Biden 'optimistic' on debt talks with Republicans as default looms

WASHINGTON —President Joe Biden said Sunday he remains "optimistic" about finding an agreement with his Republican opponents to raise the US debt limit and avoid a default, which his administration warned would cause "catastrophic" consequences.

Congressional Republicans are demanding budget cuts in exchange for lifting the US borrowing limit, while the White House has insisted for months that the nation's credit should not be up for negotiation.

Alarm bells are meanwhile ringing over the possibility of a first-ever US default, with uncertainty over the actual date the government would stop being able to pay its bills.

The two sides have remained at an impasse despite weeks of warnings from government officials and bankers that a default could unleash drastic consequences, including a possible recession and likely global financial contagion.

Nonetheless, Biden said Sunday he thinks he will eventually be able to reach a deal.

"I remain optimistic because I'm a congenital optimist, but I really think there's a desire on their part as well as ours to reach agreement. I think we'll be able to do it," Biden told reporters while out on a bike ride near his beach home in Delaware.

A much-anticipated new round of debt-ceiling talks between Biden and Republican leaders, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, was postponed from Friday until the coming week.

Asked if the Tuesday meeting was still on, Biden said: "I think so."

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned a default could occur by June 1, while the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast on Friday the date of June 15.

"We shouldn't be here," Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

"If Congress failed to raise the debt limit by the time of default, we would go into a recession and it'd be catastrophic," he warned.

"The United States of America has never defaulted on its debt -- and we can't."

'MASSIVE CUTS' 

Biden has stated he wants a "clean" hike of the debt ceiling, but Republicans are insisting any extension of the country's borrowing authority, currently capped at $31.4 trillion, come with substantial curbs on spending.

"It's time to bring spending levels back to pre-Covid, and then we can talk about raising the debt ceiling," Byron Donalds, a Republican representative from Florida, told FOX News on Sunday.

"If Joe Biden brings nothing to the table, if all he does is sit there with his hands in his pockets... then he's the one leading our nation into default."

Former president Donald Trump has encouraged Republican lawmakers to hold out for a default if Biden doesn't agree to "massive cuts."

The looming possibility of a default has also threatened Biden's upcoming trip to Asia for a G7 leaders meeting, among other events in the region.

Asked by reporters Sunday if he still planned to leave this week, Biden said: "That's my plan as it stands now."

'CONSTRUCTIVE' NEGOTIATIONS 

Adeyemo acknowledged "constructive" negotiations were ongoing at the staff level, while pushing back on assertions that Biden does not want to address ballooning US debt.

"The president's laid out a plan that includes $3 trillion in debt relief over 10 years," Adeyemo said, referring to Biden's budget request unveiled in March, which featured tax increases on the wealthy and businesses.

Congressional leaders should address ways to hammer out a deal on fiscal policy, "but as we have that conversation, there is no reason we shouldn't raise the debt limit and prevent default in this country, a default that could lead to a massive recession that would cost us millions of jobs," he said.

Lael Brainard, director of the White House's National Economic Council, maintained that a deal would be reached.

"Our expectation is that Congress will do what is necessary" to avoid a default, Brainard, a former Federal Reserve vice chair, told CBS Sunday show "Face the Nation."

Biden addressed the issue on Saturday in Delaware, where he talked briefly to reporters.

"They're moving along," he said of the talks. But while there was "real discussion," he added the two sides were "not there yet."

Agence France-Presse 

Biden on cusp of presidency after gains in Pennsylvania

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Joe Biden was on the cusp of winning the presidency on Friday as he opened up narrow leads over President Donald Trump in the critical battlegrounds of Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Those put Biden in a stronger position to capture the 270 Electoral College votes needed to take the White House. The winner will lead a country facing a historic set of challenges, including a surging pandemic and deep political polarization.

Trump remained in the White House residence Friday morning as his campaign insisted the election wasn’t over. Biden was at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, as the vote count continued.

The focus on Pennsylvania, where Biden led Trump by more than 9,000 votes, and Georgia, where Biden led by more than 1,500, came as Americans entered a third full day after the election without knowing who will lead them for the next four years. The prolonged process added to the anxiety of a nation whose racial and cultural divides were inflamed during the heated campaign.

With his pathway to reelection appearing to greatly narrow, Trump was testing how far he could go in using the trappings of presidential power to undermine confidence in the vote.

On Thursday, he advanced unsupported accusations of voter fraud to falsely argue that his rival was trying to seize power in an extraordinary effort by a sitting American president to sow doubt about the democratic process.

“This is a case when they are trying to steal an election, they are trying to rig an election,” Trump said from the podium of the White House briefing room.

Biden spent Thursday trying to ease tensions and project a more traditional image of presidential leadership. After participating in a coronavirus briefing, he declared that “each ballot must be counted.”

“I ask everyone to stay calm. The process is working,” Biden said. “It is the will of the voters. No one, not anyone else who chooses the president of the United States of America.”

Trump showed no sign of giving up and was was back on Twitter around 2:30 a.m. Friday, insisting the “U.S. Supreme Court should decide!”

Trump’s erroneous claims about the integrity of the election challenged Republicans now faced with the choice of whether to break with a president who, though his grip on his office grew tenuous, commanded sky-high approval ratings from rank-and-file members of the GOP. That was especially true for those who are eyeing presidential runs of their own in 2024.

Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan, a potential presidential hopeful who has often criticized Trump, said unequivocally: “There is no defense for the President’s comments tonight undermining our Democratic process. America is counting the votes, and we must respect the results as we always have before.”

But others who are rumored to be considering a White House run of their own in four years aligned themselves with the incumbent, including Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who tweeted support for Trump’s claims, writing that “If last 24 hours have made anything clear, it’s that we need new election integrity laws NOW.”

Trump’s campaign engaged in a flurry of legal activity to try to improve the Republican president’s chances, saying it would seek a recount in Wisconsin and file lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.

Judges in Georgia and Michigan quickly dismissed Trump campaign lawsuits there on Thursday.

In Pennsylvania, officials were not allowed to process mail-in ballots until Election Day under state law. It’s a form of voting that has skewed heavily in Biden’s favor after Trump spent months claiming without proof that voting by mail would lead to widespread voter fraud.

Mail ballots from across the state were overwhelmingly breaking in Biden’s direction. A final vote total may not be clear for days because the use of mail-in ballots, which take more time to process, has surged as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Trump campaign said it was confident the president would ultimately pull out a victory in Arizona, where votes were also still being counted, including in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous area. The AP has declared Biden the winner in Arizona and said Thursday that it was monitoring the vote count as it proceeded.

“The Associated Press continues to watch and analyze vote count results from Arizona as they come in,” said Sally Buzbee, AP’s executive editor. “We will follow the facts in all cases.”

Trump’s campaign was lodging legal challenges in several states, though he faced long odds. He would have to win multiple suits in multiple states in order to stop vote counts, since more than one state was undeclared.

Some of the Trump team’s lawsuits only demand better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted. A judge in Georgia dismissed the campaign’s suit there less than 12 hours after it was filed. And a Michigan judge dismissed a Trump lawsuit over whether enough GOP challengers had access to handling of absentee ballots

Biden attorney Bob Bauer said the suits were legally “meritless.” Their only purpose, he said “is to create an opportunity for them to message falsely about what’s taking place in the electoral process.”

Weissert reported from Wilmington, Delaware. Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Alexandra Jaffe in Washington contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Seoul officials on alert over heightened risk of US-Iran conflict

SEOUL — Seoul officials said Sunday they were cautiously watching escalating tensions between the US and Iran and staying vigilant about the possible repercussions here.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has launched a task force to evaluate the current situation in the Middle East and to discuss measures to protect Koreans living in the area, the officials said.


On Friday, the US confirmed that President Donald Trump had ordered the airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani — the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the second-most powerful man in Iran — which took place at Baghdad International Airport in Iraq. The attack has raised tensions between Washington and Tehran to new heights.

Presided over by Vice Foreign Minister Cho Se-young, the inaugural meeting of the task force was held Sunday morning.

