President Donald Trump has been getting a bump up in the polls in recent days, likely thanks to growing public optimism about the U.S. economy.

The latest Quinnipiac University poll has President Donald Trump’s approval rating at 40 percent, his best showing in seven months in that survey. The Gallup weekly tracking poll also had Trump at 40 percent. The last time that happened was mid-September. The Real Clear Politics polling average now has Trump at slightly above 42 percent, a notable change after months of weak readings in the mid to high-30’s.

But political analysts have been quick to caution any presidential progress in the polls could be undone by continuing attacks aimed at opposition Democrats and the ongoing investigation into possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.

Blasting Democrats

Trump took his economic message to a factory in Ohio recently where he highlighted the impact of his tax cuts. But the president also took a swipe at Democrats who withheld their applause at his recent State of the Union Address.

“They were like, death, and un-American, un-American.Somebody said treasonous. I mean, yeah I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not?,” he said.

It was a sharp deviation in tone from Trump’s recent address to Congress where he raised the prospect of bipartisanship.

“I call upon all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out common ground and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people,” a line that generated applause in the House chamber.

Trump’s slightly improving poll numbers suggest voters are beginning to give him some credit for the surging economy. But the attacks on Democrats could undermine his efforts to reach out and broaden his base of support beyond Trump loyalists.

“You know, if Trump is smart he will try to move to the center and make deals with Democrats,” said Jim Kessler of the center-left advocacy group Third Way. “But they have not shown an ability to go more than a week without some disaster occurring. So until they are able to string a couple of weeks together, I expect chaos.”

Russia probe

Trump and some of his Republican allies in Congress also continue to complain about the Russia probe.Dueling Republican and Democratic staff memos have sharpened the divide over whether there was any political motivation to initiate the investigation into Russian election meddling.But Democrats see that as a concerted effort to undermine the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

“They do not quit with all these conspiracy theories, with all these ridiculous fomentations,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer this week. “They do not quit, perhaps because they are afraid of what a real investigation, which Mueller is doing and will continue to do, will reveal.”

The Mueller probe shows no signs of ending anytime soon and the longer it looms over the administration, the more it could become a factor in the November midterm congressional midterm elections.

“That does overhang his presidency,” said John Fortier with the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.” We do not know the timing.We do not know the revelations that will come out and it could be a big bombshell one way or the other as we proceed this year.”

Looming midterms

Presidential approval ratings can have a big impact on midterm voting. The party that holds the White House traditionally loses congressional seats in midterms, and those losses are magnified when the president’s approval is under 50 percent. In Trump’s case, he has struggled throughout the first year of his presidency to stay near 40 percent, and that has a lot of Republicans worried about their chances to hold their majority in the House of Representatives. Democrats need to pick up 24 seats in the House to retake the majority.

Republicans hold a 51 to 49 seat edge in the Senate.But Democrats are defending 26 of the 34 seats at stake in the November election and ten of the seats they hold are states that voted for Trump in 2016.

Another good indicator for the midterms is the generic ballot question where voters are asked which party they would prefer to represent them in Congress. Democrats currently have an edge on that question over Republicans by about six points, according to the Real Clear Politics average of several surveys. But that is down from a double-digit Democratic advantage in December, suggesting the strong economy and the slight uptick in Trump’s approval rating might be helping Republicans.
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President Donald Trump will be among friends Thursday when he speaks to the 66th annual National Prayer Breakfast, an event dominated by his staunchest supporters, evangelical Christians.

He comes to the breakfast with several promises kept. 

“There are a lot of issues that the president has delivered on for evangelicals and for Christians,” said Jenna Browder, host of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Faith Nation show. 

“We’re talking about moving the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. We’re talking about his stance on abortion and being pro-life. We’re talking about the appointment of Neil Gorsuch, and not just him at the Supreme Court but also the federal courts as well,” Browder said in a VOA interview.

This year, however, there’s a new item on the agenda of many evangelicals: helping undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children who now face deportation after Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that allows them to stay.

