Flynn Attended Intel Briefings While Taking Money To Lobby for Turkey

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was attending secret intelligence briefings with then-candidate Donald Trump while he was being paid more than half a million dollars to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government, federal records show.

Flynn stopped lobbying after he became national security advisor, but he then played a role in formulating policy toward Turkey, working for a president who has promised to curb the role of lobbyists in Washington.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Friday defended the Trump administration’s handling of the matter, even as he acknowledged to reporters that the White House was aware of the potential that Flynn might need to register as a foreign agent.

When his firm was hired by a Turkish businessman last year, Flynn did not register as a foreign lobbyist, and only did so a few days ago under pressure from the Justice Department, the businessman told The Associated Press this week.

Attempts by NBC News to reach the Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin, were unsuccessful Friday.

Price Floyd, a spokesman for Flynn, said the retired general would have no comment.

Flynn was fired last month after it was determined he misled Vice President Mike Pence about Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States. His security clearance was suspended.

When NBC News spoke to Alptekin in November, he said he had no affiliation with the Turkish government and that his hiring of Flynn’s company, the Flynn Intel Group, had nothing to do with the Turkish government.

But documents filed this week by Flynn with the Department of Justice paint a different picture. The documents say Alptekin “introduced officials of the Republic of Turkey to Flynn Intel Group officials at a meeting on September 19, 2016, in New York.”

In the documents, the Flynn Intel Group asserts that it changed its filings to register as a foreign lobbyist “to eliminate any potential doubt.”

“Although the Flynn Intel Group was engaged by a private firm, Inovo BV, and not by a foreign government, because of the subject matter of the engagement, Flynn Intel Group’s work for Inovo could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey,” the filing said.

The firm was paid a total of $530,000 as part of a $600,000 contract that ended the day after the election, when Flynn stepped away from his private work, the documents say.

During the summer and fall, Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was sitting in on classified intelligence briefings given to Trump.

Spicer acknowledged Friday that Flynn’s lawyer called the Trump transition team inquiring about whether Flynn should amend his filing to register as a foreign agent.

“That wasn’t the role for the transition,” Spicer said. “This was a personal matter, it’s a business matter.”

He did not explain whether anyone in the Trump operation dug into Flynn’s lobbying work.

It was well known that on Election Day, Flynn authored an op-ed in the Hill, a Washington newspaper, in which he lambasted Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish cleric residing in Pennsylvania who is blamed by the Turkish government for fomenting a July coup attempt there.

Previously, Flynn had seemed to praise the coup attempt.

According to the Justice Department filing, Flynn’s firm was hired to gather information about Gülen, and to produce a short film about its investigation.

“Flynn Intel Group was tasked to perform investigative research for a specified scope of work using its laboratory team of senior defense, diplomacy, development, and intelligence professionals over a three-month period,” the filing said. “Flynn Intel Group was to retain an experienced filming and production crew in order to develop a short film piece on the results of its investigation, and a public affairs firm to utilize for public affairs as needed. Flynn Intel Group held weekly calls with the client to report engagement progress.”

Even some Republicans were wondering how the White House allowed Flynn to take one of the most sensitive jobs in the government.

“Makes you wonder if an adequate background check has been done,” Rep. Steve King of Iowa said on MSNBC. “I think we need to know a lot more.”

Ethics experts say more information is needed to know whether Flynn may have run afoul of any conflict of interest rules. His receipt of a large sum of money on behalf of the Turkish government may have meant he should have avoided specific decisions regarding Turkey, but the details would be crucial.

It wasn’t immediately clear Friday whether Flynn recused himself from any matter while he was national security advisor, or whether he directly participated in decisions that had an impact on Turkey.

(h/t NBC News)

Trump Adviser Roger Stone Admits to Contact With DNC Hacker

Roger Stone, President Trump’s former campaign adviser, on Friday admitted to having private conversations with a hacker who helped leak information from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during last year’s campaign.

Stone insisted to The Washington Times that the conversations were “completely innocuous.”

“It was so perfunctory, brief and banal I had forgotten it,” Stone told The Times of a private Twitter conversation he had with a hacker known as Guccifer 2.0.

Guccifer 2.0 is believed by the U.S. intelligence community to be a cover identity for Russian intelligence operatives. The intelligence community concluded that Moscow sought to interfere in last year’s election to help Trump win.

