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Bret Baier examines the record number of top level turnovers during President Trump’s first term.

President Trump has long promised to create jobs, and has consistently delivered — especially in his own White House and Cabinet, where rapid turnover is showing no signs of slowing down as 2018 comes to a close.

High-profile departures in the Trump administration — from former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Press Secretary Sean Spicer to fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (whom Trump recently characterized as “lazy as hell” and “dumb as a rock”) — have attracted the most attention. They have contributed to what some analysts have called an unprecedented number of high-level Cabinet departures going back 100 years.

The most popular parlor game in Washington right now centers on who will replace outgoing Chief of Staff John Kelly.

TRUMP REVEALS CHIEF OF STAFF SEARCH DOWN TO 5 CANDIDATES

“At some point, everybody leaves,” Trump told “60 Minutes” host Lesley Stahl in October. “Everybody. People leave. That’s Washington.”

But dozens of Executive Branch offices, both inside and outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, have emptied and filled at historic rates, with and without fanfare. The exits have included unfriendly dismissals, voluntary moves to the private sector, and other resignations.

The headline-grabbing departures include two national security advisers — H.R. McMaster and Michael Flynn, who was booted for misleading the White House about conversations with the Russian ambassador and is now facing sentencing for lying to the FBI. John Bolton now runs the national security ship.

Before Kelly, former GOP chairman Reince Priebus also came and went at the helm of the White House operation. He has since dished on the drama inside the Oval Office in the book “The Gatekeepers.”

“Take everything you’ve heard and multiply it by 50,” Priebus said.

Within the Cabinet, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was the latest to be forced out, submitting his resignation the day after the midterms at the request of the president. Trump spent the last year publicly criticizing his DOJ leader for recusing himself in the Russia probe and opening the door to the special counsel investigation. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned over the summer amid numerous ethics scandals, replaced by Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler. Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin was pushed out amid his own ethics controversy. U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley also is planning to leave, without controversy, and State Department official and former Fox News journalist Heather Nauert is Trump’s pick to succeed her.

Within the White House, the National Security Council has been the scene of considerable turnover, and not just at the top.

Senior Director for Africa Robin Townley, for example, left the administration in early 2017 after the CIA refused to grant him an elite-level Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance that he needed to serve on the National Security Council (NSC).

Townley, a top deputy to Flynn, had long held a less selective top-secret security clearance related to his service as a Marine. Sources told Politico that Flynn and Townley viewed the rejection as a “hit job from inside the CIA on Flynn and the people close to him” because of Townley’s critical views of the intelligence community.

Ezra Cohen-Watnick was reportedly forced out as a senior intelligence director at the NSC as well, for supposedly leaking information about so-called “unmasking” activities by Obama administration officials to California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee. (“Unmasking” involves asking U.S. intelligence authorities to fill in the redacted names of U.S. citizens whose comments are caught up in intelligence agencies’ foreign intelligence intercepts, which are routinely removed to protect their Fourth Amendment rights. Such revelations are supposed to be relatively rare, clearly justified and tightly controlled.)

MELANIA TRUMP’S OFFICE ISSUES STRIKING STATEMENT CALLING FOR WH STAFFER’S TERMINATION

Cohen-Watnick’s attorney denied the allegations, saying that “he never showed the documents to Nunes,” had never “met with Nunes” and had “nothing to do with Nunes.” Bloomberg reported that Trump personally directed the Department of Justice to hire Cohen-Watnick after the episode.

Several other relatively low-profile White House staffers who had key roles in major developments have also left their posts in the past two years. Keith Schiller, the president’s longtime personal bodyguard who attracted scrutiny after being photographed accidentally exposing Defense Secretary James Mattis’ phone number, has departed as director of Oval Office operations.

“At some point, everybody leaves. Everybody. People leave. That’s Washington.”

— President Trump

Schiller famously hand-delivered the notice of FBI Director James Comey’s termination to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. in May 2017 — but Comey was not there, and instead learned of his sudden firing from a television news report while in Los Angeles.

Also departed is White House Counsel Don McGahn, who oversaw not only the White House’s response to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, but also the contentious confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh amid a series of lurid and uncorroborated sexual misconduct allegations. McGahn, who left in October, has been replaced by Pat Cipollone.

In a rare interview, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner told Fox News’ “Hannity” exclusively on Monday that Cipollone “is going to be fabulous.”

