President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Baltic leaders in the East Room of the White House. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Tuesday that he will make a decision soon on U.S. force levels in Syria, saying he wants to “bring our troops back home” as soon as possible and complaining that interventions in the Muslim World had brought America “nothing except death and destruction.”
“We’ll be making a decision as to what we do in the very near future,” Trump told reporters at a joint press conference at the White House with the presidents of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. “I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home.”
He claimed that the United States had spent $7 trillion on the global war on terrorism declared after 9/11, including invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. That figure appears to be roughly double more conventional estimates.
“We have nothing, nothing except death and destruction. It’s a horrible thing,” he said. “So it’s time. It’s time. We were very successful against ISIS. We’ll be successful against anybody militarily. But sometimes it’s time to come back home, and we’re thinking about that very seriously.”
A convoy of U.S. troops drive on a road leading to the tense front line with Turkish-backed fighters, in Manbij, north Syria, last weekend. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Trump, who met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman two weeks ago and spoke by telephone Monday with his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, prodded the kingdom to do more.
“Saudi Arabia is very interested in our decision, and I said, ‘Well, you know, you want us to stay, maybe you’re going to have to pay,’” the president said. It was unclear whether he was recounting what he told the crown prince or the king.
Trump has repeatedly made variations on this argument since launching his unorthodox presidential campaign nearly three years ago, repeatedly telling voters that the money spent on military interventions syphoned off resources better used on building schools and infrastructure in the United States.
Earlier in the press conference, Trump had promised “we will not rest until ISIS is gone.” Last week, the president had raised eyebrows when he declared: “We’ll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.”
Bolton expected to shake up Trump’s National Security Council
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Oxon Hill, Maryland in 2017. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
WASHIGNTON — A fearsome array of challenges await John Bolton when he takes over next month as President Trump’s national security adviser — and the hawkish, blunt-speaking former diplomat is expected to shake up the White House team confronting them, insiders told Yahoo News on Friday.
Bolton championed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and earlier this month dismissed the diagnosis that Saddam Hussein’s removal was a mistake as “simplistic.” In February, the Yale-trained international law expert publicly called for military action against North Korea. A month earlier, he condemned diplomatic efforts to toughen the Iran nuclear deal, criticized Trump’s advisers for “inexplicably” advising him to stay in the agreement, and called for fostering regime change in Tehran, notably by supporting opposition to the regime. In 2015, he was even blunter, saying that “only military action” would work on Iran.
Bolton’s comrades and critics in the loosely-knit U.S. national security community underline his inclination to use military force, as well as his belief that America is in the grips of a decades-old clash between “Americanists” like himself who value U.S. sovereignty above all and “Globalists” who would see it tempered by international law and agreements.
“Americanists find themselves surrounded by small armies of Globalists, each tightly clutching a favorite new treaty or multilateralist proposal,” he wrote in a 2000 essay, “Should We Take Global Governance Seriously?”
Bolton’s hawkish instincts and hostility to so-called globalists — an echo of Trump’s “America First” principles — will likely lead him to purge the National Security Council, though some NSC officials uncomfortable with his April 9 arrival may opt to leave beforehand.
“I think he’s likely to see career civil servants, civilian and military, as adversaries rather than professionals and want to bring in a team whose views he knows and has confidence in,” Kori Schake, who has held positions at the Pentagon, the State Department, and served as director for Defense Strategy and Requirements on George W. Bush’s National Security Council, told Yahoo news.
Asked whether Bolton would shake up the NSC staff, a source close to him replied: “I suspect absolutely. He has hangers-on who want jobs.”
Even in an administration not quite so defined by constant personnel chaos, it would hardly be unusual for a new national security adviser to make changes. Gen. H.R. McMaster, whom Bolton will replace, purged many of disgraced predecessor Mike Flynn’s hand-picked NSC aides, dubbed “Flynnstones” by some West Wing officials. A national security expert frequently consulted by the White House told Yahoo News that some of those might be eyeing a return to an administration less constrained by McMaster and fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
“People on the outside who think POTUS has given in too much to [Defense Secretary Jim] Mattis and Tillerson and that, you know, it’s time to ‘let Trump be Trump,’ are probably already lobbying the walrus,” one administration official told Yahoo News, using a nickname derived from Bolton’s mustache.
