The White House’s trade representative in late August withdrew a recommendation to restore some of Ukraine’s trade privileges after John Bolton, then-national security adviser, warned him that President Trump probably would oppose any action that benefited the government in Kyiv, according to people briefed on the matter.The August exchange between Bolton and Lighthizer over the trade matter represents the first indication that the administration’s suspension of assistance to Ukraine extended beyond the congressionally authorized military aid and security assistance to other government programs. It is not clear whether Trump directed Bolton to intervene over Ukraine’s trade privileges or was even aware of the discussion.
Tag: Trump White House
The White House resorts to character assassination of courageous public servants
UNABLE TO answer the mounting evidence that President Trump abused his office to advance his reelection campaign, the White House is resorting to character assassination. Following reports of the congressional testimony Tuesday of William B. Taylor Jr., the acting ambassador to Ukraine, a statement attributed to press secretary Stephanie Grisham described “a coordinated smear campaign from far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution.” We’ll let House Democrats defend themselves. But the attempt to sully Mr. Taylor’s reputation, and that of other government servants who have testified in the Ukraine affair, is ludicrous — and vile.
For the record: Mr. Taylor has served his country with distinction for 50 years. After graduating from West Point, he was deployed for six years as an infantry officer, including with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. Later he worked at NATO and as a State Department diplomat in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Ukraine, where he was first appointed ambassador by George W. Bush.
In his testimony Tuesday, Mr. Taylor recounted that, after being asked to return to Kyiv earlier this year by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he approached a former senior Republican official for advice. He said “the mentor counseled: ‘If your country asks you to do something, you do it — if you can be effective.’ ” Despite the strong opposition of his wife, the 72-year-old Mr. Taylor accepted the assignment.
White House Aides Feared That Trump Had Another Ukraine Back Channel
Senior national security officials grew concerned about Kash Patel, a colleague who had been involved in Republicans’ efforts to undermine the Russia investigation.
WASHINGTON — When Kashyap Patel was an aide to the House Intelligence Committee in the first years of the Trump administration, he played a key role in helping Republicans try to undermine the Russia investigation, writing a memo that accused law enforcement officials of abusing their power.
The memo, which consumed Washington for weeks, was widely dismissed as a biased argument of cherry-picked facts. But it galvanized President Trump’s allies and made Mr. Patel a hero among them. After Republicans ceded control of Congress this year, he landed on Mr. Trump’s National Security Council staff.
Colleagues there initially questioned the role of Mr. Patel, who took few notes in meetings and had little expertise for his initial portfolio, which covered the United Nations. Within months, senior White House officials began to suspect he had won Mr. Trump’s ear and had effectively created a back channel to the president that could warp American policy, according to congressional testimony and interviews.
View the complete October 23 by Julian E. Barnes, Adam Goldman and Nicholas Fandos on The New York Times website here.
Scoop: Cyber memo warns of new risks to White House network
An internal memo on cybersecurity, obtained by Axios, warns that “the White House is posturing itself to be electronically compromised once again.”
The state of play: That’s after at least a dozen top- or high-level officials have resigned or been pushed out of a cybersecurity mission that was established under Barack Obama to protect the White House from Russian hacking and other threats, according to conversations with several current and former officials.
View the complete October 24 article by Alexi McCammon on the Axios website here.
Trump and Mulvaney’s claim that corruption concerns held up Ukraine aid
“We have an obligation to investigate corruption. And that’s what it was.”
— President Trump, in an interview on “Hannity” on Fox News, Oct. 21, 2019
“There were two reasons that we held up the aid. We talked about this at some length. The first one was the rampant corruption in Ukraine. Ukraine — by the way, Chris, it’s so bad in Ukraine that in 2014, Congress passed a law making it, making us, requiring us, to make sure that corruption was moving in the right direction. So, corruption is a big deal, everyone knows it. The president was also concerned about whether or not other nations, specifically European nations, were helping with foreign aid to the Ukraine as well.”
— White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, in an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Oct. 20, 2019
Trump and Mulvaney say they held up $250 million in security assistance for Ukraine this year because of concerns about corruption.
Congress approved the aid in September 2018. A top Defense Department official certified to congressional committees on May 23 that Ukraine had made sufficient progress on anti-corruption efforts to merit the security funds. The Pentagon announced the $250 million aid package June 18.
That’s how it typically works. But, on Trump’s orders, the White House informed the Pentagon on July 18 that Ukraine’s aid was being frozen, and didn’t release the funds until Sept. 11, weeks before the deadline.
