Tag: Trump White House

White House rejects Democrats’ call for Stephen Miller to testify on immigration

The White House will refuse to allow senior adviser Stephen Miller to testify before the House Oversight Committee, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post.

Oversight panel Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) received a letter from the White House counsel Wednesday denying his request that Miller come before the committee to testify on the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

“We are pleased that the Committee is interested in obtaining information regarding border security and much needed improvements to our immigration system,” White House Counsel Pat Cipollone wrote, offering to make available “cabinet secretaries and other agency leaders” to discuss the issue.

View the complete April 24 article by Colby Itkowitz and Rachael Bade on The Washington Post website here.

Trump effort to stonewall faces thorny legal challenge

President Trump’s attempt to stonewall investigations by House Democrats by preventing former aides such as White House counsel Don McGahn from testifying is an uphill legal battle.

The White House has signaled that it will assert executive privilege to block McGahn and others from testifying.

But Trump allowed McGahn to speak to special counsel Robert Muellerand permitted the release of the special counsel’s redacted report without asserting executive privilege, a decision that could make it hard to justify the new argument in court.

View the complete April 24 article by Jordan Fabian and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Dems accuse White House of caving to Trump’s ‘ego’ on Russian meddling

Democrats blasted the White House Wednesday following back-to-back reports that administration officials were discouraged from raising concerns about Russian interference in the 2020 election.

Several Democratic lawmakers characterized allegations that White House staffers are rebuffing administration officials as “troubling” and questioned if aides were dodging the topic over fear of irritating President Trump.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who is running for her party’s 2020 nomination, accused top White House aides of cowing to Trump’s “ego.”

View the complete April 24 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Trump opposes aides’ testimony on Mueller report, ramping up feud with Democrats

House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed former White House Counsel Don McGahn

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is opposed to current and former White House officials testifying before Congress about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report.

“There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress where it’s very partisan — obviously very partisan,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post.

The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed former White House Counsel Don McGahn, whom Democrats describe as a potential star witness in their ongoing probes of all things Trump.

View the complete April 23 article byJohn T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Is Obstruction an Impeachable Offense? History Says Yes

WASHINGTON — President Trump has been consulting the Constitution. In a Twitter post on Monday, he recited part of Article II, Section 4, the provision that allows Congress to remove federal officials who commit “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Mr. Trump wrote that he had done none of those things: “There were no crimes by me (No Collusion, No Obstruction), so you can’t impeach.”

The president’s analysis had two shortcomings. It misstated the conclusion of the report issued by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, which made no definitive judgment about whether Mr. Trump had violated criminal laws concerning obstruction of justice. And it failed to take account of what the framers meant by “other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

View the complete April 23 article by Adam Liptak on The New York Times website here.

House panel moves to hold former White House official in contempt after he obeys Trump administration’s instruction not to testify

The House Oversight Committee moved Tuesday to hold a former White House personnel security director in contempt of Congress for failing to appear at a hearing investigating alleged lapses in White House security clearance procedures.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said he would consult with the House counsel and members of the panel about scheduling a vote on contempt for former White House personnel security director Carl Kline. At the instruction of the White House, Kline failed to show up for scheduled testimony on security clearances.

The move marks a dramatic escalation of tensions between Congress and the Trump White House, which is increasingly resisting requests for information from Capitol Hill.

“The White House and Mr. Kline now stand in open defiance of a duly authorized congressional subpoena with no assertion of any privilege of any kind by President Trump,” Cummings said in a statement. “Based on these actions, it appears that the President believes that the Constitution does not apply to his White House, that he may order officials at will to violate their legal obligations, and that he may obstruct attempts by Congress to conduct oversight.”

View the complete April 23 article by Tom Hamburger on The Washington Post website here.

What to do about Sarah Sanders? White House reporters have a few ideas.

Reporters have long approached White House press secretary Sarah Sanders with a trust-but-verify attitude, knowing full well that Sanders is tasked with spinning some of the more unspinnable statements made by her boss, President Trump.

But with the publication of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on Thursday, Sanders’s credibility among the people who cover her has been stretched about as taut as a violin string.

One White House reporter, April Ryan, has openly called for Sanders to be fired. While others don’t go that far, they acknowledge that Sanders’s public statements have damaged her, perhaps permanently, as the president’s spokeswoman. In conversations with reporters, it’s not unusual to hear her compared unfavorably to Ron Ziegler, President Nixon’s press secretary, whose reputation was shredded by the Watergate scandal.

View the complete April 22 article by Paul Farhi on The Washington Post website here.

What you missed in the Mueller report

POLITICO dived back into the report and its 2,000-plus footnotes to unearth a few details that have not gotten much attention.

Robert Mueller keeps on giving.

Dozens of overlooked nuggets are buried deep inside the special counsel’s 448-page report that raise yet more intriguing questions about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and shed new light on charges Mueller considered and dropped, who dished on the president, who evaded Mueller’s attempts to secure an interview, what happened to the FBI’s mysterious counterintelligence investigation and why a Russian Olympic weightlifter mistakenly ended up on the public radar.

That’s what happens when two-plus years of investigative work get distilled into a document consumed at the speed of Twitter — and where the sheer volume of news articles about the special counsel’s findings overloaded the most able multitaskers and the fastest speed-readers.

View the complete April 23 article by Darren Samuelsohn, Kyle Cheney and Natasha Bertrand on the Politico website here.

House Judiciary chairman subpoenas former White House lawyer McGahn

The head of the House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena Monday seeking the public testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn to probe possible obstruction of justice by President Trump, following the release of special counsel’s Robert Mueller’s report.

Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) described McGahn as a critical witness who may be able to shed light on cases in which he says Trump may have sought to obstruct Mueller’s investigation, a matter that is being examined as part of his panel’s sprawling probe into possible obstruction of justice, public corruption and abuses of power by the president and his inner circle.

McGahn’s testimony was featured extensively in Mueller’s report, which stated that Trump told him to remove Mueller in June 2017, according to the former White House counsel. McGahn refused to do so, fearing it would have been viewed “as triggering another Saturday Night Massacre,” the 448-page report says.

View the complete April 22 article by Olivia Beavers and Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

To Defend Against a Mercurial Boss, Trump Aides Wield the Pen as Shield

WASHINGTON — President Trump glanced around the room and noticed Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, then his national security adviser, with his head bent over a notebook, scribbling something down.

General McMaster was a prolific note-taker, recording details for later reference, a practice that hardly seemed unusual to someone in charge of a sprawling national security apparatus. But it enraged Mr. Trump, who one day, according to people in the room, finally snapped at his adviser.

“Why are you always writing in that book?” he demanded.

View the complete April 21 article by Peter Baker and Annie Karni on The New York Times website here.