President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would let the Justice Department decide how to handle the special counsel’s report on an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Moscow.

Republican Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, William Barr, said at his confirmation hearing this month he would allow Robert Mueller to complete the probe and pledged to make as many details of the findings public as he can.

Asked in an interview with the Daily Caller conservative website whether he would make the decision on whether to release the Mueller report, Trump said “they’ll have to make their decision within the Justice Department.”

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said on Monday that Mueller’s probe is “close to being completed.”

Trump told the Daily Caller he has not spoken to Whitaker about whether the investigation is nearing its conclusion.

Whitaker’s comments were the first time a top government official with knowledge of the investigation has publicly said it is in the final stages.

Democrats worry that Trump’s administration may try to undercut the investigation, which has clouded Trump’s two years in office and has been a frequent target of the president and his allies. So far, the investigation has ensnared 34 people.

Russia rejects the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies that Moscow ran an operation to hack Democratic Party computers and spread disinformation to undermine candidate Hillary Clinton and the American electoral process.

The president dismisses the probe as a political witch hunt and denies collusion with Russia.

Mueller’s office most recently indicted a long-time Trump confidant, Republican political operative Roger Stone, on charges of obstruction, witness tampering, and lying to Congress. He has pleaded not guilty.

Others in Trump’s orbit charged by prosecutors include former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, his former campaign deputy, Richard Gates, and his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn and former lawyer Michael Cohen.
…

The Republican chairman of the U.S. Senate judiciary panel Wednesday requested a briefing from the FBI on the arrest of Roger Stone, a longtime associate of President Donald Trump, in an inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Senator Lindsey Graham said he was concerned about the number of agents involved, tactics employed and the timing of Stone’s arrest Friday in Florida. Graham asked for the briefing no later than Feb. 5.

A video of Stone’s arrest broadcast on CNN showed an FBI team taking him away from his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home in the dark just before 6 a.m. and Stone surrendering without any issue.

“Although I am sure these tactics would be standard procedure for the arrest of a violent offender, I have questions regarding their necessity in this case,” Graham wrote in the letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

The top Republican on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Representative Doug Collins, expressed similar concerns in a letter to Wray.

Collins asked Wray for answers by Feb. 13 to a series of questions, including whether Wray was aware of what Collins called the FBI’s “immense show of force” during the raid.

“Given the nature of the charges in Stone’s indictment, many believe the FBI used an excessive amount of force during his arrest,” Collins wrote.

Some law enforcement experts said in the aftermath that when a person has not agreed to give themselves up to authorities voluntarily, such procedures were standard.

Trump, in an interview with the conservative website Daily Caller on Wednesday, said Stone’s arrest was a “very, very disappointing scene” and he would “think about” asking the FBI to review its policies.

“When you have 29 people and you have armored vehicles, and you had all of the other – you know, many people know Roger, and Roger is not a person that they would have to worry about from that standpoint,” Trump said.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors accuse Stone, a self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” and longtime Republican operative, of obstruction, witness tampering, and lying to Congress. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating U.S. allegations that Russia meddled in the election and whether members of the campaign of then-Republican candidate Trump coordinated with Moscow officials. So far, the investigation has ensnared 34 people. Moscow denies interference and Trump dismisses the probe as a political witch hunt.
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U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday introduced legislation to limit the president’s power to levy import tariffs for national security reasons. The bills face an uncertain future but underscore bipartisan concerns on Capitol Hill over the rising costs of the Trump administration’s trade policies.

The United States in 2018 slapped duties on aluminum and steel from other countries, drawing criticism from lawmakers who support free trade and complaints of rising supply chain costs across business sectors.

Two bipartisan groups of lawmakers Wednesday introduced legislation known as the Bicameral Congressional Trade Authority Act in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The bills would require Trump to have congressional approval before taking trade actions like tariffs and quotas under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. The law currently allows the president to impose such tariffs without approval from Capitol Hill.

“The imposition of these taxes, under the false pretense of national security (Section 232), is weakening our economy, threatening American jobs, and eroding our credibility with other nations,” said Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, co-sponsor of the Senate bill.

Toomey led a similar push last year that did not go to a vote.

It is unclear that Congress would consider taking up such legislation now. Still, the bills underscore mounting pressure from lawmakers to address concerns over tariffs, especially those on Canada and Mexico as lawmakers prepare to vote on a new North American trade deal agreed to late last year.

​Republican Chuck Grassley from Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, earlier pressed the Trump administration to lift tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada and Mexico before Congress begins considering legislation to implement the new pact.

Numerous business and agricultural groups have come out in support of the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement, but have said its benefits will be limited so long as the U.S. tariffs and retaliatory tariffs from Canada and Mexico remain in place.

Companies are able to request exemptions from the steel and aluminum tariffs, but the process has been plagued by delays and uncertainty.

“Virginia consumers and industries like craft beer and agriculture are hurting because of the president’s steel and aluminum tariffs,” said Democratic Senator Mark Warner, co-sponsor of the Senate legislation. “This bill would roll them back.”

Republicans Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Darin LaHood of Illinois and Democrats Ron Kind of Wisconsin and Jimmy Panetta of California introduced the House legislation.
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The indictment of President Donald Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone has raised new questions about just what special counsel Robert Mueller has uncovered during his 20-month investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

One question is whether the indictment gets Mueller’s prosecutors any closer to the heart of the investigation: determining whether there was any “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The intelligence community concluded after the election that Russian government operatives furnished the activist group WikiLeaks with reams of private emails purloined from Hillary Clinton and other Democrats in 2016. But Mueller has yet to prove that Stone or any other Trump campaign associates served as conduits or facilitators in the theft and dissemination of the damaging emails.

