Tag: Trump White House

Book by ‘Anonymous’ describes Trump as cruel, inept and a danger to the nation

Washington Post logoSenior Trump administration officials considered resigning en masse last year in a “midnight self-massacre” to sound a public alarm about President Trump’s conduct, but rejected the idea because they believed it would further destabilize an already teetering government, according to a new book by an unnamed author.

In “A Warning” by Anonymous, obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its release, a writer described only as “a senior official in the Trump administration” paints a chilling portrait of the president as cruel, inept and a danger to the nation he was elected to lead.

The author — who first captured attention in 2018 as the unidentified author of a New York Times opinion column — describes Trump careening from one self-inflicted crisis to the next, “like a twelve-year-old in an air traffic control tower, pushing the buttons of government indiscriminately, indifferent to the planes skidding across the runway and the flights frantically diverting away from the airport.”

View the complete November 7 article by Philip Rucker on The Washington Post website here.

Trump’s Twitter War Room Aims Its Punches at Decorated Colonel

New York Times logoDays after a decorated Army lieutenant colonel offered damaging testimony about President Trump’s conduct on a July phone call with Ukraine’s leader, Mr. Trump stood on the South Lawn and issued a vague but ominous warning.

“You’ll be seeing very soon what comes out,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday, referring to the officer, Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman.

Mr. Trump was not more specific. But an attack on Colonel Vindman’s character and motives was already making its way from the dark corners of Mr. Trump’s social media following to the front lines of the impeachment battle.

View the complete November 6 article by Mike McIntire and Nicholas Confessore on The New York Times website here.

White House claims it had no advance knowledge president’s son was about to out whistleblower

AlterNet logoDonald Trump Jr. Wednesday morning appears to have outed the whistleblower whose formal complaint against President Trump led directly to the start of a damning impeachment investigation. The president’s eldest son, who just began a tour to promote his new book that attacks the left, took to Twitter to engage in what some claim is an illegal act.

Trump Jr. posted a tweet linking to the website Breitbart, which used to be run by the president’s former campaign manager and former White House Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor.

The title of the article includes the name of the alleged whistleblower. NCRM will not publish that name nor will we link to tweets or articles that do.

View the complete November 6 article by David Badash from The New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

White House lawyer says he will defy impeachment subpoena

The Hill logoWhite House lawyer John Eisenberg said that despite being subpoenaed to appear, he will not show up for testimony in the House impeachment inquiry on Monday, on instructions from President Trump. 

White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in a letter to William Burck, Eisenberg’s attorney, on Sunday that the Justice Department had advised him that Eisenberg, as a senior adviser to Trump, is “absolutely immune from compelled congressional testimony with respect to matters related to his service as a senior adviser to the President.”

“The constitutional immunity of current and former senior advisers to the President exists to protect the institution of the Presidency and, as stated by former Attorney General [Janet] Reno, ‘may not be overborne by competing congressional interests,” Cipollone wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Hill.

View the complete November 4 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Mike Pompeo accused of plotting escape route back home during taxpayer-funded trips to Kansas

AlterNet logoAccording to the Guardian, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been jetting back and forth between Washington his home state of Kansas for a number of bizarrely political events, including radio interviews, “workplace development” talks with first daughter Ivanka Trump, and — on one strange occasion — handing out State Department buttons emblazoned with “#Swagger.”

kylie 🌻@kcylizzle
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be speaking with Wichita State students this morning in an effort to recruit students to work as diplomats for the State Department. It’s unclear how these students were chosen to participate in this event.

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kylie 🌻@kcylizzle

These buttons were just passed out to students.

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Impeachment Probe Eyes Mulvaney’s Office in Early Effort to Hold Up Ukraine Aid

When the Trump administration first decided to send anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, Mick Mulvaney’s OMB put a mysterious, previously-unreported hold on the sale.

When the Trump administration first decided to sell Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, officials at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) moved to temporarily pause the effort, according to multiple sources briefed on the matter.

