Saudi Arabia’s typically formidable lobbying operation has gone quiet as the Senate prepares to vote on the resolution.
When the Senate voted in March on a resolution to withdraw American military support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally visited Capitol Hill to urge senators to oppose it.
Now the resolution has returned, but the crown prince has not. Saudi Arabia’s typically formidable lobbying operation has gone quiet as the Senate prepares to vote on the resolution again, a sign of the kingdom’s diminished influence in Washington after the killing of the journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi two months ago.
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The Saudi embassy has emailed Senate offices touting what it says are humanitarian efforts in Yemen, but lobbyists for the kingdom have largely disengaged since Khashoggi was killed in October at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Prince Khalid bin Salman, only returned to Washington last week after nearly two months away.
And the offices of three Republican senators who joined with Democrats late last month to advance the resolution, which calls for yanking U.S. backing for Saudi efforts in Yemen, said they hadn’t heard from any lobbyists for the Saudis ahead of a final vote on the bill.
“There’s not the same kind of environment for the Saudi government to be welcomed on the Hill,” said Kate Gould, a lobbyist for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker nonprofit that’s been advocating for the resolution.
The Central Intelligence Agency’s conclusion that Mohammed bin Salman likely ordered Khashoggi’s death, along with growing international outrage over the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, have curtailed Saudi Arabia’s influence in Washington. Five of the small army of lobbying firms that worked for the kingdom quit after the death of Khashoggi, who lived in Virginia and wrote for The Washington Post.
One Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested the Saudis had been slow to appreciate how much their position in Washington had eroded. “I don’t think they quite understand how strong the feelings are here in this town, how significant [Khashoggi’s killing] is for the reputation and credibility of Saudi Arabia,” the official said.
But one person familiar with the Saudi lobbying efforts, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to reporters, said the Saudis “are self-aware” and realized that “direct advocacy on Yemen is made more difficult” by the anger over Khashoggi’s killing.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, is working to defeat the Yemen resolution, which is widely seen as a way to rebuke Saudi Arabia. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis met with senators the day of a vote on the resolution last month to talk up the importance of the American alliance with Saudi Arabia. Pompeo cautioned that pulling back in the region would strengthen Iran — which is backing the Houthi rebels the Saudis are fighting — as well as the Islamic State and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
While senators voted to advance the resolution anyway, “it’s still more effective for Secretary Mattis and Mike Pompeo to be lobbying on it” than anything the Saudi government could be doing, the person familiar with the Saudi lobbying efforts said.
The Saudi embassy has made some limited efforts to burnish the kingdom’s image among senators by emailing Senate staffers. One email sent last week, which was obtained by POLITICO, touted the “King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center’s on going [sic] efforts to reduce risks associated with landmines that have been indiscriminately planted in Yemen by the Iran-backed Houthi militia.”
But lobbyists for the Saudis don’t appear to be making more substantial efforts to help derail the resolution.
Every Democratic senator voted to advance the resolution last month, along with 14 Republicans. But the offices of three of those Republicans— Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Rob Portman of Ohio — told POLITICO they hadn’t heard from any lobbyists representing the Saudis.
“The only voice that’s really been supporting the Saudis at this point has been the administration,” a staffer for another senator said.
The absence of a major push to kill the resolution stands in stark contrast to previous Saudi lobbying efforts. When Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) first introduced the Yemen resolution in February, Saudi Arabia’s lobbyists leaped to respond.
Lobbyists at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which represents the Saudi government, called, emailed and met with staffers for more than a dozen senators to discuss the resolution, according to a disclosure filing, and they also reached out toaides to Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Weeks later, a Brownstein Hyatt lobbyist emailed a dozen members of Congress to invite them to dinner with the crown prince.
Saudi Arabia had previously flexed its muscle in Washington by spending millions of dollars to mount an all-out push in 2016 to kill legislation that allowed families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue the kingdom. (The bill ultimately passed overwhelmingly over President Barack Obama’s veto.)
Lobbyists for Saudi Arabia also mobilized last year during a diplomatic standoff between Qatar and the Saudis and their allies. Qatar scrambled to hire Washington lobbying firms to counter those retained by Saudi Arabia at the time.
Five lobbying and public relations firms the Saudis had on retainer dropped the kingdom as a client in the wake of Khashoggi’s death, although several prominent firms continue to work for Saudi Arabia, including Hogan Lovells and Brownstein Hyatt.
Still, the Qatari government appears confident enough that it’s seized the upper hand in the ongoing diplomatic dispute that one person familiar with Qatar’s lobbying efforts said the country’s lobbyists weren’t pressing senators to support the anti-Saudi resolution.
“The boulder’s just rolling down the hill,” the person said. “No one needs to help push it.”
President Trump asserted Monday that payments to buy the silence of two women about alleged affairs were not illegal campaign contributions, as federal prosecutors contend, but instead a “simple private transaction.”
In morning tweets, Trump sought to counter assertions in a court filing Friday that he had directed his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to try to silence the women in a bid to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen has pleaded guilty to the alleged crime, saying he acted at Trump’s direction.
In his tweets, Trump suggested that the payments were being scrutinized only because investigators have not been able to find evidence of collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russia.
He also blamed Democrats for the scrutiny — a day after some high-profile members of the party appeared on Sunday talk shows and suggested Trump faces serious legal jeopardy.
“So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution, which it was not,” Trump wrote.
He further asserted that even if the payments could be considered campaign contributions, he should be facing a civil case rather than a criminal case. And he said, Cohen should be held responsible, not him.
“Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me,” Trump wrote. “Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!”
….which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s – but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!
In the tweets, Trump also twice misspelled “smoking gun” as “smocking gun” as he quoted a commentator on Fox News talking about the Russia probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
President Trump disembarks from Marine One and walks back across the South Lawn of the White House on Friday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Trump’s tweets were criticized Monday by several lawyers, both for their substance and for his public airing of a defense that could complicate matters if charges are ever brought against him.
Among those weighing in was George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and a frequent critic of the president on Twitter and in op-eds. He seized on Trump’s assertion that Democrats were behind the scrutiny of the payments.
“No, the criminal campaign-finance violations were found by professional line prosecutors in a Republican-controlled United States Department of Justice,” Conway wrote. “It looks like a pretty good case. Kudos to them.”
At issue are the payments to two women who alleged sexual relationships with Trump before he ran for president.
In August 2016, Playboy model Karen McDougal reached an agreement with American Media Inc., publishers of the National Enquirer, that ensured she would not share her story about a lengthy relationship with Trump. In October of that year, adult film actress Stormy Daniels received $130,000 to similarly stay quiet about a liaison that she said had occurred a decade before.
Both of those agreements were facilitated by Cohen, as he admitted in court in August when he pleaded guilty to two campaign-finance charges, among others.
Prosecutors argue that because Cohen was an agent of the Trump campaign, the payments to McDougal and Daniels were campaign contributions in excess of federal limits and not unrelated expenditures.
“With respect to both payments, Cohen acted with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election,” Friday’s filing from prosecutors in New York says. “Cohen coordinated his actions with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments. In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.”
Elsewhere, filings from prosecutors make clear that Individual-1 refers to Trump.
During television appearances on Sunday, some high-profile Democrats suggested that Trump faces serious legal jeopardy.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “there’s a very real prospect” that Trump may be indicted the day he leaves office and that he “may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y), who will lead the Judiciary Committee starting next month, said that if the payments were found to violate campaign finance laws, it would be an impeachable offense. Nadler appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Trump has denied the allegations of affairs by McDougal and Daniels. In May, his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said the payment to Daniels was made “to resolve a personal and false allegation in order to protect the president’s family,” adding: “It would have been done in any event, whether he was a candidate or not.”
In trying to make the case that the payments to McDougal and Daniels should be a civil matter, rather than a criminal case, Trump pointed Monday to a civil fine paid by President Barack Obama’s campaign in 2013.
In April 2012, the Federal Election Commission released an audit of Obama’s 2008 campaign that found that his committee did not disclose the identities of 1,312 donors responsible for nearly $2 million in contributions in the final weeks of the campaign.
Under federal election law, campaigns must file special notices to the FEC of last-minute contributions of $1,000 or more that are received in the final weeks before Election Day.
Eight months after the audit, Obama’s campaign agreed to pay a $375,000 fine, which was one of the largest penalties in the agency’s history.
Philip Bump and Michelle Ye Hee Lee contributed to this report.
SEATTLE — A fire that destroyed a church in Lacey, Wash. has been ruled an arson.