The job of national security adviser — formally known as assistant to the president for national security affairs – grew out of a wholesale restructuring of American military and intelligence in 1947. The role changes from administration to administration, depending on the character and priorities of the individual holding the title and the president they serve. But the duties are generally understood to center on providing the president with foreign policy advice that reflects the balance of U.S. interests in the executive branch. That means soliciting input from the Pentagon, the intelligence community, the State Department, the Treasury Department and other parts of what is known as “the interagency process.” McMaster had faced criticism from administration officials that he too often presented Trump with his own views rather than the results of that kind of attempted consensus-building, putting him at odds with Mattis and Tillerson and worried foreign diplomats whose lines into the administration ran through Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon.
When it comes to NSC staff changes, Bolton did not tip his hand.
“The United States faces a wide array of issues,” he said in a statement late Thursday. “I look forward to working with President Trump and his leadership team in addressing these complex challenges in an effort to make our country safer at home and stronger abroad.”
Bolton’s approach will be tested immediately. The month of May promises to be heavy on national security: Mid-month, Trump faces a decision about whether or not to effectively remove the United States from the Iran nuclear deal. And the White House has said May is also when they hope for a possible summit between the president and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
In an interview on Fox News Channel shortly after Trump announced the shake-up, Bolton declined to lay out his views on major foreign policy questions, including whether or not the Trump-Kim summit should go forward.
“I have my views,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll have a chance to articulate them to the president.”
WASHINGTON – Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday invited French President Emmanuel Macron to address a joint meeting of Congress when he travels to the United States next month. The French leader will come to Washington in late April for the first state visit of President Trump’s time in office.
“France is not only our oldest ally, but one of our strongest,” Ryan said in a statement. “This is a special opportunity to build on the historic relationship between our countries, and to reaffirm our commitment to defeating terror both domestically and around the world.”
Macron, who is due at the White House on April 24, will address U.S. lawmakers a day later.
The French president and Trump have met several times, including when Macron hosted his U.S. counterpart in Paris over the Bastille Day holiday in July 2017. The two leaders appear to have forged good personal ties despite being at odds on major issues of policy: Macron favors keeping the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, while Trump has announced the United States will withdraw from the former and could end American participation in the latter just weeks after the state visit.
Macron will join eight other French presidents who have addressed a joint meeting of Congress. The last was Nicolas Sarkozy, in 2007. And the first foreign dignitary to address the House of Representatives was French aristocrat and U.S. revolutionary war hero the Marquis de Lafayette, in December 1824.
Macron will be the second foreign leader to address a joint meeting of Congress under Ryan’s speakership. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in June 2016.
While Trump has welcomed many foreign leaders to the White House, Macron is the first to get the formal trappings of a ‘state visit,’ which involves more pomp and circumstance than ‘official’ or ‘working’ visits.
The full list of overseas of foreign officials to address Congress is here.
Senate to take another look at the 2001 ‘war on terror’ resolution
Yahoo News photo Illustration; photos: AP, Getty
Tackling a complex and divisive issue in an election year, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next month will debate whether and how to revise or replace the nearly 17-year-old resolution that underpins America’s open-ended, borderless war on terrorism, the panel’s chairman announced Tuesday.
Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump have invoked the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which essentially declared war on al-Qaida and set the stage for the invasion of Afghanistan, to justify using deadly force overseas — overtly, covertly, by sending in troops, ordering drone strikes, acting with or without congressional authority, with allies or unilaterally, and sometimes in ways that test the bounds of international law. They have also used the 2002 AUMF that gave the green light to the invasion of Iraq. The Trump administration most recently said the two measures permit him to keep troops in Syria and Iraq indefinitely.
Amid bipartisan calls for overhauling — or rescinding — those authorizations, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Tuesday that his panel will meet April 19 to discuss their possible “replacement and revision.”
“It’s been an issue that’s been before us for many years,” he said. “Many people were concerned about [it] because it has been so long since they were enacted. We have activities taking place around the world, still, based on those two authorizations.”
Several proposals for overhauling the president’s legal authority to make war have been floated in Congress in recent years, never quite gaining the political traction required for a proper debate, much less a vote. It was not clear which proposal the committee would debate.