The unusual move didn’t just foreshadow the huge fight that has President Donald Trump now facing impeachment. It also caught the eye of congressional investigators in the impeachment inquiry. This summer, OMB delayed the provision of a second shipment of military aid to Ukraine. An Intelligence Community whistleblower pointed to the Trump administration’s decision to temporarily hold up the aid as a source of concern about alleged efforts to extort Ukraine. Democrats responded by opening an impeachment inquiry.

In 2017, with the enthusiastic support of Defense Sec. Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the Trump administration moved to greenlight sending of over $40 million worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Kyiv. But enthusiasm for the move wasn’t unanimous; in late 2017, as the interagency process moved forward, OMB temporarily gummed it up.

View the complete November 1 article by Betsy Swan and Sam Brodey on the Daily Beast website here.

Pompeo Refuses To Say Whether Ukraine Call Transcript Was Edited

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was listening in to Donald Trump’s infamous July phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, was asked on Wednesday whether the summary released by the administration was complete. He refused to answer.

On Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert who was also listening in on the call, reportedly told the House impeachment inquiry committees that the document was not a full transcript and that some of Trump’s most overt efforts to link his quid pro quo of security aid for opposition research were omitted. Vindman contemporaneous attempts to get the transcript corrected were unsuccessful.

Pompeo was asked by Fox News whether portions of the call relating to the Bidens and the quid pro quo had been left out of the transcript, as Vindman had testified. Pompeo refused to say they had not.

View the complete November 2 article by Josh Israel on the National Memo website here.

Jared Kushner Attending Saudi Conference Raises ‘Red Flag” with Saudi Arabian in His Financial Disclosure: Ethics Experts

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s participating in Saudi Arabia’s annual investment conference this week raised ethics concerns from a watchdog alleging that the Saudi government is a part-owner of a company building a Trump-branded property that Kushner’s wife Ivanka Trump holds a stake in.

Kushner, a senior White House adviser, arrived at the Future Investment Initiative forum in Riyadh on Tuesday, a year after Western leaders, including some from the United States boycotted the conference due to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In a report on its website Tuesday, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) pointed to its finding from last year that the Trump Organization’s business partner in Indonesia signed a deal with a Saudi government-owned construction firm to build a Trump-branded resort. The agreement was apparently reached three weeks before Khashoggi disappeared.

View the complete October 30 article by Jessica Kwong on the Newsweek website here.

White House officials ramp up new tax cut talks, as Trump seeks sharp contrast with 2020 Democrats

Washington Post logoKudlow is playing a lead role, and congressional Republicans have engaged in the early planning

White House officials and congressional Republicans have begun early talks on a new package of tax reductions and economic growth measures, under pressure from President Trump, who is agitating to announce a new tax cut proposal heading into the 2020 election.

The discussions are preliminary and far from the decision stage, according to officials involved. The timeline is unclear, but White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow is playing a lead role, people briefed on the talks said.

The early-stage discussions reflect Trump’s desire to refocus the economic narrative amid some signs of a slowing economy, and after the major Republican tax cut package of 2017 failed to produce enduring economic benefits or political gains for the GOP.

View the complete October 31 article by Erica Werner, Josh Dawsey and Jeff Stein on The Washington Post website here.

White House lawyer moved transcript of Trump call to classified server after Ukraine adviser raised alarms

Washington Post logoMoments after President Trump ended his phone call with Ukraine’s president on July 25, an unsettled national security aide rushed to the office of White House lawyer John Eisenberg.

Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine adviser at the White House, had been listening to the call and was disturbed by the pressure Trump had applied to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rivals, according to people familiar with Vindman’s testimony to lawmakers this week.

Vindman told Eisenberg, the White House’s legal adviser on national security issues, that what the president did was wrong, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

View the complete October 30 article by Carol D. Leonnig, Tom Hamburger and Greg Miller on The Washington Post website here.