Stone told the Times he exchanged a handful of messages with Guccifer 2.0 in the weeks following a hack of the DNC, which was revealed in late July.

In one message from Aug. 14, Stone said he was “delighted” that Guccifer 2.0’s Twitter account had been reinstated after being suspended.

“wow. thank u for writing back, and thank u for an article about me!!! do u find anything interesting in the docs i posted?” Guccifer 2.0 wrote to Stone, referring to an article Stone wrote for Breitbart News on Aug. 5 which attributed the DNC breach to Guccifer 2.0.

“i’m pleased to say that u r great man. please tell me if i can help u anyhow. it would be a great pleasure to me,” Guccifer 2.0 wrote in an Aug. 17 message to Stone.

Stone tweeted on Aug. 21, “Trust me, it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in the barrel.” Weeks later, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails were leaked to WikiLeaks, leading many to believe Stone was aware in advance of the hack.

Stone denied any connection to the hacks at the time.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security last December released a joint report detailing how federal investigators linked the Russian government to hacks of Democratic Party organizations. Reports from the intelligence community said Guccifer 2.0 was used to publicly release the data from hacks, but that the hacks themselves were conducted by Russia.

“The content of the exchange is, as you can see completely innocuous and perfunctory,” Stone told The Times.

“Even if [Guccifer 2.0] is/was a Russian asset, my brief Aug. 14 correspondence with him on twitter comes AFTER I wrote about his role in the DNC hacks (Aug 5) and AFTER Wikileaks released the DNC material,” Stone said. “How does one collaborate on a matter after the fact?”

The revelation of Stone’s contacts come as the Trump administration is under scrutiny for its potential ties to Russia. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and other aides have been revealed to have met or spoke with top Russian figures ahead of the election.

Guccifer 2.0 had contacts with The Hill during last year’s presidential campaign, providing quotes as well as leaking documents.

In one leak, Guccifer 2.0 shared information about Democrats with The Hill, including the names, Social Security numbers and other personal information of big-ticket donors as well as memos used to prepare House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, President Barack Obama and DCCC officials for a fundraising event.

Another leak highlighted efforts by Democrats to prevent Mike Parrish from winning the party’s primary for a contested House seat in Pennsylvania.

(h/t The Hill)

Tillerson plans to travel without press

Veteran journalists who cover the State Department say they’ve never seen anything like it.

The new secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has been all but silent in his first month on the job. And he is planning on traveling to Asia next week without the traditional coterie of traveling press with him.

Journalists are strenuously objecting to the plan. But there is no indication that Tillerson is going to reverse course. The State Department may allow one hand-picked journalist to tag along, but the details are unknown.

On Friday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that Tillerson was looking to save money by taking a smaller plane without room for reporters.

However, news outlets normally pay for their reporters’ seats, compensating the government for the expenses.

Past secretaries normally flew with the so-called press “pool” as a matter of course, but the Trump administration seemingly wants that to stop.

Tillerson was similarly press-averse while running ExxonMobil, according to Steve Coll, who authored “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power.” Tillerson never granted him an interview for the book.

Now, as secretary of state, Tillerson has not given any interviews. He has appeared in photo ops with visiting dignitaries, but he has ignored the questions that reporters have tried to ask.

“Still no answers from secretary of state Rex Tillerson,” NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell said after one of her attempts.

“It’s not that previous secretaries didn’t sometimes duck questions. But Mr. Tillerson has been shockingly inaccessible since he was sworn in last month. On top of questionless photo ops, there have been no news conferences and no Sunday talk show appearances,” former Reuters diplomatic corespondent Carol Giacomo, now a member of the New York Times editorial board, wrote on Friday.

Coll called Tillerson’s silent approach to the job “strange.”

“It’s such a departure of the life of the State Department,” he said. “The secretary of state is the most important voice, after the president, representing the United States.”

Secretaries normally see interviews and press conferences as ways to articulate foreign policy to external audiences and address internal audiences at the same time.

“Kerry, Clinton, Rice, Powell, Albright — all very formidable public figures — gained influence inside the administration by taking advantage of their own bully pulpit,” Coll said.

But Tillerson’s approach has been different in many ways. Keeping his distance from the press is just one example.