“The way this AUMF is being constructed at present, when we go into new countries, when we take on new groups, the Senate would have the ability to weigh in on those issues,” Corker said.
It’s not clear what position the Trump administration will take. The White House has repeatedly said it will not seek a new vote on the president’s war powers.
The United States has declared war formally just five wars in its history, against 11 different countries: The War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II. Technically, America’s longest war — the Afghanistan operation launched after Sept. 11 — isn’t a declared war. Neither were military operations in Korea, Vietnam, Panama, nor Iraq.
Obama sent Congress an AUMF request related to the so-called Islamic State in February 2015. It was dead on arrival.
The proposal reflected Obama’s national security aides’ desire that it not tie his hands. The document would have authorized airstrikes in Iraq and Syria over the following three years. It would have forbidden the use of American ground troops in “enduring offensive ground combat operations” — a term the Obama White House publicly described as deliberately vague. It also would have allowed strikes against “individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside ISIL” anywhere in the world.
Democrats balked at supporting such a sweeping measure. Republicans pointed to the three-year limit and the ground combat language to argue that it would bind the hands of Obama’s successor.
The truth is that both sides saw political peril in the president’s proposal. The role Hillary Clinton’s support for the Iraq War played in her 2008 defeat haunted Democrats. And Republicans, who could have voted to remove the language they describe as objectionable, preferred to criticize Obama’s handling of the conflict without taking any steps that might make them co-owners of the strategy.
A lawmaker truly bent on forcing a debate on authorizing military action against Assad’s forces could try to use the 1973 Wars Powers Resolution, a law born of congressional anger at the way successive presidents expanded the conflict in Vietnam.
The law requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of introducing U.S. armed forces into conflict or into situations in which conflict is imminent. It also requires the withdrawal of U.S. forces after 60 days, with one 30-day extension, absent a declaration of war or an AUMF.
There’s a catch: Invoking the War Powers Act to force a debate would also require congressional action. And while presidents have cooperated with the reporting requirements, not one has formally accepted the resolution as setting constitutionally valid restrictions on the commander in chief.
White House defends Trump’s congratulations to Putin
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday defended President Trump’s decision to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin on winning reelection, saying that Washington has no business criticizing the way other countries pick their leaders and wants a more constructive relationship with Moscow.
“We don’t get to dictate how other countries operate,” Trump press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters. “What we do know is Putin has been elected in their country, and that’s not something that we can dictate to them, how they operate.”
Sanders continued, “We can only focus on the freeness and the fairness of our elections, something we 100 percent fully support, and something we’re going to continue to do everything we can to protect to make sure bad actors don’t have the opportunity to impact them in any way.”
The spokeswoman also said that Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and allegations that Moscow used a nerve agent in the attempted assassination of a Russian double-agent on British soil did not come up in the telephone conversation.
“We want to continue to have a dialogue with Russia, continue to talk about some of the shared interests we have, whether it’s North Korea, Iran and particularly, as the president noted today, slowing the tensions when it comes to an arms race,” Sanders said.
Official Russian results gave Putin 76.7 percent of the vote in an election that international observers described as tainted by unfair pressure on opposition candidates and the exclusion of one prominent opponent to the former KGB official. “Choice without real competition, as we have seen here, is not real choice,” the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said in a report on the contest.
The conciliatory tone from the White House podium came days after Sanders called the nerve-agent attack an “outrage” and Trump appeared to accept Britain’s conclusion that Moscow was behind it. And Washington last week announced sanctions against Russian entities and individuals tied to the alleged interference in the 2016 elections and accused hackers tied to Moscow of breaching U.S. infrastructure.
Sanders’ remarks about the United States abstaining from criticizing other countries’ electoral systems appeared at odds with the official Trump administration’s official position, at least with regard to some other countries. In July of last year, Trump called for “free and fair elections” in Venezuela. In an October 2017 policy statement on Iran, the White House accused that country’s supreme leader of “rigging elections.” At the same time, when asked in January about the exclusion of Putin critic Alexei Navalny from Russia’s 2018 election, Sanders had sidestepped the question.
Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz., a frequent and fierce Putin critic, blasted Trump’s decision to congratulate the Russian leader.
“An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections,” McCain said in a statement. “And by doing so with Vladimir Putin, President Trump insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country’s future, including the countless Russian patriots who have risked so much to protest and resist Putin’s regime.”
