Originally posted by BBC
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Hopefully, Congress can get the details from the interpreter.Originally posted by Proteus_MST View PostI also read it, but in a shorter vesion from The Hill:
Very interesting, especially the fact that Trump ordered his interpreters to talk to noone else in the government to the things they translated and, in at least one case, personally taking any written notes away from an interpreterLeave a comment:
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I also read it, but in a shorter vesion from The Hill:
Very interesting, especially the fact that Trump ordered his interpreters to talk to noone else in the government to the things they translated and, in at least one case, personally taking any written notes away from an interpreterLeave a comment:
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Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration
President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said.
Trump did so after a meeting with Putin in 2017 in Hamburg that was also attended by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. U.S. officials learned of Trump’s actions when a White House adviser and a senior State Department official sought information from the interpreter beyond a readout shared by Tillerson.
The constraints that Trump imposed are part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny and preventing even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries.
As a result, U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years. Such a gap would be unusual in any presidency, let alone one that Russia sought to install through what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as an unprecedented campaign of election interference.
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is thought to be in the final stages of an investigation that has focused largely on whether Trump or his associates conspired with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. The new details about Trump’s continued secrecy underscore the extent to which little is known about his communications with Putin since becoming president.
Former U.S. officials said that Trump’s behavior is at odds with the known practices of previous presidents, who have relied on senior aides to witness meetings and take comprehensive notes then shared with other officials and departments.
Trump’s secrecy surrounding Putin “is not only unusual by historical standards, it is outrageous,” said Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of state now at the Brookings Institution, who participated in more than a dozen meetings between President Bill Clinton and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. “It handicaps the U.S. government — the experts and advisers and Cabinet officers who are there to serve [the president] — and it certainly gives Putin much more scope to manipulate Trump.”
A White House spokesman disputed that characterization and said that the Trump administration has sought to “improve the relationship with Russia” after the Obama administration “pursued a flawed ‘reset’ policy that sought engagement for the sake of engagement.”
The Trump administration “has imposed significant new sanctions in response to Russian malign activities,” said the spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity and noted that Tillerson in 2017 “gave a fulsome readout of the meeting immediately afterward to other U.S. officials in a private setting, as well as a readout to the press.”
Trump allies said the president thinks the presence of subordinates impairs his ability to establish a rapport with Putin, and that his desire for secrecy may also be driven by embarrassing leaks that occurred early in his presidency.
The meeting in Hamburg happened several months after The Washington Post and other news organizations revealed details about what Trump had told senior Russian officials during a meeting with Russian officials in the Oval Office. Trump disclosed classified information about a terror plot, called former FBI director James B. Comey a “nut job,” and said that firing Comey had removed “great pressure” on his relationship with Russia.
The White House launched internal leak hunts after that and other episodes, and sharply curtailed the distribution within the National Security Council of memos on the president’s interactions with foreign leaders.
“Over time it got harder and harder, I think, because of a sense from Trump himself that the leaks of the call transcripts were harmful to him,” said a former administration official.
Senior Democratic lawmakers describe the cloak of secrecy surrounding Trump’s meetings with Putin as unprecedented and disturbing.
Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview that his panel will form an investigative subcommittee whose targets will include seeking State Department records of Trump’s encounters with Putin, including a closed-door meeting with the Russian leader in Helsinki last summer.
“It’s been several months since Helsinki and we still don’t know what went on in that meeting,” Engel said. “It’s appalling. It just makes you want to scratch your head.”
The concerns have been compounded by actions and positions Trump has taken as president that are seen as favorable to the Kremlin. He has dismissed Russia’s election interference as a “hoax,” suggested that Russia was entitled to annex Crimea, repeatedly attacked NATO allies, resisted efforts to impose sanctions on Moscow, and begun to pull U.S. forces out of Syria — a move that critics see as effectively ceding ground to Russia.
At the same time, Trump’s decision to fire Comey and other attempts to contain the ongoing Russia investigation led the bureau in May 2017 to launch a counterintelligence investigation into whether he was seeking to help Russia and if so, why, a step first reported by the New York Times.
It is not clear whether Trump has taken notes from interpreters on other occasions, but several officials said they were never able to get a reliable readout of the president’s two-hour meeting in Helsinki. Unlike in Hamburg, Trump allowed no Cabinet officials or any aides to be in the room for that conversation.