Another question raised by the Stone indictment is whether the charges against the presidential confidant represent a real breakthrough in the investigation or just another case of Trump allies getting caught lying to investigators or members of Congress 

To Trump allies, Stone’s indictment on charges of lying to Congress and other “procedural” offenses epitomizes an investigation gone amok, a politically motivated “witch hunt” to ensnare otherwise innocent associates of the president.

To his critics, the charges show how the Trump campaign used Stone as a witting conduit to WikiLeaks as the anti-secrecy website dumped tens of thousands of embarrassing emails and other documents aimed at hurting Clinton’s electoral prospects.

Stone, a (former U.S. President) Richard Nixon hero worshipper and an informal adviser to Trump for the past 40 years, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in federal court to seven criminal counts. 

On its surface, the indictment does not allege any criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Instead, it accuses Stone of making false statements, obstruction of a legal proceeding and witness tampering – charges that are related mostly to Stone’s congressional testimony in 2017 about his contacts with WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign.

In his brief appearance before a federal judge in Washington, D.C., Stone said little. But since his pre-dawn arrest in Florida last Friday, the self-described “dirty trickster” has spoken in several TV interviews, insisting he did nothing illegal or out of the ordinary for a gung-ho political operative.

“That’s what I engaged in. It’s called politics and they haven’t criminalized it, at least not yet,” Stone said Sunday on ABC News. 

“All I did was take publicly available information and try to hype it to get it as much attention as possible, because I had a tip, the information was politically significant and that it would come in October,” Stone said.

Stone caused a stir during the campaign by hyping the WikiLeaks email dumps and insinuating advance knowledge of their release. 

The indictment against him alleges that Stone maintained much closer than previously-known ties with the Trump campaign even after he left it in mid-2015. Through much of 2016, according to the indictment, Stone remained in regular contact with senior Trump campaign officials as they sought to learn about the WikiLeaks email releases. 

After the website published an initial batch of Democratic emails, “a senior Trump campaign official” – believed to be either former campaign chairman Paul Manafort or former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates – was “directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information” WikiLeaks had about the Clinton campaign, according to the indictment.

In October 2016, just before WikiLeaks published emails hacked from the account of Clinton’s campaign chairman, Stone received an email from a “high ranking Trump campaign official” – identified in press accounts as ousted Trump strategist Steve Bannon – asking about the “status of future releases” by WikiLeaks.

Stone replied that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had a “serious security concern” but that the site would release “a load every week going forward.”

Bennett Gershman, a professor at Pace Law School in New York who closely follows the Mueller investigation, said the indictment paints Stone as a “conduit” between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks.

​“It gets the investigation closer to the inner workings of the Trump campaign and the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia,” Gershman said.

Trump has denied any advance knowledge of the WikiLeaks email dumps. Stone has said he never discussed them with Trump during or after the campaign.

While the indictment doesn’t’ charge any conspiracy between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks or Russia, that charge may come later, Gershman said. How much later is only a guess. Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said Monday that the special counsel investigation was “close to being completed.” 

“This is a preliminary charge that will become much more significant later on,” Gershman said.

Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor now a law professor at George Washington University, said the special counsel would have charged Stone with conspiracy had he thought Stone’s contacts with WikiLeaks were illegal.

“I think the fact that the special counsel didn’t charge that conspiracy might be a bit of a sign that maybe the evidence of a broader criminal conspiracy isn’t’ there, at least not yet,” Eliason said. 

Stone’s actions may have been “deplorable” but not illegal, he said. 

“You can call that colluding, working together, sharing information but there is not necessarily an underlying crime involved there,” Eliason said.

Paul Rosenzweig, another former federal prosecutor, said there appears to be more to the indictment than meets the eye. 

“I think there are some hints here of more information about interactions with the Russians that do continue to build a case for illegal coordination between trump camp and Russia,” Rosenzweig, now a senior fellow at the R Street in Washington, said.
…

U.S. intelligence chiefs are sounding alarms about an ever more perilous future for the United States, one in which the country is in danger of seeing its influence wane, its allies waiver and key adversaries team up to erode norms that once kept the country safe and the world more stable.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, along with the leaders of five other top intelligence agencies, delivered the grim assessment Tuesday, unveiling their annual worldwide threats report for lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Coats described the challenges facing the U.S. as a “toxic mix,” combing the exploits of the “big four” — Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — and of non-state actors such as terrorists and criminal networks, and factors such as rapidly advancing technology, climate change and migration.

WATCH: Worldwide threats

​”It is increasingly a challenge to prioritize which threats are of greatest importance,” Coats said, sharing testimony that often and repeatedly contradicted past assertions by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“We face significant changes in the domestic and global environment that has resulted in an increasingly complex and uncertain world and we must be ready. We must be ready,” he added.

Driving many of the concerns, according to intelligence officials, is a growing alliance between Russia and China competing against the U.S. not just for military and technological superiority, but for global influence.

​Russia-China nexus

“China and Russia are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s,” the report warns.

That relationship is only likely to strengthen as both Moscow and Beijing attempt to take advantage of what they see as a growing U.S. unilateralism, it added.

Officials say that is already playing out in Europe where both countries find openings, as traditional U.S. allies question Washington’s role and consider new partnerships.

The threat assessment, while not mentioning the Trump administration’s focus on “America First” policies or its repeated criticism of alliances like NATO, cautions that many of these U.S. allies are already “seeking greater independence from Washington in response to their perceptions of changing U.S. policies on security and trade.”