Results of the meeting were reported to Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, who directed the team to enhance the security of Korean citizens and businesses in the Middle East.

The ministry added that in coordination with the diplomatic offices in the region, it will maintain an emergency response system around the clock.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Trump, allies aim to delegitimize impeachment from the start

WASHINGTON — They’re calling it a circus, a farce and even zany.

President Donald Trump and his Republican allies spent weeks trivializing the House impeachment inquiry ahead of Tuesday’s historic unveiling of formal charges against the president.


Where Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton treated the prospect of impeachment as a serious threat to their presidencies, Trump’s boosters have tried to brush off the whole thing. Believing that acquittal by the GOP-controlled Senate is all but certain, they’re out to convince voters to punish the president’s Democratic accusers — or at least tune out the Washington spectacle.

To that end, they have belittled the impeachment process with mockery, schoolyard taunts and an unyielding insistence that Trump did not a single thing wrong. They have stonewalled, refusing to allow witnesses to testify; protested by declining to send their own lawyers to hearings; and dished out the ultimate Trumpian insult: calling the proceedings boring.

In the process, the president and his allies have largely glossed over the substance of allegations of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, making light of what is likely to be only the third presidential impeachment in the nation’s history.

It’s a strategy borne of Trump’s instincts and informed by the results of polling and focus groups. The president and his allies believe the effort has been effective, especially when it comes to keeping independent voters skeptical of the process. It is also a reflection of the country’s increasingly polarized political environment.

“Why would we legitimize this process that the American people can’t even follow, aren’t digesting,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday when asked why the White House had chosen not to participate in the House proceedings. She equated cooperation to “colluding with an illegitimate process.”

She showed her disdain for the effort by accusing Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Democrat-New York, of “playing a game of Inspector Clouseau, Secret Squirrel” by waiting so long to unveil the articles of impeachment that were announced Tuesday.

GOP critics have been going all-out to find new ways to mock what Trump has long called a “witch hunt” and a “sham.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, compared the impeachment hearings to “the cantina bar scene in Star Wars. It’s surreal.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismissed the “zaniness that’s taking place on Capitol Hill.” And Rep. Devin Nunes, the House intelligence committee’s top Republican, called the House hearings “a show trial, a planned result of three years of political operations and dirty tricks.”

But even if GOP legislators are more than willing to complain and erect parliamentary roadblocks, many lawmakers, particularly the senators who would serve as jurors in an eventual Senate trial, have been less comfortable defending the president’s conduct.


Nor has that been a priority for White House aides, who have been firing off rapid response emails about procedural unfairness but have done little to engage on the substance of the charges.

During the early days of the inquiry there was tension between the West Wing and the president’s outside allies, who felt the White House was doing too little to defend the president against the charges. Trump himself was initially unwilling to bring on new staff or set up a “war room,” concerned that such a move would suggest he felt vulnerable or make him look guilty.

Ultimately, Trump consented to the hiring of former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi and Republican strategist Tony Sayegh, a move that has helped to mollify some outside critics.

There also was a sense of confusion early on, as administration officials and allies struggled to keep up with rapidly unfolding news about Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden. Even some of the president’s closest supporters were unclear about details of his interactions with the president of Ukraine.

With little clarity about what really had happened, Republicans took aim at the process, seeing it as an easy place to start. Once the scope become clearer, officials inside and outside the building began to refine their messaging, based in part on polling and focus group testing.

America First Policies, a nonprofit backing Trump’s policies, for instance, conducted focus groups early in the process that focused specifically on independent voters who might be open to voting for Trump in 2020.

Kelly Sadler, a spokeswoman for the group, said the sessions turned up frustration with Congress over endless investigations and not perusing bread-and-butter issues. Many people, she said, felt the impeachment inquiry was highly partisan — a sentiment reflected in polling data — and felt the whole endeavor was a waste of time and money, especially given the quickly-approaching 2020 election.

The group has targeted its advertising to speak to those frustrations, which are also reflected in messaging from the American Action Network, which is tied to House GOP leadership and has spent millions on anti-impeachment ads.

As Republicans have pushed to delegitimize the House impeachment process, they also are professing great reverence for an expected Senate trial on friendlier turf. Trump sees a Senate trial as a forum where his allies will be able to publicly defend him and turn the tables on Democrats in dramatic Court TV fashion.

“It’s pretty clear the president wants a trial,” said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley. He offered a list of some of the witnesses Trump would like to call, including House intelligence committee Chairman Adam Schiff, the whistle blower whose complaint sparked the inquiry, as well as Biden and his son, Hunter, who had dealings in Ukraine.


“The president’s eager to get his story out,” Gidley said.

But Republicans in the Senate caution that Trump may not get the show he wants because Senate rules require a majority of senators to approve individual witnesses, and some are weary of creating a spectacle. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that no decisions have been made yet about the length or structure of a Senate trial.

“The Senate has two choices: It could go down the path of calling witnesses and basically having another trial or it could decide — and again 51 members could make that decision — that they have heard enough,” he said.

/atm

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

‘Serious misconduct’ by Trump takes center stage at hearing

WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee is moving swiftly to weigh findings by fellow lawmakers that President Donald Trump misused the power of his office for personal political gain and then obstructed Congress’ investigation as possible grounds for impeachment.

Responsible for drafting articles of impeachment, the Judiciary Committee prepared Wednesday morning for its first hearing since the release of a 300-page report by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee that found “serious misconduct” by the president.


The report did not render a judgment on whether Trump’s actions stemming from a July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president rose to the constitutional level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” warranting impeachment. That is for the full House to decide. But its findings involving Trump’s efforts to seek foreign intervention in the American election process provide the basis for a House vote on impeachment and a Senate trial carrying the penalty of removal from office.

“The evidence that we have found is really quite overwhelming that the president used the power of his office to secure political favors and abuse the trust American people put in him and jeopardize our security,” Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told The Associated Press.

“It was a difficult decision to go down this road because it’s so consequential for the country,” Schiff said. But “the president was the author of his own impeachment inquiry by repeatedly seeking foreign help in his election campaigns.”

Schiff added: “Americans need to understand that this president is putting his personal political interests above theirs. And that it’s endangering the country.”

The session Wednesday with legal scholars will delve into possible impeachable offenses, but the real focus will be on the panel, led by Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Democrat-New York, and made up of a sometimes boisterous, sharply partisan division of lawmakers.

In a 53-page opening statement obtained by the AP, Republican witness Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, will say that the Democrats are bringing a “slipshod impeachment” case against the president based on secondhand information. Still, Turley doesn’t excuse the president’s behavior.

“It is not wrong because President Trump is right,” according to Turley. He calls Trump’s call with Ukraine “anything but ’perfect,” as the president claims. “A case for impeachment could be made, but it cannot be made on this record,” he says.

The remaining three witnesses, all called by Democrats, will argue for impeachment, according to statements obtained by the AP.

Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill argues, “If Congress fails to impeach here, then the impeachment process has lost all meaning.”


The political risks are high for all parties as the House presses only the fourth presidential impeachment inquiry in U.S. history.

In a statement, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said, “Chairman Schiff and the Democrats utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump.” She said the report “reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of nothing.”

Trump, attending a NATO meeting in London, called the impeachment effort by Democrats “unpatriotic” and said he wouldn’t be watching Wednesday’s hearing.

The “Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report” provides a detailed, stunning, account of a shadow diplomacy run by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, resulting in layers of allegations that can be distilled into specific acts, like bribery or obstruction, and the more amorphous allegation that Trump abused his power by putting his interests above the nation.

Based on two months of an investigation sparked by a still-anonymous government whistleblower’s complaint, the report relies heavily on testimony from current and former U.S. officials who defied White House orders not to appear.

The inquiry found that Trump “solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection,” Schiff wrote in the report’s preface. In doing so, the president “sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process, and endangered U.S. national security,” the report said. When Congress began investigating, it added, Trump obstructed the investigation like no other president in history.

Along with revelations from earlier testimony, the report included previously unreleased cell phone records raising fresh questions about Giuliani’s interactions with the top Republican on the intelligence panel, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, and the White House. Nunes declined to comment. Schiff said his panel would continue its probe.

