Treasury announces “Friends of Putin” blacklist — but no punishment

Developments on Day 376 of the Trump Administration:

See also Podcast: Trump and the Real State of the Union
A Snap Response to Trump’s State of the Union Performance

Deadline Passes With No Implementation of Legislation

Donald Trump refuses to put Congressional sanctions against Russia into effect, even as the Treasury publishes a blacklist of associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The State Department announced on Monday that it does not plan to implement the sanctions, reluctantly signed into law by Trump last summer after overwhelming votes for passage in both houses of Congress.

But the Treasury helped cover the effect of inaction overnight by issuing a name-and-shame list of 210 senior Russian political and business figures. It includes more than 40 of Putin’s closest advisors; all 30 members of the cabinet of ministers, including Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev; the heads of many important State agencies and State-run companies; and 96 billionaires.

In what appeared to be a last-minute, rushed job, a Treasury Department official said the unclassified list came directly from Forbes’ ranking of the richest businessmen in Russia while others noted that the list of officials “appears copy-pasted from…the Kremlin directory of officials available on its English-language website”.

Anders Aslund of the Atlantic Council said this final list was a last-minute replacement for work by Russia specialists:

At the last minute, however, somebody high up – no one knows who at this point – threw out the experts’ work and instead wrote down the names of the top officials in the Russian presidential administration and government plus the 96 Russian billionaires on the Forbes list. In doing so, this senior official ridiculed the government experts who had prepared another report, rendering CAATSA [the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act] ineffective and mocking US sanctions on Russia overall. By signing this list, the Secretary of the Treasury took responsibility for it.

The Treasury list has no sanctions attached to it, but Putin was still upset: “This is definitely an unfriendly act. It is complicating Russian-American relations, where the situation is already hard, and is definitely harming international relations in general.”

He said of the Congressional mandate for sanctions, “We were prepared to undertake retaliatory steps, and quite serious ones too, which would cut our relations to zero. But we will refrain from such steps for the time being.

Meanwhile, legislators continued to challenge the refusal to implement restrictions, including sanctions on large purchasers of Russian military equipment, that were adopted in response to Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine and its interference in the elections of other coutnries.

Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said:

It is a grave breach of President Trump’s responsibilities to reward President Putin by inaction for his intervention in an American election — it represents nothing less than appeasement for an attack on our country’s democracy. It is time for us time to stand up for our country. We cannot let these actions to continue to go unpunished.

The State Department maintained that implementation is not necessary because it is using the threat of the law to press customers to cancel potential deals.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in a Congressional hearing, rejected suggestions that the Administration was delaying action and insisted, “There will be sanctions out of this report.”

Last week Sergey Naryshkin, director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, was in Washington even though he was put on the sanctions list by the Obama Administration. Russian media said he was meeting with CIA Director Mike Pompeo over “terrorism”.

Nunes Refuses to Say If He Coordinated with White House on #ReleaseTheMemo

Trump ally Representative Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has refused to say whether he is coordinating with the White House on a four-page memorandum attacking the FBI and Justice Department.

In an attempt to limit or even halt the Trump-Russia investigation, Nunes’ staff has compiled the memo alleging that the agencies acted inappropriately in getting a warrant from a top-secret Government court for surveillance of Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.

The FBI, which also obtained a warrant for surveillance of Russian officials and entities, suspected that Moscow was trying to recruit Page as an agent.

Nunes was asked during a closed-door hearing on Monday if his staffers spoken with the White House. He made a few comments evading the question before saying, “I’m not answering.”

Nunes was forced to recuse himself as Committee chair for Trump=Russia hearings last April, after he met White House officials who gave him information claiming — falsely — that the Obama Administration had wiretapped Trump Tower.

But the representative has continued efforts to pin blame on the FBI and Justice Department, diverting from the main lines of the Trump-Russia inquiry.

On Monday, the White House turned down a last-minute appeal by the Justice Department to withhold the memo, just before the House Intelligence Committee approved its dissemination in a party-line vote.

FEMA Ends Food and Water Assistance to Puerto Rico

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is ending food and water assistance to Puerto Rico, more than four months after Hurricane Maria.

FEMA says that it will “officially shut off” the mission on Wednesday, having provided more than 30 million gallons of potable water and nearly 60 million meals. The agency will turn its remaining food and water supplies over to the Puerto Rican Government for distribution.

One-third of of residents still lack electricity and, in some places, running water. FEMA maintains that its internal analytics suggest only about 1% of islanders still need emergency food and water.

“The reality is that we just need to look around. Supermarkets are open, and things are going back to normal,” said Alejandro De La Campa, FEMA’s director in Puerto Rico. “If we’re giving free water and food, that means that families are not going to supermarkets to buy. It is affecting the economy of Puerto Rico.”

In Morovis, Mayor Carmen Maldonado said about 10,000 of 30,000 residents still receive food and water rations: “There are some municipalities that may not need the help anymore, because they’ve got nearly 100 percent of their energy and water back. Ours is not so lucky.”

Maldonado estimated that 80% percent of Morovis’s people are still without electricity: “In municipalities like this one, where families are going out to work just to buy gas to run a generator, it becomes very hard because money they would use to buy food they’re instead using to buy fuel.”