Brennan: “Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late.”
Developments on Day 124 of the Trump Administration:
See also Political WorldView Podcast: The Brazil and Trump Meltdown Edition
Is Trump’s Embrace of Dictators a Perpetual US Foreign Policy?
Ex-CIA Head: Why We Investigated Trump-Russia Collusion
John Brennan, the former director of the CIA, tells the House Intelligence Committee in dramatic language of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials during the 2016 election.
Brennan said he was concerned by a series of suspicious contacts as the CIA began to cope with Russian hacking and influence operations.
Without naming specific Trump associates, Brennan said, “I know what the Russians try to do. They try to suborn individuals and try to get individuals, including U.S. individuals, to act on their behalf, wittingly or unwittingly.”
He summarized that, when he left office in January, “I had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting U.S. persons involved in the campaign or not to work on their behalf.”
Brennan said he personally did not know if collusion occurred and acknowledged that the contacts might have been benign.
The White House tried to portray Brennan’s remarks as exoneration: “This morning’s hearings back up what we’ve been saying all along: that despite a year of investigation, there is still no evidence of any Russia-Trump campaign collusion.”
But the former CIA director did not rule out the possible “coordination” cited by FBI Director James Comey before he was fired by Donald Trump two weeks ago.
Instead, he spoke of Russian efforts around the world to use politicians for their objectives and emphasized, “I certainly was concerned that they were practicing the same types of activities here in the United States.
He repeated that US targets are often unwitting in the Russian efforts: “Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late.”
The former CIA director explained that the investigation began in late July and that days later, he spoke to the head of the Russian security service FSB and warned him to stop the influence operations. Brennan said that in August and September he briefed a small number of congressional leaders — including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan — sharing the top-secret intelligence about Moscow’s efforts to subvert the election to Trump’s benefit.
Brennan added that Russia is still trying to exploit the discord around the Trump Administration and the activities of the President and his associates before and after the inauguration: “Even though the election is over. I think [President Vladimir] Putin and Russian intelligence services are trying to actively exploit what is going on now in Washington to their benefit and to our detriment.”
Senate Committee Subpoenas Records of Flynn’s Businesses
The Senate Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas on Tuesday for documents from two businesses owned by former National Security Michael Flynn, following his refusal to hand over information as he invoked the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination.
The ranking Democrat on the committee, Mark Warner, explained, “A business does not have a right to take the Fifth if it’s a corporation.”
The GOP chairman, Richard Burr, said the committee is considering a contempt of Congress charge but — for the moment — prefers to give Flynn the opportunity that he requested last month to testify.
TOP PHOTO: Al Drago/New York Times
Associate: Comey Saw Trump White House as “Dishonorable”
A close friend of James Comey says the former FBI director saw advisors in the Trump White House as “dishonorable”.
Benjamin Wittes, who runs the Lawfare website and is a fellow at the Brookings Institution, spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper about Trump’s dismissal of Comey over the Trump-Russia investigation.
Wittes said he had begun speaking to media after the revelation, just after Comey’s firing, that Trump had asked for a pledge of personal loyalty — refused by the FBI Director — in late January, days after then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn misled the FBI over his contacts with Russian officials.
Saying that the Trump Administration should be very worried about Comey’s forthcoming public testimony to a Congressional committee, Wittes said out a series of incidents which he said made Comey feel the FBI’s independence was not being respected by Trump.
Friend of James Comey speaks out: He has a story to tell. "If I were Donald Trump that would scare me a lot." https://t.co/KfrLel3uzb
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) May 24, 2017
Trump Praises Philippines’ Duterte for Deadly Crackdown on Drug Suspects
Donald Trump has praised the Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte for government-sanctioned attacks on drug suspects.
In an April 29 phone call, the transcript of which was released by Duterte’s office, Trump said, “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.”
Duterte’s extrajudicial killings have taken thousands of lives without arrest or trial. In March, the program was criticized in the State Department’s annual human rights report as an “apparent governmental disregard for human rights and due process”.
See also Is Trump’s Embrace of Dictators a Perpetual US Foreign Policy?
Trump also told Duterte that two US nuclear submarines have been deployed off the North Korean coast.