Republicans defended the president in a 123-page rebuttal claiming Trump never intended to pressure Ukraine when he asked for a “favor” — investigations of Democrats and Joe Biden. They say the military aid the White House was withholding was not being used as leverage, as Democrats claim — and besides, the $400 million was ultimately released, although only after a congressional outcry. Democrats, they argue, just want to undo the 2016 election.

For Republicans falling in line behind Trump, the inquiry is simply a “hoax.” Trump criticized the House for pushing forward with the proceedings while he was overseas, a breach of political decorum that traditionally leaves partisan differences at the water’s edge.

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy called on Democrats to end the impeachment “nightmare.” He said, “They’re concerned if they do not impeach this president they can’t beat him in an election.”


Democrats once hoped to sway Republicans to consider Trump’s removal, but they are now facing an ever-hardening partisan split over the swift-moving proceedings that are dividing Congress and the country.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faces a critical moment of her leadership as she steers the process ahead after initially resisting the impeachment inquiry, warning it was too divisive for the country and required bipartisan support.

Possible grounds for impeachment are focused on whether Trump abused his office as he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open investigations into Trump’s political rivals. At the time, Trump was withholding $400 million in military aid, jeopardizing key support as Ukraine faces an aggressive Russia at its border.

The report also accuses Trump of obstruction, becoming the “first and only” president in U.S. history to “openly and indiscriminately” defy the House’s constitutional authority to conduct the impeachment proceedings by instructing officials not to comply with subpoenas for documents and testimony.

For Democrats marching into what is now a largely partisan process, the political challenge if they proceed is to craft the impeachment articles in a way that will draw the most support from their ranks and not expose Pelosi’s majority to messy divisions, especially as Republicans stand lockstep with the president.

While liberal Democrats are pushing the party to go further and incorporate the findings from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and other actions by Trump, more centrist and moderate Democrats prefer to stick with the Ukraine matter as a simpler narrative that Americans understand.

Democrats could begin drafting articles of impeachment against the president in a matter of days, with a Judiciary Committee vote next week. The full House could vote by Christmas. Then the matter moves to the Senate for a trial in 2020.

The White House declined an invitation to participate Wednesday, with counsel Pat Cipollone denouncing the proceedings as a “baseless and highly partisan inquiry.” Cipollone, who will brief Senate Republicans on Wednesday, left open the question of whether White House officials would participate in additional House hearings.

House rules provide the president and his attorneys the right to cross-examine witnesses and review evidence before the committee, but little ability to bring forward witnesses of their own.

/atm

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

US Energy chief Perry asked to testify in impeachment probe

WASHINGTON — House investigators have called Energy Secretary Rick Perry to testify in the impeachment inquiry and issued subpoenas late Friday to a top White House lawyer and another administration official to appear.

Perry is the first member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet asked to appear before the House. His testimony is scheduled for Wednesday, according to an official working on the impeachment inquiry. The person was unauthorized to discuss it and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes indicated Friday that Perry would not appear for the closed-door hearing but would consider testifying in a public session. Perry has already defied a subpoena from the committees for Ukraine-related documents.

“The Secretary will not partake in a secret star chamber inquisition where agency counsel is forbidden to be present,” Hynes said.

“If the committee is interested in conducting a serious proceeding they are welcome to send for the Secretary’s consideration an invitation to participate in an open hearing where the Department’s counsel can be present and the American people can witness,” she said.

The subpoenas were issued to two White House officials who have already been asked to appear Monday.

One subpoena is for testimony from John Eisenberg, the lead counsel at the National Security Council, according to another person familiar with the situation, who was also unauthorized to discuss it. Eisenberg was instrumental in discussions about how to handle a White House memo recounting the Trump phone call with Ukraine that is central to the impeachment inquiry.

The House impeachment inquiry is turning to Eisenberg as investigators learn more about the concerns other officials at the White House raised with him about the Trump administration’s actions toward Ukraine.

The impeachment inquiry stems from Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy when he asked for a “favor” — to investigate Democrats and a company linked to the family of Joe Biden — as the White House was withholding military aid to the Eastern European ally as it confronts Russian aggression.

Eisenberg was among the White House lawyers privy to a discussion about moving the memo of Trump’s phone call into a highly restricted computer system normally reserved for documents about covert action. The White House eventually released a rough transcript of the call amid a government whistleblower’s complaint about it.

In testimony behind closed doors this week, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a Ukraine expert, told investigators he twice brought his concerns to the NSC’s lead counsel , presumably Eisenberg, about the call and related administration actions toward the country.


Another White House official who testified before the impeachment investigators, Tim Morrison, the Russia expert at NSC, said he, too, contacted the NSC legal office about the call, not because of any concerns it was illegal but because he was worried about how a potential leak to the public would “play out in Washington’s polarized environment.”

The other subpoena is to Brian McCormack, who works on energy policy at the Office of Management and Budget. McCormack is Perry’s former chief of staff.

Trump has blocked White House officials from testifying in the impeachment probe, which he views as illegitimate.

But an ever-growing list of current and former administration staffers has been appearing behind closed doors in the impeachment hearings.

Investigators also want to hear Wednesday from David Hale, an undersecretary at the State Department who has been mentioned in previous testimony.

Mostly, the witnesses are corroborating the core of the investigation: that Trump wanted Zelenskiy for the investigation of Democrats and the company linked to Biden’s son Hunter, while administration withheld military aid.

Democrats see the actions as a quid pro quo, trading government policy and funding for a political favor. Trump said he did nothing wrong.

Perry, who led a U.S. delegation to Ukraine for Zelenskiy’s inauguration in May, has emphatically denied hearing anyone, during his frequent meetings with Ukrainian officials, mention the Bidens or the Ukraine company that employed Hunter Biden.

Perry told the AP in Dubai last weekend that he considered the way lawmakers were pursuing impeachment improper and indicated he did not plan to testify.

The House voted this week to affirm the impeachment process and formalize the procedures ahead.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Democrats move ahead with subpoenas, Trump impeachment

WASHINGTON — House Democrats took their first concrete steps in the impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump, issuing subpoenas demanding documents from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and scheduling legal depositions for other State Department officials.

At the end of a stormy week of revelation and recrimination, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi framed the impeachment inquiry as a somber moment for a divided nation.


“This is no cause for any joy,” she said on MSNBC.

At the White House, a senior administration official confirmed Friday a key detail from the unidentified CIA whistleblower who has accused Trump of abusing the power of his office. Trump, for his part, insisted anew that his actions and words have been “perfect” and the whistleblower’s complaint might well be the work of “a partisan operative.”

The White House acknowledged that a record of the Trump phone call that is now at the center of the impeachment inquiry had been sealed away in a highly classified system at the direction of Trump’s National Security Council lawyers.

Separately, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters that the whistleblower “has protection under the law,” something Trump himself had appeared to question earlier in the day. He suggested then that his accuser “isn’t a whistleblower at all.”

Still at issue is why the rough transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president was put on “lockdown,” in the words of the whistleblower. The CIA officer said that diverting the record in an unusual way was evidence that “White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired” in the conversation.

The whistleblower complaint alleges that Trump used his office to “solicit interference from a foreign country” to help himself in next year’s U.S. election.

In the phone call, days after ordering a freeze to some military assistance for Ukraine, Trump prodded new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to dig for potentially damaging material on Democratic rival Joe Biden and volunteered the assistance of both his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

Pelosi refused to set a deadline for the probe but promised to act “expeditiously.” The House intelligence committee could draw members back to Washington next week.

Pelosi said she was praying for the president, adding, “I would say to Democrats and Republicans: We have to put country before party.”


At the White House, it was a senior administration official who acknowledged that the rough transcript of Trump’s conversation with Ukraine’s Zelenskiy had been moved to a highly classified system maintained by the National Security Council. The official was granted anonymity Friday to discuss sensitive matters.

White House attorneys had been made aware of concerns about Trump’s comments on the call even before the whistleblower sent his allegations to the intelligence community’s inspector general. Those allegations, made in mid-August, were released Thursday under heavy pressure from House Democrats.