KING-TV reports the fire Friday morning burned a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives announced the conclusion Saturday. The federal agency is investigating the fire with the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office.
The fire is the sixth act of violence since March on a Kingdom Hall in the county.
In May, someone shot about 35 rifle rounds at the Yelm Kingdom Hall, causing more than $10,000 in damage.
Four fires were set at three Kingdom Halls, including the one at Yelm.
The Lacey fire began around 3:30 a.m.
Fire officials had worked with church officials to improve security.
Minister Dan Woollett says the loss won’t stop members from practicing their religion.
Former FBI Director James Comey has said that Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York and now President Donald Trump’s attorney, may have been leaking sensitive information from inside the bureau’s New York office during the closing days of the 2016 presidential election.
Comey told Congress during a closed-door deposition on Friday that he ordered agents to investigate possible leaks based on Giuliani’s public statements, which appeared to draw on inside knowledge of the FBI’s investigation into alleged misuse of classified information by then-candidate Hillary Clinton, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“I was concerned that there appeared to be in the media a number of stories that might have been based on communications reporters or non-reporters like Rudy Giuliani were having with people in the New York field office,” Comey said, according to a transcript of his Friday appearance in front of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees.
“Mr. Giuliani was making statements that appeared to be based on his knowledge of workings inside the FBI New York,” he added. “And then my recollection is there were other stories that were in the same ballpark that gave me a general concern that we may have a leak problem—unauthorized disclosure problem out of New York, and so I asked that it be investigated.”
As the city’s former mayor and with many years of experience as the top federal prosecutor in New York, Giuliani built a network of law-enforcement contacts within the city, the Journal suggested. This would have put him in a prime position to receive information about open investigations at the local FBI office.
Comey said he was fired before the leak probe was complete and that its current status is unknown.
The FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s alleged use of a private email server to handle classified information while secretary of state closed in July 2016 without recommending charges. But the case was reopened just days before the election in November that year after New York agents uncovered new evidence.
Giuliani made several television appearances in the days before the case was reopened, suggesting new developments were imminent.
Giuliani—who did not immediately respond to Newsweek’s request for comment—has long-denied receiving or leaking information from the FBI’s New York office. He claims that any insider knowledge was gleaned from rumours, retired FBI agents and media reports.
Soon after the FBI made its announcement, Giuliani told Fox and Friends, “This has been boiling up in the FBI. I did nothing to get it out. I had no role in it.” According to USA Today, he added, “Did I hear about it? Darn right I heard about it. I can’t even repeat the language I heard from the former FBI agents.”
Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor and current lawyer for President Donald Trump, speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House on May 30, 2018 in Washington, D.C. Alex Wong/Getty Images
The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that personal belongings of 2012 Newton, Conn. shooter Adam Lanza be made public. USA TODAY
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter was not only obsessed with mass murder and socially isolated, but he expressed a “scorn for humanity.’’
Those are some of the revelations from the release of more than 1,000 pages of documents seized in the investigation after Adam Lanza massacred 20 children and six educators on Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut.
Lanza also killed his mother in her sleep before going on his shooting rampage and eventually took his own life.
The documents, unveiled after the Hartford Courant prevailed at the state’s Supreme Court after a five-year legal battle, paint a more detailed picture of Lanza’s disdain for the world and his disturbed state of mind.
They include hundreds of pages of his writings and a spreadsheet with the specifics of 400 incidents of mass violence going back to 1786.
The criminal investigation ended a year after the massacre without determining a motive. Thousands of pages of documents were released at the time, but in a lawsuit brought by the Courant, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in October that personal belongings of the gunman that had been withheld, including journals, also had to be made public because they were not exempt from open record laws.
The newspaper quotes Lanza as writing, as part of an exchange with a fellow gamer, “I incessantly have nothing other than scorn for humanity. I have been desperate to feel anything positive for someone for my entire life.”
The writings also disclose Lanza’s interest in pedophilia, which he regarded as a form of love, his contempt for overweight people and a long list of grievances that included the feel of a metal door handle, bright lights and his hair touching his older brother’s towel.
Records show Lanza became marginalized starting at an early age, when his developmental speech delays led to frustration over his peers not understanding him. He was later diagnosed with sensory disorder, autism spectrum disorder, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He also had a phobia about germs.
After his parents separated when Lanza was 9, his mother, Nancy, became increasingly protective of him. Starting in the 10th grade, she kept Lanza at home, where he was surrounded by an arsenal of firearms and spent long hours playing violent video games.
Lanza, who was 20 at the time of the attack, had an aversion to being touched, and he likened visits to the doctor to molestation.
“Honestly, doctors touching my penis when I was a child was worse than it would be if I consented to an adult in a loving relationship with them,” he wrote. “I don’t see how I and every child was not raped by doctors: We did not consent to it. We only did it because our parents made us.’’
Mostly, the newly unveiled documents confirm the notion that Lanza was a deeply troubled young man whose detachment from most human contact only increased the rancor that boiled inside him.
“Most of my social contact was through those players,” he wrote to the other gamer. “All of them are typical detestable human beings, and it bred an aura of innumerable negative emotions for me. You were a respite from that.”
Two large British banks are among those ensnared in the controversy over Huawei Technologies Co., which escalated over the weekend after the Chinese government warned Canada it would face “severe consequences” if it didn’t release the Chinese telecommunications giant’s finance chief.
Canada this month arrested Meng Wanzhou at the behest of U.S. authorities, who are seeking her extradition over allegations she misled banks about Huawei’s business dealings with Iran to skirt international sanctions against that country. Ms….
Mr. Trump lashed out at Mr. Cohen on Twitter in recent days, saying, “He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.”
One of the campaign finance charges Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to centered on Mr. Cohen’s paying $130,000 to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. The payment amounted to an excessive contribution to Mr. Trump’s campaign, prosecutors said, arguing that her silence helped his election chances and that campaign finance law prohibits individuals from donating more than $2,700 to a presidential candidate in the general election.
Mr. Cohen also pleaded guilty to “causing” an illegal corporate donation to Mr. Trump when he urged American Media Inc., which publishes The National Enquirer, to buy the rights to a former Playboy model’s story of an affair with Mr. Trump. The deal effectively silenced the model, Karen McDougal, for the remainder of the campaign.
Mr. Cohen has also told the Southern District that Mr. Weisselberg, who is one of Mr. Trump’s longtime loyalists, was involved in discussions about how to pay Ms. Daniels, according to a person briefed on the matter. Mr. Cohen linked him to the deal with American Media as well.
During the campaign, Mr. Cohen recorded a conversation he had with Mr. Trump about buying the rights to negative information American Media had collected on Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen told Mr. Trump, who did not know he was being recorded, that “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up.” The deal was signed by American Media and Mr. Cohen, according to court papers. But a person familiar with the arrangement said that Mr. Trump balked at reimbursing America Media, as had been agreed to, and the media company was never reimbursed in relation to Ms. McDougal.
But after the campaign, Mr. Weisselberg handled reimbursing Mr. Cohen for the payment to Ms. Daniels, according to people briefed on the matter. In early 2017, Mr. Cohen sought to recoup the $130,000 he paid out of his own pocket to Ms. Daniels as well as $50,000 he spent on a technology company in connection with the campaign, prosecutors have said.
Not only did the Trump Organization repay those expenses, but it agreed to pay taxes Mr. Cohen might have incurred on the reimbursements. This decision to “gross up” Mr. Cohen went against the Trump Organization’s typical reimbursement practices, people briefed on the matter said.
A winter storm dropped more than an inch of snow on the William & Mary campus Sunday. (WYDaily/Courtesy Erin Zagursky)
More than 21,000 customers in the Historic Triangle were without power Sunday evening after a winter storm dropped at least an inch of snow in the area.
As of 8:25 p.m. Sunday, there were more than 17,000 customers without power in James City County, 1,908 in Williamsburg and 2,390 in York County, according to the Dominion Energy outage map.
A winter weather advisory is in effect until 4 a.m. Monday in the Williamsburg area.
Dominion customers can report and check outages by calling 866-366-4357.
There’s a chance of rain, snow and sleet before 10 a.m. Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
The forecast high Monday is 40 degrees (mostly cloudy), with overnight lows around 25 degrees.
The National Weather Service said a “prolonged period of snow” began late Saturday and would last until Monday in the region, with the heaviest snow expected in northwest North Carolina and southern Virginia. Some areas of North Carolina and Virginia saw more than a foot of snow by Sunday afternoon.
More than 300,000 power outages were reported across the region with the majority of those — about 240,000 — in North Carolina, according to poweroutage.us. Parts of Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia also saw outages.