White House counsel Don McGahn looks on as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Marc Short, Trump’s former legislative affairs director and a former high-level aide to Vice President Mike Pence, left the White House in July to consult and become a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center School of Public Affairs. His appointment to the one-year fellowship prompted fierce, partisan backlash from students and faculty at UVA.

TRUMP CABINET OFFICIALS IN THE CROSSHAIRS AS DEMS AIM TO RAMP UP INVESTIGATIONS

Short, who previously obtained his MBA from UVA, departed just as the confirmation battle over Kavanaugh was intensifying. His record as the White House’s liaison to Capitol Hill staffers and politicians was largely seen as successful, even if some of the results he oversaw were mixed.

Although he helped ensure the passage of Trump’s historic $1.5 trillion tax overhaul last year, Short was unable to push the president’s longstanding effort to repeal ObamaCare over the finish line. That legislative measure — panned by Democrats and some Republicans for failing to offer a viable health care alternative — was defeated in a dramatic 11th-hour vote by the late Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain.

The White House tapped Shahira Knight, who had served on the White House’s National Economic Council and played a major role in developing the tax legislation, to replace Short.

Other exits from the Trump orbit have been comparably ugly and unceremonious.

White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter was forced to resign earlier this year after two of his ex-wives came forward with domestic abuse allegations. Trump has reportedly expressed a desire to see Porter return to the White House at some point.

Former Deputy National Security adviser Mira Ricardel also lost her post last month after an unusual public spat with first lady Melania Trump. The Wall Street Journal reported in mid-November that Ricardel had clashed with the first lady’s staff over seating arrangements on a plane during her October trip to Africa. The paper added that the first lady’s office suspected Ricardel of leaking negative stories about the first lady and her staff.

TRACKING SOME NOTABLE TRUMP CABINET DEPARTURES: FROM AG SESSIONS TO UN REP NIKKI HALEY AND EPA HEAD SCOTT PRUITT

Dr. Ronny Jackson, formerly Trump’s personal physician and nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, is now neither after he was besieged by unproven and disputed allegations compiled by Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester’s office concerning his prescription-drug practices and use of alcohol. (Trump has bitterly feuded with Tester, the top Democrat on the Republican-controlled Senate Veteran Affairs Committee, ever since the episode.)

Perhaps the most storied and colorful departure was that of Anthony Scaramucci, who left as communications director after a mere 11 days on the job (or 10, depending how you count it). Trump confidant Hope Hicks assumed the job, then resigned early this year.

The flurry of departures from the White House has continued into 2018’s final weeks. Pence Chief of Staff Nick Ayers announced Sunday he will leave the White House at the end of the year, leaving unclear who will replace Kelly, as Ayers was the favorite for that role.

White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Tuesday that Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, might stay on briefly into the new year while the president finds a replacement.

For his part, Trump has clearly signaled that replacements for other roles are very likely coming up in the new year.

“Yeah, other people will go, sure,” Trump told Stahl in the “60 Minutes” interview. “We have a great Cabinet. There are some people I’m not happy with. I have some people that I’m not thrilled with. And I have other people that I’m beyond thrilled with.”

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/turnover-in-trump-cabinet-white-house-shows-no-sign-of-slowing-amid-new-departures

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Trump, the great ‘builder,’ is erecting a glorified picket fence instead of a wall – Washington Examiner

When President Trump last summer said to a stadium of supporters, “I’m a builder. That’s what I do. That’s probably what I do best,” I suspect they had in mind more impressive architecture than a wall, but that’s all they wanted anyway.

Two years into his presidency, the most Trump has managed to build are bits and pieces of what a mounts to a high picket fence.

The administration in late November proudly sent out an email featuring a before-and-after set of images purporting to show the swimming progress on the construction of the wall. They look like those infomercials for anti-wrinkle creams, wherein the model in one slide is shown frowning under ghastly florescent light and then in the second slide giving a radiant smile with a soft camera focus.

It’s a scam.

The administration’s “after” photo is nothing more than new fencing put up after border patrol as far back as 2009 identified specific areas where enhanced barriers were needed due to high crossing rates. It looks nothing like the massive prototypes Trump was photographed with in March.

Those walls underwent intensive testing for potential weaknesses by both the military and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, using power tools, torches, and ropes, according to the Associated Press. Only one agent was able to throw a hook atop one of the walls so that he might climb up. Everything else failed, though agents did recommend combining elements of each prototype if any actual structure were to be put up on the border.