One former official said memos of Trump calls with foreign leaders had to be severely restricted after leaks in 2017. Calls with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russia’s Vladimir Putin were among those whose distribution were kept to a minimum.

The official cautioned that administrations discuss sensitive matters with both nations, and that the treatment shouldn’t imply anything untoward on the call. Even some calls with US allies are also restricted due to discussions of classified topics. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the process.

On the Ukraine matter, Trump was keeping up his full-bore attack on the whistleblower and the unnamed “White House officials” cited in the complaint, drawing a warning from Pelosi against retaliation.

Late Thursday, Trump denounced people who might have talked to the whistleblower as “close to a spy” and suggested they engaged in treason, an act punishable by death. Then on Friday, he said the person was “sounding more and more like the so-called Whistleblower isn’t a Whistleblower at all.”

He also alleged without evidence that information in the complaint has been “proved to be so inaccurate.”

Pelosi told MSNBC, “I’m concerned about some of the president’s comments about the whistleblower.”

She said the House panels conducting the impeachment probe will make sure there’s no retaliation against people who provided information in the case. On Thursday, House Democratic chairmen called Trump’s comments “witness intimidation” and suggested efforts by him to interfere with the potential witness could be unlawful.

Trump’s Friday comment questioning the whistleblower’s status seemed to foreshadow a possible effort to argue that legal protection laws don’t apply to the person, opening a new front in the president’s defense, but Conway’s statement seemed to make that less likely.


The intelligence community’s inspector general found the whistleblower’s complaint “credible” despite finding indications of the person’s support for a different political candidate.

Legal experts said that by following proper procedures and filing a complaint with the government rather than disclosing the information to the media, the person is without question regarded as a whistleblower entitled to protections against being fired or criminally prosecuted.

“This person clearly followed the exact path he was supposed to follow,” said Debra D’Agostino, a lawyer who represents whistleblowers. “There is no basis for not calling this person a whistleblower.”

Lawyers say it also doesn’t matter for the purposes of being treated as a whistleblower if all of the allegations are borne out as entirely true, or even if political motives or partisanship did factor into the decision to come forward.

Giuliani, already in the spotlight, was scheduled to appear at a Kremlin-backed conference in Armenia on Tuesday, but he said Friday he would not be attending. The agenda showed him speaking at a session on digital financial technologies. Russian President Vladimir Putin also was scheduled to participate in the conference.

Republicans were straining under the uncertainty of being swept up in the most serious test yet of their alliance with the Trump White House.

“We owe people to take it seriously,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a onetime Trump rival who is now a member of the intelligence committee.

“Right now, I have more questions than answers,” he said. “The complaint raises serious allegations, and we need to determine whether they’re credible or not.”

A swift resolution to the impeachment inquiry may not be easy. The intelligence committee is diving in just as lawmakers leave Washington for a two-week recess, with the panel expected to work while away. One person familiar with the committee’s schedule said that members might return at the end of next week.

Findings will eventually need to be turned over to Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s Judiciary Committee, which is compiling the work of five other panels into what is expected to be articles of impeachment. The panel will need to find consensus.


Meanwhile, Trump’s reelection campaign took to accusing Democrats of trying to “steal” the 2020 election in a new ad airing in a $10 million television and digital buy next week.

The ad also attacks Democrat Biden, highlighting his efforts as vice president to make U.S. aid to Ukraine contingent on that country firing a prosecutor believed to be corrupt. The ad claims that the fired prosecutor was investigating the former vice president’s son.

In fact, the prosecutor had failed to pursue any major anti-corruption investigations, leaving Ukraine’s international donors deeply frustrated. In pressing for the prosecutor’s ouster, Biden was representing the official position of the U.S. government, which was shared by other Western allies and many in Ukraine.

/atm

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

After Texas shooting, Democrat O’Rourke accuses Trump of stoking racism

EL PASO, United States — Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke accused President Donald Trump Saturday of inciting hatred after a mass shooting in his Texas hometown that police are investigating as a possible hate crime.

Speaking to reporters outside a hospital in El Paso where he was visiting victims of the shooting, O’Rourke said Trump had proven himself a racist with his recent attacks on four ethnic minority congresswomen and his past branding of Mexicans as rapists.


“He is a racist and he stokes racism in this country. And it does not just offend our sensibilities, it fundamentally changes the character of this country and it leads to violence,” said O’Rourke, who represented El Paso in the US Congress until recently.

“We’ve had a rise in hate crimes every single one of the last three years during an administration where you have a president who’s called Mexicans rapists and criminals.”

O’Rourke was responding to questions about a manifesto purportedly written by the gunman which railed against the Hispanic “invasion” of Texas which borders Mexico.

More than 80 percent of El Paso’s population is Hispanic, according to US census figures.


Asked if any of the contents of the manifesto should “fall at the feet” of Trump, O’Rourke replied: “Yes.”

“There are still details that we are waiting on but I’m just following the lead that I’ve heard from the El Paso police department where they say there are strong indications that this shooter wrote that manifesto and that this was inspired by his hatred of people here in this community.”

A suspect being questioned by police over the shooting has not been named by the authorities, although US media have identified him as Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old who lives on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas.

After nearly ousting the incumbent Texas Senator Ted Cruz in last year’s mid-term elections, O’Rourke had been one of the favorites to challenge Trump for the presidency when he announced his candidancy in March. His campaign, however, has faltered since then.

Trump has faced growing accusations of racism since he attacked the four left-leaning lawmakers last month in a series of tweets, saying they should “go back” to their countries of origin. The president insists he hasn’t “a racist bone” in his body.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Gender gap hurts GOP, but Kavanaugh helps – McConnell

WASHINGTON  — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged Wednesday that Republicans have a longstanding gender gap when it comes to American women, but he stood by one key Senate woman, saying “nobody’s going to beat” Lisa Murkowski of Alaska despite her opposition to Brett Kavanaugh.

In an Associated Press interview, McConnell took issue with President Donald Trump, who has said Alaska voters “will never forgive” Murkowski and that she’ll “never recover” politically after bucking her party on Kavanaugh last week.


The GOP leader told the AP he doesn’t think the acrimonious battle over confirming Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court amid sexual misconduct allegations made the gap in which Republicans trail Democrats in support among women any worse. But he didn’t say that was such great news.

“I don’t see how it could be much wider than it already was,” he said. “We’ve always had that,” though in general “it clearly is wider than it used to be.”

On a positive note for his party, he said he expects the Kavanaugh confirmation fight and approval to provide an “adrenaline shot” of GOP enthusiasm at the polls. Heading into the November midterms, the party is defending its House and Senate majorities. Only six of the 51 Republicans in the Senate are women.

The GOP leader said it’s not that there aren’t enough Republican women running, but that they don’t win their elections the way Democratic women do.

“It’s a great frustration,” he said.

The 76-year-old McConnell, who’s been in the Senate since 1985 and majority leader since 2015, said one change he’s hoping to see is on the Senate’s Judiciary Committee.

The all-male line-up on the Republican side drew attention during the confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual misconduct in high school and college. He has denied the allegations.

McConnell said he’s hoping to persuade more Republican women to join the committee but hasn’t had much success in the past because “they just haven’t been interested.”

As for the accusations against Kavanaugh, he said he found Christine Blasey Ford’s account of her sexual assault “convincing” but noted that there had been no corroboration.


Alaska Sen. Murkowski was the only Republican who voted against advancing Kavanaugh’s nomination to a full roll call, and she voted “present” on the final tally. Trump has said Alaskans will make her pay.

However, “Nobody’s going to beat her,” McConnell said. He noted that Murkowski won election on write-in votes in 2010 and said, “She’s about as strong as you can possibly be in Alaska.”

The GOP leader also split from Trump to defend Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whom the president accused of leaking a private letter from Ford, the California professor who accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teens.

“I haven’t criticized Dianne,” McConnell said.

When Trump made his case against Feinstein at a rally Tuesday night, the crowd in Iowa chanted “lock her up.” Feinstein has denied that she or her staff released the private letter.

