Tag: Trump White House

Confidential draft IRS memo says tax returns must be given to Congress unless president invokes executive privilege

A confidential Internal Revenue Service legal memo says tax returns must be given to Congress unless the president takes the rare step of asserting executive privilege, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The Washington Post.

The memo contradicts the Trump administration’s justification for denying lawmakers’ request for President Trump’s tax returns, exposing fissures in the executive branch.

Trump has refused to turn over his tax returns but has not invoked executive privilege. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has instead denied the returns by arguing there is no legislative purpose for demanding them.

View the complete May 21 article by Jeff Stein and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

Nadler subpoenas Hope Hicks and McGahn’s former aide for testimony

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday subpoenaed two former White House officials to testify before his committee and provide documents, a move that is likely to further exacerbate a standoff with the White House.

Nadler issued subpoenas to Annie Donaldson, who served as chief of staff to former White House counsel Don McGahn, and former White House communications director Hope Hicks, one of President Trump‘s longest-serving aides in the West Wing.

The two subpoenas mark an ongoing fight between the White House and Congress as House Democrats seek to compel the testimony of other current and former administration officials as part of their sprawling investigations into Trump and his administration.

View the complete May 21 article by Olivia Beaver and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Trump says he was not warned about Flynn. The Mueller report disagrees.

“It now seems the General Flynn was under investigation long before was common knowledge. It would have been impossible for me to know this but, if that was the case, and with me being one of two people who would become president, why was I not told so that I could make a change?”

— President Trump, in a tweet, May 17, 2019

The president tweeted that he did not realize Michael Flynn, his first national security adviser, had been under investigation on suspicion of being a Russian agent and that he should have been warned.

This is a puzzling complaint. First, a report issued by a Republican-led House committee — often touted by Trump — disclosed in 2018 that there had been an ongoing counterintelligence investigation of Flynn. So that’s not new information. Second, Trump was warned by President Barack Obama not to hire Flynn — and the report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III says that warning actually soured Trump on Flynn.

Here’s what we know about the warnings Trump received about Flynn. In a narrow, technical sense, Trump was not warned that Flynn was being investigated as a possible Russian agent. But there were plenty of other flashing lights that Flynn was trouble — warnings that Trump chose to ignore.

View the complete May 20 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.

Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Anti-money-laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.

The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.

But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees’ advice. The reports were never filed with the government.

View the complete May 19 article by David Enrich on The New York Times website here.

Trump: Anonymous news sources are ‘bulls—‘

President Trump on Friday railed against the use of anonymous sources in news reports about his administration, calling it “bullshit.”

The president went on a tangent during remarks to the National Association of Realtors in Washington, D.C., complaining about news coverage of his administration’s approach to Iran.

He disputed that he is at odds with some of his top advisers on the subject, before mocking the way some of the reports use unnamed administration officials.

View the complete May 17 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

New court filings in Michael Flynn’s case spell trouble for Trump

It ain’t over ’til it’s over.

President Donald Trump is still in a lot of trouble, and it has nothing to do with Congress. Federal courts continue to reveal new information that appears to show the president’s inner circle and closest allies were deeply involved in efforts to stymie investigations into his administration. With over a dozen investigations ongoing, the Justice Department is still casting a long shadow over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the government to release a transcript of a call in which Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, discussed U.S. sanctions with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Sullivan also ordered the release of a transcript in which Trump’s former personal lawyer, John Dowd, seemed to discourage Flynn from cooperating with federal prosecutors on November 22, 2017.

Flynn ignored Dowd and pleaded guilty on December 1, 2017, admitting he lied to federal investigators about his conversation with Kislyak. In a sentencing memo filed last year, prosecutors said Flynn provided “substantial assistance” in three investigations, two of which are ongoing.

View the complete May 17 article by Joshua Eaton on the ThinkProgress website here.

Newly Unsealed Documents Reveal Fresh Details Of Flynn Cooperation

Court documents from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team revealing details about the cooperation of Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser and campaign aide, were unsealed on Thursday.

The new information shows Flynn was particularly helpful to the team in the investigations of both WikiLeaks and of potential efforts to obstruct his testimony.

Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, and after that, he became a cooperating witness for Mueller. He has yet to be sentenced for his crime.

View the complete May 16 article by Cody Fenwick on the National Memo website here.

Judge orders public release of what Michael Flynn said in call to Russian ambassador

A federal judge on Thursday ordered that prosecutors make public a transcript of a phone call that former national security adviser Michael Flynn tried hard to hide with a lie: his conversation with a Russian ambassador in late 2016.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington ordered the government also to provide a public transcript of a November 2017 voice mail involving Flynn. In that sensitive call, President Trump’s attorney left a message for Flynn’s attorney reminding him of the president’s fondness for Flynn at a time when Flynn was considering cooperating with federal investigators.

The transcripts, which the judge ordered be posted on a court website by May 31, would reveal conversations at the center of two major avenues of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. So far they have been disclosed to the public only in fragments in court filings and the Mueller report.

View the complete May 16 article by Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman on The Washington Post website here. Matt Zapotosky and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.

Trump‘s latest immigration plan came with no Democratic outreach

Proposal appears going no further than White House Rose Garden

President Donald Trump unveiled his latest immigration overhaul plan Thursday, but given its lack of outreach to Democrats, it likely will go little further than the Rose Garden setting where it first saw light.

Trump used the White House backdrop to also reiterate some of his familiar hard-line immigration stances that may ingratiate him to his conservative base, but usually only repel Democrats and many independents.

“Democrats are proposing open borders, lower wages, and frankly, lawless chaos,” the self-described “America first” president said, adding: “We are proposing an immigration plan that puts the jobs, wages and safety of American workers first.”

View the complete May 16 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

White House Again Rejects Democrats’ Requests for Documents in Corruption Inquiry

The White House on Wednesday rejected another round of document requests from the House, expanding on its assertions that Democrats in Congress lacked a legitimate legislative purpose for the demands and were inappropriately replicating the work of the special counsel.

The letter from the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, laid out a series of arguments, saying essentially that Congress was not a law enforcement body and does not have the standing to investigate the president.

The letter stopped short of asserting executive privilege over the documents, which relate to 81 individuals and entities connected to the president or his campaign and inauguration. The documents are being sought by the House Judiciary Committee for its investigation into possible obstruction of justice, abuse of power and corruption. But the letter framed the requests as overly broad. And it suggested that the committee was trying to get another crack at material the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, had already reviewed at great length.

“Congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation, not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized ‘do-over’ of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice,” Mr. Cipollone wrote in the 12-page letter, which was first reported by ABC News.

View the complete May 15 article by Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos on The New York Times website here.