Those are the walls his supporters fantasize about when Trump says “we need a wall.” Though they could be forgiven for being unsure whether a wall has already been built, whether it’s almost completed, or whether it’s even still needed.

Depending on the hour, Trump speedily shifts between declaring victory on the wall and pleading to Democrats for votes to pass more funding for it.

At the on-camera Oval Office meeting Tuesday with Democratic leaders, Trump at one point said, “So we’ve done a lot of work on the wall; a lot of wall is built.” And then he said, “We have walls that were in very bad condition that are now in A-1, tip-top shape. And, frankly, some wall has been reinforced by our military. Our military has done a fantastic job.”

So do we need the wall, is there already a wall that’s simply getting a makeover (not what he promised), or is the military the wall?

At yet another point in the meeting, Trump all but insisted a wall was unnecessary because of the tremendous job that border patrol is doing. “[W]hen you look at these numbers of the effectiveness of our border security, and when you look at the job that we’re doing with our military …” he said.

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Trump said building a wall would be cost-effective but only after heralding the “newly built Walls, makeshift Walls & Fences, or Border Patrol Officers & Military.”

Trump is asking for $5 billion to build more “wall.” Were he trying to build a real wall and not some reinforced playground fence, he’d be asking for closer to $30 billion.

“[I]f we got $5 billion, we could do a tremendous chunk of wall,” Trump said at the meeting Tuesday.

But what “wall” is he talking about? Does he know anymore?

I don’t.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/trump-the-great-builder-is-erecting-a-glorified-picket-fence-instead-of-a-wall

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Trump was in the room when Michael Cohen discussed hush money deals, sources confirm – CBS News

New information ties President Trump to his campaign’s efforts to silence women who claim they had sex with him more than a decade ago. CBS News sources confirm the president was in the room when his then-attorney Michael Cohen and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker discussed paying hush money in August of 2015, reports CBS News’ Weijia Jiang. Cohen pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance laws in connection with hush money payments.

In an interview with ABC News, Cohen said the hush money payments to Daniels and McDougal were made to impact the election.

“Nothing at the Trump Organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump…He directed me to make the payments, he directed me to become involved in these matters,” Cohen said. “You have to remember at what point in time that this matter came about, two weeks or so before the election, post the Billy Bush comments. So, yes, he was very concerned about how this would affect the election.”

The president is pushing back against the accusations, claiming they are being made to make him look bad—even after Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in part for the crimes the president denies. Mr. Trump said when it comes to breaking campaign finance laws, the only thing he did wrong was trust a bad attorney.

“Let me tell you, I never directed him to do anything wrong. Whatever he did, he did on his own,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on Fox News Thursday. “And you know what? In retrospect, I made a mistake….I hire usually good people.”

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, disputed Cohen’s account on Thursday night.

“People saying that we did this in furtherance of the election. There is just no proof of that. That is somebody’s opinion,” Conway said on CNN.

Mr. Trump’s statements on the matter have evolved from being unaware in April. Now, he says the payments were a “simple private transaction” and that there are ulterior motives to calling them anything more.

Raids of Cohen’s properties have also led to a criminal investigation into President Trump’s inauguration spending. Federal prosecutors reportedly are looking at whether some of the donors to the president’s $107 million inauguration fund gave money in return for access to Mr. Trump.

In a statement, the inauguration committee said “donors were vetted in accordance with the law” and that “no improprieties have been found.”

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Thursday that the committee “doesn’t have anything to do with the president.”

Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-was-in-room-when-michael-cohen-discussed-hush-money-payments-sources-confirm/

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Homeland Security reiterates dangers of illegal border crossing after migrant girl, 7, reported dead – Fox News

FILE: A U.S. Border Patrol agent patrols Sunland Park along the U.S.-Mexico border next to Ciudad Juarez.
(Associated Press)

The Department of Homeland Security expressed its “sincerest condolences” Thursday after reports that a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl died last week after more than eight hours in custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

In a statement, DHS said CBP agents “took every possible step to save the child’s life under the most trying of circumstances.”

“Unfortunately, despite our best efforts and the best efforts of the medical team treating the child, we were unable to stop this tragedy from occurring,” the statement continued.

DHS also noted the risks inherent in attempting to enter the U.S. illegally.

“Once again, we are begging parents to not put themselves or their children at risk attempting to enter illegally,” the statement said. “Please present yourselves at a port of entry and seek to enter legally and safely.”