However, McConnell has been highly critical of what he calls the “mob” of protesters who swarmed the Capitol confronting senators over the Kavanaugh vote.

Asked if he considered the crowd at Trump’s rally also a mob, McConnell said: “I’m not interested in talking about tweets or what people may say at rallies.”

Facing the prospect of a tough midterm election that could sway control of the House, McConnell warned that Democrats will pay a political price if they win and then use their majority to dig into investigating Trump next year. He says it would backfire and help Trump in 2020 the way President Bill Clinton’s impeachment cost Republicans two decades ago.

“I think it’ll help the president get re-elected,” he said. “This business of presidential harassment may or may not be quite the winner they think it is.”

If control of Congress does split, he envisions a Republican Senate majority keeping full-throttle on confirming the president’s nominees — including another Supreme Court pick if there’s a vacancy on the high court. He bemoaned what he considered Democrats tying the Senate in knots with procedural votes on less controversial executive branch nominations.

“Far be it from me to complain about obstruction, I’ve done my share of it. But never just kind of mindless obstruction,” he said.

One key nomination could be for a new attorney general if the president fires Jeff Sessions, as has been hinted, after the midterm elections.

McConnell declined to weigh in on a possible replacement except to say he or she would not be coming from the ranks of his slim 51-seat Senate majority. Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas have been among those mentioned.

“It’s not going to be from our caucus, I can tell you that,” he said.

He also said he had little information about special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, but hopes it wraps up soon. “I don’t know a thing,” he said.

Questioned if the Senate leader should play a bigger role pushing back against Trump’s more combative rhetoric on minorities and other groups at a time of steep polarization, McConnell dismissed the need for such interventions.

“It’s not my job to do a routine sort of daily critique of the president’s observations,” he said. “I speak up when I think it’s necessary.”

The GOP leader downplayed the notion of a Senate that has become broken by deep partisanship and touted the accomplishments of this Congress as some of the most substantial ever.

He’s expecting a “relatively lively” lame duck session after the election and did not shy away from a possible federal government shutdown over funding for Trump’s border wall. He suggested it would be modest since Congress has already provided year-long funding for some 75% of federal operations.

“That episode, if it occurs, would be in the portion of the government we haven’t funded,” he said. “We’re committed to helping the president try to get the wall funding.”

McConnell is also preparing for his own re-election in 2020 and, if he is successful, staying on as GOP leader.

He said his approval rating has almost doubled since the Kavanaugh confirmation.

source: usa.inquirer.net

Presidents, lawmakers honor McCain’s life of service

WASHINGTON — Presidents and lawmakers from both parties honored Sen. John McCain’s decades of service to his country in the hours after his death Saturday. President Donald Trump, who once criticized McCain for being taken prisoner during the Vietnam War, said his “deepest sympathies and respect” went out to McCain’s family.

McCain, 81, died at his ranch in Arizona after a yearlong battle with brain cancer. On Saturday night, a black hearse accompanied by a police motorcade could be seen driving away from the ranch near Sedona where the Republican senator spent his final weeks.


Trump’s brief Twitter statement said “hearts and prayers” are with the McCain family. First lady Melania Trump thanked McCain for his service to the nation, which included more than five years as a prisoner of war and six terms in the Senate.

Trump and McCain were at odds until the end. The president, who mocked McCain’s capture in Vietnam during the 2016 campaign, jabbed at the senator even after his illness for voting against Republican efforts to roll back President Barack Obama’s health care law. Earlier this summer, McCain issued a blistering statement criticizing Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Former presidents, including those who blocked McCain’s own White House ambitions, offered emotional tributes.

Obama, who triumphed over McCain in the 2008 election, said that despite their differences, McCain and he shared a “fidelity to something higher – the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched, and sacrificed.”

Obama said the two political opponents “saw our political battles, even, as a privilege, something noble, an opportunity to serve as stewards of those high ideals at home, and to advance them around the world.”

Former President George W. Bush, who defeated McCain for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, called his one-time political rival “man of deep conviction and a patriot of the highest order” and a “friend whom I’ll deeply miss.”

Bush was among those expected to speak at McCain’s funeral.

McCain was the son and grandson of admirals and followed them to the U.S. Naval Academy. A pilot, he was shot down over Vietnam and held as a prisoner of war for more than five years. He went on to win a seat in the House and in 1986, the Senate, where he served for the rest of his life.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called McCain a “fascinating personality.”

“He would occasionally be in a bad place with various members, including myself, and when this would blow over it was like nothing ever happened,” McConnell said Saturday after a GOP state dinner in Lexington, Kentucky. “He also had a wicked sense of humor and it made every tense moment come out better.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who developed a friendship with McCain while they served together in the Senate, said the Arizona lawmaker will “cast a long shadow.”

“The spirit that drove him was never extinguished: we are here to commit ourselves to something bigger than ourselves,” Biden said.


McCain is expected to be remembered in Arizona and Washington before being buried, likely this week, at the Naval Academy Cemetery on a peninsula overlooking the Severn River.

Other plans were taking shape, too. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced that he wants to name the Senate building that housed McCain’s suite of offices after the Arizona senator, who served as chairman of the Commerce Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“As you go through life, you meet few truly great people. John McCain was one of them,” Schumer said. “Maybe most of all, he was a truth teller – never afraid to speak truth to power in an era where that has become all too rare.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Facebook suspends hundreds of apps over data concerns

SAN FRANCISCO, US — Facebook on Wednesday said it has suspended more than 400 of thousands of applications it has investigated to determine whether people’s personal information was being improperly shared.

Applications were suspended “due to concerns around the developers who built them or how the information people chose to share with the app may have been used,” vice president of product partnerships Ime Archibong said in a blog post.

Apps put on hold at the social network were being scrutinized more closely, according to Archibong.

The app unit launched in March by Facebook stemmed from the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal.

Facebook admitted that up to 87 million users may have had their data hijacked by Cambridge Analytica, which was working for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Archibong said that a myPersonality app was banned by the social network for not agreeing to an audit and “because it’s clear that they shared information with researchers as well as companies with only limited protections in place.”

Facebook planned to notify the approximately four million members of the social network who shared information with myPersonality, which was active mostly prior to 2012, according to Archibong.

Facebook has modified app data sharing policies since the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

“We will continue to investigate apps and make the changes needed to our platform to ensure that we are doing all we can to protect people’s information,” Archibong said.

Britain’s data regulator said last month that it will fine Facebook half a million pounds for failing to protect user data, as part of its investigation into whether personal information was misused ahead of the Brexit referendum.

The Information Commissioner’s Office began investigating the social media giant earlier this year due to the Cambridge Analytica data mishandling.


Cambridge Analytica has denied accusations and has filed for bankruptcy in the United States and Britain.

Silicon Valley-based Facebook last month acknowledged it faces multiple inquiries from regulators about the Cambridge Analytica user data scandal.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the European Parliament in May and said the social media giant is taking steps to prevent such a breach from happening again.

Zuckerberg was grilled about the breach in US Congress in April.

source: technology.inquirer.net

US transgender woman wins Democratic nod for governor in Vermont

Washington, United States — Christine Hallquist won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in the US state of Vermont on Tuesday, moving a step closer to becoming the nation’s first transgender governor, US media reported.

But she still faces an uphill battle in the general election, when she is projected to face Republican incumbent Phil Scott, who has been in office since 2016.

“HISTORY MADE! @christineforvt just became the first trans/non-binary gubernatorial candidate from a major political party in American history!” tweeted the Victory Fund, an organization that supports LGBTQ candidates.


Hallquist transitioned while heading the Vermont Electricity Coop, several years before launching her gubernatorial bid.

In 2015, “Christine made the decision, after years of holding it inside, to come out as her true self, a transgender woman, becoming the first business leader in the country to transition while in office,” according to her campaign’s website.

“Working to ensure that Vermont remains the special, inclusive and progressive place that it has always been… is what motivates Christine to seek the honor and opportunity to serve the people of Vermont as its next governor,” it says.

Hallquist beat out James Ehlers, a Navy veteran and environmentalist, and Brenda Siegel, the executive director of a dance festival, to win the Democratic nomination.