Gov. Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency Saturday.
“Virginians should take all necessary precautions to ensure they are prepared for winter weather storm impacts,” Northam said.
Virginia State Police said Interstate 81 in far southwest Virginia was particularly dangerous, with snow coming down faster Sunday afternoon than crews could clear it. Police said several tractor-trailers slid off the highway.
Officials warned residents to prepare emergency kits and stay off roads in impacted areas. Several schools districts in North Carolina and Virginia announced they’ll be closed Monday.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper also declared a state of emergency as the storm approached.
Cooper strongly urged residents to stay off the roads Sunday, asking drivers not to put lives of first responders needlessly at risk. Cooper said emergency crews, including the National Guard, worked overnight to clear traffic accidents on major roadways. One tractor trailer ran off a road and into a river, Cooper said.
“Stay put if you can,” Cooper said. “Wrap a few presents, decorate the tree, watch some football.”
A winter storm dropped more than an inch of snow on the William & Mary campus Sunday. (WYDaily/Courtesy Erin Zagursky)
Charlotte Douglas International Airport, the sixth busiest airport in the country, said American Airlines reduced its operations, with more than 1,000 flights canceled on Sunday.
American Airlines also issued a travel alert for nine airports throughout the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Virginia, meaning passengers may be able to change travel plans without a fee.
Travelers were advised to check their flight status before heading to the airport. Cancellations were reported on flights from as far as the Midwest.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said it would be a serious mistake for President Trump to pardon his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
In court documents filed Friday evening, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible Russian interference in the 2016 election accused Paul Manafort of lying to them about his contact with senior officials from the Trump administration while under indictment. Trump still speaks highly of Manafort, and has told the New York Post that he wouldn’t take pardoning Manafort “off the table.”
ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz asked Rubio on “This Week” Sunday morning whether he thinks pardoning Manafort would constitute obstruction of justice.
“I think it would be a terrible mistake if he did that. I do. I believe it’d be a terrible mistake,” Rubio replied. “You know, pardons should be used judiciously. They’re used for cases with extraordinary circumstances. And I just haven’t heard that the White House was thinking about doing it. I know he hasn’t ruled it out but I haven’t heard anyone say, We’re thinking about doing it.”
Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for Donald Trump, walks out of the U.S. Courthouse after a bond hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Nov. 6, 2017. Manafort, 68, an international political consultant, was accused along with his right-hand man, Rick Gates, of lying to U.S. authorities about their work in Ukraine, laundering millions of dollars, and hiding offshore accounts. Both pleaded not guilty on Oct. 30. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for Donald Trump, right, arrives to the U.S. Courthouse for a bond hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Nov. 6, 2017. Manafort, 68, an international political consultant, was accused along with his right-hand man, Rick Gates, of lying to U.S. authorities about their work in Ukraine, laundering millions of dollars, and hiding offshore accounts. Both pleaded not guilty on Oct. 30. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for Donald Trump, right, exits the U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Oct. 30, 2017. The federal investigation into whether President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia took a major turn Monday as authorities charged three people a former campaign chief, his business associate and an ex-policy adviser — with crimes including money laundering, lying to the FBI and conspiracy. Photographer: Zach Gibson/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Rubio suggested that if he were part of Trump’s inner circle, he would advise strongly against pardoning Manafort and will be a critical voice in Congress if it comes to pass. He said a presidential pardon in this situation would undercut the very reason for their existence and could result in contentious wrangling over that presidential power granted by the Constitution.
“I don’t believe that any pardon should be used with relation to these particular cases. Frankly, not only does it not pass the smell test, I think it undermines the reason why we have presidential pardons in the first place,” Rubio said. “And I think, in fact, if something like that were to happen, it could trigger a debate about whether the pardon powers should be amended, given these circumstances.”
Manafort is a longtime Republican political consultant who advised presidential campaigns for Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole. Manafort pleaded guilty in September to several charges, including making false statements about his work in Ukraine, financial fraud and obstructing justice. As part of his plea deal, he agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s probe into possible collusion, but the allegation that he’s been lying prompted even more speculation that he’s angling for a pardon from Trump.
“There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him. That he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
.@AdamSchiff on the Russia Investigation: My takeaway is there’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office the justice department may indict him. That he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. pic.twitter.com/3kfwumFkh7
Schiff, who is likely to be the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, added that the next president may have to determine whether to pardon Trump.
“We have been discussing the issue of pardons the president may offer to people or dangle in front of people,” Schiff said. “The bigger pardon question may come down the road, as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump.”
“I think the prosecutors in New York make a powerful case against that idea,” he added. “All the arguments they make against Michael Cohen … that argument was equally made with respect to Individual-1, the president of the United States.”
About the photographs, Mr. Comey said he wasn’t aware that any existed. “I have never hugged or kissed the man,” he said. “Again, I’m an admirer but not that kind of admirer.”
Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, asked, “Are you best friends with Robert Mueller?”
“I am not,” Mr. Comey replied. “I admire the heck out of the man, but I don’t know his phone number, I’ve never been to his house, I don’t know his children’s names. I think I had a meal once alone with him in a restaurant. I like him.”
Mr. Nadler thanked Mr. Comey and said he would not ask “whether you’ve ever hugged and kissed him.”
“A relief to my wife,” Mr. Comey replied.
He was quizzed on the history of elections
At one point, questioning turned to text exchanges between the F.B.I. agent Peter Strzok, who had overseen an investigation into Mr. Trump’s campaign, and Lisa Page, an F.B.I. lawyer.
Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, said that one text from March 2016 read, “Hillary should win 100 million to zero.”
“In the course of human history, has anyone won an election 100 million to zero, to your knowledge?” Mr. Gowdy asked.
Canadian authorities said Wednesday that they have arrested the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies for possible extradition to the United States. Time
The Chinese foreign ministry on Sunday summoned U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad to protest the detention of a senior tech executive by the Canadian authorities “at the unreasonable behest of the United States.”
Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng demanded the release of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, who is accused by U.S. officials of attempting to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran.
Meng, 46, was bound for Mexico when she was detained while changing planes in Vancouver, Canada, more than a week ago. Huawei is China’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. Meng is also the daughter of the company’s founder.
A Canadian bail hearing for Meng that began last week will continue Monday. Prosecutor John Gibb-Carsley wants her held without bail, saying she faces fraud charges in the U.S. that could result in a prison sentence of 30 years.
Authorities say Huawei did business with Iran through a shell company in Hong Kong. Gibb-Carsley said Meng has been aware of the charges and avoided the U.S. for months – despite allowing her son to attend school in Boston.
“What the United States has done severely violates Chinese citizen’s legitimate rights and interests, and is vile in nature,” Le said in a statement through the state-run Xinhua news agency. “China will respond further according to the U.S. side’s actions.”
On Saturday, Canadian Ambassador John McCallum was similarly summoned and chastised. The legal imbroglio has led to some unease among Canadian businesses and political leaders. But Roland Paris, a former foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, took to Twitter to warn that threats from China would be fruitless.
“Perhaps because the Chinese state controls its judicial system, Beijing sometimes has difficulty understanding or believing that courts can be independent in a rule-of-law country,” Paris tweeted. “There’s no point in pressuring the Canadian government. Judges will decide.”
Paris also had a suggestion for Chinese business leaders: “If you’re a high-profile Chinese tech executive targeted by the US in an escalating hegemonic struggle between the US and China, please do not change planes in Canada. Thank you.”
China Daily, an English-language newspaper seen as the government mouthpiece, claimed Meng’s arrest proved “the U.S. is trying to do whatever it can to contain Huawei’s expansion in the world.” The publication was dismissive of what it called a “Cold War mentality” toward China.
The issue surfaces in the midst of a U.S.-China trade war that saw President Donald Trump slap tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods. The administration also has warned that duties on another $267 billion in goods could be coming, which would subject to tariff virtually all Chinese-made products shipped into the U.S.
China retaliated by levying tariffs on $110 billion worth of a wide variety of U.S. products, including farm equipment, soybeans, electric cars, orange juice, whiskey, salmon and cigars.
The trade clash had appeared to be cooling, with the U.S. and China agreeing to suspend additional tariffs for 90 days. Last week, China’s government said it would promptly carry out a tariff cease-fire with Washington and expressed confidence that a trade agreement can be reached within the three-month timeline.
Trump’s response on Twitter was also encouraging: “I agree!”
Republican senator speaks out on the importance of the attorney general nominee being confirmed on ‘Sunday Morning Futures.’