A dozen Washington bureau chiefs and editors, including representatives from CNN, sent a letter to the State Department earlier this week urging the secretary to make arrangements for “pool” travel.

“Not only does this situation leave the public narrative of the meetings up to the Chinese foreign ministry as well as Korea’s and Japan’s, but it gives the American people no window whatsoever into the views and actions of the nation’s leaders,” the editors wrote. “And the offer to help those reporters who want to travel unilaterally is wholly unrealistic, given the commercial flight schedules, visa issues and no guarantee of access once they are there.”

CNN anchor Jake Tapper commented on the matter on Twitter: “Not bringing press on a trip like that is unusual & insulting to any American who is looking for anything but a state-run version of events.”

MSNBC anchor Greta Van Susteren also weighed in: “Tillerson should take media on trip to Asia — Americans want to know and we pay his salary and his staff and plane.”

Voice of America correspondent Steve Herman replied to her tweet and added: “And it’s not a free ride for media. We reimburse government for the travel costs.”

Up until this week, the State Department had not held an on-camera briefing since inauguration day — a highly unusual break from tradition.

The briefings are normally another way for the State Department to inform the public about foreign policy. This week, there were two on-camera briefings and two off-camera conference calls.

Tillerson has yet to name a press secretary.

(h/t CNN)

EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Says Carbon Dioxide is Not a Primary Contributor to Global Warming

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said Thursday he does not believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming.

“I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“But we don’t know that yet. … We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”

The statement contradicts the public stance of the agency Pruitt leads. The EPA’s webpage on the causes of climate change states, “Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change.”

Pruitt’s view is also at odds with the opinion of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere,” NASA and NOAA said in January.

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, co-chair of the Senate Climate Action Task Force, slammed Pruitt for his comments, calling his views “extreme” and “irresponsible.”

“Anyone who denies over a century’s worth of established science and basic facts is unqualified to be the administrator of the EPA. Now more than ever, the Senate needs to stand up to Scott Pruitt and his dangerous views,” he said in a statement.

Schatz said lawmakers would hold Pruitt accountable through the appropriations process and oversight of the EPA, and by making sure he follows the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.

Pruitt previously served as Oklahoma attorney general, where he rose to prominence as a leader in coordinated efforts by Republican attorneys general to challenge President Barack Obama‘s regulatory agenda. He sued or took part in legal actions against the EPA 14 times.

Democrats and environmentalists opposed Pruitt’s nomination to lead the EPA due to his close relationship with fossil fuel companies and his history of casting doubt on climate change. Conservatives and the energy industry have cheered his efforts to push back on what they view as over-regulation under Obama.

Pruitt maintained on Thursday it’s possible to be pro-growth, pro-jobs and pro-environment all at once.

“This idea that if you’re pro-environment you’re anti-energy is just something we’ve got to change so that attitude is something we’re working on very much,” he said.

Asked whether he would seek to roll back the EPA’s 2009 determination that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are a danger to public health, Pruitt suggested he would like to see Congress take up the issue.

“I think all those things need to be addressed as we go forward but not least of which is the response by the legislative branch with respect to the issue,” he said.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases from automobiles. In 2014, it determined the agency could also regulate some sources of greenhouse gases, such as power plants.

Pruitt also called the Paris Agreement, an international accord aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change, “a bad deal.” He said it puts the United States on a different playing field than developing countries like China and India.

The United States has vowed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. In comparison, China has committed to reach peak carbon emissions levels by 2030, but will try to reach that point sooner.

“I happen to think the Paris accord, the Paris treaty, or the Paris Agreement, if you will, should have been treated as a treaty, should have gone through senate confirmation. That’s a concern,” he said.

The Paris Agreement was negotiated by the State Department, and future adherence to U.S. commitments made under Obama will be guided by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Tillerson, the former chief of Exxon Mobil, said during his Senate confirmation hearing that he believes the United States should remain a party to the Paris Agreement.

(h/t CNBC)

Reality

There is nothing in the scientific literature that can back up Scott Pruitt’s claim. On the contrary there is overwhelming scientific evidence that carbon dioxide [CO2] in the atmosphere is the primary driver of climate change.