Trump also had other private conversations with Putin at meetings of global leaders outside the presence of aides. He spoke at length with Putin at a banquet at the same 2017 global conference in Hamburg, where only Putin’s interpreter was present. Trump also had a brief conversation with Putin at a Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires last month.
Trump generally has allowed aides to listen to his phone conversations with Putin, although Russia has often been first to disclose those calls when they occur and release statements characterizing them in broad terms favorable to the Kremlin.
In an email, Tillerson said that he “was present for the entirety of the two presidents’ official bilateral meeting in Hamburg,” but declined to discuss the meeting and did not respond to questions about whether Trump had instructed the interpreter to remain silent or had taken the interpreter’s notes.
In a news conference afterward, Tillerson said that the Trump-Putin meeting lasted more than two hours, covered the war in Syria and other subjects, and that Trump had “pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement” in election interference. “President Putin denied such involvement, as I think he has in the past,” Tillerson said.
Tillerson refused to say during the news conference whether Trump had rejected Putin’s claim or indicated that he believed the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered.
Tillerson’s account is at odds with the only detail that other administration officials were able to get from the interpreter, officials said. Though the interpreter refused to discuss the meeting, officials said, he conceded that Putin had denied any Russian involvement in the U.S. election and that Trump responded by saying, “I believe you.”
Senior Trump administration officials said that White House officials including then-National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster were never able to obtain a comprehensive account of the meeting, even from Tillerson.
“We were frustrated because we didn’t get a readout,” a former senior administration official said. “The State Department and [National Security Council] were never comfortable” with Trump’s interactions with Putin, the official said. “God only knows what they were going to talk about or agree to.”
Because of the absence of any reliable record of Trump’s conversations with Putin, officials at times have had to rely on reports by U.S. intelligence agencies tracking the reaction in the Kremlin.
Previous presidents and senior advisers have often studied such reports to assess whether they had accomplished their objectives in meetings as well as to gain insights for future conversations.
U.S. intelligence agencies have been reluctant to call attention to such reports during Trump’s presidency because they have at times included comments by foreign officials disparaging the president or his advisers, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, a former senior administration official said.
“There was more of a reticence in the intelligence community going after those kinds of communications and reporting them,” said a former administration official who worked in the White House. “The feedback tended not to be positive.”
The interpreter at Hamburg revealed the restrictions that Trump had imposed when he was approached by administration officials at the hotel where the U.S. delegation was staying, officials said.
Among the officials who asked for details from the meeting were Fiona Hill, the senior Russia adviser at the NSC, and John Heffern, who was then serving at State as the acting assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment from the interpreter. Heffern, who retired from State in 2017, declined to comment.
Through a spokesman, Hill declined a request for an interview.
There are conflicting accounts of the purpose of the conversation with the interpreter, with some officials saying that Hill was among those briefed by Tillerson and that she was merely seeking more nuanced information from the interpreter.
Others said the aim was to get a more meaningful readout than the scant information furnished by Tillerson. “I recall Fiona reporting that to me,” one former official said. A second former official present in Hamburg said that Tillerson “didn’t offer a briefing or call the ambassador or anybody together. He didn’t brief senior staff,” although he “gave a readout to the press.”
A similar issue arose in Helsinki, the setting for the first formal U.S.-Russia summit since Trump became president. Hill, national security adviser John Bolton and other U.S. officials took part in a preliminary meeting that included Trump, Putin and other senior Russian officials.
But Trump and Putin then met for two hours in private, accompanied only by their interpreters. Trump’s interpreter, Marina Gross, could be seen emerging from the meeting with pages of notes.
Alarmed by the secrecy of Trump’s meeting with Putin, several lawmakers subsequently sought to compel Gross to testify before Congress about what she witnessed. Others argued that forcing her to do so would violate the impartial role that interpreters play in diplomacy. Gross was not forced to testify. She was identified when members of Congress sought to speak with her. The interpreter in Hamburg has not been identified.
During a joint news conference with Putin afterward, Trump acknowledged discussing Syria policy and other subjects but also lashed out at the media and federal investigators, and seemed to reject the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies by saying that he was persuaded by Putin’s “powerful” denial of election interference.