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News on Sunday that Saudi Arabia’s military “can’t fight out of a paper bag” when confronted with Mideast challenges including Iran, and insisted that the U.S. has the necessary leverage to punish the Saudi leadership for its apparent role in the murder of dissident writer Jamal Khashoggi.
“Let me put it this way — I want to be very blunt with you,” Graham told host Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “If it weren’t for the United States they’d be speaking Farsi in about a week in Saudi Arabia.”
Graham’s remarks deepened his unusual divide with the White House on the issue. In an equivocal statement last month that highlighted the complexities of U.S. interests in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia’s role in advancing American interests there, President Trump indicated it was not clear in his mind whether Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s death.
However, Graham echoed his colleagues in saying that classified intelligence briefings provided to members of Congress strongly suggested a different conclusion.
“Their military can’t fight out of a paper bag.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
“It’s the most brilliant briefing I’ve ever received in my time in Congress,” Graham said. “You had two analysts that walk us through the crown prince’s focus on Mr. Khashoggi for about two years. This operation was very sophisticated.
“The person in charge of executing the operation is MBS’s right-hand man,” Graham continued, using the three-letter acronym to refer to bin Salman. “There is no doubt by any senator who received this briefing that MBS was complicit in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi.”
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” backed up Graham on Sunday, telling host Jake Tapper: “We don’t need direct evidence that he ordered the code red on this thing.”
Khashoggi, a dissident who opposed Saudi Arabia’s military intervention against Iranian-backed forces in Yemen, disappeared after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in early October.
Both Democrats and Republicans say the Saudis must pay a price for the death of columnist Jamal Khashoggi; chief congressional correspondent Mike Emanuel reports.
The CIA reportedly has concluded he was murdered inside, and Turkish officials have said more than a dozen people linked to bin Salman and Saudi intelligence entered and departed the country shortly before and after Khashoggi’s death.
“The bottom line is that there is no way that 17 people close to him got a charter plane, flew to a third country, went into a consulate, killed and chopped up a man and flew back, and he didn’t know about it, much less order it,” Rubio told Tapper.
Jamal Khashoggi, seen here in 2011, vanished this past October. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)
The U.S. has imposed a slew of sanctions against the individuals who U.S. intelligence has determined were involved in Khashoggi’s apparent murder. But the White House has voiced fears that taking more aggressive action against Saudi Arabia might unnecessarily compromise U.S. strategic interests, as well as arms deals worth more than $100 billion.
“They give us 9 percent of our oil imports. We need them a lot less than they need us,” Graham countered. “I don’t buy this idea you’ve got to hook up to a murderous regime, a thug like MBS, to protect America from Iran. Quite the opposite. I think by hooking up with him we hurt our ability to govern the region.”
Bipartisan group of senators introduces a resolution to hold Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accountable for the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi; analysis from Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.
The influential South Carolina senator, who has built an unlikely friendship and close political alliance with Trump after bitterly opposing him during the 2016 presidential race, said the stakes are larger than Khashoggi alone.
“It’s not just this dissident he’s going after,” Graham said. “He’s going after others, people have been captured in other countries and brought back to Saudi Arabia because they’ve been critics in these countries. He put the Lebanese prime minister under house arrest in the most bizarre episode I’ve seen in 20 years and it goes on and on and on.”
Graham, who called bin Salman a “wrecking ball” and “crazy,” said the prince’s primary objectives have been to sever U.S. ties to Saudi Arabia.
“Well, we’re going to label him complicit. We’re going to have a vote in the Senate saying that MBS was complicit in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi,” Graham said. “I’m never gonna support any more arms sales to Saudi Arabia.”
Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo contributed to this report.
The Russian ambassador. A deputy prime minister. A pop star, a weightlifter, a lawyer, a Soviet army veteran with alleged intelligence ties.
Again and again and again, over the course of Donald Trump’s 18-month campaign for the presidency, Russian citizens made contact with his closest family and friends, as well as figures on the periphery of his orbit.
Some offered to help his campaign and his real estate business. Some offered dirt on his Democratic opponent. Repeatedly, Russian nationals suggested Trump should hold a peacemaking sit-down with Vladimir Putin — and offered to broker such a summit.
In all, Russians interacted with at least 14 Trump associates during the campaign and presidential transition, public records and interviews show.
“It is extremely unusual,” said Michael McFaul, who served as ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama. “Both the number of contacts and the nature of the contacts are extraordinary.”
As special counsel Robert S. Mueller III slowly unveils the evidence that he has gathered since his appointment in May 2017, he has not yet shown that any of the dozens of interactions between people inTrump’s orbit and Russiansresulted in any specific coordination between his presidential campaign and Russia.
But the mounting number ofcommunications that have been revealed occurred against the backdrop of “sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the U.S. presidential election,” as Mueller’s prosecutors wrote in a court filing last week.
The special counsel’s filings have also revealed moments when Russia appeared to be taking cues from Trump. In July 2016, the then-GOP candidate said at a news conference, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” referring to messages Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had deleted from a private account. That day, the Russians made their first effort to break into servers used by Clinton’s personal office, according to court documents.
As Americans began to grip the reality that a hostile foreign power took active steps to shape the outcome of the race, Trump and his advisers asserted they had no contact with Russia.
Two days after Trump was elected president, a top Kremlin official caused a stir by asserting that Trump’s associates were in contact with the Russian government before the election.
“I don’t say that all of them, but a whole array of them supported contacts with Russian representatives,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Interfax news agency on Nov. 10, 2016.
The claim was met with a hail of denials. Hope Hicks, then Trump’s top spokeswoman, responded, “It never happened. There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”
After Trump took office, in February 2017, he reiterated the denial. “No. Nobody that I know of,” the presidenttold reporters when asked whether anyone who advised his campaign had contact with Russia. “I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.”
It is now clear that wasn’t true.
Trump’s oldest children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, interacted withRussians who were offering to help the candidate.
Ivanka’s husband, top campaign adviser Jared Kushner, as well as Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his personal lawyer Michael Cohen and his longest-serving political adviser, Roger Stone, also had contact with Russian nationals.
Veterans ofpast White House bids said that so much interplay with representatives of a foreign adversary is highly unusual.
“This is different in kind than anything I have ever heard of before,” said Trevor Potter, who served as general counsel to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008. McCain, he noted, traveled the globe as a member of the Senate, but his contacts with foreign government officials generally occurred in consultation with the State Department and involved questions of policy — not personal business or his own electoral concerns.
The number of known interactions has grown since last year, when The Washington Post tallied that at least nine Trump associates had contacts with Russians during the campaign or presidential transition.
At the time, then-White House lawyer Ty Cobb said, “I think the American public can fully appreciate that those are isolated, obviously disconnected events, quite small in number for a presidential campaign.”
Trump attorney Jay Sekulow declined to comment on Sunday.
The president has repeatedly denied that people close to him coordinated with Russia, tweeting frequently, “NO COLLUSION!”
New court documents filed by Mueller’s prosecutors in the past two weeks revealed the Russian outreach was more extensive than previously known.
In November 2015, Cohen spoke with a Russian national who claimed to be a “trusted person” in the Russian Federation offering the campaign “political synergy” and “synergy on a government level,” according to a memo filed by the special counsel Friday.
The Russian national repeatedly proposed a meeting between Trump and Putin, prosecutors wrote, saying that a sit-down between the two men could have a “phenomenal” impact because there is “no bigger warranty in any project” than Putin’s backing.
The details of the episode matches descriptions of an interaction Cohen had at the time with Dmitry Klokov, a well-connected Russian athlete, which was first reported by BuzzFeed News.
An Olympic weightlifter turned entrepreneur, Klokov sells training equipment, clothing and fitness programs worldwide from his base in Moscow.
Asked on Saturday via a message to his Instagram account about his reported communications with Cohen, Klokov responded with three laughing-in-tears emoji and the words: “This is someone’s nonsense.”
Klokov’s wife reached out to Ivanka Trump in October 2015, saying she had connections in the Russian government and could help her father build a Trump Tower in Moscow, a project he had long sought, according to a person familiar with the interaction.
Ivanka Trump did not know the woman but forwarded her contact information to Cohen, who later connected with Klokov, the people familiar with the exchanges said.
After an initial conversation, prosecutors said Cohen did not pursue a meeting through the Russian national because he believed he already had connections to the Russian government through a business partner.
That partner, Russian-born developerFelix Sater, said in an interviewthat he had been unaware of Cohen’s contact with Klokov.