Trump supporters noted Tuesday that Obama had placed a congratulatory telephone call to Putin after elections in March 2012. At the time, Obama had seemingly snubbed the Russian leader by waiting a week before placing the call — but also publicly said he wanted better bilateral relations. At the time, Russia had already invaded the country of Georgia but it would be years before it annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region or interfered in the U.S. presidential election.
Before Sanders spoke, Trump himself told reporter that he had “a very good call” with Putin by telephone and had “congratulated him on the victory — his electoral victory.”
Trump said he and Putin will “probably be meeting in the not-too-distant future” to discuss arms control, Ukraine, Syria, and North Korea. Asked about the timing of such a summit, Sanders said nothing was in the planning stages.
Fired by Trump over Twitter, Tillerson doesn’t thank him
Rex Tillerson, outgoing US Secretary of State leaves after making a statement after his dismissal at the State Department in Washington, DC, March 13, 2018. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON – Hours after President Trump announced his firing over Twitter, outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday left the former real estate entrepreneur off the list of people he praised and thanked in a brief speech about his accomplishments and the future of his department.
Tillerson, looking and sounding defeated as he delivered an eight-minute farewell, said he was delegating his duties to Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan effective at the end of the day, and formally ending his own watch as the top U.S. diplomat at the end of the month.
The former Exxon chief told reporters in the State Department briefing room that Trump had telephoned him from Air Force One a little after noon – some five hours after the president announced to the world that Tillerson was out, to be replaced by CIA director Mike Pompeo.
He shared no details, and did not mention Trump again.
Tillerson’s dismissal continues a period of extraordinary turbulence for the administration, which has seen a record level of turnover among top-level staffers and Cabinet officials. It comes on the heels of the abrupt exit of Gary Cohn, who was Trump’s top economic adviser. Cohn resigned March 6.
The State Department released a statement from Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein saying Tillerson “did not speak to the president and is unaware of the reason” for his dismissal.
“The Secretary had every intention of staying because of the critical progress made in national security,” the statement said.
Hours later, Goldstein himself was fired, evidently for contradicting the White House version of events. A senior Trump aide told reporters that White House chief of staff John Kelly telephoned Tillerson, who was traveling in Africa, on Friday to tell him he would be replaced. The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Kelly “made clear that it was imminent.” Kelly called Tillerson again on Saturday and “reiterated the Friday conversation,” said the aide, whose remarks suggested Trump hoped Tillerson would resign.
Tillerson cut short his Africa trip and was back in Washington by Monday.
Tillerson praised his top aides for being “extraordinarily dedicated” to advancing “values that I view as being very important: The safety and security of our State Department personnel; accountability, which means treating each other with honesty and integrity; and respect for one another, most recently, in particular, to address challenges of sexual harassment within the department.”
Tillerson praised U.S. diplomats in Washington, DC, and overseas, as well as the U.S. military. He said the Pentagon believes U.S. power “starts with diplomacy” and lauded the leadership of Defense Secretary James Mattis.
The 65-year-old former energy executive highlighted some of what he called “accomplishments under this administration.” He noted the ramped-up sanctions against North Korea, and the new Afghanistan war strategy, not mentioning Trump by name. And he acknowledged “much work remains” on issues like Syria, stabilizing Iraq, defeating ISIS, and resetting the U.S. relationship with China.
“Nothing is possible without allies and partners, though,” said Tillerson, whose mission included selling a wary world on Trump’s “America First” approach to global affairs.
And he warned Moscow over its “troubling behavior,” saying: “Russia must assess carefully as to how its actions are in the best interests of the Russian people and of the world more broadly.”
Tillerson continued, “continuing on their current trajectory is likely to lead to greater isolation on their part, a situation which is not in anyone’s interest.”
Saying he would return to private life as a “proud American,” Tillerson concluded: “God bless all of you, God bless the American people, God bless America.”
There had been persistent tensions between Trump and Tillerson, including a report last October that the secretary of state had called the president a “moron” in a Pentagon meeting. Tillerson never fully denied that report.