Science has been aware for over 150 years that carbon in the atmosphere will retain heat. The year was 1859 to be exact, and it was scientist John Tyndall who made the discovery that carbon in the atmosphere trapped heat. Then in 1896 Svante Arrhenius calculated that, based on this simple principle of physics, higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere would raise global temperatures. These discoveries are the cornerstones of climate science, in 150 years have yet to be disputed, and instead continues to be confirmed by observation.

To explain further, the science, in short, says the following. CO2 lets through short wave light, the kind that passes through our atmosphere, but traps long wave radiation, the kind that is reflected and travels back into space. This experiment can be done in a laboratory, and should you have the time you could see it for yourself.

The site at this link has compiled a list of just a handful of the published scientific papers of laboratory measurements of CO2 absorption properties, ranging from 1861 all the way up to 2008. Knowing this evidence, scientist reached a consensus a long time ago that CO2 is indeed a contributor to global warming.

Just to reiterate here, Scott Pruitt’s acceptance of science predates the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War, and the First Transcontinental Railroad. This is the equivalent trying to attack a state-of-the-art military drone with a Civil War era musket.

Media

CNBC

Trump Met Russian Ambassador at Reception During Campaign

President Donald Trump met last April with the Russian ambassador at the center of a pair of controversies over engagement between Trump allies and the Kremlin, despite claims by his spokeswoman that he had “zero” involvement with Russian officials during the campaign.

Attention to Trump’s encounter with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak resurfaced after revelations last week that at least five members of Trump’s campaign team — including Attorney General Jeff Sessions — had contact with Kislyak before Trump took office.

The federal government has launched multiple investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential contacts between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

Trump met Kislyak during a VIP reception April 27, 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel shortly before a foreign policy address, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. In the speech, Trump said an “easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia” is possible.

The Wall Street Journal article, published May 13, 2016, reported Trump “warmly greeted Mr. Kislyak and three other foreign ambassadors who came to the reception.”

White House officials described the encounter as brief and non-substantive, saying that Trump only attended the reception for five minutes and that multiple foreign ambassadors were present.

The Center for the National Interest, a nonprofit that hosted Trump’s speech, said that it invited Kislyak to attend and sat him in the front row of the audience with three other foreign ambassadors. “The Trump campaign had nothing to do with the seating arrangement,” the group said in a statement posted on its website on Wednesday.

No Recollection

The center said it invited the ambassadors to a “short reception” preceding Trump’s speech with about two dozen guests, who formed a receiving line for Trump.

“The line moved quickly and any conversations with Mr. Trump in that setting were inherently brief and could not be private,” the group said. “Our recollection is that the interaction between Mr. Trump and Ambassador Kislyak was limited to the polite exchange of pleasantries appropriate on such occasions.”

One of the White House officials said in a statement e-mailed on condition of anonymity that campaign staffers who were at the event “have no recollection of who he may have shaken hands with at the reception and we were not responsible for inviting or vetting guests. To state they met or that a meeting took place is disingenuous and absurd.”

But the meeting is at odds with White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders’ claim last week that Trump had “no interaction” with Russian government officials during the campaign.

“The big point here is the president himself knows what his involvement was, and that’s zero,” Sanders told reporters on March 3. “And I think that he’s the primary person that should be held responsible, and he had no interaction, and I think that’s what the story should be focused on.”

The encounter between Trump and Kislyak is in keeping with routine work by foreign diplomats who often seek contact with presidential campaigns of both parties during election season in order to report back analysis of potential impact to their governments.

Renewed Scrutiny

But the White House has come under renewed scrutiny over ties between campaign officials and Russia.

Sessions, who said during his confirmation hearings that he hadn’t had contact with Russian officials, acknowledged last week that he met the Russian ambassador twice during the election year, in response to media reporting on the meetings. He later recused himself from any Justice Department investigation into the Trump presidential campaign and amended his prior Senate testimony.

Last month, former national security adviser Mike Flynn resigned after it was revealed he misled senior administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, about the content of his conversations with Kislyak.

The White House has also said Kislyak met with Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.

Trump himself has dismissed allegations of improper ties with Russia as “a ruse.”

“I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia,” he said during a February press conference.

(h/t Bloomburg)

China Approves 38 New Trump Trademarks for His Businesses

China has granted preliminary approval for 38 new Trump trademarks, paving the way for President Donald Trump and his family to develop a host of branded businesses from hotels to insurance to bodyguard and escort services, public documents show.