Pinocchio Test
View the complete October 23 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.
Trump barked at ‘weak’ Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney in a room full of aides — and insisted he’s ’in charge of the Hatch Act’
The Wall Street Journal has published an exposé about the Trump 2020 re-election campaign and how the president is “banking on base-pleasing campaign events – more meticulously produced this time – to outweigh any need for a fresh message.”
In one disturbing tale WSJ White House reporter Michael Bender relays how Trump has apparently grown frustrated with White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney – his third in under three years – and attacked him during a meeting with other aides present.
The Wall Street Journal has published an exposé about the Trump 2020 re-election campaign and how the president is “banking on base-pleasing campaign events – more meticulously produced this time – to outweigh any need for a fresh message.”
White House press secretary whines after CNN’s Anderson Cooper ridiculed her outrageous lies
Donald Trump promised to bring the best and brightest with him to the White House, but instead has delivered a long line of upward-failing orcs. Shortly after the impeachment inquiry was announced, the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, told reporters that yes, the Trump administration “held up the money” for aid to Ukraine in a quid pro quo deal for an investigation into the Biden family, and that everybody should just “get over it.” Since then, the White House has done what it does most of the time: scramble to spin, spin, spin.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, whose work history has more red flags than an Olympic slalom event, has never held a single press conference, but she has found the time to speak with Fox News hosts on occasion. CNN’s Anderson Cooper took Grisham to task on his show on Friday during a segment called “The RidicuList.” Cooper pointed out that Grisham has not held a single official news briefing and then went on to discuss Grisham’s strange appearance defending Mick Mulvaney’s statement. As with all Trump mouthpieces, Grisham went to Fox & Friends and blamed the evil media, saying it had gotten itself “in a tizzy” over nothing.
In a clip that can be seen below, Cooper mocked Grisham and asked the audience whether everybody who worked for Trump “had to debase themselves and lie like he does.” He hooked on to a certain talking point that Grisham has echoed a few times on Fox News—that press conferences and media availabilities with White House officials are “theater.” The talking point is a perfect one for the Trump administration, as it’s dismissive of the media while absolving White House officials of lying. She also said that press conferences were “about people wanting to be on TV and making names for themselves.”
View the complete October 21 article by Walter Einenkel from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.
Republicans rip Mick Mulvaney’s ‘rough patch’
Senate Republicans are astounded by the troubled performances from the acting White House chief of staff.
Fighting for President Donald Trump is one thing. But Republicans aren’t eager to defend a struggling White House acting chief of staff they’ve never really loved.
Mick Mulvaney’s two stumbling public appearances over the past week have deepened the president’s Ukraine scandal, undercut a chief GOP talking point and left the party stunned and frustrated as Republican lawmakers look to hold off Democrats’ impeachment drive.
Iowa’s Chuck Grassley, the most senior GOP senator, put it this way: Mulvaney is “probably somebody that didn’t know what they were talking about.”
Mick Mulvaney Struggles to Explain Comments on Ukraine
WASHINGTON — Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, tried again on Sunday to back off assertions he made to reporters last week that the Trump administration had held up an aid package to Ukraine because the president wanted the country to investigate Democrats, acknowledging he did not have a “perfect press conference.”
During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Mulvaney disagreed with an assertion by the show’s anchor, Chris Wallace, that Mr. Mulvaney’s remarks were proof of a quid pro quo, an exchange the president has publicly denied for weeks. But he struggled to explain how his comments Sunday were not at odds with what he said last week.
“That’s what people are saying that I said, but I didn’t say that,” Mr. Mulvaney said, adding that he had outlined “two reasons” for withholding the aid to Ukraine in a news briefing with reporters on Thursday. In the briefing, however, he outlined three reasons: the corruption in the country, whether other countries were also giving aid to Ukraine and whether Ukrainian officials were cooperating in a Justice Department investigation.
Mulvaney faced White House ouster threat before impeachment crisis took over
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney faced internal efforts to oust him before House Democrats moved ahead with their impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, multiple sources tell CNN.
Top aides including Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner were in the process of reaching out to at least two potential replacements for the top West Wing job shortly before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in late September that she would move ahead with an impeachment inquiry.
These previously unreported efforts did not come to fruition, but underscore the weakness of Mulvaney’s position even before his headline-generating performance in the briefing room last week. One person familiar with Mulvaney’s thinking said the search came as Mulvaney himself was looking for an exit after 10 months in the role, though people close to Mulvaney have denied he wanted to leave.