Cohen, who had worked for Trump for a decade and urged him to run for president years before the celebrity mogul launched his bid in 2015, was focused on his boss’s relationship with Russia from the campaign’s earliest days.
In September 2015, Cohen told Sean Hannity during an appearance on the Fox News host’s radio program that there was a “better than likely” chance that Trump and Putin would meet while Putin was in New York for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly then underway.
“People want to meet Donald Trump. They want to know Donald Trump,” Cohen told Hannity.
Last week, prosecutors revealed Cohen admitted he conferred with Trump about the idea “before reaching out to gauge Russia’s interest in such a meeting.”
Mueller said Cohen has corrected past misstatements about “his outreach to the Russian government during the week of the United Nations General Assembly.” Court filings provided no additional details about the outreach.
The special counsel also revealed in recent weeks that Cohen communicated with the Kremlin about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen spoke by phone with an assistant to Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, after asking Peskov for government help propelling the project.
Prosecutors called the real estate development — pursued even as Trump was campaigning for the Republican nomination — a “lucrative business opportunity” that could have produced hundreds of millions for Trump’s company, noting that it probably would have required Russian government help for completion.
Mueller also indicated that his team hasbeen gathering evidence about Manafort’s interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian army veteran who worked for Manafort in the Kiev office of his political consulting company.
Mueller’s team accused Manafort of lying repeatedly in interviews with investigators about his interactions with Kilimnik, who has been assessed by the FBI to have ties to Russian intelligence and met with Manafort twice during the campaign.
Details about those alleged falsehoods were redacted from the filing.
The Post has previously reported that Manafort asked Kilimnik to extend an offer of “private briefings” about the campaign to Oleg Deripaska, a top Russian businessman who is close to Putin. Deripaska’s spokeswoman has said no such briefings took place.
Some outreach came directly from the Russian government. Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak met several Trump advisers, including then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), at the Republican National Convention. Trump aide Carter Page has said he was greeted by Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich after delivering a speech in Moscow in July 2016.
People close to Trump were twice offered damaging information about Clinton, a particular foe of Putin whom he blamed for fomenting protests against his regime while she was secretary of state.
In June 2016, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer, whom he was told would providedirt on Clinton. The meeting was arranged by billionaire Moscow developer Aras Agalarov and his pop star son Emin.
The attendees of the Trump Tower gathering, which also included Manafort and Kushner, saidlawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya offered nothing helpful. But several attendees described to congressional investigatorsTrump Jr.’s eagerness for the Russian’s assistance, according to transcripts of their testimony.
In addition, Russians repeatedly suggested a meeting between Trump and Putin might be a good idea.
Months after the Russian weightlifter broached the idea of such a summit with Cohen, Ivan Timofeev, a director of a Moscow think tank with ties to the Russian foreign ministry, discussed a Trump-Putin meeting with George Papadopoulos, a Trump foreign policy adviser.
A London-based professor also connected Papadopoulos to a Russian woman whom the Trump adviser believed was Putin’s niece.
Some of the interactions between Trump associates and Russians were low-level, speculative discussions.
“The kind of people we are talking about are not the kind of people you talk to about U.S.-Russia relations, the future of the START [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] treaty and so on,” McFaul said.
But he said the Russians would have taken note of the willingness of Trump aides to engage.
“I think the Russians would nurture those contacts and see them as a way to establish relationships that could be useful for Putin and his government,” he said.
Anton Troianovski and Amie Ferris-Rotman in Moscow contributed to this report.
NEW: THE PRESIDENT’S WEEK AHEAD: MONDAY: President Donald Trump is having lunch with Vice President Mike Pence. TUESDAY: Trump is having lunch with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. WEDNESDAY: The president will participate in an “Opportunity Zones” event. THURSDAY: Trump will meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and have a discussion with governors-elect.
SUNDAY BEST … MUELLER FALLOUT EDITION: JAKE TAPPER spoke with REP. JERRY NADLER (D-N.Y.) on CNN’S “STATE OF THE UNION”: TAPPER: “If it is proven that the president directed or coordinated with [Michael] Cohen to commit these felonies, if it’s proven — and I understand it has not yet been — it’s been alleged by the prosecutors, but has not been proven. If it’s proven, is — are those impeachable offenses?”
NADLER: “Well, they would be impeachable offenses. Whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question. But, certainly, they would be impeachable offenses, because, even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office. That would be the — that would be an impeachable offense.”
— TAPPER also spoke with SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FLA.): TAPPER: “If it is proven that the president directed an aide to commit felonies to influence the election, what should the repercussions be?” RUBIO: “Well, again, we’re speculating, right, because we don’t know what additional information the Justice Department have. … If someone has violated the law, the — the application of the law should be applied to them, like it would to any other citizen in this country. And, obviously, if you’re in a position of great authority, like the presidency, that would be the case.”
— RUBIO on “FACE THE NATION” with MARGARET BRENNAN: “There’s no reason to not stand by anybody in this moment. There are pleadings there are cases there are evidence, we’re gonna wait for all of it to be out there. And I would caution everyone to wait for all of it to be out there until you make judgment.”
— CHUCK TODD talked with SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY.) on NBC’S “MEET THE PRESS”: TODD: “Why do you think that the story keeps changing in and around the president. If all of these things are as innocent as you’ve said, why does he keep changing his story?” PAUL: “I think we’re trying to make and find a crime. This has been my overall complaint about the process — about having these special prosecutors: is that really, they find a person and they look for a crime. Traditional justice in our country is, someone steals something from the grocery store and you have a crime, you try to find out who did it.
“With a special prosecutor you decide, we’re going after someone, the president, and we’re going to squeeze as many people as we can until we can try to get a person. And that’s why I’m against these special prosecutors. I think they’re a huge mistake. I think they’re a huge abuse of government power.”
— MARTHA RADDATZ spoke with CHRIS CHRISTIE on ABC NEWS’ “THIS WEEK”: RADDATZ: “And Gov. Christie, if you were still a U.S. attorney, would you indict the president?” CHRISTIE: “Well, first off, there’s Justice Department policy which says that you can’t indict a president. So my guess is that I wouldn’t and that I’d follow Justice Department policy. …
“I thought the Michael Cohen situation was much more perilous for the White House then was Bob Mueller. There’s no Russian collusion, there’s been no proof of Russian collusion. And I don’t think there’s going to be. It doesn’t appear to me there will be. This is the stuff that’s much more — should be much more concerning to the White House legal team. And that language is very, very strong and very definitive, so the prosecutors better have corroboration, because if they don’t and they just go by Michael Cohen that’s a problem, but if they do have corroboration that could be a problem for the White House.”
Good Sunday morning. WHAT’S ON THE PRESIDENT’S MIND — @realDonaldTrump at 8:38 a.m.: “On 245 occasions, former FBI Director James Comey told House investigators he didn’t know, didn’t recall, or couldn’t remember things when asked. Opened investigations on 4 Americans (not 2) — didn’t know who signed off and didn’t know Christopher Steele. All lies!”
… at 8:53 a.m.: “Leakin’ James Comey must have set a record for who lied the most to Congress in one day. His Friday testimony was so untruthful! This whole deal is a Rigged Fraud headed up by dishonest people who would do anything so that I could not become President. They are now exposed!”
SPOTTED at the Army-Navy game on Saturday in Philly (Army won 17-10): President Donald Trump (who visited the group for an hour), Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, HR and Katie McMaster, Sens. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho), David Solomon, Dave Urban and Kellie Mooney, David McCormick and Dina Powell, Ambassador Jeanne Phillips, Josh Raffel, Virginia Boney, Dan Scavino, Jordan Karem, Tony Sayegh, Vinnie Viola, Ralph Reed, Tommy Hicks, Manus Cooney and Luis Alberto Moreno.
FROM 30,000 FEET — WAPO’S BOB COSTA and PHIL RUCKER: “‘Siege warfare’: Republican anxiety spikes as Trump faces growing legal and political perils”: “A growing number of Republicans fear that a battery of new revelations in the far-reaching Russia investigation has dramatically heightened the legal and political danger to Donald Trump’s presidency — and threatens to consume the rest of the party, as well.
“President Trump added to the tumult Saturday by announcing the abrupt exit of his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, whom he sees as lacking the political judgment and finesse to steer the White House through the treacherous months to come.
