The following article by Callum Borchers was posted on the Washington Post website May 19, 2017:
A current, senior White House adviser — not merely another former campaign aide or distant associate of President Trump — has been identified by federal investigators as a significant person of interest in a probe aimed at determining whether Trump’s political team colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election.
The following commentary from the Star Tribune Editorial Board was posted on their website May 20, 2017:
An independent, 9/11-style commission could examine broader threat.
DOUG MILLS • NEW YORK TIMES Robert Mueller, then director of the FBI, in 2007. The Justice Department has appointed Mueller to serve as a special counsel to oversee its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
The U.S. Justice Department appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller to lead a criminal investigation into possible collusion between President Trump’s campaign and the Russia government is a welcome and overdue move to bring integrity and seriousness of purpose to the daily revelations that threaten to overwhelm Washington.
But more is needed. An old-school, by-the-book prosecutor, Mueller is expected to undertake a meticulously thorough examination and has the sweeping powers necessary to do so. He will be focused on whether the president, his campaign associates or members of his administration have or had illegal ties to an adversarial nation. If laws were broken, he will determine which ones and to what extent. Mueller also remains bound by Justice Department rules and supervision. His decisions, actions and budget can be reined in at any time. And a criminal probe, no matter how thorough, will not address the larger issues that confront this nation about how to ensure that U.S. elections and governments are protected against foreign interference. Continue reading “More than Mueller probe needed to assess Russian meddling”
The following article by Tom Porter with Newsweek was posted on the National Memo website May 21, 2017:
White House lawyers are researching impeachment procedures in an effort to prepare for a possible attempt to remove President Donald Trump from office. With both houses of Congress controlled by a Republican majority, Trump’s impeachment is a distant possibility but one that the White House is preparing for, two people briefed on the discussions told CNN.
The following article by Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky was posted on the Washington Post website May 19, 2017:
The law enforcement investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign has identified a current White House official as a significant person of interest, showing that the probe is reaching into the highest levels of government, according to people familiar with the matter.
It was a few days after the start of the new millennium, and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow was holding a reception at Spaso House, for decades the elegant residence of the American ambassador. Russia’s tumultuous Boris Yeltsin era had come to an abrupt, shocking end on New Year’s Day, when the Russian president who had brought down the Soviet Union and turned his country into a chaotic, fledgling democracy announced his resignation. His successor was the man he had named his prime minister just four months earlier, a man barely known to most Russians, let alone to the outside world: former KGB officer Vladimir Putin.
As Jim Collins, a soft-spoken career diplomat who was then the U.S. ambassador to Russia, made the rounds at that reception, querying guests as to what they thought of the dramatic shift atop the Kremlin, the overwhelming sentiment was relief. The Yeltsin era, which had begun with so much promise, had turned into a shambolic, deeply corrupt dystopia. Yeltsin, who had burst to prominence with a burly energy—his climb atop a tank in central Moscow to turn back revanchists who sought to save the Soviet dictatorship is one of the iconic moments of the Cold War’s end—had become chronically ill and increasingly fond of his vodka. A group of politically connected businessmen had raped the country economically and spirited most of their gains offshore. Its budget was busted, its civil servants unpaid. (I did a story then about a colonel in the Soviet Rocket Forces who killed himself because he could not afford to throw his wife a birthday party.) The once mighty—and mightily effective—KGB had to watch its best officers go off to work for private businessmen, leaving the state security services demoralized and increasingly corrupt. Russia was in chaos. Continue reading “Inside Putin’s Campaign To Destroy U.S. Democracy”
The following article by Michael S. Schmidt was posted on the New York Times website May 18, 2017:
WASHINGTON — President Trump called the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, weeks after he took office and asked him when federal authorities were going to put out word that Mr. Trump was not personally under investigation, according to two people briefed on the call.
Mr. Comey told the president that if he wanted to know details about the bureau’s investigations, he should not contact him directly but instead follow the proper procedures and have the White House counsel send any inquiries to the Justice Department, according to those people. Continue reading “Comey, Unsettled by Trump, Is Said to Have Wanted Him Kept at a Distance”
The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website May 18, 2017:
President Trump listens as he and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg participate in a news conference in the East Room of the White House on April 12 . (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Remember the very first episode of “Black Mirror,” the one in which the prime minister of the United Kingdom is extorted into doing … something he would rather not have done? He woke up that morning just a regular ol’ prime minister and by midafternoon he’d ended up cheating on his wife, sort of.
If you haven’t seen it, it doesn’t matter. You just need to know that, as the prime minister was weighing his options over the course of the day, he was being constantly updated on how the public was viewing the rapid-fire shifts in the decision-making process. At the outset, he was viewed positively. When his aides tried to get him out of the problem, his numbers tanked. In other words, there were multiple polls conducted over the course of the day that informed whether he would have sex with a pig on live television. Continue reading “New polling shows a sharp increase in skepticism about Trump’s relationship to Russia”
The following article by Linda Qiu was posted on the New York Times website May 18, 2017:
At a news conference on Thursday, President Trump exaggerated the scale of his proposed tax cut and made a dubious comparison between Israel’s West Bank barrier and his proposed border wall. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Trump defended his conduct related to the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia and made several misleading claims on Thursday afternoon.
In a joint news conference with President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, Mr. Trump denied there was any collusion between his campaign and Russian officials, explained why he had fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director and trumpeted his legislative agenda. Here’s an assessment.
Mr. Trump contradicted Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and his own earlier statement on firing Mr. Comey.
Before he was fired by President Trump, former FBI director James B. Comey fielded practice questions in advance of meetings and wrote highly detailed notes afterward in his car. (Jason Aldag,Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