The President responded to Duterte’s concern about North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests with the assertion that leader Kim Jong-un “has got the powder, but he doesn’t have the delivery system — all his rockets are crashing”.
He continued, “We have a lot of firepower over there. We have two submarines — the best in the world. We have two nuclear submarines, not that we want to use them at all.”
Carrier Plant that Trump “Saved” From Mexico Move To Cut 600 of 800 Jobs
A Carrier furnace plant, which Donald Trump bragged he had kept in the US, will cut 600 jobs by Christmas.
Trump declared in December 2016, during a visit to the plant, that Carrier had withdrawn a plan to move the Indianapolis plant to Mexico.
The President-elect and Carrier proclaimed that 1,100 jobs — in fact, the real number was 800 — would be retained for the manufacture of fan coils. But Greg Hayes, the CEO of Carrier’s corporate parent United Technologies, later said that automation would ultimately replace some of those jobs.
Carrier has now notified the state of Indiana that 338 jobs will be cut on July 20, four supervisor jobs in October, and a final 290 jobs on December 22.
In contrast to his series of tweets proclaiming success in December, Trump had no comment about the latest news.
Trump Budget Circumvents Courts to Defund “Sanctuary Cities”
Blocked by courts from denying Federal funds to cities which protect undocumented immigrants, the Trump Administration inserts the measure into its 1,300-page draft budget.
In his first week in office, Donald Trump signed an executive order to defund cities such as San Francisco, Miami, and New York, but a federal judge blocked the order last month.
However, the draft budget broadens the definition of a sanctuary jurisdiction to give the Justice and Homeland Security Departments the ability to withhold funding — including grants aimed at preventing terrorism. Congressional assent would effectively get around the court objection that Trump cannot unilaterally deny funds authorized by the Senate and House of Representatives.
Language in the budget allows Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to withhold funds to jurisdictions that do not comply with requests for information about individuals and requests to detain them.
Trump Budget Sharply Cuts Aid, Peacekeeping, Climate Change Programs
The Trump Administration’s draft budget makes deep cuts in State Department funding, including long-term development aid, humanitarian food assistance, and peacekeeping missions.
The budget eliminates all funding for climate-change programs and for two prominent Washington institutions, the US Institute for Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The only money earmarked for the two would be for closeout costs such as severance pay.
Affected programs include those fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria, and polio. An emergency food aid program that purchases food from U.S. farmers is eliminated, and contributions to UN peacekeeping are cut by more than half in a $1.6 billion reduction.
In total, the core budget of the State Department and the Agency for International Development is cut by 32% to $25.3 billion, plus $12 billion for overseas contingency operations.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “As we advance the President’s foreign policy priorities, this budget will also help lay the foundation for a new era of global stability and American prosperity.”
But the White House proposal removes more than two dozen countries receiving economic and development assistance and directs the rest not to those most in need but to those deemed most critical to US national security.
Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, maintained, “The President’s budget provides strong support for foreign aid while reflecting the reality that resources are not unlimited.”
Trump’s Budget Cuts for Health Care and Research
The draft Trump budget sets out significant cuts in Federal funding of health care, including Medicaid; other provision for the poor, elderly, and disabled; biomedical research; programs to fight infectious disease outbreaks; and prevention of HIV/AIDS.
In conjunction with the GOP’s health care replacement for ObamaCare, which finally passed the House of Representatives in early May, the budget proposes cuts of $616 billion over 10 years in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, with almost half the savings in the last two years.
Spread out over the decade, the decrease is more than 10% on health care and support services for 75 million low-income, elderly, and disabled people, about half of whom are children.
There are also reductions for the National Institutes of Health, cutting funds by almost 20% to $25 billion, and for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with a 17% drop.
Planned Parenthood is completely defunded because of its provision of abortions. The ban is not only from Medicaid funding but also from any other Health and Human Services program, including Title X family planning, maternal and child health, STD testing and treatment, and Zika prevention.
The budget also slices $192 billion from nutritional assistance and $272 billion from other welfare programs over 10 years.
Among the dozens of agencies and programs slated for elimination are the National Endowment for Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the US Trade and Development Agency, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.