Tag: Trump White House

White House officials concerned about being exposed by Mueller report

“They got asked questions and told the truth, and now they’re worried the wrath will follow,” one former White House official said.

WASHINGTON — Some of the more than one dozen current and former White House officials who cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller are worried that the version of his report expected to be made public on Thursday will expose them as the source of damaging information about President Donald Trump, according to multiple witnesses in the investigation.

Some of the officials and their lawyers have sought clarity from the Justice Department on whether the names of those who cooperated with Mueller’s team will be redacted or if the public report will be written in a way that makes it obvious who shared certain details of Trump’s actions that were part of the obstruction of justice probe, people familiar with the discussions said. But, they said, the Justice Department has refused to elaborate.

Of particular concern is how Trump — and his allies — will react if it appears to be clear precisely who shared information with Mueller, these people said.

View the complete April 16 article by Carol E. Lee, Hallie Jackson and Kristen Welker on the NBC News website here.

Democrats take aim at Miller as questions persist about ‘sanctuary city’ targeting

House Democrats are sharpening their focus on White House immigration adviser Stephen Miller, with key lawmakers saying he should be brought before congressional committees to testify about his role in recent policy controversies.

The talk of hauling Miller before lawmakers comes days after The Washington Post reported that he played a key role in a plan first discussed last year to release undocumented immigrants into “sanctuary cities” represented by President Trump’s Democratic critics. While the plan never came to fruition because of objections from agency officials, Trump has since embraced the idea.

With a spate of new vacancies at the Department of Homeland Security, including the departure last week of the secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, Miller has emerged as a key target for Democrats who see him as an influential survivor in an administration that has otherwise churned through personnel.

View the complete April 14 article by Mike DeBonis, Rachael Bade and Felicia Sonmez on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Sees an Obstacle to Getting His Way on Immigration: His Own Officials

WASHINGTON — Stephen Miller was furious — again.

The architect of President Trump’s immigration agenda, Mr. Miller was presiding last month over a meeting in the White House Situation Room when he demanded to know why the administration officials gathered there were taking so long to carry out his plans.

A regulation to deny welfare benefits to legal immigrants — a change Mr. Miller repeatedly predicted would be “transformative” — was still plodding through the approval process after more than two years, he complained. So were the new rules that would overturn court-ordered protections for migrant children. They were still not finished, he added, berating Ronald D. Vitiello, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

View the complete April 14 article by Eileen Sullivan and Michael D. Shear on The New York Times website here.

Inside Ivanka’s Dreamworld

The “first daughter” spent years rigorously cultivating her image. But she wasn’t prepared for scrutiny.

You could tell by his eyes, the way they popped and gleamed and fixed on someone behind me. Only one person gets that kind of look from Donald Trump. “Oh!” the president said. “Ivanka!”

Ivanka Trump lifted her hands, astonished. “I forgot you guys were meeting—I was just coming by!” she said. “Uh-oh!”

The first daughter (though not the only daughter), wearing a fitted black mockneck and black pants, her golden hair fastened in a low twist, glided across the Oval Office. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and it was apparently vital to inform Trump, at that very moment, that Siemens had pledged to expand its education and training opportunities to more workers as part of Ivanka’s workforce-development initiative. She also wanted to remind him that tomorrow would be the inaugural session of the program’s advisory board, and that Tim Cook would be joining the meeting.

View the complete April 12 article by Elaina Plott on The Atlantic website here.

 

Republicans writing off hard-line DHS candidate

Senate Republicans are waving President Trump off from nominating Kris Kobach, a favorite among conservatives who want tougher enforcement of immigration laws, to serve as the next secretary of Homeland Security.

GOP lawmakers are already scrambling to contain the controversy surrounding two potential nominees to the Federal Reserve Board — Stephen Moore and Herman Cain — and they don’t want to find themselves in another political fight with the White House over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of Senate leadership on the Judiciary Committee, warned Wednesday that he could not stand behind Kobach if the former Kansas secretary of state is nominated to replace Kirstjen Nielsen as DHS chief.

View the complete April 11 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

It’s Trump vs. Trump as immigration divides White House

The president is weighing — and reflecting — different opinions among his top advisers, including Stephen Miller and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

President Donald Trump is in a fight over immigration — with himself.

Trump denied on Tuesday that he is “cleaning house” at the Department of Homeland Security. But on Wednesday, the White House was eyeing a replacement for a senior DHS official whose job congressional Republicans are trying to save.