Trump’s lawyers in China applied for the marks in April 2016, as Trump railed against China at campaign rallies, accusing it of currency manipulation and stealing U.S. jobs. Critics maintain that Trump’s swelling portfolio of China trademarks raises serious conflict of interest questions.

China’s Trademark Office published the provisional approvals on Feb. 27 and Monday.

If no one objects, they will be formally registered after 90 days. All but three are in the president’s own name. China already registered one trademark to the president, for Trump-branded construction services, on Feb. 14.

If President Trump receives any special treatment in securing trademark rights, it would violate the U.S. Constitution, which bans public servants from accepting anything of value from foreign governments unless approved by Congress, ethics lawyers from across the political spectrum say. Concerns about potential conflicts of interest are particularly sharp in China, where the courts and bureaucracy are designed to reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party.

Dan Plane, a director at Simone IP Services, a Hong Kong intellectual property consultancy, said he had never seen so many applications approved so quickly. “For all these marks to sail through so quickly and cleanly, with no similar marks, no identical marks, no issues with specifications – boy, it’s weird,” he said.

The trademarks are for businesses including branded spas, massage parlors, golf clubs, hotels, insurance, finance and real estate companies, retail shops, restaurants, bars, and private bodyguard and escort services.

Spring Chang, a founding partner at Chang Tsi & Partners, a Beijing law firm that has represented the Trump Organization, declined to comment specifically on Trump’s trademarks. But she did say that she advises clients to take out marks defensively, even in categories or subcategories of goods and services they may not aim to develop.

“I don’t see any special treatment to the cases of my clients so far,” she added. “I think they’re very fair and the examination standard is very equal for every applicant.”

Richard Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said the volume of new approvals raised red flags.

“A routine trademark, patent or copyright from a foreign government is likely not an unconstitutional emolument, but with so many trademarks being granted over such a short time period, the question arises as to whether there is an accommodation in at least some of them,” he said.

Painter is involved in a lawsuit alleging that Trump’s foreign business ties violate the U.S. Constitution. Trump has dismissed the lawsuit as “totally without merit.”

China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce, which oversees the Trademark Office, and Trump Organization general counsel Alan Garten did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

(h/t NBC News)

Trump Adviser Icahn Accused of Breaching Lobbying Rules

A consumer advocacy group is filing a complaint to Congress on Wednesday accusing President Donald Trump’s friend and fellow billionaire Carl Icahn of violating lobbying rules by pushing the White House to change the federal ethanol regulations.

Public Citizen contends that Icahn, his company Icahn Enterprises and the CVR oil refining company he owns failed to register as lobbyists, yet pushed the White House to change the EPA’s decade-old rules on ethanol — a move that would save Icahn’s company hundreds of millions of dollars.

Trump named Icahn, whose net worth is pegged by Forbes at nearly $22 billion, as the White House’s special adviser for regulatory reform in December, but said he would “not be serving as a federal employee or a special government employee and will not have any specific duties.”

Icahn has aggressively advocated for the change in the ethanol rules under the EPA’s Renewable Fuel Standard since last year, and according to the Public Citizen complaint, he submitted a proposal to the White House on Feb. 27 to overhaul the program and shift the burden for complying with the ethanol rules to fuel wholesalers. The RFS, which was created by Congress, gives EPA authority to operate the nation’s biofuels program.

The letter to the secretary of the Senate and the clerk of the House calls for an investigation into whether Icahn and CVR’s activities constitute lobbying of the White House for changes to the program. The complaint also cites Icahn’s work in helping select EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, and the proposed language he and fellow oil refiner Valero Energy submitted to the White House for a memo that would direct EPA to make the change.

“All of this has occurred with no record of any [Lobbying Disclosure Act] filings by or on behalf of Mr. Icahn, Icahn Enterprises or CVR Energy,” the complaint reads. “It is unlikely that all these activities occurred without some individual or entity being obligated to report lobbying activity under the LDA.”

The letter is latest controversy around the ethical complications that Trump, the wealthy members of his Cabinet and his advisers have faced because of their myriad business holdings.