At the same time, China and Russia appear to be benefiting from different approaches.

Beijing is trying to win influence by selling would-be partners “a distinctly Chinese fusion of strongman autocracy and a form of Western-style capitalism as a development model and implicit alternative to democratic values and institutions,” Coats said.

In contrast, Coats warned Russia is using weapons sales, private security firms and energy deals with some success across the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia.

​North Korea

The intelligence chiefs also broke with Trump over North Korea less than a month after the president touted what he called an “incredible” meeting with North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Yong Chol.

“We have made a lot of progress, as far as denuclearization is concerned,” Trump said at the time.

But Coats is skeptical that Pyongyang will ever give up its entire nuclear arsenal, pointing to “activity that is inconsistent with full denuclearization.”

CIA Director Gina Haspel also said that despite indications North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “is trying to navigate a path toward some kind of better future,” his calculations on the need for nuclear weapons do not seem to have changed.

“The regime is committed to developing a long-range nuclear armed missile that would pose a direct threat to the United States,” she told lawmakers.

And while North Korea has not conducted a nuclear test in more than a year, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Robert Ashley likewise warned there is no reason to relax.

“They showed a capability to have an ICBM function,” Ashley said, pointing to older missile tests. “The capabilities and threat that existed a year ago are still there.”

​Islamic State

The U.S. intelligence community also expressed caution about the president’s willingness to declare the demise of the Islamic State terror group.

The IS caliphate, Coats said, has been defeated, reduced to just a “couple of little villages” in Syria. But he said underestimating the group’s resolve would be a mistake.

“ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria,” Coats said, using an acronym for the group.

“ISIS will continue to be a threat to the United States, and we’re going to have to continue … to keep our eyes on that and our interest in the realization that this terrorism threat is going to continue for some time.”

​Iran nuclear deal

U.S. intelligence analysts also appear to split with Trump over Iran and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“At the moment, technically, they are in compliance,” Haspel said of the 2015 deal between Iran and world powers meant to prevent Tehran from pursuing nuclear weapons.

The U.S. withdrew from the agreement last May, after Trump decried it as “defective to its core,” arguing that it would allow Iran to get economic relief and still have a path to nuclear weapons.

But for now, U.S. intelligence officials say Tehran is at least a year away from being able to produce a nuclear warhead, though they caution that with new U.S. and European sanctions, their willingness to stick with the agreement may be waning.

“We do see them debating amongst themselves as they’ve failed to realize the economic benefits they hoped for from the deal,” Haspel added.

At the same time, Coats said intelligence analysts expect Iran to put greater pressure on the U.S. in the Middle East, with Iranian-backed Shia militias likely to pose a growing threat to U.S. troops in Iraq.

​Cyber

Coats and the other intelligence chiefs warned lawmakers that Russia, China, North Korea and Iran would continue to pressure the U.S. in cyberspace.

“We expect these actors and others to rely more and more on cyber capabilities when seeking to gain political, economic and military advantages over the United States and its allies and partners,” he told lawmakers Tuesday.

Coats said despite successful efforts to protect “the integrity of the 2018 midterm elections,” the intelligence agencies expected Russia, China, Iran and others to target the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.

“We expect them to refine their capabilities and add new tactics as they learn from each other’s experiences and efforts in previous elections,” he said.

​Venezuela

Coats called the situation in Venezuela, where the U.S. has officially recognized Venezuelan legislative leader Juan Guaido as the country president, “tenuous.”

In an effort to support Guaido and constrain Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, the U.S. on Monday slapped sanctions on the country’s state-run oil company.

But Coats said he expects Cuba, Russia and China “to prop up the Maduro regime’s security or financing,” and that the deciding factor could be the country’s military.

“The influence of the military on that decision … probably is key to what direction we might go in,” he said.

​U.S. border

Despite the heavy focus from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security on the need for a border wall, the intelligence chiefs made no direct mention of threats along the southern U.S. border with Mexico.

Coats said he expected Mexico would “pursue cooperation with the United States as it tries to reduce violence and address socioeconomic issues, but authorities still do not have the capability to fully address the reduction, the flow and trafficking of the drug cartels.”

Coats also warned that high crime rates and economic problems “will continue to spur U.S.-bound migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.”

The Worldwide Threat Assessment report also warned of increased migration pressures worldwide due to a combination of a slowing global economy and climate change.
…

President Donald Trump is dismissing — and potentially bolstering sales — of a new tell-all book by a former White House aide, calling it “made-up stories and fiction.”

The book by Cliff Sims, called Team of Vipers, is the latest in a series of insider accounts by journalists and former Trump staffers that paint an unflattering picture of life in the West Wing. In it, Sims engages in score-settling with former internal rivals, fingers other administration officials as “leakers,” and casts the president as disloyal to his staff.

Trump, in a Tuesday morning tweet, dismissed Sims as a “low level staffer” who had written “yet another boring book.”

“He pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer,” said Trump, who claimed Sims had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Indeed, Michael Glassner, chief operating officer of Trump’s re-election campaign, tweeted that the campaign was preparing to file suit against Sims for violating the agreement. Trump and his associates have a habit of announcing legal action and not following through.

Sims was read Trump’s tweet during an appearance on CNN and said he knew a mean tweet was a possibility.

Sims’ book was officially released Tuesday, the same day as another behind-the-scenes account of Trump’s team by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, an informal Trump adviser and longtime friend. The book, titled Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics, paints a sympathetic picture of a president who has been ill-served by what he describes as a “revolving door of deeply flawed individuals — amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons — who were hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes seemingly without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia.”