The president has also said he has no plans to renew the administration’s highly controversial migrant child separation policy — even as officials throughout the administration weigh a plan to make arrested border-crossers choose whether to “voluntarily” separate from their kids.

View the complete April 10 article by Eliana Johnson, Nancy Cook and Anita Kumar on the Politico website here.

Trump signs executive orders seeking to speed up oil and gas projects

President Trump signed on April 10 two executive orders to prevent states from blocking the construction of oil and gas pipelines. (The Washington Post)

CROSBY, Tex. — President Trump signed a pair of executive orders on Wednesday seeking to make it easier for firms to build oil and gas pipelines and harder for state agencies to intervene, a move that drew immediate backlash from some state officials and environmental activists.

“Too often, badly needed energy infrastructure is being held back by special-interest groups, entrenched bureaucracies and radical activists,” Trump said during a visit to a union training center for operating engineers 25 miles outside of Houston. “The two executive orders that I’ll be signing in just a moment will fix this, dramatically accelerating energy infrastructure approvals.”

The executive action seeks to rein in states’ power by changing the implementation instructions, known as guidance, that are issued by federal agencies, according to one of the orders.

View the complete April 10 article by Toluse Olorunnipa and Steven Mufson on The Washington Post website here.

Report: GOP, Business Leaders Fear Trump’s ‘Increasingly Erratic Behavior’

Even President Donald Trump’s allies are getting nervous as his behavior — never restrained or deliberative — has become more unpredictable and tumultuous in recent weeks.

In a new report from the Washington Post documenting what it called his last “twelve days of chaos.” journalists David Nakamura, Josh Dawsey and Seung Min Kim found that officials and business leaders are frightened by what could happen next out of the White House:

Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior over the past 12 days — since he first threatened to seal the border in a series of tweets on March 29 — has alarmed top Republicans, business officials, and foreign leaders who fear that his emotional response might exacerbate problems at the border, harm the U.S. economy and degrade national security.

Continue reading “Report: GOP, Business Leaders Fear Trump’s ‘Increasingly Erratic Behavior’”

Twelve days of chaos: Inside the Trump White House’s growing panic to contain the border crisis

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was a loyal soldier for President Trump and often repeated his falsehoods, but it wasn’t enough to save her job. (Video: JM Rieger/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

He had threatened to close the southern border and ordered a halt to foreign aid for three Central American nations. But as President Trump weighed his next move to respond to a mounting immigration crisis, he had another problem: His homeland security chief was in Europe on a week-long business trip.

The location of Kirstjen Nielsen, the embattled leader of the Department of Homeland Security, on April 1 was like a bad joke for a president who vowed to curb unauthorized immigration but was now showing signs of panic as border crossings spiked to the highest levels in more than a decade. Continue reading “Twelve days of chaos: Inside the Trump White House’s growing panic to contain the border crisis”

Here are 21 facts that explain who Trump ‘puppet master’ Stephen Miller really is

The anti-immigrant Trump mouthpiece has been like this for a long time.

This story first ran in 2017.

Even among the right-wing ideologues doing the actual presidenting in this administration, Stephen Miller stands out for the copious amounts of Kool-Aid he mainlines. Speaking to the New York Times, a Trump team colleague described Miller as “fiercely loyal” to the president, “a true believer in every sense of the word.” Though he joined the campaign in its early days, penning many of the apocalyptic speeches that won fear-drunk Republican hearts and minds, Miller recently got a lot more visibility after a string of television appearances in defense of the Muslim ban. At each stop, Miller showed a flair for the dramatic: he lied, he dodged, he put on his best tyrant’s voice and proclaimed the executive branch above the law. It seemed contrived and forced, like a politically precocious, weasley teenager’s idea of how to command a crowd. According to those who know Miller’s history, that’s not so far off the mark.

Dating back to junior high school, Miller has been the unwavering right-winger now before us. Though the internet, and some of his family members, were quick to compare him to Joseph Goebbels, this reporter saw a resemblance to Roy Cohn—a Trump mentor—down to the sartorial details. Miller wears retro skinny suits, only recently ditched a chain-smoking habit and has the kind of cockiness that reads as unexamined, unsympathetic self-hatred. His barked orders and put-on baritone are all part of the package, and can strike an observer as funny. At least until you remember this guy is trying to turn the country into an all-white gated community. Continue reading “Here are 21 facts that explain who Trump ‘puppet master’ Stephen Miller really is”