Tag Archives: FBI probe

national news

Kushner, under scrutiny, to lead WH ‘war room’

How does this work?

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has been identified as the subject of an FBI investigation into “the Russia thing” that is bedeviling the Trump administration.

Now we hear that Kushner is going to lead a team effort within the White House to combat the myriad questions that keep dogging the president, his campaign and his senior White House staff — of which Kushner is a member!

How in the world does Kushner separate himself from the very probe while leading the effort to fight it?

To be fair, the FBI is likely to look into what Kushner knows about the Russia matter, not what he has done … allegedly.

The young man is about to undertake a multi-tasking effort that might not have any equal in American political history.

national news

By all means, yank Kushner’s top-secret clearance

Congressional Democrats are making a reasonable demand of the Trump administration, which is to strip White House adviser Jared Kushner of his top-secret security clearance … at least for the time being.

It’s not a simple task, of course. Kushner happens to be the son-in-law to the president of the United States. He’s also under “scrutiny” by the FBI, which is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into I’ve grown fond of calling the “Russia thing.”

That “thing” involves potential contact between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government. Kushner happens to be a principal actor in all that drama.

Trump hired him to be a senior adviser. Kushner doesn’t get paid but he has unfettered access to the president. He does not have any prior government experience. He has zero credentials to deal with foreign government leaders, yet the president considers him “qualified” to be a liaison between the administration and governments in the Middle East.

He’s also known to be a successful businessman. He’s had plenty of exposure to Russian business executive and government officials. Has he crossed any lines that might pose serious trouble for his father-in-law? That’s what the FBI is investigating.

Until the FBI reaches its conclusion, and if that conclusion clears Kushner, he has no business sitting at the president’s side during high-level meetings. He shouldn’t be privy to information reserved for the president and his national security team.

Let’s allow the FBI probe to continue. If the young man skates into the clear, fine. If not … well, then we’ve got a whole set of other problems with which to deal.

Until then, Kushner should be sitting at the kids’ table — in another room away from where national secrets are being discussed.

legal news, national news

Can’t we find a law enforcement pro to lead FBI?

We live in a gigantic country that is full of qualified patriots who are steeped in law enforcement experience.

One of them, somewhere, ought to be able lead the FBI. Don’t you think? One of them ought to be tough enough to withstand the pressure of leading an organization under intense fire at the moment as it probes questions about the president of the United States.

I mention this because a leading politician, former Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, announced that he no longer wants to be considered for the FBI directorship.

Lieberman had received a lot of pushback from U.S. Senate Democrats who, I reckon, haven’t forgiven him for backing Republican Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Lieberman ended up leaving the Democratic Party and served for a time as an independent in the Senate.

In reality, though, Lieberman would have been a terrible choice. Why? He’s a politician. He’s got decades of political experience in Connecticut and in Washington. He’s not a bad guy. He came within just a few votes of being elected vice president in 2000 as Al Gore’s running mate.

The FBI — which has been reeling since Donald J. Trump fired former director James Comey — needs a pro to serve as director. It needs an inherently non-political figure. It needs someone whose integrity cannot be questioned by anyone on either side of the partisan aisle. It needs a director who can withstand the heat that is sure to come as the FBI probe into Donald J. Trump’s Russia connection gets closer to its conclusion.

Who would that person be? I haven’t the faintest idea.

As one of more than 300 million American citizens, I am absolutely certain that someone lives in this great country of ours who fits the bill perfectly.

International news

‘Scrutiny’ brings more pressure to Trump

My handy-dandy American Heritage dictionary defines “scrutiny” this way: A close, careful examination.

So, what does that mean for Donald J. Trump son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is now under “scrutiny” by the FBI?

It means the feds are going to look closely and carefully at what his contacts with the Russian government might have meant to his father-in-law’s presidential campaign and the presidency to which he was elected.

This is a serious development in the still-burgeoning controversies that are threatening to swallow whole the Trump administration.