Also among the primary candidates was 14-year-old schoolboy Ethan Sonneborn, who took advantage of a quirk in the constitution of the bucolic northeastern state that imposes no age limit on running for governor.

His website proclaims him a champion for middle- and working-class families, with “the right ideas” on healthcare reform, economic development and education — never mind that he’s still years from graduating high school.

But despite praise for Sonneborn’s “maturity” and political awareness, his campaign attracted calls for Vermont lawmakers to close the loophole.

“I think we should probably take a look at that to be perfectly honest,” Governor Scott told reporters when asked if he thought 14-year-olds should be eligible to run.


“I think you should at least be able to get your driver’s license at the time that you become governor.” /kga

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Facebook moves to help users know if they got tricked by Russian propaganda during 2016 US polls

A software tool would be released by end 2017 that would allow users to know if they were taken in by so-called Russian propaganda during the last presidential campaign in the United States, as Facebook bids to help people tell if they liked or followed posts considered part of a Russian effort to meddle with the 2016 US election.

The software tool would let users see whether they engaged with Facebook pages or Instagram accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA) between January 2015 and the August before the presidential election in 2016.

The IRA is seen as a Russian resource for spreading propaganda online.

“It is important that people understand how foreign actors tried to sow division and mistrust using Facebook before and after the 2016 US election,” the leading online social network said in a blog post.

The creation of the new tool comes in the face of Congressional pressure on Facebook and other internet giants to let users know if they were exposed to Russian propaganda prior to the election.

Google, Facebook, and other tech firms joined global news organizations earlier this month in an initiative aimed at identifying “trustworthy” news sources, in the latest effort to combat online misinformation.

Microsoft and Twitter also agreed to participate in the “Trust Project” with some 75 news organizations to tag news stories which meet standards for ethics and transparency.

Google, Twitter and Facebook have come under fire for allowing the spread of bogus news – some of which was directed by Russia – ahead of the 2016 US election and in other countries.

During a quarterly earnings call with analysts this month, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg addressed criticism over allowing disinformation and manipulation during the US presidential election, just hours after the company’s top lawyer faced a grilling at a Washington congressional hearing.

“Our community continues to grow and our business is doing well,” Zuckerberg said.

“But none of that matters if our services are used in ways that don’t bring people closer together. Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits.”

Facebook told Congress that the apparent political meddling included use of its image-sharing application Instagram.

Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a hearing that Instagram posts by suspect Russian accounts were seen by some 20 million Americans last year.

The data on Instagram is on top of the estimated 126 million Americans exposed to Facebook posts from Russian entities seeking to create divisions during the election campaign.

“I’ve expressed how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust,” Zuckerberg said earlier this month.

“What they did is wrong and we are not going to stand for it.”            /kga

source: technology.inquirer.net

Trump ousts Bannon, his influential, divisive strategist

WASHINGTON— Steve Bannon, the blunt-spoken and divisive strategist who rose from Donald Trump’s conservative campaign to a top White House post, was pushed out by the president Friday, capping a turbulent seven months marked by the departure of much of Trump’s original senior staff.

The former leader of conservative Breitbart News and a favorite in the farther-right portions of the Republican Party, Bannon had pushed Trump to follow through on some of his most contentious campaign promises including his travel ban for some foreigners and his decision to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement. He returned to Breitbart News as executive chairman and chaired the Friday evening editorial meeting, the news site announced.

Barely more than a half-year in, Trump now has forced out his hardline national security adviser, his chief of staff, his press secretary (whose last day will be Aug. 31) and two communications directors — in addition to the FBI director he inherited from Barack Obama.

Bannon’s departure is especially significant since he was viewed by many as Trump’s connection to his base of most-committed voters and the protector of the disruptive, conservative agenda that propelled the celebrity businessman to the White House.

“It’s a tough pill to swallow if Steve is gone because you have a Republican West Wing that’s filled with generals and Democrats,” said former campaign strategist Sam Nunberg, shortly before the news of Bannon’s departure broke. “It would feel like the twilight zone.”

From Breitbart, there was a dramatic one-word warning.

“#WAR,” tweeted Joel B. Pollak, a senior editor at large at the news site.

Indeed, Bannon’s nationalistic, outsider conservatism served as a guiding force for Trump’s rise to office. He injected a dark populism into the campaign and sharpened its attacks on Democrat Hillary Clinton, encouraging Trump’s instinct to fight and counter-punch at every turn. When the release of a 2005 tape, in which Trump can be heard boasting about groping women, threatened to capsize the Republican’s campaign, Bannon attempted to turn the tables by gathering a group of women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault and trying to ambush the Democratic nominee at a general election debate.

Without him, Trump’s agenda is left in the hands of more moderate advisers, including his son-in-law, his daughter and his economic adviser whom Bannon has slammed as “globalist.”

But Bannon was also accused by many of his critics of leaking to reporters in a bid for self-promotion, and egging on Trump’s most damaging impulses.

Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Bannon and Chief of Staff John Kelly, only recently installed himself, had agreed that Friday would be Bannon’s last day.

“We are grateful for his service and wish him the best,” she said in the only statement from the White House.

A combative and unorthodox Republican, Bannon was a contentious presence in a White House divided by warring staff loyalties. He repeatedly clashed with other top advisers, most notably Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. His puppet-master image also drew the ire of the president, who at times bristled at the perception that Bannon was the mastermind of his winning campaign and the force behind White House policies.

One person close to Bannon said he had offered his resignation to Trump on Aug. 7. It was to go into effect a week later, the one-year anniversary of when he officially joined Trump’s presidential campaign. But the departure was delayed after the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, said the person, who spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

In fact, Bannon has been on shaky ground for weeks, and his job appeared in jeopardy when Kelly announced that he’d be embarking on a personnel review of West Wing staff.

Though Bannon had adopted a lower profile in recent weeks, he again became a flashpoint following criticism from the right of national security adviser H.R. McMaster, which some blamed on him, and Trump’s refusal to blame white nationalists for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Earlier this week, The American Prospect posted an interview in which he contradicted Trump by saying there was no military solution to the threat posed by North Korea and its nuclear ambitions. Just last week, Trump pledged to answer North Korean aggression with “fire and fury.”

Bannon also talked about purging his rivals from the Defense and State departments, as though he were in charge.

In recent remarks, the president has downplayed Bannon’s role in his campaign and passed up an opportunity to express confidence in him publicly.

“He’s a good person. He actually gets very unfair press in that regard,” Trump said earlier this week. “But we’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon.”

Trump had recently signaled to confidants that he was going to dismiss Bannon but had not settled on a timeframe, according to another person who had discussed the matter with the president but was not authorized to speak publicly about private discussions and insisted on anonymity. Still, Bannon had been telling people as recently as this week that he believed his job was safe and he would leave only if fired.

Several sources said Bannon has been hinting for weeks that he might soon return to the helm of Breitbart News. At one point he was casually discussing the matter as though it was a certainty, according to a Bannon associate who demanded anonymity to share private conversations.

Bannon told Bloomberg politics in an interview that he’ll be continuing to fight the same fights, just from outside the White House.

“If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents — on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America,” Bannon told the outlet.

Still, Bannon is telling allies he intends to hold the administration accountable if it falters on campaign promises.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Trump says Putin favored Clinton for president

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump says he gets along “very, very well” with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But he says the Russian leader would have preferred to have his 2016 rival Hillary Clinton in the White House.

Trump tells Christian broadcast station CBN in an interview taped Wednesday that Clinton would have weakened the U.S. military and driven up energy prices — two things Putin would have welcomed.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russian government meddled in the 2016 election to bolster Trump, and to hurt Clinton.

Trump also says in his first interview following a lengthy face-to-face meeting with Putin that he thinks the two “get along very, very well.” But he says Putin will always want “what’s good for Russia, and I want what’s good for the United States.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

British PM Theresa May loses majority, faces pressure to resign

LONDON—British Prime Minister Theresa May faced pressure to resign on Friday after losing her parliamentary majority, plunging the country into uncertainty as Brexit talks loom.