“Trump remains headstrong in his belief that he can outsmart adversaries and weather any threats, according to advisers. In the Russia probe, he continues to roar denials, dubiously proclaiming that the latest allegations of wrongdoing by his former associates ‘totally clear’ him. But anxiety is spiking among Republican allies, who complain that Trump and the White House have no real plan for dealing with the Russia crisis while confronting a host of other troubles at home and abroad.” WaPo
— NYT’S PETER BAKER and NICK FANDOS: “Prosecutors’ Narrative Is Clear: Trump Defrauded Voters. But What Does It Mean?”: “The latest revelations by prosecutors investigating President Trump and his team draw a portrait of a candidate who personally directed an illegal scheme to manipulate the 2016 election and whose advisers had more contact with Russia than Mr. Trump has ever acknowledged. In the narrative that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and New York prosecutors are building, Mr. Trump continued to secretly seek to do business in Russia deep into his presidential campaign even as Russian agents made more efforts to influence him.
“At the same time, in this account he ordered hush payments to two women to suppress stories of impropriety in violation of campaign finance law. The prosecutors made clear in a sentencing memo filed on Friday that they viewed efforts by Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to squelch the stories as nothing less than a perversion of a democratic election — and by extension they effectively accused the president of defrauding voters, questioning the legitimacy of his victory.” NYT
MORE SUNDAY BEST — FOX NEWS SUNDAY: “Kudlow: U.S.-China trade talks ‘on track’,” by Martin Matishak: “White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow on Sunday insisted that U.S.-China trade talks are moving in a ‘positive’ direction, despite mixed signals from top Trump administration officials and the arrest of the chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei.
“‘We are on track,’ Kudlow said on ‘Fox News Sunday’ when asked about the stock market’s 1,100 point drop over the course of last week, pointing to ‘promising’ statements from Beijing’s commerce department and government agencies. … ‘I don’t think there’s much daylight between Peter and I,’ according to Kudlow. ‘I really think that’s an exaggerated point.’
“He also said that President Donald Trump ‘did not know’ of the plan to arrest Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada when hammering out trade details with his Chinese counterpart at the G-20 summit last week. ‘He learned way later,’ Kudlow said. ‘And he had no reaction afterward.’” POLITICO
2020 WATCH — ELIANA JOHNSON, “Kelly exit helps position Trump for 2020”: “Brian Jack, the deputy White House political director, is expected to replace [Bill] Stepien as White House political director. White House aides predicted that [Nick] Ayers, if tapped despite internal opposition to his selection, would focus the West Wing almost entirely on the president’s reelection effort. ‘You’re going to have a White House that’s all politics all the time,’ said a former White House official, who predicted a transformation of the West Wing into a ‘quasi-campaign operation.’ …
“Among other things, Kelly knocked Kushner for trying to play a sort of ‘boy secretary of state,’ according to a former White House official, and looked down on the first daughter for what he perceived were efforts to burnish her image at the expense of the White House, according to a former White House official.” POLITICO
— NYT’S ANNIE KARNI and MAGGIE HABERMAN: “Mr. Trump has settled on Nick Ayers, a youthful but experienced political operative who serves as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, as his top choice to replace Mr. Kelly … But Mr. Ayers, 36, who has young children and wants to return home to Georgia with his family, has so far agreed to serve only on an interim basis through the spring. Mr. Trump, who does not want more turnover, is pressing Mr. Ayers to agree to a more permanent stay …
“If the president ultimately turns to another candidate, potential choices include the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin; his budget director, Mick Mulvaney; and the United States trade representative, Robert Lighthizer. … In the residence on Friday night, the president and Mr. Kelly agreed that the departing chief would break his own news on Monday, announcing his exit to senior White House staff members. But Mr. Trump ultimately broke the news himself on Saturday afternoon.” NYT
WSJ: “Details Emerge in U.S.’s Trade Truce With China,” by Lingling Wei in Beijing and Bob Davis: “A week after President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping struck a trade truce in Buenos Aires, details of the ceasefire are becoming clear—big Chinese purchases, tough negotiations and shifting deadlines to finish a deal.
“Interviews with officials in both countries, briefed on the Trump-Xi talks, give a fuller picture of the agreement the two men reached. The two sides agreed on a negotiating period of about 90 days, during which the U.S. won’t raise tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25%, as it had planned to do on Jan. 1.
“Beijing and Washington also agreed that China will purchase large amounts of goods and services, with China pledging to announce soybean and natural-gas purchases in the coming weeks, said officials in both nations. Beijing is also considering reducing tariffs on U.S. automobiles.” WSJ
SCOOP — “Trump first wanted his attorney general pick William Barr for another job: Defense lawyer,” by Yahoo’s Mike Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman: “In late spring 2017, President Trump was having a hard time finding a topflight lawyer to spearhead his defense in the sprawling Russian investigation conducted by the new special counsel Robert Mueller. Some of the most prominent litigators in Washington had turned aside overtures to represent the president in the case, expressing concerns that he would not listen to their advice anyway. Around that time, sources tell Yahoo News, White House officials reached out to a man they thought would be an ideal candidate: William P. Barr, the attorney general under President George H.W. Bush.
“An outspoken conservative, Barr had gotten on Trump’s radar screen that spring after he had written a newspaper op-ed vigorously defending the president’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. At one point, Barr was ushered into a brief White House meeting with Trump, who asked him if he was interested in the job, according to a source who was present for the meeting. Barr demurred. He had other obligations, he said. He would have to think about it.” Yahoo
2020 WATCH – “Beto O’Rourke Emerges as the Wild Card of the 2020 Campaign-in-Waiting,” by NYT’s Matt Flegenheimer and Jonathan Martin: “Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas has emerged as the wild card of the presidential campaign-in-waiting for a Democratic Party that lacks a clear 2020 front-runner.
“After a star-making turn in his close race against Senator Ted Cruz, Mr. O’Rourke is increasingly serious about a 2020 run — a development that is rousing activists in early-voting states, leading veterans of former President Barack Obama’s political operation (and Mr. Obama himself) to offer their counsel and hampering would-be rivals who are scrambling to lock down influential supporters and strategists as future campaign staff.” NYT
SNL LAST NIGHT – “Trump Brothers Bedtime Cold Open”: “Donald Trump Jr. (Mikey Day) puts Eric Trump (Alex Moffat) to bed when an unexpected visitor, Robert Mueller (Robert De Niro), stops by to chat.” 5-min. video
PLAYBOOK READS
DOWN IN NORTH CAROLINA … — “North Carolina’s ‘Guru of Elections’: Can-Do Operator Who May Have Done Too Much,” by NYT’s Richard Fausset, Alan Blinder, Sydney Ember and Timothy Williams in Bladenboro, N.C. and Serge F. Kovaleski in N.Y.: “In this rural region near the state’s southern border, where candidates are often intimately known as neighbors, friends or enemies, [L. McRae] Dowless ran a do-it-all vote facilitating business that was part of the community fabric. … Dozens of interviews and an examination of thousands of pages of documents portray Dowless, a former car salesman, as a local political opportunist who was quick to seek ballots, collect them or offer rides to the polls.
“He employed a network of part-time helpers, some of them his own relatives, who, lured by promises of swift cash payments, would fan out across southeastern North Carolina in get-out-the-vote efforts for whichever candidate happened to be footing that year’s bill.” NYT
DAVID SIDERS in Manhattan Beach, Calif.: “Progressives rail against bandwagon Democrats”: “Progressive Democrats are beginning to confront an unintended consequence of their own success: Dilution of the brand.
“So many Democratic presidential prospects are now claiming the progressive mantle in advance of the 2020 primaries that liberal leaders are trying to institute a measure of ideological quality control, designed to ensure the party ends up with a nominee who meets their exacting standards.
“Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are discussing policy platforms that could serve as a litmus test for presidential contenders. Progressive donors, meanwhile, are plotting steps — ranging from closer engagement with campaigns to ultimatums tied to fundraising — to ensure that Medicare for All, debt-free college and a non-militaristic foreign policy, among other causes, remain at the center of the upcoming campaign. In an effort to winnow the burgeoning field, progressive advocacy groups are beginning to poll supporters in the hopes of elevating candidates who gain the imprimatur of the left.” POLITICO
GREAT READ — “The Wooing of Jared Kushner: How the Saudis Got a Friend in the White House,” by NYT’s David D. Kirkpatrick, Ben Hubbard, Mark Landler and Mark Mazzetti: “Senior American officials were worried. Since the early months of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, had been having private, informal conversations with Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son of Saudi Arabia’s king.Given Mr. Kushner’s political inexperience, the private exchanges could make him susceptible to Saudi manipulation, said three former senior American officials.