Media are reporting tonight that the FBI is looking at Kushner’s role in the Trump administration. Does “scrutiny” mean the FBI suspects Kushner of doing something wrong? No. It does mean that the FBI thinks he might have pertinent information to the investigation that is underway at many levels.

The Russia relationship is baffling in the extreme. Donald Trump cannot bring himself to speak negatively of Vladimir Putin. He trashes political foes here at home; he is understandably quick to pull the verbal trigger on assorted international bad guys — such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

Russia and Putin, though, remain ensconced in a no-criticism zone. Kushner appears to be as close to the “Russia thing” as anyone associated with the president’s inner circle.

I would hate to be anyone close to Donald Trump at this moment. He got the news while overseas, where he is the middle of a moderately successful series of meetings with friendly heads of state.

The president is going to come home, though, to a spate of even more bad news. I believe the FBI scrutiny of Jared Kushner is going to keep the president up at night.

national news, political news

Impeachment? Not likely with this Congress

John Podesta knows a thing or two about impeachment. He served as White House chief of staff for a president who was impeached by the House of Representatives and put on trial in the Senate.

Podesta has looked at the political landscape and reports that he doesn’t see impeachment on the horizon for Donald J. Trump.

I have to agree with his assessment.

The issue is the makeup of the body that would file articles of impeachment.

Podesta seems to think, according to his comments to the Washington Post, that Trump might deserve to be impeached, but he doesn’t think the current House has the guts to do it. He allegedly sought to quash an FBI investigation into his campaign’s relationship with Russia. The Justice Department has assigned a special counsel to look at the matter.

Consider the 20th century’s two big impeachment moments.

* One of them occurred in 1974. The House was in control of Democrats. The president, Richard Nixon, was a Republican. Nixon stood accused of obstructing justice in the Watergate scandal. The House Judiciary Committee, with its Democratic majority, approved articles of impeachment and referred them to the full House.

President Nixon’s impeachment was a done deal. It took a stern lecture from the late Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater to persuade the president to give up the fight; Nixon quit the presidency the next day.

* The other occurred in 1998. Republicans controlled the House and the Senate. The special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, began his probe by looking at a real estate matter involving President Clinton and his wife, Hillary — both of whom are Democrats. He expanded it to include an extramarital dalliance the president was having with a young woman. He summoned the president to testify before a federal grand jury; the president was untruthful.

He was impeached on obstruction and perjury charges. The Senate acquitted him. Again, politics — just as it did in 1974 — played a role in moving the impeachment forward.

Would the Republicans who control Congress have the stones to impeach a fellow Republican who also happens to be president? Podesta doesn’t think so. Neither do I.

Impeachment is a political exercise in the extreme. Sure, the members of Congress talk a good game about seeking justice, to punish the president for committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The reality is that it all rests on politics.

The previous century provided ample evidence of the politics associated with this serious matter. I have no reason to believe — at least not yet — that anything has changed.

legal news, national news, political news

It keeps getting deeper and darker for POTUS

The hits just keep on piling up on Donald John Trump.

The latest batch of them involves more media reporting that the president asked intelligence officials to push back on the FBI investigation into that “Russia thing.” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers said, um, “No can do.”

The FBI is looking into allegations that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russians who were hacking into our electoral system, seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election outcome — in Trump’s favor!

Trump keeps denying any collusion. Yet these reports keep piling up suggesting something quite different.

The Washington Post has reported this latest live grenade to blow up in the president’s face as he travels through the Middle East and Europe on his first overseas venture as leader of the free world.

A special counsel, Robert Mueller, already is on the job. Senate and House intelligence committees are at work as well in the hunt for the truth.

And, yes, so are the media — the scorned “enemy of the American people” and purveyors of “fake news.”

I am not going to predict with — as the late PBS talking head John McLaughlin would say — any “metaphysical certitude” that the president is heading straight for impeachment. But certain elements of the progression of events keep suggesting something such as that might occur.