The pound fell sharply amid fears the Conservative leader will be unable to form a government and could even be forced out of office after a troubled campaign overshadowed by two terror attacks.

After being re-elected with an increased majority in the London commuter seat of Maidenhead, May said Britain “needs a period of stability” as it prepares for the complicated process of withdrawing from the European Union.

She said that while the full results had yet to emerge, her party seemed to have won the most seats and “it would be incumbent on us to ensure we have that period of stability”.

But Leftist opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose Labour party surged from 20 points behind, urged May to quit, saying she had “lost votes, lost support and lost confidence”.

Former Conservative minister Anna Soubry, who just held onto her seat, said May was “in a very difficult place” following a “dreadful campaign”.

With a handful of seats still to be declared, the Conservatives were predicted to win 319 seats, down from 331 in 2015 — yet another upset in a turbulent year since the EU referendum in June 2016.

They were mathematically unable to reach the 326 mark that would give them a majority, meaning they will have to form an informal or formal alliance to forward their agenda.

Labour are expected to increase their share from 229 to 260 seats, resulting in a hung parliament.

May, a 60-year-old vicar’s daughter, is now facing questions over her judgement in calling the election three years early and risking her party’s slim but stable majority of 17.

“It is exactly the opposite of why she held the election and she then has to go and negotiate Brexit in that weakened position,” said Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics.

Sterling fell nearly two percent against the dollar on the back of the exit poll, as investors questioned who was now going to control the Brexit process.

Early newspaper editions reflected the drama, with headlines such as “Britain on a knife edge”, “Mayhem” and “Hanging by a thread”.

In a night that threatened to redraw the political landscape once again, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which won 12.5 percent of the vote two years ago and was a driving force behind the Brexit vote, was all but wiped out, hovering around two percent.

The pro-European Liberal Democrats, who have campaigned for a second EU referendum, increased their number of seats from nine, but their former leader Nick Clegg lost his seat.

Meanwhile the Scottish National Party of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, which has dominated politics north of the border for a decade and called for a new independence vote after Brexit, was tipped to lose around 21 of its 54 seats.

Deputy leader Angus Robertson, one of the strongest SNP performers in the House of Commons, was an early casualty.

‘Pressure to resign’

May, who took over after last year’s Brexit referendum, began the formal two-year process of leaving the EU on March 29, promising to take Britain out of the single market and cut immigration.

Seeking to capitalize on sky-high popularity ratings, she called the election a few weeks later, urging voters to give her a stronger mandate to go into Brexit talks that are expected to begin as early as June 19.

Officials in Brussels were hopeful the election would allow her to make compromises, but this has been thrown into question by the prospect of a hung parliament.

“It creates another layer of uncertainty ahead of the Brexit negotiations,” said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at OANDA currency traders.

Despite campaigning against Brexit, Labour has accepted the result but promised to avoid a “hard Brexit”, focusing on maintaining economic ties with the bloc.

Barely a month ago, the center-left party seemed doomed to lose the election, plagued by internal divisions over its direction under veteran socialist Corbyn.

But May’s botched announcement of a reform in funding for elderly care, a strong grassroots campaign by Corbyn and the terror attacks, which increased scrutiny of her time as interior minister, changed the game.

“Even if she manages to get just enough seats it will be seen as a failure and she may indeed be under pressure to resign as leader quite quickly,” said Paula Surridge, senior lecturer at the University of Bristol.

Terror in the campaign

Britain has been hit with three terror attacks since March, and campaigning was twice suspended.

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a pop concert in Manchester on May 22, killing 22 people.

Last Saturday, three assailants wearing fake suicide vests mowed down pedestrians and launched a stabbing rampage around London Bridge, killing eight people before being shot dead by police.

The attacks led to scrutiny over May’s time as interior minister from 2010 to 2016, particularly since it emerged that some of the attackers had been known to police and security services.

Labour seized on steep cuts in police numbers implemented as part of a Conservative austerity program, although May insisted she had protected funding for counter-terrorism.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Clinton says FBI chief and Putin cost her election

NEW YORK—Hillary Clinton on Tuesday laid the blame for her defeat in last year’s White House race squarely at the feet of FBI director James Comey and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, saying they had “scared off” voters.

The Democrat, speaking at a charity luncheon in New York, said she took “absolute personal responsibility” for a series of campaign blunders that contributed to her loss against Donald Trump.

But she pointed a finger at Russian hacking and interference and at the Federal Bureau of Investigation director, who revealed just before the November 8 election he was re-opening a probe into Clinton’s use of a personal email server while secretary of state.

“I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28th and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me, but got scared off,” Clinton said.

“If the election had been on October 27, I’d be your president.”

In January the US intelligence community announced it had concluded Russia interfered in the election — and that Putin himself ordered a campaign to undermine the US democratic process and harm Clinton’s electability in order to help Trump win.

Clinton described the Russian president as someone who was “not a member of my fan club.”

“He certainly interfered in our election and it was clear he hurt me and helped my opponent,” she said.

Clinton pointed to the release of an old video tape on October 7 on which Trump is heard crudely discussing groping women, and how “within an hour or two” of the tapes’ release, the Russian theft of Clinton staffers’ emails were made public on WikiLeaks.

“What a coincidence. You just can’t make this stuff up,” she said.

Clinton’s remarks — which echoed CIA comments branding WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service” abetted by the likes of Russia — were the most extensive and direct about her loss since the shock result last year.

“The reason why I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last 10 days,” she said.

‘Everybody but herself’

Political analysts widely consider that Clinton fell short in part because she failed to mobilize the coalition of non-whites, young voters, single women and college-educated whites who propelled Barack Obama to victory in 2008 and 2012.

She was also faulted for not spending enough campaign time in traditionally Democratic strongholds Michigan and Wisconsin, states which fell to Trump on election day.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that Democrats have focused on Russian hacking — and alleged cooperation between Moscow and Trump associates — to mask their bitter defeat.

“The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly… so they made up a story — RUSSIA. Fake news!” Trump tweeted in February.

Clinton blamed “everybody but herself,” Republican congressman Jeff Duncan said on Twitter.

The 69-year-old former first lady, US senator and secretary of state has spent decades in the public spotlight.

“I’m now back to being an active citizen and part of the resistance,” she said, referring to the informal movement opposed to the Republican president.

Clinton is writing a book about her experiences, to be released later this year, and said it has been a “painful process” to relive the campaign and the mistakes she made.

“You’ll read my confession and my request for absolution,” she said.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

S. Korea’s longtime ‘princess’ leaves in disgrace

SEOUL — The corridors of power have been home to South Korea’s Park Geun-hye as a child, de facto first lady, and president.

She leaves them in disgrace, crippled by a corruption scandal that made her the country’s first head of state to be removed by impeachment.

Now 65, Park grew up in the spotlight at the Blue House, the presidential complex just north of one of Seoul’s royal palaces, enjoying a pampered life as the eldest child of military dictator Park Chung-hee.

Despite rights abuses, her father oversaw the country’s rapid economic development during his 1961-1979 rule, with the first family treated as royalty by some supporters and Park dubbed as a young “princess”—a nickname that endured for decades.

The assassinations of both her parents five years apart in the 1970s only further fanned sympathy for her.

Park’s mother, who was widely praised as a dutiful wife and caring mother in the still traditionalist society of the day, was murdered by a Korean-Japanese believed to have been acting on Pyongyang’s orders.

A student in France at the time, Park returned home to assume the role of first lady until her father was killed by his own security chief in 1979.

She subsequently kept a low profile for nearly two decades, until she made a successful 1998 bid to become a lawmaker as the South reeled from the fallout of the Asian financial crisis.

Instant political star

She became an instant political star among older conservative Koreans who fondly remembered her mother and revered her father for helping pull a war-ravaged nation out of poverty.

Adept at taking advantage of the nostalgia for them and the sympathy for her, she frequently peppered her campaign speeches with the phrase, “After I tragically lost my parents to assassins’ bullets.”

Park rose quickly up the political ladder, earning the nickname “the queen of elections” due to her voters’ unwavering loyalty.

The fact that Park never married and was estranged from her two siblings was part of her appeal, in a country where leaders had often been embroiled in major corruption scandals involving relatives.