Trump has said he wants these immigrants — known informally as Dreamers, a name taken from a legislative effort to address their status, which did not pass — to remain in the only country many of them have ever known, but only if Congress approves measures to strengthen border enforcement and fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

At a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday, evangelical leaders joined members of Congress from the president’s Republican Party in demanding a solution to the Dreamers’ dilemma before a March 5 deadline set by Trump.

“As Christians, Dreamers are not some abstract category for us,” said Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

“Dreamers are teaching Sunday school in our churches. Dreamers are leading door-to-door evangelism efforts in our communities. Dreamers are the ones who are baptizing, the ones who are teaching people to read in our communities,” Moore added.

Conservative Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma called this a “unique moment” to act on the immigration issue.

“Each individual is created in the image of God, each individual has value and worth, each individual has dignity, and for the very foundation of our country, even before we were a nation, the Declaration of Independence, we honored the rights of each individual,” Lankford said. “We want to continue to be able to practice that.”

Keeping promises to evangelicals

Trump’s reputation for keeping promises to evangelicals is good. Weeks after taking office last year, he told prayer breakfast attendees he would do away with a 63-year-old law known as the Johnson Amendment, which some Christian pastors said threatens their churches’ tax-exempt status if they endorse political candidates from the pulpit.

“Our republic was formed on the basis that freedom is not a gift from government, but freedom is a gift from God,” Trump said, quoting Thomas Jefferson. “That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that.”

While the law remains on the books, Trump signed an executive order last May intended to allow churches to be more politically outspoken.

“That’s something that hasn’t been done in a long time, and the president was proud to do it,” deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said.

Those who support the Johnson Amendment, however, say Trump’s executive order made it easier for religious groups to deny contraception and other forms of birth control to their employees in their health insurance coverage.

At a forum held before the 2016 presidential election, Diane Winston, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Southern California and an authority on religion and the media, said evangelical voters differentiate between Trump’s morality and his politics.

“He supports some of their basic social and political positions. He may be immoral, but he has a moral agenda,” Winston said.

CBN’s Browder said Trump has shown evangelicals that while his behavior may not be what they would like, he represents their interests.

“If you have a candidate, a president, who is not perfect, like you, like me, but who is delivering on policy, then it makes a lot of sense that evangelicals would support him,” she said.

The annual multifaith breakfast is held each year on the first Thursday in February. Lawmakers and religious leaders from about 70 countries are expected at this year’s event, which brings bipartisan political leaders and their religious counterparts together to meet, pray and build relationships.

Every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has headlined the event.
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U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi conducted a rare “filibuster” speaking for more than seven hours in Congress on Wednesday to try to force Republicans to bring up an immigration bill in the chamber.

The California Democrat, who turns 78 next month, started talking shortly after 10 a.m., saying that Democrats would oppose any funding bill unless House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, agreed to bring a bipartisan immigration bill to the House floor for a vote.

A filibuster is a prolonged speech that obstructs progress in a legislative assembly while not technically contravening the required procedures. This case is not a classic filibuster since it is not obstructing the passage of specific legislation.

“There’s nothing partisan or political about protecting Dreamers,” Pelosi said, using the term commonly applied to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children. “If a Dream Act were brought to the floor, it would pass immediately, with strong bipartisan support.” She cited polling that showed 84 percent of Americans support a path to citizenship for the Dreamers. 

“I commend my Republican colleagues for their courage in speaking out on this, yet our Dreamers hang in limbo with a cruel cloud of fear and uncertainty above them. The Republican moral cowardice must end,” she continued, referring to Republican leadership’s reluctance to bring a bill to the floor.

Eight hours and seven minutes later, at 6:11 p.m., Pelosi stopped, having spent an entire workday standing at her desk in 10-centimeter heels and consuming nothing but water, an aide said.

The House historian’s office said in a statement that Pelosi’s speech was the longest continuous one in the chamber that it was “able to find on short notice.”

What was thought to be the previous House record belonged to Missouri Democratic Representative Champ Clark, who in 1909 spoke for five hours and 15 minutes, the statement said, but he was repeatedly interrupted, unlike Pelosi.
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U.S. White House staff secretary Rob Porter said Wednesday he would resign following accusations of domestic abuse from two former wives.