“Once again, we are begging parents to not put themselves or their children at risk attempting to enter illegally. Please present yourselves at a port of entry and seek to enter legally and safely.”

— Department of Homeland Security statement

The girl had reportedly been traveling with her father and a group of 163 people before crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on Dec. 6. After crossing the border, the group approached agents to turn themselves in.

FEDS FIND GIRL, 2, STRAPPED TO CHEST OF TEEN BOY CAUGHT CROSSING US-MEXICO BORDER

The girl died of dehydration and shock more than eight hours after she was arrested by agents near Lordsburg, N.M., according to an agency statement released to the Washington Post.

Video

CBP said the girl had not eaten or consumed water in several days. It’s unknown what happened to the girl during the eight hours before she started having seizures and was flown to an El Paso, Texas, hospital.

The girl’s death is under investigation by the Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility and the inspector general.

The agency’s detention facilities are meant to be temporary and hold a small number of people. When a Border Patrol agent arrests someone, that person gets processed at a facility but usually spends no more than 72 hours in custody. But processing 163 immigrants in one night likely posed challenges for the agency.

FILE: People line up to cross into the United States from Tijuana, Mexico, seen through barriers topped with concertina wire at the San Ysidro port of entry in San Diego.
(Associated Press)

The Border Patrol has seen an increasing trend of large groups of immigrants, many with young children, walking up to agents and turning themselves in. Most are Central American and say they are fleeing violence in their home countries. They turn themselves in instead of trying to circumvent authorities, many with plans to apply for asylum.

Agents in Arizona see groups of more than 100 people on a regular basis, sometimes including infants and toddlers. Arresting such groups poses logistical problems for agents who have to wait on transport vans that are equipped with baby seats to take them to processing facilities, some which are at least a half-hour north of the border.

TODDLER’S DEATH AFTER LEAVING IMMIGRATION FACILITY LEADS TO $40 MILLION LEGAL CLAIM

The death of the 7-year-old girl comes after a toddler died in May just after being released from an ICE family detention facility in Texas, and as the Trump administration attempts to ban people from asking for asylum if they crossed the border illegally. A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked that ban, but the administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate it Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/us/7-year-old-immigrant-girl-dies-after-border-patrol-arrest

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Dept. of Education to cancel $150 million in student loan debt – NBC News

The U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday it would automatically cancel $150 million in student loans connected to for-profit colleges that closed in recent years.

The move was made under an Obama-era policy that a federal judge in October essentially forced U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to implement. The story was first reported by Politico.

The discharge of loans applies automatically to about 15,000 students who attended now-defunct colleges that closed between Nov. 1, 2013, and Dec. 4, 2018, according to the department’s announcement.

About half of those affected attended Corinthian Colleges, Inc., a chain that closed on April 27, 2015, the department stated. Other students who attended recently closed campuses or who believe they were otherwise defrauded can still apply to have their loans canceled, the department said.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dept-education-cancel-150-million-student-loan-debt-n947821

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MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski apologizes for ‘crass and offensive’ remark – NBC News

Mika Brzezinski, a co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” apologized on Friday for using what she called “crass and offensive” language to describe Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“Please allow me to say this face-to-face,” she said live at the top of the 6 a.m. ET show. “The term is crass and offensive and I apologize to everybody, especially the LGBTQ community and to my colleagues.”

She added: “I just wanted to say on camera, looking people straight in the eye: I am really, really sorry.”

Brzezinski made the offensive remark during a segment on Wednesday about the alleged culpability of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia in the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

She had criticizing Pompeo’s recent appearance on Fox News in which he avoided questions about Prince Mohammed.

Khashoggi’s death sparked widespread outrage, especially after the CIA concluded the prince had ordered the killing, prompting even some Trump allies to say the White House was downplaying the young royal’s involvement.

“Are the pathetic deflections that we just heard, when [Pompeo] appeared on ‘Fox & Friends,’ is that a patriot speaking, or a wannabe dictator’s butt boy?” Brzezinski asked. “Dead serious, I’m asking. Are these the words of a patriot?”

Brzezinski’s comments drew criticism from President Donald Trump and the U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who is openly gay.

She apologized later on Wednesday via Twitter, saying she used a “SUPER BAD choice of words.”

On Thursday, Trump tweeted that Brzezinski was not being held to the same standards as conservative commentators who have been criticized for homophobic rhetoric.