Virgin queen

“I’m married to the Republic of Korea. I have no children. South Koreans are my family,” Park once said, citing her role model as Elizabeth I of England, known as the “Virgin Queen.”

Eventually Park was elected the South’s first female president in 2012, winning the highest vote share of any candidate in the democratic era.

But it was the family of a shady religious figure she chose as a mentor who ultimately sowed the seeds of her downfall.

Her relationship with Choi Tae-min, the seven-times-married founder of a cult-like group 40 years her senior, began in the 1970s when he sent her letters claiming that he had seen her dead mother in his dreams.

His influence grew until a US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks noted widespread rumors that he had “complete control over Park’s body and soul.”

He died in 1994, and his daughter Choi Soon-sil, already a friend who handled Park’s daily life including her wardrobe choices, inherited his role.

Park is accused of colluding with her for years to squeeze tens of millions of dollars from South Korean businesses, including many of the country’s biggest companies, in exchange for governmental favors.

Choi is on trial for coercion and abuse of power, while Lee Jae-yong, the de facto leader of the world’s biggest smartphone maker Samsung, has been indicted for bribery, corruption and other offenses.

Park apologized several times in tearful televised addresses, painting herself as a lonely, isolated leader whose main offense was to place too much trust in a friend.

“South Koreans, since I took office, I have lived a lonely life,” Park said.

Choi “stayed with me during my most difficult times,” she added. “It is a fact that I let my guard down.”

But the scandal was too much even for many of her supporters, prompting millions to take to the streets calling for her ouster and sending her once-bulletproof approval ratings to record lows.

Many in her own party turned against her to vote for her impeachment in parliament, leaving it to the constitutional court to have the final say.

‘Obsession with power’

The scandal has exposed allegedly corrupt ties between politics and business, as in Park’s father’s time, and his divisive legacy has always dogged her political career, with critics accusing her of inheriting his authoritarian streak.

State probes have portrayed Park as a solitary, aloof figure who preferred staying at her residence to meeting advisors at the office, overly focused on her appearance and showing little tolerance for criticism.

One official who was her chief of staff for two years told a parliamentary hearing that he often went entire weeks without seeing her at all—an experience echoed by many other senior personnel.

Park was also accused of negligence over the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014, when more than 300 people, mostly schoolchildren, drowned in the South’s worst disaster for decades.

Separately, Park is accused of ordering officials to crack down on and punish thousands of artists who voiced criticism of her.

“Instead of the father’s intelligence, insight and determination to  build the economy, she only inherited the worst [parts] of him: obsession with power … and intolerance for critics,” Chun Yu-ok, a former ally and senior lawmaker in Park’s party, wrote in a recent memoir.

“Her downfall is a reminder for all South Koreans that now is time to finally say goodbye to our past,” he said.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Obama’s parting message: ‘We’re going to be OK’

WASHINGTON — “We’re going to be OK.”

In the final minutes of his final presidential news conference, Barack Obama insisted he’s not just tossing out reassuring platitudes about the nation’s future.

It’s what he really believes.

“This is not just a matter of no-drama Obama,” he said. “It is true that behind closed doors I curse more than I do publicly. And sometimes I get mad and frustrated like everybody else does. But at my core, I think we’re going to be OK.”

It is what he chose as the parting message for what is most likely his last extended remarks as president.

Processing the November election results in an intensely personal frame, Obama spoke at length about how his daughters, Sasha and Malia, felt about Donald Trump’s election.

“They don’t mope,” he said – a noteworthy comment to come from any parent of teenage girls.

He said they were disappointed, but also resilient.

“We’ve tried to teach them hope,” Obama said. “The only thing that is the end of the world is the end of the world.”

This, then, is not the end of the world.

“You get knocked down, you get up, you brush yourself off and you get back to work,” he said. “That tended to be their attitude.”

That said, the outgoing president allowed, neither of his daughters is interested in going into politics.

In that, he added with a grin, “I think their mother’s influence shows.”

He cast his daughters as emblematic of the rising generation, and of the promise of America’s future.

Yes, democracy is messy, he said, but there are more good people than bad and things will turn out just fine.

“We just have to fight for it. We have to work for it and we have to not take it for granted.”

Obama out. –Nancy Benac

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Clinton, Trump fight to the finish in bitter US presidential vote

LEESBURG, Virginia—White House rivals Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were still flailing for a knockout blow on Monday as a presidential race that has cast a pall over US democracy neared its end.

With one day of campaigning left, both sides had packed schedules in the swing states that will decide whether the Democratic Party candidate can convert her slim opinion poll lead into final victory.

The 70-year-old Trump, a populist tycoon who coopted the Republican Party and created a raucous, nativist grassroots movement in his own image, was still campaigning on Sunday midnight.



Branding 69-year-old Clinton the “most corrupt candidate ever to seek the office of the presidency,” he urged supporters to “deliver justice at the ballot box on Nov. 8.”

Clinton, a former US secretary of state running to become America’s first female president, had events planned through Monday midnight to take her into polling day itself.

The Democrat spent the last eight days of campaigning under a renewed FBI inquiry into whether she had exposed US secrets by using a private e-mail server at the state department.

Note of optimism

That burden was finally lifted on Sunday, when the FBI confirmed it would not seek criminal charges, but at the cost of another cycle of headlines about an issue that has hurt her.

She tried to end Sunday’s round of rallies on a note of optimism about the United States, albeit couched as a warning that her supporters need to rise to counter the Trump threat.

“I really want each and every one of us to think for a moment about how we would feel on Nov. 9, if we were not successful,” she said in Manchester, New Hampshire.

“When your kids and grandkids ask you what you did in 2016, when everything was on the line, I hope you’ll be able to say you voted for a better, stronger, fairer America,” she added.

World markets were rocked last month when the renewed FBI probe threatened to sink Clinton’s chances, but Asian, European and US exchanges opened higher after that threat was lifted.

But Trump came back fighting, and experts said the renewed scandal had already damaged the former first lady’s chance of succeeding President Barack Obama.

Clinton’s lead dropped from 5.7 to 2.9 percentage points in the week since the scandal resurfaced, according to influential data journalist Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com.

Trump is predicting a ballot upset on a par with Britain’s shock vote this year to quit the European Union, or what on Sunday he called: “Brexit plus, plus, plus.”

All-out
Clinton has booked a star-studded roster of supporters—headlined by President Obama and rock star Bruce Springsteen—for her final events on Monday.

But Trump is also touring key swing states and was determined not to let Clinton off the hook over her e-mails, a symbol for his supporters of the corruption of the Washington elite.

“The rank-and-file special agents of the FBI won’t let her get away with her terrible crimes,” Trump told a rally in Michigan, a state that was won comfortably by Obama in 2012.

“Right now she’s being protected by a rigged system. It’s a totally rigged system. I’ve been saying it for a long time,” he declared, as his supporters chanted “Lock her up!”

Opinion polls tightened

Late last month, with Clinton seemingly on a glide path to victory, a renewed FBI investigation in Clinton’s e-mail use sent shock waves through both campaigns.

Trump seized on the opening, condemning Clinton’s “criminal scheme” and arguing that she is unfit to be president.

He has previously threatened to reject the result of Tuesday’s vote if he loses, alleging that the race has been “rigged” by the media and the establishment elite.

Opinion polls tightened as Trump began to recover ground he had lost after several women accused him of sexual assault, and the race looked headed for a photo finish.

Clinton made no direct reference to her reprieve during her Sunday campaign stops.

Russian interference

Instead, she hammered her opponent over his sometimes ugly rhetoric and, implicitly, the alleged covert Russian interference that have poisoned the race.

“There are powerful forces inside and outside of America that do threaten to pull us apart,” she said. “We’ve arrived at a moment of reckoning in this election. Our core values as Americans are being tested.”

If Clinton wins, she will seek to build on Obama’s cautious but progressive legacy, including his controversial health insurance reforms.

Trump has vowed to tear up the healthcare reform, along with free trade agreements, to rebuild a “depleted” US military and review US alliances. —AFP

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net