Christie, who challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 but endorsed Trump after dropping out, oversaw Trump’s transition team until he was fired shortly after the November election, allegedly at the urging of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Christie, during his tenure as a federal prosecutor, sent Kushner’s father — businessman Charles Kushner — to prison after winning his conviction on tax evasion and other crimes.

In his account, Christie paints unflattering portraits of a number of former Trump aides, including former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, whom he describes as “a fraud, a nobody, and a liar.” He also rails against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, panning him as a “walking car crash” and “train wreck from beginning to end.”

Sims began rolling out his book Monday with a media blitz that included an appearance on ABC’s Good Morning America and a sit-down with late-night TV host Stephen Colbert of CBS.

Christie was due to visit with Colbert on Tuesday.
…

Russia and China pose the biggest espionage and cyber attack threats to the United States and are more aligned than they have been in decades, the leader of the U.S. intelligence community told U.S. senators on Tuesday.

While the two countries seek to expand their global reach, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said, some American allies are pulling away from Washington in reaction to changing U.S. policies on security and trade.

“China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways – to steal information, to influence our citizens, or to disrupt critical infrastructure,” Coats said.

“Moscow’s relationship with Beijing is closer than it’s been in many decades,” Coats told the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual hearing on worldwide threats, where he testified with the director of the CIA, FBI and other top intelligence officials.

He also said some U.S. allies are seeking more independence, responding to their perceptions of changing policies on security and trade and “are becoming more open” to new partnerships. “The post-World War Two international system is coming under increasing strain amid continuing cyber and WMD proliferation threats, competition in space and regional conflicts,” Coats said, using the acronym for weapons of mass destruction.

Election security

Coats also said U.S. adversaries likely are already looking to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election, refining their capabilities and adding new tactics.

He said Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities and criticizing politicians perceived to be anti-Russia.

Senator Mark Warner, the panel’s top Democrat, said in his opening statement that he was particularly concerned about Russia’s use of social media “to amplify divisions in our society and to influence our democratic processes” and the threat from China in the technology arena.

The United States on Monday announced criminal charges against China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, escalating a fight with the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment maker and coming days before trade talks between Washington and Beijing.

“Especially concerning have been the efforts of big Chinese tech companies — which are beholden to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) — to acquire sensitive technology, replicate it, and undermine the market share of U.S. firms with the help of the Chinese state,” Warner said.

The U.S. Justice Department on Monday charged Huawei and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran by doing business with Tehran through a subsidiary it tried to hide and that was reported on by Reuters in 2012.

“China is going to be a major competitor of ours in every way that there is,” said Republican Senator Jim Risch, an intelligence committee member who is also chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday accepted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation to deliver his State of the Union address in the House chamber on Feb. 5. The speech comes as Trump faces an uphill battle to secure funding for his border wall, as well as a special investigation on Russian election meddling, and lawsuits alleging that his businesses violate anti-bribery laws. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s longtime ally Roger Stone pleaded not guilty Tuesday to seven charges linked to the release of damaging hacked emails about Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in the midst of the presidential campaign.

The 66-year-old Stone, arrested last week at his Florida home in a pre-dawn FBI raid, was arraigned in a federal court in Washington on five counts of lying to Congress about his role in the WikiLeaks release of the emails, and single counts of witness tampering and obstructing a congressional investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Stone has vocally asserted his innocence in recent days but said nothing as he left court.

Some onlookers outside court chanted, “Lock him up,” and carried signs calling him a “dirty traitor.” But supporters nearby said he did nothing wrong and held up photos of him.

Unlike most defendants in U.S. criminal cases, Stone since his arrest has made the rounds of television news shows, to belittle the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and special counsel Robert Mueller, who brought the charges against him.

On his Instagram account, Stone, a long-time self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” whose hero is Richard Nixon, the disgraced U.S. president from the early 1970s, depicted Mueller in a cartoonish-image as a butler holding a tray with a hamburger roll, but with no meat in between.

The charges against Stone do not allege that he coordinated with Russia or with WikiLeaks on the release of the hacked emails, which U.S. authorities say were stolen from Democrats by Russian agents.

Stone told ABC news on Sunday that all he “did was take publicly available information and try to hype it” to disparage Clinton in support of Trump’s campaign.

The charging documents against Stone say that at one point, a senior Trump campaign official “was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information” WikiLeaks had about Clinton, but does not disclose who gave the order to find out information from Stone.

Mueller probe

Stone’s arraignment occurred a half day after Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said on Monday that he thinks Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with Trump’s campaign will finish soon.

“The investigation is, I think, close to being completed, and I hope that we can get the report from Director Mueller as soon as possible,” Whitaker said at a news conference in Washington.

Whitaker has been the acting attorney general since November when Trump ousted Jeff Sessions from the position. Trump had repeatedly complained about Sessions removing himself from oversight of the Russia probe, and Whitaker declined to recuse himself, despite calls that he should, based on his past criticism of Mueller’s investigation.

William Barr, a former U.S. attorney general, is awaiting a confirmation vote on his nomination to again take over the Justice Department. During his confirmation hearings, he pledged, without citing specifics, that he would publicly release as much of Mueller’s eventual report as possible.

So far, Mueller’s investigation has resulted in guilty pleas or convictions of five key figures in Trump’s orbit, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, campaign aide Rick Gates, foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn and former personal attorney Michael Cohen.