(h/t Politico)

White House Official Terrorizes Network Green Rooms

White House official Boris Epshteyn, a combative Trump loyalist tasked with plugging the president’s message on television, threatened earlier this year to pull all West Wing officials from appearing on Fox News after a tense appearance on anchor Bill Hemmer’s show.

Epshteyn, according to multiple sources familiar with the exchange, got in a yelling match with a Fox News booker after Hemmer pressed him for details of President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order cracking down on immigration from Muslim-majority countries — a topic he was not expecting to be grilled on.

“Am I someone you want to make angry?” Epshteyn told the booker, the sources said. When he threatened to pull White House officials from the network, the fed-up booker had had enough.

“Go right ahead,” the booker fired back, the sources said, aware that Epshteyn had no power to follow through on a threat that would have upended the administration’s relationship with a sympathetic news network.

Ultimately, White House officials have continued to appear on Fox News, and the network told POLITICO that it handled the flare-up professionally.

Epshteyn’s rise to a position of prominence in the Trump White House reveals how the president has rewarded his loyalists. But Epshteyn, who serves as special assistant to the president, has added to the impression of an antagonistic White House by throwing his weight around in a manner that has further strained the relationship between the administration and the television networks.

Epshteyn’s official job is to oversee White House officials who appear on television to speak on behalf of the administration, and defend and explain Trump on TV himself. In recent weeks, he has been aligned with counselor Kellyanne Conway in pushing the administration to use Cabinet secretaries to talk about policies on television, and reduce the on-air profiles of White House staffers.

Epshteyn declined to comment for this story. In an interview, White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended Epshteyn as an important member of his team. “Boris is a fierce advocate for the president and his policies,” Spicer told POLITICO. “Obviously we’ve got to make sure that everyone is treated with the appropriate level of respect. I have not seen a problem.”

But on all three cable news networks, according to more than half a dozen interviews with TV insiders and contributors, Epshteyn has earned a reputation as someone who is combative and sometimes difficult to work with, even when he arrives at studios as a guest of a network. He has offended people in green rooms with comments they have interpreted as racially insensitive and demeaning.

“His off-camera behavior was even more distasteful than his on-camera behavior,” said Joy-Ann Reid, a national correspondent for MSNBC, who often sparred with Epshteyn on television during the campaign.

During an incident last summer, Epshteyn was chatting at Fox News with Basil Smikle, chairman of the New York State Democratic Party about an upcoming story segment on affirmative action. Smikle, the son of Jamaican immigrants, explained to Epshteyn, who is a Russian Jew, the challenge of feeling like you have to work twice as hard to prove your worth when you’re black in America, he told POLITICO in an interview.

In response, “Boris suggested affirmative action means that institutions have to lower their standards to let African-Americans in,” Smikle said in an interview, noting that Epshteyn seemed to imply that the bar for success was lower for him because of the color of his skin. Smikle, who holds degrees from Cornell University and Columbia University, said he was “stunned at the comment, and I found it offensive.”

It was not an isolated incident of making offensive statements in public. Sitting in the green room at CNN during the election, Epshteyn rankled Christine Quinn, a paid network contributor and the former speaker of the New York City Council. “Why does she dress like that?” he said out loud, in front of multiple people, pointing to a woman with very short hair, wearing a loose-fitting pantsuit.

“Why do you dress like that?” Quinn, who is gay and a longtime LGBT rights activist, fired back. Epshteyn, Quinn said in an interview, appeared stunned by the reaction to his comment.

Epshteyn entered Trumpworld as a surrogate, thanks to a friendship with Eric Trump developed as fellow undergrad students at Georgetown University. He became a ubiquitous presence on cable news throughout the 2016 campaign, first as an outside supporter and then as a paid Trump campaign staffer.

One CNN contributor interviewed for this story, who declined to speak on the record without approval from the network, recalled Epshteyn arriving early for a segment during the campaign and sprawling out on the couch in the greenroom to rest — and then complaining to a producer that the makeup staff wasn’t quick enough to powder his face.

Now, Epshteyn is a White House official, with an office in the Old Executive Office Building, steps from the West Wing. He is often spotted in the West Wing, near Spicer’s office, or sporting his signature three-piece suits in the briefing room.

Internally, Epshteyn is well-regarded for his loyalty to Trump and for his ability to publicly speak on behalf of the administration — no small posting for an administration where the president is keenly focused on how things play on cable TV.