Michael Flynn is going to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination as the FBI looks into the former national security adviser’s Russia involvement; former FBI director James Comey is going to talk publicly with congressional committees about memos he wrote chronicling some alleged attempts by Trump to obstruct justice; and Mueller is going to talk to a current senior White House aide who has been deemed a “person of interest” in this ongoing investigation.

Just think: Donald Trump’s time in the only political office he ever sought is just beginning.

International news, legal news, national news, political news

Invoking the Fifth usually doesn’t imply innocence

What in the world are we to make of this bit of news, that former national security adviser Michael Flynn will reject a U.S. Senate committee subpoena and invoke his Fifth Amendment rights protecting him against self-incrimination?

Let me think. My takeaway is that Gen. Flynn doesn’t want the world to know certain things about, um, certain foreign governments.

Flynn’s role in the still-burgeoning controversy surrounding Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign and its potential relationship with the Russian government has taken another, apparently far more serious, turn.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ap-source-says-flynn-will-invoke-fifth-amendment/ar-BBBowHX?li=BBnb7Kz

The Associated Press is reporting that Flynn won’t appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee and that he’ll clam up under his constitutional protection.

If someone were to ask me, I’d say that he doesn’t want to say something that’s going to get him tossed into prison. What might that be?

Hmm. It might be that he did do something potentially illegal when he went to work for Turkey’s government, drawing a substantial stipend for the Turks as a lobbyist while also serving as the president’s national security adviser.

Gen. Flynn, who also served on Trump’s transition team, also might have said something to say about Russian officials who had worked to undermine the 2016 presidential election. There well might be some collusion between the Trump team and the Russians to be revealed … yes? Well, maybe.

Flynn also reportedly sought immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony after the president fired him as national security adviser.

I’m smelling something terribly foul. Do you smell it, too?

International news, national news, political news

Rep. Chaffetz spoils possible role as truth-seeker

I had thought Jason Chaffetz might emerge in the U.S. House of Representatives as a lame duck with some bite.

The Utah Republican for now chairs the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform. He’s about to surrender that chairmanship and apparently his congressional seat as he heads back home to ponder what he wants to do next.

My hope had been that Chaffetz would be unafraid of political blowback as the congressional probe of Donald J. Trump’s relationship with Russian government officials picked up steam. The committee he chairs plays a principal role in the search for the truth.

Thus, I figured that Chaffetz — free from the pressure of seeking re-election — would be unleashed as he pursued all the facts.

But he’s going to leave the House of Reps at the end of June. His committee chairmanship will go to someone else.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republicans-watch-their-step-in-a-slow-retreat-from-trump/ar-BBBmjUS?li=BBnbcA1

In the meantime, there’s reporting now that congressional Republicans are beginning to pull back from the president as his domestic political troubles deepen even as he continues his first overseas trip as president. Trump’s journey to the Middle East got off to a good start with his speech at the Arab summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His trip continues in Israel, where he well might face a rockier reception, given the trouble he got into regarding his release of Israeli intelligence information to visiting Russian dignitaries at the White House the other day.

There well might come a moment if the FBI probe deepens into the president’s Russia connections, or as the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller picks up steam when key congressional Republicans tell the president the political truth. That his support is dwindling to dangerous levels.

I had thought that Chairman Chaffetz might emerge as that GOP go-to guy, given that he won’t face a re-election in 2018. That’s not going to happen.

At issue, of course, is whether Russian hackers sought to influence the 2016 presidential election. Chaffetz lamented today that the president has been eerily silent about those allegations, other than to dismiss them and disparage the intelligence agencies that have concluded that the Russians did try to manipulate the election.

“You would like, I would think, the president to kind of beat (Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov) over the head with the fact that, if they actually did interfere in any way, shape or form, how wrong that is and how outraged America is on both sides of the aisle,” Chaffetz said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The president hasn’t done such a thing. Instead, he bragged about the “great intel” he had and spilled many of the beans about what he had regarding certain Islamic State activities in the Middle East.