The pair also clashed on policy issues including Iran, North Korea and the blockade against Qatar. Just before Trump revealed his surprising decision earlier this month to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Tillerson had said it was not yet time to negotiate with Pyongyang. And on Monday, Tillerson struck a far different tone than the White House over the attempted assassination of a former spy now living in Britain, which British Prime Minister Theresa May blamed on Russia. Tillerson’s strong statement contrasted with the reluctance of the White House to blame Moscow.
When he spoke to reporters before boarding Marine One, Trump said he and Tillerson “were not really thinking the same way.” As an example, he cited the Iran nuclear deal, which he has denounced and Tillerson sought to fix. Trump said he and Pompeo are “always on the same wavelength.”
And, the president said, “I think Rex will be much happier now.”
“The use of a highly lethal nerve agent against U.K. citizens on U.K. soil is an outrage. The attack was reckless, indiscriminate and irresponsible,” President Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Sanders, told reporters. “We offer the fullest condemnation and we extend our sympathy to the victims and their families and our support to the U.K. government. [We] stand by our closest ally and the special relationship that we have.”
Sanders spoke shortly after British Prime Minister Theresa May told British lawmakers that either the government of Vladimir Putin was directly behind the attack, or Moscow “lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.” The attack targeted Sergei Skripal, who passed Russian secrets to the U.K., and his daughter Yulia.
May said that London had demanded an explanation from Moscow by Tuesday.
“Should there be no credible response, we will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom,” she said.
Asked whether the United States could corroborate the U.K.’s attribution, Sanders declined to do so, saying British officials were “still working through even some of the details of that.”
But, she said, U.S. authorities were “ready if we can be of any assistance.”
Sanders’s comments were the first time the White House had spoken publicly about the attack. A Yahoo News request for comment on Friday morning went unanswered.
It was not clear whether Trump and May had discussed the incident. Asked about transatlantic communications on the issue, a U.K. government spokesperson told Yahoo News that “there have been conversations between senior U.S. and U.K. officials. There will be more contact over the coming days.”
WASHINGTON — Amid unusually high staff turnover, confusion over major policies, and unexpected salvos from the tweer-in-chief, President Trump on Tuesday portrayed the White House as a dream place to work but admitted: “I like conflict.”
“It’s tough, I like conflict, I like having two people with different points of view – and I certainly have that – and then I make a decision,” he said at a joint press conference with visiting Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. “But I like watching it, I like seeing it, and I think it’s the best way to go.”
Earlier in the day, Trump had denied that his West Wing was in “chaos,” but cryptically added “I still have some people that I want to change.” That poured fuel on speculation that he could part ways with troubled Cabinet officials, like Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin or Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or senior aides like national security advisor H.R. McMaster and chief of staff John Kelly.
Asked at the press conference whether his comment might have referred to Sessions, Trump told reporters “I don’t really want to talk about that” before going on an extended riff praising his own West Wing.
“The White House has tremendous energy, it has tremendous spirit. It is a great place to be working. Many, many people want every single job,” he said.
President Trump speaks during a news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in the East Room of the White House. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“You know, I read where, ‘Oh, gee, maybe people don’t want to work for Trump.’ And believe me, everyone wants to work in the White House,” Trump declared. “They all want a piece of that Oval Office they want a piece of the West Wing. Not only in terms of it looks great on their résumé, it’s just a great place to work.”
But he again alluded to possible staffing changes.
“There’ll be people — I’m not going to be specific — but there’ll be people that change,” he said. “Sometimes they want to go out and do something else. But they all want to be in the White House. So many people want to come in. I have a choice of anybody. I could take any position in the West Wing and I’ll have a choice of the 10 top people having to do with that position.”
In fact, however, the administration has approached Republicans in Congress, at trade associations and think tanks, and in the private sector for various executive branch jobs, only to be rebuffed, according to people who have turned down White House overtures.
Trump has seen remarkable turnover. According to data from a Brookings Institution report cited by the New York Times, the turnover rate of Trump’s staff in his first year — 34 percent — was higher than any White House in decades. He is on his second national security adviser – his third if you count a placeholder early last year – his second chief of staff, and will be hiring his fifth communications director after the sudden resignation of Hope Hicks.