“Boris is someone who is willing to go on the battlefield in support or defense of candidate and now President Trump,” Conway said in an interview, noting that many of the unflattering stories about Epshteyn are par for the course when your job is to defend Donald Trump. “Everyone here is aware that if you are someone who continues to support President Trump, you, yourself are a target,” she said. “I think some people are looking for a body count.”

But his recent blow-up with Fox News has put him on thin ice with some senior White House officials, according to people close to the administration. When Epshteyn joined the administration’s communications team, Spicer was warned by campaign aides about past complaints from the network about his behavior, and Epshteyn was warned that his campaign antics would not be tolerated by the White House, multiple sources familiar with the discussions said. Spicer declined to comment on any specific warning delivered to Epshteyn.

As the communications director for Trump’s inaugural committee last January, Epshteyn met with all of the networks ahead of the president’s swearing in. At a meeting with NBC executives, he aired his grievances against Reid and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. In the room, his jokes about how he enjoys appearing on television in part because of the free food fell flat, according to multiple sources in the meeting.

“He calls women girls, and he has no decorum about how he speaks to people,” said Reid. “He’s somebody that just makes the room uncomfortable. When he leaves the room, the conversation is, ‘I hope he never comes back.’ He enjoys making people uncomfortable.”

Despite his critics, Epshteyn’s political profile has quickly risen, thanks to his early allegiance to the president. Just eight years ago, Epshteyn was a junior staffer on Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign. Today, Epshteyn is a senior White House official who is considered critical to the mission of creating the image of a successful presidency. And in Trump’s world, loyalty and ubiquity on television count for a lot.

“He goes on TV and he defends Donald Trump,” said one former campaign aide. “That carries a lot of weight.”

(h/t Politico)

Trump Campaign Approved Adviser’s Trip to Moscow

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski approved foreign policy adviser Carter Page’s now-infamous trip to Moscow last summer on the condition that he would not be an official representative of the campaign, according to a former campaign adviser.

A few weeks before he traveled to Moscow to give a July 7 speech, Page asked J.D. Gordon, his supervisor on the campaign’s National Security Advisory Committee, for permission to make the trip, and Gordon strongly advised against it, Gordon, a retired naval officer, told POLITICO.

Page then emailed Lewandowski and spokeswoman Hope Hicks asking for formal approval, and was told by Lewandowski that he could make the trip, but not as an official representative of the campaign, the former campaign adviser said. The adviser spoke on the condition of anonymity because he has not been authorized to discuss internal campaign matters.

The trip is now a focus of congressional and FBI investigations into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election.

Lewandowski told POLITICO he did not recall the email exchange with Page, but he did not deny that it occurred.

“Is it possible that he emailed me asking if he could go to Russia as a private citizen?” Lewandowski said Tuesday. “I don’t remember that, but I probably got 1,000 emails a day at that time, and I can’t remember every single one that I was sent. And I wouldn’t necessarily remember if I had a one-word response to him saying he could do something as a private citizen.”

Hicks declined to comment. But a former campaign official said campaign officials did not discuss Page’s planned trip before he left for Moscow.

“No one discussed the trip within the campaign and certainly not with candidate Trump directly,” said the former campaign official.

The official pointed to a July statement from Hicks that declared that Page was in Moscow in a private capacity and was not representing the campaign. That statement came in response to media reports from Moscow about Page’s presence there.

Both Lewandowski and the White House official cast Page as a minor character on the periphery of the campaign, who was a foreign policy adviser in name only.

“I’ve never met or spoken to Carter Page in my life,” Lewandowski said.

Gordon and Page had no comment on whether the Trump campaign officially sanctioned the trip, which has drawn the attention of investigators from the FBI and congressional committees investigating possible Trump campaign ties with Russian officials before the election.

And while Page has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in connection with his Moscow visit, it is now drawing increased scrutiny as a result of new disclosures about his contact two weeks later with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Just days after Kislyak talked to Page, Gordon and a third campaign official, WikiLeaks disseminated thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee’s servers — a hack that U.S. intelligence later attributed to the Russian government.