“In an effort to tighten practices at the White House, a new chief of staff tried to reimpose long-standing procedures stipulating that National Security Council staff members should participate in all calls with foreign leaders. But even with the restrictions in place, Mr. Kushner, 37, and Prince Mohammed, 33, kept chatting, according to three former White House officials and two others briefed by the Saudi royal court.
“In fact, they said, the two men were on a first-name basis, calling each other Jared and Mohammed in text messages and phone calls. The exchanges continued even after the Oct. 2 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was ambushed and dismembered by Saudi agents, according to two former senior American officials and the two people briefed by the Saudis.” NYT
FOR YOUR RADAR — “Millions Of Comments About The FCC’s Net Neutrality Rules Were Fake. Now The Feds Are Investigating,” by BuzzFeed’s Kevin Collier and Jeremy Singer-Vine: “The Justice Department is investigating whether crimes were committed when potentially millions of people’s identities were posted to the FCC’s website without their permission, falsely attributing to them opinions about net neutrality rules, BuzzFeed News has learned. Two organizations told BuzzFeed News, each on condition that they not be named, that the FBI delivered subpoenas to them related to the comments.” BuzzFeed
BONUS GREAT WEEKEND READS, curated by Daniel Lippman:
— “‘Everyone’s for Sale’: A Generation of Digital-Media Darlings Prepares for a Frigid Winter,” by Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo: “Vice, Vox, and BuzzFeed, among other companies that once heralded the dawn of a new media age, are now grappling with decidedly old-media problems.” VF
— “Documents Point to Illegal Campaign Coordination Between Trump and NRA,” by Mike Spies in The Trace and Mother Jones: “Trump and the gun group used the same consultants to spearhead their TV ad blitzes at the height of the 2016 election, likely in violation of federal law.” The Trace
— “On to Mars,” by Charles Krauthammer in the Weekly Standard in Jan. 2000: “It took 100,000 years for humans to get inches off the ground. Then, astonishingly, it took only 66 to get from Kitty Hawk to the moon. And then, still more astonishingly, we lost interest, spending the remaining 30 years of the 20th century going around in circles in low earth orbit, i.e., going nowhere.” TWS
— “Why We Sleep, and Why We Often Can’t,” by Zoë Heller in the New Yorker: “Does our contemporary obsession with sleep obscure what makes it special in the first place?” New Yorker
— “How a Real-Estate Scuffle Turned into a True Tale of Miami Vice,” by Mark Seal in Vanity Fair’s Holiday issue: “They’re known as the Jills. They’re two of America’s top realtors, selling the glitziest mansions in Miami. Then a place went missing—and everyday greed blossomed into full-blown extortion.” VF
— “Four Days Trapped at Sea With Crypto’s Nouveau Riche,” by Laurie Penny in Breaker Mag: “There are people of all genders and political persuasions looking to walk the plank of the good ship Reality before they’re pushed, but I’ve never met so many so transparently trying to con as many fellow travelers on their way down.” Breaker Mag (h/t Longform.org)
— “The Empress of Facebook: My Befuddling Dinner with Sheryl Sandberg,” by Virginia Heffernan in Wired: “In person Sandberg is dazzling. She looks like the actor Carla Gugino—old-fashioned, with rosy lineless skin and 91 percent cacao-content hair. … I don’t think I’ve ever met a better host. At a table of decidedly anti-corporate women, Sandberg engaged, and seemed to win over, everyone.” Wired
— “The Friendship That Made Google Huge,” by James Somers in the New Yorker: “Coding together at the same computer, Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat changed the course of the company—and the Internet.” New Yorker
— “Syria’s Last Bastion of Freedom,” by Anand Gopal in the New Yorker: “Amid the brutal civil war, a town fought off the regime and the fundamentalists—and dared to hold an election. Can its experiment in democracy survive?” New Yorker
— “Why We Miss the WASPs,” by NYT’s Ross Douthat: “Their more meritocratic, diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.” NYT … “The Death of the WASP,” by Ben Schreckinger in POLITICO Magazine in April 2014
— “Special Report: How Iran spreads disinformation around the world,” by Reuters’ Jack Stubbs and Christopher Bing: “A Tehran-based agency has quietly fed propaganda through at least 70 websites to countries from Afghanistan to Russia. And American firms have helped.” Reuters
PLAYBOOKERS
SPOTTED: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) hanging out in the cafe car of the 3 p.m. Acela from NY Penn Station to DC.
SPOTTED at a holiday party last night held by David Frum and Danielle Crittenden: Susan Rice and Ian Cameron, Al Franken, Marty Baron, Elizabeth Drew, Susan Eisenhower, Charles Lane, Andrew Sullivan, Kevin Chaffee, Jeff Goldberg, Francesca Chambers, Mona Charan, Juleanna Glover and Christopher Reiter, Katherine Bradley, David Corn, Jamie Kirchick, Ken Weinstein, Amy Nathan and British Ambassador Kim and Lady Darroch.
WEEKEND WEDDINGS — Ryan Jackson, chief of staff at the EPA and a Jim Inhofe and EPW alum, married Ashley Winfree, who works in banking, in a ceremony at the White-Meyer House with a reception at the Meridian House. EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler attended and made remarks. Pic
– “Hannah Levinson, Jonathan Cross” – N.Y. Times: “Mrs. Cross, 30, is a health care law associate in the Washington office of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, a law firm. … Mr. Cross, 31, is a managing director of the Quincy Group, a government relations and strategic advisory firm in Washington that focuses on the Middle East.” With a pic.NYT
— “Nora Kelly, Douglas Lee” – N.Y. Times: “Ms. Kelly, 29, is a senior associate editor at The Atlantic in Washington. … Mr. Lee, also 29, works in Washington as the legislative director for Representative Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois.” With a pic.NYT
BIRTHDAYS: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is 52 … Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin is 64 … Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant is 64 … Samantha Tubman, manager of special projects at the Obama Foundation (hat tip: Meredith Carden) … Neal Wolin, CEO of Brunswick Group, is 57 (h/ts Tim Griffin and George Little) … former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) is 71 … Nathan Daschle, president and COO of the Daschle Group … Terry Moran, chief foreign correspondent for ABC News … Jonathan Wald, SVP at MSNBC (h/t Kurt Bardella) … James Pindell, Boston Globe political reporter … Jeff Smith is 45 … Cris Turner, head of gov’t affairs for the Americas at Dell … Aniela Butler (h/t Meghan Mitchum) … Treasury alum John E. Smith (h/t Peter Baker) … Scott Schloegel … Emily Kopp … Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas) is 56 … former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D-Texas) is 72 … Andrew Ricci, principal at Riccon Strategic Communications … Laena Fallon … Brian McGuire, policy director at Brownstein Hyatt …
… Alexandra DeSanctis, National Review staff writer … Kathryn Cameron Porter … Kyle Roberts, president of Smart Media Group … Kelsey Gorma of Miller Strategies … Fernando Lujan (h/t Susanna Quinn) … Ryan King … Richard Allen Smith … Graham Wilson … Veronique Rodman … Josh Katcher … Hammad Ul Hassan … Ryan Whalen of the Rockefeller Foundation … Alli Blakely Sydnor (h/t Ed Cash) … Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy (h/t Blair Latoff Holmes) … Megan Devlin (h/t Ben Chang) … Shoshana Weissmann … Eric Garcia … Dottie Suggs … Tricia Enright, comms director for Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) (h/ts Jon Haber) … Derrick Johnson … Anne Dudro … Richard Wachtel is 36 … Rhett Dawson … Rick Horten is 5-0 … Dawn Wilson … Diane Kopp … Robert Kraig (h/ts Teresa Vilmain)
A growing number of Republicans fear that a battery of new revelations in the far-reaching Russia investigation has dramatically heightened the legal and political danger to Donald Trump’s presidency — and threatens to consume the rest of the party, as well.
President Trump added to the tumult Saturday by announcing the abrupt exit of his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, whom he sees as lacking the political judgment and finesse to steer the White House through the treacherous months to come.
Trump remains headstrong in his belief that he can outsmart adversaries and weather any threats, according to advisers. In the Russia probe, he continues to roar denials, dubiously proclaiming that the latest allegations of wrongdoing by his former associates “totally clear” him.
But anxiety is spiking among Republican allies, who complain that Trump and the White House have no real plan for dealing with the Russia crisis while confronting a host of other troubles at home and abroad.
Facing the dawn of his third year in office and his bid for reelection, Trump is stepping into a political hailstorm. Democrats are preparing to seize control of the House in January with subpoena power to investigate corruption. Global markets are reeling from his trade war. The United States is isolated from its traditional partners. The investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference is intensifying. And court filings Friday in a separate federal case implicated Trump in a felony.
