The following article by Tom Porter with Newsweek was posted on the National Memo website May 21, 2017:
White House lawyers are researching impeachment procedures in an effort to prepare for a possible attempt to remove President Donald Trump from office. With both houses of Congress controlled by a Republican majority, Trump’s impeachment is a distant possibility but one that the White House is preparing for, two people briefed on the discussions told CNN.
The following article by Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky was posted on the Washington Post website May 19, 2017:
The law enforcement investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign has identified a current White House official as a significant person of interest, showing that the probe is reaching into the highest levels of government, according to people familiar with the matter.
It was a few days after the start of the new millennium, and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow was holding a reception at Spaso House, for decades the elegant residence of the American ambassador. Russia’s tumultuous Boris Yeltsin era had come to an abrupt, shocking end on New Year’s Day, when the Russian president who had brought down the Soviet Union and turned his country into a chaotic, fledgling democracy announced his resignation. His successor was the man he had named his prime minister just four months earlier, a man barely known to most Russians, let alone to the outside world: former KGB officer Vladimir Putin.
As Jim Collins, a soft-spoken career diplomat who was then the U.S. ambassador to Russia, made the rounds at that reception, querying guests as to what they thought of the dramatic shift atop the Kremlin, the overwhelming sentiment was relief. The Yeltsin era, which had begun with so much promise, had turned into a shambolic, deeply corrupt dystopia. Yeltsin, who had burst to prominence with a burly energy—his climb atop a tank in central Moscow to turn back revanchists who sought to save the Soviet dictatorship is one of the iconic moments of the Cold War’s end—had become chronically ill and increasingly fond of his vodka. A group of politically connected businessmen had raped the country economically and spirited most of their gains offshore. Its budget was busted, its civil servants unpaid. (I did a story then about a colonel in the Soviet Rocket Forces who killed himself because he could not afford to throw his wife a birthday party.) The once mighty—and mightily effective—KGB had to watch its best officers go off to work for private businessmen, leaving the state security services demoralized and increasingly corrupt. Russia was in chaos. Continue reading “Inside Putin’s Campaign To Destroy U.S. Democracy”
The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website May 18, 2017:
President Trump listens as he and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg participate in a news conference in the East Room of the White House on April 12 . (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Remember the very first episode of “Black Mirror,” the one in which the prime minister of the United Kingdom is extorted into doing … something he would rather not have done? He woke up that morning just a regular ol’ prime minister and by midafternoon he’d ended up cheating on his wife, sort of.
If you haven’t seen it, it doesn’t matter. You just need to know that, as the prime minister was weighing his options over the course of the day, he was being constantly updated on how the public was viewing the rapid-fire shifts in the decision-making process. At the outset, he was viewed positively. When his aides tried to get him out of the problem, his numbers tanked. In other words, there were multiple polls conducted over the course of the day that informed whether he would have sex with a pig on live television. Continue reading “New polling shows a sharp increase in skepticism about Trump’s relationship to Russia”
The following article by Linda Qiu was posted on the New York Times website May 18, 2017:
At a news conference on Thursday, President Trump exaggerated the scale of his proposed tax cut and made a dubious comparison between Israel’s West Bank barrier and his proposed border wall. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Trump defended his conduct related to the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia and made several misleading claims on Thursday afternoon.
In a joint news conference with President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, Mr. Trump denied there was any collusion between his campaign and Russian officials, explained why he had fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director and trumpeted his legislative agenda. Here’s an assessment.
Mr. Trump contradicted Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and his own earlier statement on firing Mr. Comey.
Before he was fired by President Trump, former FBI director James B. Comey fielded practice questions in advance of meetings and wrote highly detailed notes afterward in his car. (Jason Aldag,Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch was posted on the Washington Post website May 18, 2017:
Donald Trump disembarks Marine One yesterday as he returns to the White House after speaking at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Commencement Ceremony. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
THE BIG IDEA: The White House tried hard last night to downplay the significance of the Justice Department appointing a special counsel to investigate possible coordination between President Trump’s associates and Russian officials. Robert S. Mueller III, who spent 12 years as FBI director, will lead the probe.
In their account, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein called up White House Counsel Don McGahn at 5:30 p.m. to give him a head’s up that he was going to make the announcement half an hour later. A senior administration official told reporters that Trump was “unbelievably calm and measured.” The press office then put out this statement under the president’s name: “A thorough investigation will confirm what we already know — there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity. I look forward to this matter concluding quickly.” Continue reading “Special counsel Robert Mueller is bad news for Trump’s embattled White House”
The following article by Matthew Rosenberg and Mark Mazzetti was posted on the New York Times website May 17, 2017:
In February, Michael T. Flynn stepped down as national security adviser amid a scandal surrounding his contacts with Russia before President Trump took office. By SUSAN JOAN ARCHER, DAVE HORN, A.J. CHAVAR and ROBIN LINDSAY on Publish Date February 14, 2017. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times.
WASHINGTON — Michael T. Flynn told President Trump’s transition team weeks before the inauguration that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign, according to two people familiar with the case.
The Justice Department appointed special counsel to investigate Trump and Russia on May 17. (Peter Stevenson,Jason Aldag,Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
White House lawyers are researching impeachment procedures in an effort to prepare for a possible attempt to remove President Donald Trump from office. With both houses of Congress controlled by a Republican majority, Trump’s impeachment is a distant possibility but one that the White House is preparing for, two people briefed on the discussions told CNN.