No connection between any of those three events has been alleged publicly or confirmed. But on Tuesday, Page confirmed that he is one of about a dozen individuals and organizations contacted by the Senate Intelligence Committee and asked to preserve relevant materials for its investigation into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.

“I will do everything in my power to reasonably ensure that all information concerning my activities related to Russia last year is preserved,” Page said in a letter to committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.).

In his letter, Page again denied any wrongdoing and repeated his claims that former officials of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other Democrats have been spreading false information about the trip and Page’s other connections to Russia.

Page’s trip to Moscow has been the subject of intense speculation for months, but many of the details remain cloudy.

A longtime oil and energy industry consultant, Page had already spent considerable time in Russia before making the trip, most recently as founder and managing partner of the Global Energy Capital investment and consulting firm, which specializes in Russian and Central Asian oil and gas business.

The firm’s website says Page has been involved in more than $25 billion of transactions in the energy and power sector and that he spent three years in Moscow, where he was an adviser on key transactions for Russian state-owned gas company Gazprom and other energy-related companies.

Page has insisted that he was in Moscow to give a commencement address at the New Economic School there based on his scholarly research, and that his visit was “outside of my informal, unpaid role” on the Trump campaign. He also said he had divested any stake in Gazprom and that he had “not met this year [2016] with any sanctioned official in Russia despite the fact that there are no restrictions on U.S. persons speaking with such individuals.”

But last September, top congressional lawmakers were briefed on suspected efforts by Russia to meddle in the election. Soon after, then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada asked FBI Director James Comey to investigate meetings between a Trump official, later identified as Page, and “high ranking sanctioned individuals” in Moscow that he believed were evidence of “significant and disturbing ties” between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Trump campaign officials took steps to distance themselves from Page, who had been publicly identified as an adviser as recently as Aug. 24. He announced Sept. 26 that he was taking a leave of absence from the campaign, saying the accusations were untrue but causing too much of a “distraction.”

But even after Russia was linked to the hacking effort against Democrats, the Trump campaign did not seek to question Page about his trip, the campaign adviser said.

Asked what Page did while in Moscow, the adviser said, “I have no idea. I didn’t want to know.”

The adviser also said he was not aware of anyone else on the campaign who discussed the trip with Page, either to glean any foreign policy insight from him or to determine whether any damage control was needed based on his contacts.

“Nobody talked about it. It was such an ugly topic. Even when I saw him at the convention, I didn’t talk to him about it,” the adviser said, adding that some in the campaign had expressed concern that any public appearances in Moscow by Page would send a bad message.

The campaign fired Lewandowski on June 20, before Page took the trip. Paul Manafort, who replaced Lewandowski as manager and later became chairman, said he had no knowledge of any aspect of Page’s trip, including whether Lewandowski or anyone else approved it.

In recent days, Page’s contact with Russians resurfaced with news reports that he, Gordon and senior Trump campaign adviser Sen. Jeff Sessions all engaged in discussions with Kislyak at an event on the sidelines of the GOP convention.

Page has declined to comment on what they discussed, saying it was private, while Gordon characterized the conversations as harmless efforts to improve U.S.-Russia ties.

The former campaign adviser on Tuesday said Page and the ambassador had a lengthy discussion and that they were at times joined by Gordon and two other ambassadors from the region. The adviser did not know whether Page or Kislyak initiated the conversation.

(h/t Politico)

Trump Hits Obama Again, This Time With False Claims About Gitmo Detainees

President Trump early Tuesday incorrectly blamed the Obama administration for releasing 122 “vicious” prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

“122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!” Trump wrote.

Trump posted the tweet 31 minutes after Fox News tweeted about a U.S. airstrike that killed a former detainee in Yemen.

“Former Gitmo detainee killed by a U.S. airstrike in Yemen; at least 122 former Gitmo detainees have re-engaged in terrorism” the “Fox & Friends” account tweeted just after 6:30 a.m.

But according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 113 of the 122 former detainees who have re-engaged in terrorism were released before January 2009, when former President Barack Obama took office.

The former detainee recently killed in the U.S. airstrike, Muhammad Tahar, was transferred to Yemen in December 2009, according to Department of Defense files compiled by the The New York Times.

Trump during his presidential campaign said he would “load” the detention center “with some bad dudes.” Obama during his own presidential campaign had promised to close the facility.

(h/t The Hill)

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