Papadopoulos served a short jail term, while Cohen has been sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to surrender himself in early March.  Manafort, Gates and Flynn are awaiting sentencing.
…

The White House says President Donald Trump wants to avert another partial U.S. government shutdown but remains committed to erecting new barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, something most Democratic lawmakers still reject.

“The president doesn’t want to go through another shutdown — that’s not the goal,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday at a press briefing, where she urged Democrats to “get serious about fixing the problem at the border, including funding for a border wall.”

Federal agencies have reopened after the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Late last week, Trump signed a stopgap three-week funding bill designed to give congressional negotiators a window to craft a package enhancing border security.

The bipartisan conference committee, comprised of appropriators from both legislative chambers, is to begin consultations later this week. But the partisan fault line over border wall funding that sparked the shutdown persists.

“Democrats sharply disagree with the president on the need for an expensive and ineffective border wall,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said moments before Sanders spoke.

“What I believe is, at any given place along the border, we’ve got to have some combination of three elements: physical barriers, technology and personnel,” Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said. “So, we need a complement of each of those things in this border security bill that hopefully we’ll be voting on in the coming weeks.”

Earlier, Trump said he sees less than a 50 percent chance that congressional negotiators will put together a deal acceptable to him.

The president told The Wall Street Journal Sunday he doubts he would accept less than the $5.7 billion in wall funding he has been demanding. He also cast doubt on granting permanent legal status to immigrants brought illegally to America as children, calling it a “separate subject to be taken up at a separate time.”

Meanwhile, conference committee members declined to speculate on what negotiations might produce.

“We’re going to try to get something that works,” Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt told VOA. “It’s going to have to be done somewhere other than in public. I’m of the view that we should make it as all-encompassing as we can.”

At the White House, Sanders echoed Trump’s threats to declare a national emergency and order wall construction if Congress fails to provide funding.

“If they don’t come back with a deal, it means Democrats get virtually nothing,” the press secretary said. “That will make the president — force him — to take executive action that does not give Democrats the things that they want.”

Such talk is counterproductive, according to Democrats.

“When the president injects maximalist partisan demands into the process, negotiations tend to fall apart,” Schumer said. “The president should allow the conference committee to proceed with good-faith negotiations. I genuinely hope it will produce something that is good for the country and acceptable to both sides.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the five-week partial shutdown caused a $3 billion loss to the U.S. economy. The funding lapse caused federal services to be curtailed or paused and created a financial hardship for 800,000 federal workers who were either furloughed or worked without pay.
…

U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has re-invited President Donald Trump to address the nation Feb. 5 from the Capitol.

In a formal letter sent Monday, Pelosi issued the invitation, asking Trump to “deliver your State of the Union address before a Joint Session of Congress.”

The House and Senate must still pass a resolution to invite Trump.

His original 2019 address was scheduled for Tuesday, but Pelosi asked Trump to wait until after a partial government shutdown had ended or to submit the speech in writing.

In asking for a postponement, Pelosi cited security concerns due to the shutdown. Trump considered going ahead with the address at a different location, but then decided to wait.

The longest shutdown in U.S. history ended Friday when Trump and congressional leaders agreed to refund the government until Feb. 15.
…

The probe of possible Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, is wrapping up, Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told reporters on Monday.

“I’ve been fully briefed on the investigation and I look forward to Director Mueller delivering the final report,” he said at a press conference on U.S. charges against China’s Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. “Right now the investigation is I think close to being completed and I hope that we can get the report from Director Mueller as soon as possible.”

The investigation most recently ensnared a long-time confidant of President Donald Trump, political operative Roger Stone, and has led to the conviction of Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

Mueller has been tight-lipped about when the months of closed-door grand jury sessions and plea deals will conclude, leaving questions over how far into the White House his probe will reach and what will happen to his findings. Trump’s nominee to fill the attorney general post permanently, William Barr, recently pledged to make public as much of the report as possible, saying Mueller is required to file it confidentially.

Russia denies any wrongdoing in the 2016 election. Trump has repeatedly said he was not involved in any collusion with Russia and has often referred to the probe as a “witch hunt.”
…

U.S. President Donald Trump says he sees less than a 50 percent chance congressional negotiators can put together deal to fund a southern border wall that he will accept.

Trump told The Wall Street Journal Sunday there are some “very good people” on the bipartisan negotiating team. But he said he doubts he will accept less than the $5.7 billion in wall funding he has been demanding, adding “I have to do it right.”

The president also said he doubts he would accept citizenship for the so-called “Dreamers” as part of an agreement. He said the futures of immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children is a “separate subject to be taken up at a separate time.”

Trump said another government shutdown is “certainly an option” if he does not get what he wants to build a wall. He also said he could declare a national emergency which would allow him to fund the wall without congressional approval — a tactic Democrats are sure to challenge in the courts.

Trump agreed Friday to reopen the shuttered federal government for three weeks with no wall funding. In the meantime, a panel of nine Democrats and eight Republicans will try to work out a border security agreement that both Congress and Trump would accept and keep the entire government operating at least through the rest of the fiscal year.

​

The month-long partial shutdown created a financial hardship for 800,000 federal workers who were either furloughed or working without pay. They included homeland security and law enforcement officers and air traffic controllers.

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday that the next thee weeks are “a chance for Democrats to see if they believe in border security” to thwart illegal immigration and stop the flow of illicit drugs. 

Mulvaney said the White House is “seeing Democrats starting to agree with the president” on the need for a wall along nearly 400 kilometers of the 3,200-kilometer U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump’s chief congressional Democratic opponents, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, have staunchly refused his demand for wall construction money. But Mulvaney said the negotiation period will give Democrats a chance to answer the question, “Are you telling people the truth” about favoring border security, “or doing something that’s politically expedient?”