No can do, Mr. President.

As for Chaffetz, he’s nearly a goner and he’ll hand over a key congressional committee gavel to a politician who won’t nearly be as candid as the lame-duck chairman.

legal news, national news

Comey set to return to center stage

I understand James Comey is a good lawyer.

He knows the consequences of committing perjury. He understands that when he takes an oath he is bound to tell the whole truth.

The former FBI director, whom Donald J. Trump fired just the other day, is heading to Capitol Hill in a few days to talk to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Reports now are surfacing that Comey is going to tell senators that the president sought to meddle in an investigation Comey was leading. Trump is the focus of the investigation, which now has been taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller. Comey said the FBI was examining whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Trump denies collusion. He has told TV networks and other media that he fired Comey because of the “Russia thing” and Comey’s investigation into the actions of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. He also reportedly blabbed as much to Russian dignitaries who were visiting him in the Oval Office; the Russians have denied that Trump said discussed Comey.

Hmmm.

Comey on the stand

Now we’ll get to hear from the former FBI director himself. I’m quite certain that senators — particularly those on the Democratic side of the dais — are going to get right to the heart of the Big Question.

Did the president of the United States — in your opinion — obstruct justice by asking the FBI director to shut down his probe of Flynn and the campaign’s Russia connection?

Be sure you tell us the whole truth, Mr. Comey.

national news, political news

No matter the result, blowback will be ugly

Donald J. Trump’s current political troubles are likely to end one of two ways.

The special counsel and two congressional committees will find criminal conduct involving the president, his campaign and the Russian government — and he’ll be impeached and possibly convicted.

Or …

The special counsel and those committees will come up empty and will decide there’s no “there” there. The president will be absolved of wrongdoing and he’ll complete his term in office.

Either outcome bodes ugly for those of who have an interest in government, in politics and in public policy. The ugliness will be the result of the president’s reaction to either outcome.

History already has shown that Trump cannot — or will not — let go of the past. Witness his continual recitation of his stunning, shocking victory in the 2016 presidential election.

Consider the potential outcomes:

Trump gets impeached and then convicted. The president will not go quietly. He will not leave office as President Nixon did in August 1974 and then disappear for years. We won’t see Trump fly away aboard Marine One from the White House lawn, grinning broadly, waving to his friends, White House staff and political supporters.

Oh, no. He’ll be angry. He’ll be lashing out continually against the media, Democrats, turncoat Republicans, Congress in general. He might even call for the abolition of the U.S. Constitution for all I know.

Once in some form of retirement, he’ll be tweeting his fingers to the bone. He’ll be dishing out insults by the minute, let alone the hour. He’ll threaten to sue anyone for any reason that comes to mind.

And the media he hates — allegedly — will lap it up, report it dutifully and give him all the platform he needs to seek some form of revenge against the system that “betrayed” him.

If the president is impeached and then acquitted by the Senate, well, ratchet all of the previous up by a factor of, oh, several thousand.

The president is clean. This outcome could be just as ugly as the other one.

Think of how the president is going to play this one out. He’ll stage campaign-style rallies. He’ll savage the media and his political enemies. He likely could re-tell the story of his “historic” electoral victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton. The president is not likely to accept victory like a gentleman, praise the system for doing its job, thank the special counsel, Robert Mueller, for his service to the country and wish him well as he returns to private law practice.

The president will seethe and stew over the very idea that he would be the subject of an FBI probe, of an investigation by the legislative branch of government.

Moreover, he’ll do all of it in public. He likely would seize the limelight at every opportunity. He’ll create opportunities when they don’t present themselves.

All of this is my way of telling you that no matter the outcome of these investigations, we — the American public — are going to be disserved by the president of the United States.

Just as he showed during the 2016 GOP primary campaign, he exhibited a clearly defined “sore loser” trait. When he won the whole thing, he has shown as well that he is a “sore winner.”

Thus, I am not looking forward to the end of this investigation, no matter how it turns out.