President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, March 6, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Just last week, the president surprised some senior aides by announcing tariffs of 25 percent and 10 percent on imports of steel and aluminum, respectively. While not shocking in terms of ideology — Trump has been vocally protectionist for decades — he short-circuited the process for announcing such a major policy. Senior aides told reporters no announcement was imminent. The White House was unable to give details of the proposal, because there none had cleared the complex legal and interagency process that typically precedes a rollout. Lawmakers allied with the administration but caught unawares reached out to reporters for any scraps of information about a decision that, critics warn, could trigger a trade war.
Former chief of staff Reince Priebus says in an upcoming book that the chaos looks worse from inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Trump’s efforts to deny that his administration is particularly volatile are also nothing new. After a string of departures last year – press secretary Sean Spicer, Priebus, and blink-and-you-missed-his-tenure communications director Anthony Scaramucci — Trump took to Twitter.
Top Trump aide Kellyanne Conway violated Hatch Act, watchdog says
Kellyanne Conway speaks in Washington in April 2017. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)
WASHINGTON – Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House aide, violated a law last year that forbids federal employees from using their official titles while engaging in partisan politics, the watchdog that oversees the law reported Tuesday. It will be up to President Trump to determine the punishment, if any.
The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) said in a report that Conway violated the 1939 Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, better known as the Hatch Act, twice, in interviews with “Fox & Friends” on Nov. 20 and with CNN’s “New Day” on Dec. 6. While she appeared on both in her official capacity as counselor to the president, Conway weighed in on the Alabama Senate race in support of Republican candidate Roy Moore, OSC said. Moore lost the special election, which was held on Dec. 12.
“Both instances constituted prohibited political activity under the Hatch Act and occurred after Conway received significant training on Hatch Act prohibitions,” OSC said in a statement. The Hatch Act forbids all but a few federal employees from engaging in partisan politics while on duty, and those permitted to do so cannot use their formal titles.
It’s not the first time Conway has been in trouble for public remarks in her official taxpayer-funded role. In February 2017, the White House said she had been “counseled” after inappropriately promoting Ivanka Trump’s clothing line.
“Go buy Ivanka’s stuff is what I would say,” she said on “Fox & Friends.” “This is just [a] wonderful line. Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”
Federal ethics rules prohibit using public office for anyone’s private gain, including product endorsements.
Just last month, the Trump reelection campaign came under criticism for using the formal title of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner — assistant to the president — in a press release announcing the appointment of a campaign manager for the 2020 race. The title was deleted after the campaign was alerted to the potential legal impropriety.
The OSC report lists multiple occasions on which Conway was informed of what constitutes a prohibited partisan political activity under the Hatch Act, “in a formal ethics training session, during individual conversations, and in multiple written communications.”
They included a Jan. 24, 2017, senior staff ethics training session led by White House counsel Donald McGahn and Stefan Passantino, deputy counsel to the president, and a March 1, 2017, one-on-one session in which Passantino provided “specialized Hatch Act training.” Then, on April 20, 2017, McGahn’s office sent Conway and other White House aides an email entitled “Political Activities and Interactions with Partisan Political Organizations,” that included a description of the ban on politicking while on duty. A day later, Passantino and Scott Gast, senior associate counsel to the president, “met individually with Ms. Conway to provide specialized Hatch Act training.” On June 28, 2017, Conway received a copy of the White House Staff Manual, which has a section on partisan politicking.
After the Nov. 20 interview, OSC reached out to Conway to highlight “Hatch Act concerns raised by her interview and again provided her with Hatch Act guidance.” McGahn’s office also contacted Conway by email on Dec. 4 to remind her of the Hatch Act restrictions.
According to the OSC report, that email “included the following information about the Hatch Act’s use of official authority prohibition: ‘You may not use your official position to affect the result of an election. You may not, for example, use your official title when participating in any political activities, nor may you use your official authority to encourage or coerce anyone (including subordinates) to engage in or refrain from engaging in political activity. This includes through use of official social media accounts.’”
The OSC report concluded: “The U.S. Constitution confers on the President authority to appoint senior officers of the United States, such as Ms. Conway. Considering the President’s constitutional authority, the proper course of action, in the case of violations of the Hatch Act by such officers, is to refer the violations to the President.”