Democrats insist they are interested in border security, but say a wall is impractical and a waste of money. They suggest such measures as more controls at ports of entry, more border agents, and more technology are more effective.

On the same Fox News show, Senator Joe Manchin, the only Democrat to vote last week for wall funding in a failed Republican-sponsored bill, said Democrats would “look at a wholistic approach” to determine border security needs. “We’ll let the experts tell us what’s needed, help us find the right path.”

After Trump and Congress agreed on the three-week hiatus to end the shutdown, some government operations started to open again Saturday and many federal workers will be back at work on Monday.

But federal contract workers may not ever recoup the money for the time they were out of work unless Congress enacts legislation to pay them.

The shutdown was having a cascading effect on the U.S. economy, with Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings saying the government closures cost the economy about $6 billion.
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Federal employees are going back to work after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history ended late last week. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, President Donald Trump signed a bill funding the government for three weeks, meaning the threat of another shutdown persists with the president and congressional Democrats still at odds over funding for wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Roger Stone, a long-time friend and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, said Sunday he would consider cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and discuss his conversations with the U.S. leader.

Stone, charged last week with lying, obstruction and witness tampering in connection with Trump’s campaign, told ABC’s “This Week” show, the extent of his cooperation with Mueller’s 20-month probe would be something he would “have to determine after my attorneys have some discussions.”

He added, “If there’s wrongdoing by other people in the campaign that I know about, which I know of none, but if there is, I would certainly testify honestly.”

The 66-year-old Stone, arrested in a pre-dawn FBI raid Friday on his Florida home, has denied wrongdoing, saying hours after his apprehension, “I will plead not guilty to these charges, I will defeat them in court. I believe this is a politically motivated investigation.”

As he left court Friday after posting a $250,000 bond to secure his freedom pending trial, Stone said, “I have made it clear that I will not testify against the president, because I would have to bear false witness against him.”

Stone told ABC that if he cooperates with Mueller, “I’d also testify honestly about any other matter, including any communications with the president. It’s true that we spoke on the phone, but those communications are political in nature, they’re benign, and there is certainly no conspiracy with Russia.”

Stone said he never discussed cooperation with Russia with Trump.

“Everything that I did… is constitutionally protected free speech. That is what I engaged in – it is called politics,” Stone said.

Stone is the sixth key figure in Trump’s orbit to be accused of criminal offenses as a result of the Mueller investigation. Five men – former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, campaign aide Rick Gates, foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn and former personal attorney Michael Cohen — have pled guilty or been convicted of various offenses.

Papadopoulos served a short jail term, while Cohen has been sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to turn himself in in early March. Manafort, Gates and Flynn are awaiting sentencing.

After Stone’s arrest, Trump sought to distance himself from his one-time aide, saying on Twitter, “Roger Stone didn’t even work for me anywhere near the Election!”

 
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U.S. government agencies closed during the 35-day partial shutdown began reopening Saturday, two days before the Internal Revenue Service will begin processing 2018 tax filings.

The shutdown ended Friday night, after President Donald Trump signed a three-week spending bill passed by Congress to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

The U.S. Office of Management and Budget sent a memo late Friday to closed federal government departments and agencies to inform them that their divisions were now open and that their employees could return to work. The memo also called on the agencies to “reopen offices in a prompt and orderly manner.”

A note “to all IRS employees” on the department’s website said employees were expected to report to work “no later than four hours after this announcement is posted on Friday, January 25, 2019, at 9:30 p.m. ET.” Beyond that, the post advised employees to “report to work at the beginning of your next scheduled workday.”

​Other agencies

Some websites of other departments that had been affected by the shutdown — State, Transportation, Agriculture, Justice and Interior — had notices that the departments would be back up and running as soon as possible. The Interior Department, however, still had a video titled “Seasons Greetings from Interior.”

Many parks — from the Virgin Islands National Park to the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area in Minnesota — reopened Saturday, but a statement from Grand Canyon officials said the park, in the southwest U.S. state of Arizona, would not be entirely operational until the end of next week.

In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo are to reopen Tuesday.

Roughly 800,000 federal employees missed their second consecutive paychecks on Friday. Earlier this week, Congress passed and Trump signed legislation ordering federal agencies to issue back pay to workers “at the earliest date possible.” But officials cautioned that it could take several days for federal employees to receive back pay.

VOA parent

On Saturday, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other organizations, sent employees two emails regarding “Return to Work and Back Pay Processing Instructions,” which included information that the agency’s payroll office would offer several informational sessions on the processing of back pay claims.

The bill funding the government through Feb. 15 does not include money for the construction of Trump’s proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall. The president said that a bipartisan committee would be formed to evaluate border security, but, contrary to previous claims, he was not asking for a concrete wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

On Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California named the Democratic House members who will serve on the bipartisan committee to evaluate border security. They are Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey of New York, Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security Chairwoman Lucille Roybal-Allard of California, David Price of North Carolina, Barbara Lee of California, Henry Cuellar of Texas and Pete Aguilar of California. House Republicans had yet to name members to the committee by late Saturday.

In the Senate, those who will serve on the bipartisan committee are Democrats Jon Tester of Montana, ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Republicans Richard Shelby of Alabama, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Roy Blunt of Missouri.

Trump tweets

The president issued a series of tweets Saturday morning about the shutdown and the wall, saying that after two previous caravans of thousands of migrants had been turned away at the southern U.S. border, a new caravan with at least 8,000 people had formed in Mexico and was headed for the U.S.

