The Trump White House isn’t big on sharing information or answering questions asked on behalf of the public.
The so-called daily briefings are not even monthly.
The “communications” office specializes in stonewalling, often not even deigning to issue a “no comment.”
View the complete January 2 article by Margaret Sullivan on The Washington Post website here.
In August 2017, shortly after John F. Kelly became White House chief of staff, he convened crucial meetings on Afghanistan at President Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
Top officials from the Pentagon and the CIA, the director of national intelligence, diplomats and lawmakers huddled with Trump as Kelly and others urged him not to give up in Afghanistan.
“When I first took over, he was inclined to want to withdraw from Afghanistan,” Kelly recounted during an exclusive two-hour interview with the Los Angeles Times.
View the complete December 30 article by Molly O’Toole on the Los Angeles Times website here.
Defense Secretary James Mattis announced Thursday he would resign at the end of February, sending a note to President Trump saying he deserved a secretary “whose views are better aligned with yours.”
The announcement came a day after the White House said the U.S. would be withdrawing its troops from Syria, as well as reports it was also considering a drawdown in Afghanistan. Both moves have been met with opposition by Pentagon officials and members of the foreign policy establishment.
In a striking resignation letter to Trump notable as much for what it did not say as what was included, Mattis signaled his concern with the way Trump treated allies in NATO as well as rivals such as China and Russia.
View the complete December 20 article by Rebecca Kheel on The Hill website here.
From the very start of Tuesday’s White House press briefing, press secretary Sarah Sanders had no real answers on former national security adviser Michael Flynn. White House hopes that a judge would rebuke the FBI for its treatment of Flynn quickly and rather spectacularly fell apart. Flynn himself told the judge that he didn’t feel duped into lying, as his and Trump’s supporters have alleged. It all rendered Sanders’s argument earlier in the day that Flynn had been “ambushed” pretty well undercut.
So she changed the subject to James B. Comey — and butchered what Comey actually said.
Flynn didn’t make the case the White House desired, so Sanders suggested Comey had. Here’s what she said about Comey, who was FBI director when Flynn lied repeatedly as he was interviewed in January 2017 (emphasis added):
View the complete December 18 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.
Early Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan agreed to delay the sentencing of Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn until March.
In some ways, Flynn’s sentencing will bring closure to one chapter of the ever-expanding investigation by Robert Mueller into the Trump campaign’s efforts to collude with Russia to steal a presidential election. Flynn was the first and most senior Trump administration official to plead guilty to federal charges, in this case lying to the FBI.
But while the hearing was, in some ways, expected to be a formality — federal prosecutors recommended Flynn receive no prison time on account of his extensive cooperation with Mueller’s investigation — Judge Sullivan used his opportunity to meticulously and methodically twist the knife in one of the far-right’s favorite talking points.
View the complete December 18 article by Adam Peck on the ThinkProgress.org website here.
Former Trump national security and campaign adviser Michael Flynn will not be sentenced for lying to the FBI until March.
A federal judge agreed to delay the sentencing of the former Trump official after signaling to Flynn and his attorneys that he was prepared to send Flynn to prison unless he learned more about his cooperation with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
Flynn admitted to Judge Emmet Sullivan in a Washington courtroom on Tuesday that he knew it was a crime when he lied to the FBI in January 2017.
View the complete December 18 article by Griffin Connolly on The Roll Call website here.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders seemed to endorse a potential spending deal that would include all of the remaining appropriations, including a Senate Homeland Homeland Security bill with $1.6 billion in wall-related funding.
But as usual, there was a catch — President Donald Trump might insist on flexibility to use other funds already identified to get closer to his desired $5 billion.
“We have other ways to get to that $5 billion, that we will work with Congress if they will make sure that we get a bill passed that provides not just the funding for the wall, but there’s a piece of legislation that’s been pushed around that Democrats actually voted 26-5 out of committee, that provides 26, roughly $26 billion in border security, including $1.6 billion for the wall,” Sanders said on Fox News. “That’s something that we would be able to support as long as we can couple that with other funding resources that would help us get to the $5 billion.”
View the complete December 18 article by Niels Lesniewski on The Roll Call website here.
On Monday, former FBI director James Comey finally lost his patience
with House Republicans, who had hauled him in for closed-door testimony in a partisan stunt last week. “So another day of Hillary Clinton emails and the Steele Dossier,” Comey complained to reporters. “This while the President of the United States is lying about the FBI, attacking the FBI and attacking the rule of law in this country. How does that make any sense at all?”
This comment evidently did not sit well with White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who took to Twitter to attack Comey with a Gish Gallop of nonsense:
Sarah Sanders
✔@PressSec
Republicans should stand up to Comey and his tremendous corruption – from the fake Hillary Clinton investigation, to lying and leaking, to FISA abuse, and a list too long to name. The President did the country a service by firing him and exposing him for the shameless fraud he is
There are a lot of things to unpack there, from the fact that Comey’s “fake Hillary Clinton investigation” is probably the reason Sanders has a job at the White House, to the fact that there is no evidence Comey ever leaked classified information, to the fact that the idea Comey’s investigators abused the FISA process to go after the Trump campaign has been repeatedly debunked. This is an absolutely insane thing to tweet from an official government account.
View the complete December 17 article by Matthew Chapman on the AlterNet.org website here.
President Trump on Friday named budget director Mick Mulvaney as his acting White House chief of staff, capping off a week of frenzied speculation about who would take over the key West Wing role.
Trump said in a pair of Twitter posts that Mulvaney would start at the beginning of next year after outgoing chief of staff John Kelly leaves his post.
“Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration,” Trump wrote. “I look forward to working with him in this new capacity as we continue to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
View the complete December 14 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.
Chris Christie said Friday that he told President Trump he doesn’t want to be considered to replace John Kelly as White House chief of staff, per the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, who obtained a copy of his statement.
The backdrop: President Trump, who considered Christie a top contender to replace John Kelly as chief of staff, discussed the job with Christie Thursday night, a source familiar with the president’s thinking told Axios’ Jonathan Swan.
View the December 14 article on the Axios.com website here.