Under Obama, there were two notable instances of senior aides facing charges of improper politicking. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis drew accusations that she engaged in improper fundraising by soliciting subordinates for donations to Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. The OSC referred the matter to the Department of Justice for possible criminal investigation, but dropped its probe when Solis stepped down to run for office in California. And the OSC found that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had violated the Hatch Act in 2012 by endorsing a Democratic candidate in North Carolina and promoting Obama’s reelection at a gala where she appeared in her official capacity.
Under the current president, Ben Carson was briefly in trouble after he was introduced at an August 2017 Trump campaign rally as “the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Ben Carson.” The OSC determined that the had not done anything to imply that he was speaking in his official capacity.
Trump hails progress on North Korea but warns of ‘false hope’
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, March 5, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday warily welcomed word of a possible diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea, cautioning that it “may be false hope” but praising international efforts to get the Stalinist regime to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
“Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned,” Trump said on Twitter. “The World is watching and waiting! May be false hope, but the U.S. is ready to go hard in either direction!”
It was not clear whether “go hard” included possible U.S. military action — a strike that could precipitate a catastrophic regional war with millions of casualties. But the president has previously indicated that he is prepared to use force to prevent North Korea from being able to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon.
Trump has successfully pushed for several rounds of escalating economic sanctions against the country ruled by Kim Jong Un, even convincing China, Kim’s de facto patron, to curb trade with the regime.
The president’s tweet came after South Korea and North Korea concluded a summit in the North’s capital, Pyongyang. South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s office released a statement saying that Kim told Moon’s envoys that he is prepared to start talks with the United States on scrapping its nuclear weapons and freeze nuclear and missile tests during the negotiations. In return, Washington would have to give Pyongyang security guarantees.
“The North Korean side clearly state its willingness to denuclearize,” Moon’s office said. “It made it clear that it would have no reason to keep nuclear weapons if the military threat to the North was eliminated and its security guaranteed.”
There was no immediate comment from the North, which has dramatically stepped up its nuclear and missile tests during Trump’s 14 months in office while steadfastly insisting that it will not abandon either program. Analysts says Kim views those weapons as vital to his regime’s survival, and it was not clear what sort of security guarantees the United States might be willing to provide.
Moon’s office also said that the two Koreas would hold a summit in April on neutral ground, in the Peace House at Panmunjom, on their shared border, and that the two leaders would establish a hotline. The statement also said North Korea aimed to “normalize” relations with the United States.
The Trump administration has been inconsistent on whether it is prepared to talk with North Korea, and under what conditions, if any. When Vice President Mike Pence traveled to South Korea for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics there, he publicly snubbed Kim’s sister, Kim Yo-jong. But Pence’s office later revealed that North Korea backed out of plans for the vice president to meet with North Korean officials during the trip — and made no mention of any preconditions for those talks.
In this Monday photo, provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, his sister Kim Yo Jong, and Vice Chairman of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party Central Committee Kim Yong Chol meet members of South Korean delegation. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
Over the weekend, Trump joked at the annual dinner thrown by the Gridiron club of journalists about the tense relationship with Pyongyang.
“I won’t rule out direct talks with Kim Jong Un. I just won’t,” the president said. “As far as the risk of dealing with a madman is concerned, that’s his problem, not mine.”
During a Feb. 26 meeting with governors at the White House, Trump said of North Korea: “They want to talk. And we want to talk also, only under the right conditions. Otherwise, we’re not talking.”
A few days earlier, Trump had talked tough about North Korea as he welcomed Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
“If the sanctions don’t work, we’ll have to go ‘phase two,’ and phase two may be a very rough thing, may be very, very unfortunate for the world,” Trump said. “But hopefully the sanctions will work.”
By Trump’s standards — he has threatened to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea or “totally destroy” it — his comment was relatively mild. But military conflict with Pyongyang could turn into a catastrophic all-out war that would put millions of lives at risk in North and South Korea, as well as in nearby Japan.
In January, Moon’s office said that Trump told the South Korean leader by telephone that he was not considering a so-called “bloody nose” military strike — a one-off hit meant to drag Kim to the negotiating table by signaling that the United States is serious about potentially using force. A White House summary of the call omitted this assurance.
The White House summary said that Trump “expressed his openness to holding talks between the United States and North Korea at the appropriate time, under the right circumstances.”
At her Feb. 26 briefing, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters that Trump himself “would be the lead in taking point on anything that would move forward” regarding talks with North Korea.