The White House is adopting what one official termed a “shrugged shoulders” strategy for the Mueller findings, calculating that most GOP base voters will believe whatever the president tells them to believe.
But some allies fret that the president’s coalition could crack apart under the growing pressure. Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump strategist who helped him navigate the most arduous phase of his 2016 campaign, predicted 2019 would be a year of “siege warfare” and cast the president’s inner circle as naively optimistic and unsophisticated.
“The Democrats are going to weaponize the Mueller report and the president needs a team that can go to the mattresses,” Bannon said. “The president can’t trust the GOP to be there when it counts . . . They don’t feel any sense of duty or responsibility to stand with Trump.”
This portrait of the Trump White House at a precarious juncture is based on interviews with 14 administration officials, presidential confidants and allies, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss private exchanges.
Rather than building a war room to manage the intersecting crises as past administrations have done, the Trump White House is understaffed, stuck in a bunker mentality and largely resigned to a plan to wing it. Political and communications operatives are mostly taking their cues from the president and letting him drive the message with his spontaneous broadsides.
“A war room? You serious?” one former White House official said when asked about internal preparations. “They’ve never had one, will never have one. They don’t know how to do one.”
Trump’s decision to change his chief of staff, however, appears to be a recognition that he needs a strong political team in place for the remainder of his first term. The leading candidate for the job is Nick Ayers, Vice President Pence’s chief of staff and an experienced campaign operative known for his political acumen and deep network in the party.
Throughout the 18-month special counsel investigation, Trump has single-handedly spun his own deceptive reality, seeking to sully the reputations of Mueller’s operation and federal law enforcement in an attempt to preemptively discredit their eventual conclusions.
The president has been telling friends that he believes the special counsel is flailing and has found nothing meaningful. “It’s all games and trying to connect dots that don’t really make sense,” one friend said in describing Trump’s view of Mueller’s progress. “Trump is angry, but he’s not really worried.”
But Mueller’s latest court filings offer new evidence of Russian efforts to forge a political alliance with Trump before he became president and detail the extent to which his former aides are cooperating with prosecutors.
Some GOP senators were particularly shaken by this week’s revelation that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had met with Mueller’s team 19 separate times — a distressing signal to them that the probe may be more serious than they had been led to assume, according to senior Republican officials.
Even in the friendliest quarters, there are fresh hints of trouble. Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson, a reliable prime-time booster of the president, faulted Trump in an interview this week for failing to keep his main campaign promises, understand the legislative process and learn how to govern effectively.
For now, Republicans on Capitol Hill are still inclined to stand by Trump and give the president the benefit of the doubt. But one pro-Trump senator said privately that a breaking point would be if Mueller documents conspiracy with Russians.
“Then they’ve lost me,” said the senator, noting that several Republican lawmakers have been willing to publicly break with Trump when they believe it is in their interests — as many did over Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s role in the brutal killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), an outspoken Trump critic and a frequent subject of his ire, said, “The president’s situation is fraught with mounting peril, and that’s apparent to everyone who’s paying any attention, which is all of my Republican colleagues.”
Another possible breaking point could come if Trump pardons his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who has elicited the president’s sympathy as he sits in solitary confinement in a Virginia prison following the collapse of his plea agreement with Mueller’s team, White House aides and Republican lawmakers said. Trump advisers said they understand that a pardon of Manafort could be difficult to defend and could prompt rebukes from Republican allies.
The special counsel on Friday accused Manafort of telling “multiple discernible lies” during interviews with prosecutors. Manafort was convicted of tax and bank fraud and has pleaded guilty to additional charges, including conspiring to defraud the United States by hiding years of income and failing to disclose lobbying work for a pro-Russian political party and politician in Ukraine.
Trump’s legal team, meanwhile, is bracing not only for new Mueller developments but also for an onslaught of congressional requests. New White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his associate, Emmet T. Flood, are the leaders inside, although both have taken pains to stay out of the spotlight.
Cipollone has been scouring the résumés of congressional Republican staffers with experience handling investigations and trying to recruit them to the White House, officials said. Meanwhile, Flood, who advised former president Bill Clinton during his impeachment, has been prepping for months to forcefully exert executive privilege once House Democrats assume the majority.
President Trump attends a Hanukkah reception in the East Room of the White House on Dec. 6, 2018. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Yet hiring remains difficult as potential staffers worry about whether they will need to hire a personal lawyer if they join and express uncertainty about the constant turmoil within the White House hierarchy, as illustrated by Kelly’s announced departure Saturday.
Bannon said he and others were urging contacts in the White House to enlist David N. Bossie, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager and a former congressional investigator who was known for his hard-edge tactics.
Trump’s lead outside attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said he and his team are busy writing a defiant “counter report” to Mueller, which the president boasted this week was 87 pages long. Giuliani described the effort as a collaboration in which he, Jay Sekulow, Jane Raskin and other lawyers draft different sections and then trade them among the group, debating how to frame various passages on the president’s conduct and Russian interference.
“We’re writing out a lot and will pick and choose what to include. We’re trying to think through every possibility,” Giuliani said. “I’m sure we’ll take the lead in defending [Trump] publicly, if he needs defense, like we always do.”
Some of Trump’s allies have been encouraging him to bolster his legal team. One confidant recalled telling the president, “You need to get you an army of lawyers who know what the hell they’re doing.”
So far, Trump’s public relations strategy mostly has been to attack Mueller, as opposed to countering the facts of his investigation. But Lanny Davis, a former Clinton lawyer, said that approach has limits.
“No matter what your client says, if you’re not ready with factual messages to rebut charges, you’ll fail,” said Davis, who now advises former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who faces possible prison time for crimes including lying to Congress about his Russia contacts. “Even if you think the Trump strategy of attacking the messenger can continue to work, it will not work once the Mueller report is done.”
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich said Clinton’s experience in 1998, when the embattled president questioned the special prosecutor and warned of GOP overreach, is instructive for Trump and Republicans, showing them how to be both combative and confident amid chaos.
“You can’t have that many smart lawyers, with the full power of the government, and not have something bad come out,” Gingrich said of the special counsel’s team. “Mueller has to find something, like Trump jaywalked 11 times. The media will go crazy for three days, screaming, ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’ ”
But, Gingrich said, “This isn’t a crisis moment for Trump or the party. Remember, we thought we had Clinton on the ropes, but Clinton kept smiling and his popularity went up.”
Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), left, and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) speak outside a reception at the British ambassador’s residence in Washington on May 19, 2018. (Erin Schaff/For The Washington Post)
The White House is looking to its hard-right supporters on Capitol Hill to serve as its political flank, in particular House Republicans such as Mark Meadows (N.C.), Jim Jordan (Ohio), and Devin Nunes (Calif.), who are frequent guests on Fox News Channel. In January, Jordan and Nunes will be the top-ranking Republicans on the House Oversight Committee and the House Select Committee on Intelligence, respectively, positioning them as public faces of the Trump defense and antagonists of the Justice Department’s leadership.
Republicans close to incoming House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said there is an implicit understanding that Jordan, Meadows and others in their orbit will be most vocal, but many rank-and-file Republicans, looking to hold on to their seats, will attempt to avoid becoming swept up in the standoff over the probe, as they have for over a year.
“Among most House Republicans, the feeling is, ‘We’re ready for this to be over with. We’re not nervous, but we’re having Mueller fatigue,’ ” Meadows said.
But Democrats say they are determined not to let the investigation end prematurely. Rep. Eric Swalwell (Calif.), who sits on the intelligence committee as well as the House Judiciary Committee, said, “Our job is to protect the investigation from the president — whether it’s firing Mueller, intimidating witnesses or obstructing the investigation.”
Trump critics, like retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz) — who has sponsored legislation that would protect Mueller but has been largely ignored by his colleagues — warned that the drumbeat of Trump loyalists in Congress, along with the president’s relentless clashes with Mueller, have lulled Republicans into a dangerous place.
“It’s like the party is a frog slowly boiling in water, being conditioned to not be worried, to not think too hard about what’s happening around them,” Flake said. “They feel at a loss about what to do because it’s the president’s party, without any doubt. So, there’s a lot of whistling by the graveyard these days.”
Giuliani dismissed Flake’s criticism in much the same way he and the president have taken on Mueller — with a barbed character attack rather than a measured rebuttal.
“He’s a bitter, bitter man,” Giuliani said of Flake. “It’s sick. Nobody likes him and they would like him gone.”
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