Previous presidents have required senior aides to attend meetings with adversaries including the Russian president largely to ensure that there are not misunderstandings and that others in the administration are able to follow up on any agreements or plans. Detailed notes that Talbot took of Clinton’s meetings with Yeltsin are among hundreds of documents declassified and released last year.
No puppet!Leave a comment:
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Confederate Plaque Stating Civil War Wasn’t About Slavery Will Now Be Removed From Texas Capitol
A plaque at the Texas State Capitol in Austin that has stirred ire for more than half a century will finally be removed. Texas lawmakers, fresh in their newest legislative session this week, agreed Friday the Confederacy plaque that claims the U.S. Civil War wasn’t about slavery will be removed.
The plaque removal was a bipartisan committee decision in Texas, which is considered to be one of the more conservative state governments in the country. Not only did new state Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick back the removal, Gov. Greg Abbott called for it in a letter to Rod Welsh, executive director of the State Preservation.
The plaque in question contains the phrase that the Civil War was “not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery.”
The plaque was initially erected in 1959, and state rep. Eric Johnson has led a cause to eradicate the “Children of the Confederacy Creed” that’s been there now for more than six decades.
Johnson, a Dallas Democrat, has said the plaque “is not historically accurate in the slightest, to which any legitimate, peer-reviewed Civil War historian will attest.”
Bonnen, who’s the newly-appointed Texas Speaker of the House, also said the plaque was historically inaccurate.
George P. Bush, the Texas Land Commissioner and son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — and grandson of the late President George H.W. Bush — said the plaque and other such displays “belong in museums, not our state capitol."
State rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican from Plano who sits on the State Preservation Board, fervently agreed with the plaque removal.
“If I had a sledgehammer in my office, I’d go up there right now and remove it," Leach said. "But I’m told that’s not necessary as it will be removed very soon.”
The location to where it will be moved hasn’t been indicated, but the motion started by Leach says it will simply be moved to a location away from the capitol grounds.
The Texas lawmakers agreed to the committee’s decision of removing the plaque, which brought a sigh of relief to Johnson, who has worked to get this done.
"The plaque should never have been put up by the Legislature in the first place, and it certainly shouldn’t have taken 60 years to remove it. And that’s on Republicans and Democrats alike, to be perfectly honest," Johnson wrote.
Texas does something right for once.Leave a comment:
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Gee, maybe a racist presidential candidate adopted a wall as a rallying cry for his racist supporters?Leave a comment:
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Granted it is Fox but it is interesting to hear the opinion of the Obama appointed former head of the border patrol. How is it the Dem position is so far off now from where it was under Obama?Leave a comment:
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It is good to see discovery can go forward. Even without access to any internal emails (if any such emails exist) it is highly likely a court would rule in favor of the families. If they do turn up some emails proving Jones didn't believe his own horse **** then that would just be the final nail in the coffin wrt this lawsuit.Leave a comment:
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Families of Sandy Hook shooting victims win legal victory in lawsuit against InfoWars, Alex Jones
Six families sued Alex Jones and InfoWars for defamation, among other claims.Six families of victims killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School won a legal victory Friday in their fight against controversial radio and internet personality Alex Jones.
A judge in Connecticut has granted the families’ discovery requests, allowing them access to, among other things, Infowars’ internal marketing and financial documents.
(MORE: Remembering the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims)
The judge has scheduled a hearing next week to decide whether to allow the plaintiffs’ attorneys to depose Jones.
The plaintiffs include the parents of five children who went to the school as well as family members of first-grade teacher Victoria Leigh Soto and Principal Dawn Hochsprung, according to a statement from the plaintiff's attorneys.
According to the statement, the plaintiffs allege a "years-long campaign of abusive and outrageous false statements in which Jones and the other defendants have developed, amplified and perpetuated claims that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged and that the 26 families who lost loved ones that day are paid actors who faked their relative's deaths."
It goes on to say that "Jones' actions subjected the families and survivors of the Sandy Hook shooting to physical confrontations and harassment, death threats and personal attacks on social media."
