House Intelligence Committee memo alleging wrongdoing by the FBI and the Justice Dpt. Credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
This was the week when the Republican Party finally went all in with President Trump. What once seemed unlikely is now reality. The Republican establishment — there are a few dissenting voices, of course — has succumbed to the power of the presidency, and this president in particular.
The following commentary from the Editorial Board of the Washington Post was posted on their website February 1, 2018:
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
“WHAT THIS is not is an indictment of our institutions, of our justice system,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday about the now infamous “Nunes memo.” “It does not impugn the Mueller investigation or the deputy attorney general,” the speaker insisted. Is this cynicism or naivete?
Discrediting law enforcement is the memo’s transparent purpose and why it has been embraced by President Trump. Written mainly by the staff of Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the loose-cannon chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the memo reportedly makes the case that the FBI abused spying authorities as it sought permission to surveil a former Trump adviser. The Justice Department called its potential release, which Mr. Trump reportedly intends to approve, “extraordinarily reckless.” The FBI released its own startling public statement citing “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” Adam Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, wrote in a Post op-ed that the Nunes memo “cherry-picks facts, ignores others and smears the FBI and the Justice Department.” Continue reading “A process that tarnishes the House”
The following commentary by Joe Scarborough was posted on the Washington Post website February 1, 2018:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), left, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” Cassius counseled his friend and fellow republican Marcus Brutus. In Shakespeare’s telling of the tragedy of Julius Caesar, the triumphant general returns to Rome and is feared to be plotting to become an emperor capable of laying waste to the Roman republic. But Brutus takes to heart Cassius’s reminder that loyalties flow first to the republic and not to political friends. He acts on the warning, helps to kill Caesar and then dies a miserable death. Alas, no one lives happily ever after.
This week’s story line out of Washington is less grim but still of great concern. Despite daily reminders that President Trump holds democratic traditions in deep contempt, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and his Republican caucus are allowing themselves to become co-conspirators in the president’s push to compromise U.S. constitutional norms. While no one expects the GOP to take grisly cues from Shakespeare, is it too much to ask that Ryan place grave national security concerns from the Justice Department ahead of his political peonage to Trump? Continue reading “Trump’s enablers are misreading the stars”
The Justice Department’s No. 2 official has been in the president’s crosshairs since appointing special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the agency’s Russia investigation.
He’s the only official who could fire Mueller given Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from Russia-related matters.
Some Republicans are now worried that a soon-to-be-released memo from GOP staff on the House Intelligence Committee could hand Trump more ammunition to fire Rosenstein — a move they fear would boomerang on the White House and Republicans running for reelection in the House and Senate. Continue reading “GOP lawmakers say Trump would make mistake in firing Rosenstein”
The following article by Karoun Demirjian was posted on the Washington Post website January 30, 2018:
After the House Intelligence Committee voted to release a classified memo, Republicans lauded the step while Democrats criticized it as a political deception.(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Tuesday defended the way that Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes handled a politically divisive vote to publicize a classified memo detailing alleged surveillance abuses by federal law enforcement agencies, but he warned against using it to discredit the special counsel’s probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The following article by Michelle Ye Hee Lee was posted on the Washington Post website January 28, 2018:
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). Credit: Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) credited the network of billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch for being “such a critical part of our historic success in 2017,” highlighting its support for the tax code overhaul.
“Your network has been instrumental for allowing us to reach so many milestones that have long been talked about, but until this year, have not been achieved,” Ryan said in a three-minute video message aired to hundreds of Republican mega-donors attending a three-day meeting here. Continue reading “Paul Ryan credits Koch network for supporting GOP’s tax overhaul”
The following article by Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey was posted on the Washington Post website January 11, 2018:
President Trump listens before signing a law to curtail opioids trafficking in the Oval Office at the White House on Jan. 10, 2018. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
At 6:46 Thursday morning, Andrew Napolitano — a Fox News Channel personality and supporter of President Trump — opined about a critical government surveillance program on “Fox & Friends,” the show that is part alarm clock, part unofficial briefing for the commander in chief.
“I’m scratching my head,” Napolitano said, referring to Thursday’s House vote to reauthorize a key part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “I don’t understand why Donald Trump is in favor of this.”
And then, just 47 minutes later, Trump was no longer in favor of the bill that his own White House had been championing. In a tweet, the president quoted verbatim the Fox headline from Napolitano’s appearance and suggested that the FISA law had been used by the Obama administration to “so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign.” Continue reading “Trump’s ‘ping-pong’ on surveillance law sets off a 101-minute scramble”
The following article by Laura Jarrett, Evan Perez and Manu Raju was posted on the CNN website January 5, 2018:
(CNN) — House Speaker Paul Ryan backed his fellow congressional Republican, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, during a meeting over the Russia investigation Wednesday, capping off a months-long dispute between the committee and the Justice Department, multiple sources with the knowledge of the situation told CNN.
CNN reported Wednesday that Ryan met with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI head Christopher Wray in his Capitol Hill office, but details emerged Thursday providing new insight into how a nasty inter-branch dispute has quietly subsided — at least for now.