Grenell tweeted, “Your words demean, mock and therefore try to control whole groups by minimizing our humanity.”

F. Brinley Bruton

F. Brinley Bruton, a senior editor at NBCNews.com in London, focuses on news from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/msnbc-s-mika-brzezinski-apologizes-crass-offensive-remark-n947836

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Trump offers new alternative facts to explain his problems, but … – CNN

Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/14/politics/shutdown-showdown-trump-facts/index.html

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Trump Inaugural Fund and Super PAC Said to Be Scrutinized for Illegal Foreign Donations – The New York Times

The prosecutors in Manhattan were apparently following up on leads from their case against Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former longtime fixer. Mr. Cohen was sentenced on Wednesday to three years in prison, in part for organizing payments to cover up sex scandals that could have threatened Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the White House.

Among other documents seized during raids on Mr. Cohen’s home and office in the spring, investigators found a tape recording of a conversation with Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a friend of Melania Trump’s, who ran entities that collected $26 million from the fund. Ms. Winston Wolkoff blamed Mr. Barrack for news reports questioning the payments to her and criticized him for failing to properly manage the account, according to people who spoke with her. She complained about how he had handled the money to several friends, including Mr. Cohen, those people said.

The inaugural committee complied with all laws and “has not been contacted by any prosecutors,” said Mr. Blicksilver, who is also a spokesman for the fund. Its finances “were fully audited internally and independently,” and donors were fully vetted and disclosed to the Federal Election Commission, as required, he said.

In fact, though, the fund has already run into trouble related for both donations and expenditures. Mr. Gates, who is awaiting sentencing for crimes related to a financial fraud scheme he executed with Mr. Manafort, has testified that he may have submitted personal expenses for reimbursement from the fund. A later review of the inaugural expenses found no issue with his reimbursements, a person close to Mr. Gates said.

And this year, a well-known Republican lobbyist, Sam Patten, pleaded guilty to arranging for a Ukrainian oligarch and another foreigner to buy $50,000 worth of tickets to an inaugural event, using an American as a straw purchaser.

Investigators have asked witnesses whether other foreigners also contributed illegally to the inaugural committee. Once Mr. Trump was elected, foreign governments were frantically trying to build connections to the incoming administration, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Although it hosts and heavily subsidizes an American military base, Qatar is constantly striving to counter the influence of its powerful neighbors, also allies of the United States.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/us/politics/trump-inauguration-investigation.html

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Trump Attended Meeting About Hush Money Payments With Tabloid Publisher: Reports – HuffPost

The payments to both McDougal and the adult film star Stormy Daniels, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, became a central point in prosecutors’ case against Cohen. The attorney was sentenced to three years in prison on Wednesday for a litany of convictions, including violating campaign finance laws, tax evasion and lying to Congress, and said he did so “in coordination with and at the direction” of the president.

Source Article from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-hush-money-national-enquirer_us_5c12fda2e4b0f60cfa27931d

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Russian agent’s guilty plea intensifies spotlight on relationship with NRA – The Washington Post

December 13 at 7:04 PM

The guilty plea Thursday of a woman accused of infiltrating the National Rifle Association on behalf of the Russian government has thrust the powerful conservative group into an uncomfortable spotlight as the organization appears to be facing declining donations and signs its fearsome political influence may be waning.

Russian gun rights activist Maria Butina pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington to conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of Russia, admitting that she worked for more than two years to forge relationships with conservative activists and leading Republicans in the United States.

One of Butina’s main targets was the NRA — a group she identified in a 2015 memo as an organization that “had influence over” the Republican Party, according to court filings. Her relationships with the group, she wrote, could be used as the groundwork for an unofficial channel of communication to the next presidential administration.

Later that year, she helped organize a delegation of top NRA leaders to visit Moscow, arranging for them to meet Russian government officials, and she attended the group’s annual conventions as an honored guest.

Butina and Alexander Torshin, a former Russian government official who helped direct her activities, then used their NRA connections to get access to GOP presidential candidates, according to court filings.

Butina’s case exposed how Russia saw the NRA as a key pathway to influencing American politics to the Kremlin’s benefit. And it has intensified questions about what the gun rights group knew of the Russian effort to shape U.S. policy and whether it faces ongoing legal scrutiny.