Trump then noted, “21 days goes very quickly. Negotiations with Democrats will start immediately. Will not be easy to make a deal, both parties very dug in. The case for National Security has been greatly enhanced by what has been happening at the Border & through dialogue. We will build the Wall!”

The date for Trump’s delivery of his State of the Union address to Congress was still unknown. It was originally scheduled for Jan. 29, but Pelosi delayed the address, citing the shutdown.
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A dozen immigrant workers at one of President Donald Trump’s golf clubs in New York who are in the U.S. illegally were fired this month, even though managers knew about their legal status for years, a lawyer for the workers said Saturday. 

As the president railed against immigrants coming into the country illegally during the government shutdown, a manager at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County called a dozen immigrant workers into a room one by one Jan. 18 and fired them, said lawyer Anibal Romero. 

Many of them had worked at the club for a dozen or more years, he said, and managers knew they had submitted phony documents but looked the other way. 

The firings came after workers at another Trump club in New Jersey came forward last month to say managers there had hired them knowing they were in the country illegally, and had even helped one obtain phony documents.  

The crackdown at the New York club was first reported by The Washington Post. 

A message seeking comment was left with the Trump Organization.  
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The longest government shutdown in U.S. history ended Friday when President Donald Trump delayed his demand for funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, signing a three-week spending bill that will reopen shuttered agencies and get back pay to 800,000 federal workers. But as VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, the short-term funding is meant to buy lawmakers time to address border security.
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U.S. President Donald Trump broke from his non-interventionist foreign policy this week, when he recognized Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guiado as the country’s interim president. The move increased tensions between Caracas and Washington, as President Nicolas Maduro kicked out American diplomats and the U.S. president said “all options are on the table.” White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has more.
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Roger Stone, the Republican political operative indicted Friday by the grand jury investigating Russian election interference, is a longtime friend and confidante of President Donald Trump who helped pave the way for the real estate mogul’s unforeseen ascent to the White House.

A self-described “dirty trickster” with a taste for loud suits and colorful language, Stone, 66, has known Trump since the late 1970s when Stone, a young veteran of Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election team, was campaigning for another Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan, and courting supporters for his campaign in New York.

As Stone recalled in a 2016 interview with PBS’ Frontline program, Trump, a brash real estate developer and a registered Republican at the time, offered to help the campaign even though “he emphasized that he was a businessman, that he wasn’t that political.”

“For those who say he’s not a conservative, he’s not a Republican, he was there in the Reagan revolution,” Stone said.

​In Trump orbit

Stone has remained in Trump’s orbit ever since, by turns serving as a lobbyist, business consultant, and political confidante.

In the 1980s, Trump hired Stone, then a Washington lobbyist, to represent him in the nation’s capital to deal with “a number of small but important issues” involving the businessman’s Atlantic City casinos and other properties.

For his part, Stone, viewing Trump as a larger-than-life figure “who’s got it all” — charisma, wealth, standing — pressed Trump to run for president.

In 1988, as Reagan’s second term was winding down, Stone arranged for Trump to travel to New Hampshire, site of the nation’s first presidential primary, to address a crowd of 2,000 well-wishers. Trump liked the “publicity” and the “notoriety” but was not “serious about running,” Stone recalled in the interview.

Trump made a more serious albeit ultimately unsuccessful run for the White House in 2000, but it wasn’t until Trump declared his candidacy for president in 2015 that Stone began to see his decadeslong push to put Trump in the White House within reach.

Stone joined his friend’s long-shot campaign early on in 2015 but left shortly thereafter for reasons that remain in dispute. The campaign said at the time that Stone had been fired, but Stone maintained that he’d left on his own.

Whatever the case, the parting of ways did not stop Stone from serving as loud cheerleader of Trump’s presidential bid. He set up a super PAC, the Committee to Restore America’s Greatness, paying for a billboard in New York’s Times Square depicting Trump as Superman.

As the campaign shifted into high gear, Stone drew wide scrutiny after WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy activist group, released thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Prosecutors say Russian military intelligence agents hacked the emails and then funneled them to WikiLeaks as part of Moscow’s effort to disrupt the election.

After the first WikiLeaks email dump in July 2016, Stone insinuated in social media comments that the website was planning to release Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails.

In an August tweet, Stone wrote, “Trust me, it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary.” In October, WikiLeaks released thousands of emails hacked from Podesta’s Gmail account.

​Merely ‘bluffing’

Peter Flaherty, chairman and chief executive officer of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center and a friend of Stone, said Stone was merely “bluffing and double dealing as all political consultants do.”

“If you want to make that a crime, the jails around Washington, D.C., would be pretty full,” Flaherty said.

Flaherty said Stone’s role in Trump’s election has been exaggerated.

“Roger and Donald Trump have had an on-again, off-again relationship over the years,” he said. “Trump respected his opinion on many things but I don’t think he was his closest adviser or somehow quarterbacked the presidential race. It’s just not the case.”

Stone has long denied advance knowledge of the email release.

In September 2017, he appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, testifying that he had no direct contact with WikiLeaks during the campaign, did not direct anyone to contact WikiLeaks, and that he did not discuss his conversations with an intermediary to WikiLeaks with the Trump campaign.

But prosecutors say those statements were all false. Stone, they say, was in close contact with the Trump campaign as he was trying to find out when WikiLeaks was planning to publish its next batch of damaging emails and documents about the Clinton campaign.

After WikiLeaks released its first batch of the Podesta emails on Oct. 7, an associate of a senior Trump campaign official sent a text message to Stone that read “well done,” according to the indictment.