"From the beginning, we have alleged that Alex Jones and his financial network trafficked in lies and hate in order to profit from the grief of Sandy Hook families. That is what we intend to prove, and today's ruling advances that effort," Chris Mattei, one of the attorneys representing the families, said in the statement. "We look forward to gaining access to Infowars' internal marketing and financial documents to show that Jones has built an empire as nothing more than a conspiracy profiteer, as alleged in our complaint."
Jones has sought to dismiss the lawsuit.
"Plaintiffs suffered a horrible tragedy," his defense attorney, Jay M. Wolman, wrote in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. "Alex Jones and Infowars are not responsible for this tragedy. To punish them for First Amendment protected speech on this matter of public concern will not bring back the lives lost."
Wolman did not immediately respond to ABC News' requests for comment.
(MORE: Sandy Hook mom reflects on 'incredibly raw' grief ahead of 6th anniversary)
The judge’s ruling on discovery gives the plaintiffs access to any communication Jones had about the Newtown massacre and to documents that could point to the inner workings of Infowars.Leave a comment:
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Adam Schiff asks for his pay as congress member to be withheld until the government shutdown is over
https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/st...67973361864704
(something that actually should be the norm in case of a shutdown ... that all congress members (and their employees) as well as everyone in the WH won't get paid during a shutdown ... why should they decide over the fate of thousands of governmental employees, without having to suffer the same consequences? )Leave a comment:
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Undeterred by Critics, Ted Cruz’s Beard Grows On
On Thursday, Donald Trump traveled to the U.S.–Mexico border in Texas to continue to demand funds for a wall (as the federal government remained shut down). But during his appearance, it was hard for anyone to focus on what the president had to say — because all eyes were glued to one thing and one thing only: Ted Cruz’s beard, which is fuller than ever.
We first noticed the new facial hair back in November, when it cast a glaring shadow upon the face of the Texas senator newly dubbed “beautiful” by the president of the United States. By December, the beard had only intensified in size, causing the nation to worry that it will remain on his face for the foreseeable future. And as of its new appearance, we have to face facts: Ted Cruz’s beard is here to stay (at least, for now).
Understandably, a lot of people on social media have opinions on Cruz’s ever-increasing beard. Warning, at least one of the following will implant a mental image into your brain that may indelibly altar your mental state:ted cruz looks like he’d fall out of a hot air balloon in a Jules Verne novel pic.twitter.com/kvpLXiS9MO
— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) January 11, 2019ted cruz's beard is slowly morphing into 19th century lamb chops pic.twitter.com/h3qL8Fk98t
— David Mack (@davidmackau) January 10, 2019Ted Cruz's beard has entered "lazy signifier of a tertiary Star Trek race after they ran out of ideas" territory
— Nathan Bernhardt (@jonbernhardt) January 11, 2019Ted Cruz's beard look like earwig pincers. pic.twitter.com/2RTsVFLtF3
— Yes, I Like Wine Mancino-Williams (@Manda_like_wine) January 11, 2019ted cruz looks like the ******* in a western who sells the protagonist out bc he’s “got mouths to feed” pic.twitter.com/6Z2bzJbEtuStill, the reasons behind Cruz’s decision to grow a beard remain unclear — #NoShaveNovember has been over for a while. The senator recently tweeted out praise he allegedly received from a rabbi for his facial hair, so maybe he’s just showing off that he is able to grow hair on his face? As ever, he appears to be very pleased with himself over the development:
— KT Nelson (@KrangTNelson) January 11, 2019Leave a comment:
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The creator of the GoFundMe campaign to collect 1B $ for Donnies wall hjas accepted his defeat and will return all of the money (20 Mio so far).
Guess someone told him that it isn't realistic to expect 1B to come together before Trump leaving office, if you just collect 20 Mio / month
No, I am joking ... they didn't accpet defeat but now claim that they (the citizens) are better able to build the wall than the government and now would like to use the 20 Mio as a starting capital of a non profit organisation in order to build a wall on their own ... smells fishy ... I guess the initiator of the gofundme-campaign and its friends (who found the corporation) will give themselves CEO positions with a high monthly salary (and hey, I couldn't even be mad at them, they just are abusing the natural stupidity of Trumpists, if they do)
Last edited by Proteus_MST; January 11, 2019, 21:06.Leave a comment:
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