A page from a 2010 Russian-language gun rights pamphlet written by then-government official Alexander Torshin. (Obtained by The Washington Post)

The 30-year-old — the first Russian national convicted of seeking to influence U.S. policy as a foreign agent before the 2016 election — agreed to cooperate in a plea deal with U.S. investigators in exchange for less prison time.

“Who at the NRA knew Butina’s agenda, and what did they get in return?” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked in a tweet Thursday.

Wyden, who has sought to learn more about the NRA’s Russia ties as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the organization has turned over documents related to Butina but has not provided financial records he has requested.

“Everything I have learned about the NRA to date has made me more concerned about its activities leading up to the 2016 election, not less,” Wyden said in a statement to The Washington Post.

On Thursday, Wyden sent letters to three past presidents of the group, asking that they agree to be interviewed by the committee about the group’s interactions with Russia.

NRA officials, who did not return requests for comment Thursday, have repeatedly refused to answer questions about Butina or its interactions with Russian activists.

“I’m just amazed that in today’s world, if you shake hands with a Russian, you must be an agent of the Kremlin,” David Keene, a former NRA president who was a key contact for Butina and Torshin, told the New York Times earlier this year.

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed Butina’s case at a meeting of a Kremlin council on human rights in Moscow, saying: “I asked all the heads of our intelligence services what is happening, ‘Who is she?’ No one knows a thing about her.”

[‘She was like a novelty’: How alleged Russian agent Maria Butina gained access to elite conservative circles]

The NRA’s interactions with Butina and Torshin came as the group embarked on an unprecedented spending spree to help elect Donald Trump president.

NRA spending on the 2016 elections surged in every category, with its political action committee and political nonprofit arm together shelling out $54.4 million. The bulk of the money — $30 million — went to efforts supporting Trump. That is triple the amount the group devoted to electing Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race.

Two years later, the group’s standing appears to have shifted amid robust challenges from student activists, lawmakers and, most recently, an anti-
gun-violence campaign led by medical professionals.

The group’s spending on federal races in 2018 plummeted to roughly $9 million. In a rare move, some Republican candidates running in competitive, suburban House districts returned or did not deposit donations from the NRA.

Election-related spending reflects just one aspect of the NRA’s political influence, and the group remains an active lobbying and grass-roots force.

In 2017, the NRA’s political nonprofit arm, which is separate from its charitable arm and its PAC, spent more money than it took in for the second year in a row, according to tax filings and an independent financial audit obtained by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Contributions from donors to that group declined in 2017, tax records show. That entity also saw a decline in revenue from membership dues in 2017 compared with 2016, the audit shows.

On Capitol Hill, Democratic lawmakers have questioned whether the group’s spending spike in 2016 was tied to its Russian connections.

The NRA has denied those allegations, saying it followed campaign finance laws that make it illegal for foreign citizens to fund political efforts in the United States.

In a letter to Wyden earlier this year, NRA general counsel John C. Frazer wrote that the group received just about $2,500 in 2015 and 2016 from 25 people with Russian addresses who paid ∞standard membership dues and magazine subscription fees.

“Our review of records has found no foreign donations in connection with a United States election, either directly or through a conduit,” Frazer wrote.

Ann Ravel, a former member of the Federal Election Commission, said the Butina case underscores the risk of foreign actors seeking to influence U.S. elections through politically active groups whose finances are difficult to trace.

“They’ve got so many varied ways to give that money circuitously,” said Ravel, a Democrat. “You can’t know the derivation of the money, so it is extremely easy for foreign actors, foreign governments, foreign entities — like Butina and others — to give money.”

Butina cultivated ties with NRA leaders at a time when the conservative movement broadly was growing increasingly intrigued by Russia.

Social conservatives admired Russia’s hard-line stance on gay rights. Nationalist conservatives were attracted to Putin’s insistence that Russia’s issues were of little concern to the United States. Foreign policy conservatives saw Putin as a natural ally in the fight against Islamist terrorism.

[Guns and religion: How American conservatives grew closer to Putin’s Russia]

Torshin, who penned a 2010 Russian-language booklet that echoed NRA rhetoric to support the expansion of gun rights in his country, was introduced to Keene at the NRA’s annual meeting that year by a conservative Nashville lawyer named G. Kline Preston IV, who had done business in Russia for years.

Preston said this week that he had no regrets about making the connection and saw nothing wrong with Butina’s activities.

“I don’t know what their goals were, but if the goal was to improve U.S.-Russia relations, I don’t see what the problem is,” said Preston, who said he has not been interviewed by U.S. authorities about the relationship.