Stone was arrested by FBI agents at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, early Friday after a grand jury in Washington handed down an indictment, charging him with five counts of making false statements, one count of obstruction of a legal proceeding, and one count of witness tampering.

According to the indictment, not only did Stone lie to Congress about his interactions with WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign, but he also tried to prevent an associate, Randy Credico, from providing testimony to Congress that would contradict Stone’s version of events.
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While other Democrats around the country are preparing for presidential runs, a retired Army paratrooper and former West Virginia lawmaker Friday became the first to call off his White House bid after about two months as a candidate.

Richard Ojeda says he isn’t getting the money or attention needed to sustain a campaign.

“The last thing I want to do is accept money from people who are struggling for a campaign that does not have the ability to compete,” he wrote in a statement on social media.

The tattooed veteran who recently ran for Congress announced his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president on Veterans Day at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington.

Ojeda said he was told as a child that anyone could grow up to be president.

“I now realize that this is not the case. Unless someone has extreme wealth or holds influence and power it just isn’t true,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

Ojeda was elected to the West Virginia Senate in 2016 and became a champion of teachers during their fight for better pay and benefits. He sponsored successful legislation to make medical marijuana legal, and has stressed health care and economic issues in a district reeling from lost coal jobs.

On Friday, he said he’ll make an announcement soon about his future.
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Potential Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said Friday that Donald Trump’s presidency “cannot be helped” and was “dangerous” for the country.

The former New York City mayor also described the partial government shutdown, now at a record 35th day, as “a complete failure of presidential leadership.”

The billionaire businessman said that for fellow New Yorker Trump, “the art of the deal is simply cheating people and not caring about how badly they get hurt and now he’s doing it to the American people.”

Bloomberg also told a meeting of the Democratic Business Council of Northern Virginia that he thinks “it’s clear that this president, at this point, cannot be helped.”

The remarks by Bloomberg, a former Republican who registered as a Democrat only last fall, were some of his toughest against Trump since Bloomberg’s speech to the Democratic National Convention more than two years ago. Back then, Bloomberg warned of the prospect of a Trump presidency: “God help us.”

Bloomberg reflected upon that 2016 speech repeatedly on Friday, and he went further, suggesting that the government shutdown has proved that his initial warning about Trump was correct.

“The presidency is not an entry level job. There’s just too much at stake,” Bloomberg said. “And the longer we have a pretend CEO who’s recklessly running this country, the worst it’s going to be for our economy and our security.

He added: “This is really dangerous.”

Bloomberg’s warm reception at the business-friendly audience highlighted the chief political challenge should he enter the 2020 race. Liberal activists, who like to attack what they call “corporate Democrats,” play a far more prominent role in the primary process than do the kind of business executives who gave him a standing ovation Friday.

One of the most prominent early Democratic candidates, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, has warned against the role of billionaires in the presidential primary process.

Bloomberg tried to make the case for both capitalism and a centrist candidate, suggesting that Democrats don’t need to choose between “energizing the base” and “pragmatic leadership.”

Asked about his 2020 intentions, he acknowledged that he has “a good life” and can make a difference even if he doesn’t run.

“Having said that, I don’t like walking away from challenges.”
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Jerome Corsi, a right-wing political commentator and conspiracy theorist, confirmed on Friday he is “Person 1” cited in the indictment of Roger Stone and said he no longer believed he would be charged as part of the U.S. special counsel’s Russia probe.

Stone, a self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” and ally of U.S. President Donald Trump for 40 years, was arrested on Friday on charges of lying to Congress about the release of stolen Democratic Party emails during the 2016 campaign.

The indictment details multiple communications about the emails and WikiLeaks’ plans to release them to the public between Stone and “Person 1” and “Person 2”, who are described in broad terms but not identified by name.

Corsi confirmed to Reuters that he was “Person 1.”

“I can confirm everything they report in the indictment about ‘Person 1’,” Corsi said. “I don’t see that I am being charged with any wrongdoing of any kind. I think that’s appropriate because I’ve done nothing wrong.”

July 2016 email

Among other communications, the indictment references an email from Stone in late July 2016 in which he urged Corsi to go to see Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks who is living in Ecuador’s embassy in London, and to “get the pending… emails”.

Corsi, who was in Europe at the time, responded to Stone in an email on Aug. 2: “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging,” Corsi wrote, according to the indictment.

Corsi has said he did not receive any inside knowledge or advance notice of the planned email releases from Wikileaks and figured it out on his own based on his own research.

Corsi said in November that he had received a plea offer from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office under which they were asking him to plead guilty to one felony count of providing false information to them in return for a lighter sentence.

Deal rejected

Corsi, who said he rejected the deal because he never intentionally lied during his 40 hours of interviews with Mueller’s team, expressed concerns at the time that he would be indicted as part of the special counsel’s probe.

Corsi said he would advise Stone not to underestimate the amount of information already in Mueller’s possession.

“The Special Counsel has everything and they are extremely thorough,” said Corsi, who has filed a lawsuit against Mueller, the FBI and other agencies, claiming the government violated his Fourth Amendment due process rights.
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U.S. authorities expect to soon hand down a sentence in the case of Maria Butina, the 30-year-old Russian woman now held in a U.S. jail who has pleaded guilty of conspiring to influence American politics, accused of conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent. VOA’s Ricardo Marquina-Montanana traveled to the Siberian city of Barnaul to speak with Butina’s family about a case being watched around the world. Igor Tsikhanenka narrates.
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