Talk about bad faith.
On Monday, the Trump campaign sent a memo to TV producers arguing that prominent Trump critics — including four Democratic members of Congress, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, and former CIA Director John Brennan — should be banned from appearing on news segments.
The reason? All six people have made comments about Trump and Russia that the Trump team disagrees with.
View the complete March 25 article by Emily Crockett on the National Memo website here.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III “did not establish” that members of Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to affect the outcome of the 2016 election, but left it up to Attorney General William Barr to determine whether the president obstructed justice to stymie the investigation, the AG wrote in a letter to Congress on Sunday.
Barr has declined to pursue the obstruction thread, he wrote to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees in a four-page letter summarizing the key findings from Mueller’s report.
Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the day-to-day operation of the special counsel, “concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense,” the AG wrote in his letter.
President Donald Trump’s aides don’t yet know what special counsel Robert Mueller’s report says. But they have tried to prepare for almost any outcome.
Staff at the White House, Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee have quietly plotted in recent weeks to launch an aggressive campaign to defend the president after Mueller’s long-awaited findings become public, three of them told POLITICO.
Working in earnest since last fall, at the first signs that Mueller might be finishing up, they have prepared statements and talking points for loyal surrogates, including congressional Republicans and state GOP officials. Different versions aim to cover multiple different conclusions of the Justice Department investigation into whether Trump associates conspired with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election, ranging from the most damning conclusions likely to trigger impeachment calls to a potential exoneration of the president.
View the complete March 22 article by Anita Kumar on the Politico website here.
The latest revelations about Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s use of private email and messaging apps in the White House of is yet another example of how thoroughly unqualified President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and daughter are for their current roles, said journalist Vicky Ward in conversation with Ari Melber on MSNBC’s “The Beat” on Thursday — and of how they simply don’t care about how sensitive White House business is.
“These are two people who are naive and reckless because they have an extraordinary sense of self-importance,” said Ward. “They are extraordinarily unaware. They are disdainful of rules, they think that rules are for other people.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is expressing concerns over senior White House aide Jared Kushner’s use of the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp and his personal e-mail account for official government business.
Cummings has revealed that Kushner’s use of WhatsApp was discussed during a December 19 meeting that the Maryland Democrat attended along with Rep. Trey Gowdy and Abbe Lowell, who is Kushner’s attorney. And Cummings voiced his concerns over Kushner’s use of WhatsApp for government matters in a March 21 letter to White House Counsel Pat A. Cipollone. Continue reading “Report: Kushner Uses Private Email, WhatsApp For White House Business”
The White House is rejecting a sweeping request from House Democrats for documents and interviews related to President Trump’s communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a letter obtained by The Hill, White House counsel Pat Cipollone asserts that the president’s diplomatic communications are confidential and protected by executive privilege and describes the requests as beyond Congress’s legitimate realm of inquiry.
Cipollone also argues that such a disclosure could have a detrimental impact on the ability of Trump or future presidents to conduct foreign relations.
View the complete March 21 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.
The White House has decided it’s going to stonewall every single effort Democrats make at performing their constitutional oversight responsibilities of the executive branch. As Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings writes in the Washington Post, the White House hasn’t handed over a single document to his committee.
I serve as chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, the primary investigative body in the House of Representatives. I have sent 12 letters to the White House on a half-dozen topics — some routine and some relating to our core national security interests. In response, the White House has refused to hand over any documents or produce any witnesses for interviews.
The White House also hasn’t made a single official available to testify to the panel, which is investigating the process the White House used to grant security clearances to people who were reportedly rejected for those clearances by career professionals. It’s an urgent matter of national security on which the White House is completely blocking Congress.
View the complete March 20 article by Kerry Eleveld of the Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.
In November, the American people voted overwhelmingly to put Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives to start serving as a truly independent check and balance on the executive branch. Since then, President Trump and his allies have complained of “Presidential Harassment,” decrying Democrats for having the audacity to request documents and witnesses to fulfill our constitutional responsibilities.
The problem is that the White House is engaged in an unprecedented level of stonewalling, delay and obstruction.
I serve as chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, the primary investigative body in the House of Representatives. I have sent 12 letters to the White House on a half-dozen topics — some routine and some relating to our core national security interests. In response, the White House has refused to hand over any documents or produce any witnesses for interviews.
View the complete March 19 commentary by Elijah E. Cummings on The Washington Post website here.
The top House Democrat in the impending fight between the executive branch and Congress over the release of special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s report to the public indicated Tuesday that he will strongly oppose White House lawyers’ efforts to redact some information.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler claimed Tuesday that the Trump administration waived any claims of executive privilege over Mueller’s eventual findings “long ago” when it agreed to cooperate with the probe. Continue reading “Rep. Nadler: White House can’t claim executive privilege on Mueller report”
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Monday dismissed concerns publicly voiced by her husband, lawyer George Conway, that President Trump’s mental condition is deteriorating and should be of concern to his Cabinet.
George Conway has been a persistent conservative critic of Trump’s policies and actions, frequently taking to Twitter to question whether the president is operating within the Constitution and other accepted boundaries. But Conway’s criticism recently has become more personal, as he questions the president’s mental health and psychological state.
A series of tweets Monday included images from the American Psychiatric Association’s “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” In addition to the manual’s cover, Conway highlighted pages that include diagnostic criteria for “narcissistic personality disorder” and “antisocial personality disorder.”
View the complete March 19 article by John Wagner on The Washington Post website here.