He said he always believed Butina was acting as a private citizen. But, he added, “the question becomes, okay, perhaps she was working at the behest of the Russian government. But if it’s a commercial arm of a foreign government that’s trying to expand ties with another country, is that wrong?”

In 2013, Butina and Torshin hosted a small group of gun enthusiasts led by Keene at the annual meeting of a gun rights group Butina founded in Moscow, records about the event show. The following year, Butina arrived in the United States for the first time to attend an NRA meeting in Indianapolis.

The NRA treated Butina and Torshin like important visiting dignitaries, according to the pair’s social media accounts. Butina was welcomed to a special luncheon for women who support the group, as a personal guest of former NRA president Sandra Froman. Butina gushed on Twitter that she was given the “rare privilege” of ringing the NRA’s “Liberty Bell” at an event for donors who had given $1 million or more to the group. Later, she was given a tour of the group’s highly secure headquarters in Fairfax County, according to Butina’s social media posts.

The access gave Butina opportunity to brush shoulders with high-profile Republican politicians who spoke at the NRA’s meetings, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and then-
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

When NRA leaders planned a visit to Moscow in December 2015, Butina and Torshin were eager to show the Americans the same kind of hospitality they were afforded, according to a person familiar with testimony Butina gave to the Senate Intelligence Committee in April.

She and Torshin also discussed “the importance of a political program” as part of the trip, according to Butina’s plea agreement.

[Maria Butina’s proud defense of her homeland drew notice at American University]

Included in the group was Keene, as well as Pete Brownell, the group’s vice president, who would take over as president in 2016, according to documents provided to Congress. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke attended as well, later disclosing in Wisconsin records that his travel had been funded by Butina’s group. Major NRA donors Arnold Goldschlager and Joseph Gregory were in attendance, as well.

The sometimes lavish December 2015 festivities included a visit to the famed Bolshoi Ballet, a Russian gun-manufacturing company and the private offices of the Russian Foreign Ministry for a meeting with the country’s top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov.

The group also met with Dmitry Rogozin, a deputy prime minister who had been hit with sanctions by the United States after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014.

Attendance at the meeting with Lavrov was limited to just seven people, documents provided to Congress show.

In a statement, Lavrov’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told The Post earlier this year that the meeting came at the request of the Americans, as part of the ministry’s “traditional interaction” with large civic organizations.

“The declared topic of the meeting was aspects of the bilateral relationship and international questions,” she said, noting that Americans are often particularly focused on Middle East policy.

After the Americans left Russia, Butina reiterated to Torshin the goal of the trip: “We should let them express their gratitude now, we will put pressure on them quietly later,” she wrote to him, according to court documents.

Butina and Torshin’s efforts to use the NRA as a springboard to broader influence in the Republican Party was evident in the run-up to the NRA’s 2016 annual meeting in Louisville, where Trump was scheduled to speak.

About 10 days before the event, an American Republican operative named Paul Erickson emailed a campaign aide to Trump. Erickson, who was romantically involved with Butina, wrote that his involvement with the NRA had placed him in a position “to slowly begin cultivating a back channel to President Putin’s Kremlin,” according to a copy of the email read to The Post.

“The Kremlin believes the only possibility of a true reset in this relationship would be a new Republican White House,” he continued. He suggested that during the NRA convention, Trump meet Torshin, whom he described as “President Putin’s emissary on this front,” as a “first contact.” He wrote that Trump could then visit the Kremlin before the election.

“Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” Erickson wrote.

Erickson has not been charged with any wrongdoing. His attorney, William Hurd, called him “a good American” who “has never done anything to hurt our country and never would.”

The Trump campaign declined Erickson’s offer. But Butina told the Senate Intelligence Committee that when she and Torshin joined Keene to celebrate his birthday, they discovered they had selected the same restaurant where Trump Jr. was dining with NRA members.

According to a person familiar with her testimony, the Russian agent spoke briefly with the candidate’s son, discussing hunting in Russia. Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee that their conversation was “brief, a few minutes.”

Asked what they discussed, Trump Jr. said simply of Torshin, “I believe he’s a gun enthusiast.”

Alice Crites, Spencer S. Hsu, Tom Jackman and Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/russian-agents-guilty-plea-intensifies-spotlight-on-relationship-with-nra/2018/12/13/e6569a00-fe26-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html

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