He did not say when his resignation would be effective.

Porter, a senior adviser who is in charge of much of the documentation that goes to President Donald Trump for his signature, announced his resignation in a statement after his former wives made accusations against him in published reports.

DailyMail.com quoted Colbie Holderness as saying that Porter choked and punched her during their marriage. Intercept.com quoted former wife Jennifer Willoughby as saying that Porter was abusive. Reuters has not independently confirmed the claims.

“These outrageous allegations are simply false,” Porter said in a statement released by the White House. “I have been transparent and truthful about these vile claims, but I will not further engage publicly with a coordinated smear campaign.”

Porter said he would “seek to ensure a smooth transition when I leave the White House.”

The accusations against Porter were a surprise to many at the White House, who have seen the lanky aide as a mild-mannered, easy-going adviser.

Porter had not yet been approved for a security clearance.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said issues related to an individual’s suitability are reviewed through a thorough and lengthy background check process.

“Background checks involve a complex investigation run by intelligence and law enforcement agencies. As has always been our policy, we do not comment on security clearances. Rob Porter has been effective in his role as Staff Secretary. The President and Chief of Staff [John Kelly] have full confidence in his abilities and his performance,” she said.
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U.S. lawmakers grilled Trump administration officials Tuesday on the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, saying the new White House strategy is inconsistent and and is not producing results. The comments, at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, reflect growing frustration about the U.S.-led war, which is entering its 17th year, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports.
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The U.S. Congress appeared no closer to finding a way forward on an immigration deal securing the status of 1.8 million undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children Tuesday, even as leaders negotiated an end to the long-running budget stalemate. VOA’s Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports on an unpredictable day in Washington.
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The U.S. Congress is poised to deadlock on extending government funding two days before another possible federal shutdown. The Republican-led House of Representatives is expected to pass a bill that funds the U.S. military for the rest of the fiscal year but extends domestic funding for just six weeks — something Senate Democrats are pledging to block.

Republicans, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, say national defense must come first with yearlong funding while negotiations continue on domestic spending levels.

“Senators on both sides of the aisle say they agree that our war-fighters deserve sufficient, stable funding to fulfill the missions and tasks their country assigns them,” he said.

Democrats say health care and other domestic needs are just as vital.

“We [Democrats] support an increase in funding for our military and our middle class,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “The two are not mutually exclusive. We don’t want to do just one and leave the other behind.

U.S. government funding has been extended four times since late last year and is set to expire once again at midnight Thursday. Further complicating the picture is a continuing stand-off on immigration reform, with President Donald Trump and conservative Republicans so far unable to reach a deal with Democrats to protect young undocumented immigrants brought to America as children who will be at risk of deportation next month.
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Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon skipped a scheduled interview Tuesday with the House Intelligence Committee about his time as a key adviser to President Donald Trump, even after lawmakers subpoenaed him to appear.

Congressman Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican leading the panel’s investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 U.S. presidential election, said he had expected Bannon to appear to answer questions, but Bannon was a no-show, part of lawmakers’ ongoing dispute with the White House over the scope of their questioning of Bannon.

Bannon could face a contempt of Congress charge for his failure to answer the subpoena, but it was not clear whether the committee would take any action against him.

The top Democrat on the panel, Congressman Adam Schiff of California, said Bannon’s lawyer told the committee this week the White House is continuing to block Bannon’s testimony “beyond a set of 14 yes-or-no questions the White House had pre-approved.”

Schiff said the White House position on Bannon’s testimony “covers matters during the transition” before Trump’s assumption of power a year ago, Bannon’s seven months at the White House, and his communications with Trump since leaving government service last August, “even though the president has not in fact invoked executive privilege” to bar Bannon’s testimony.

Schiff called the White House stance “unacceptable” and said the subpoena remains in effect, with Bannon’s interview rescheduled for next week.  He said that “should Bannon maintain his refusal to return and testify fully to all questions, the committee should begin contempt proceedings to compel his testimony.”

Bannon last month spent 10 hours before the committee, but largely refused to answer questions about the weeks he spent helping Trump organize his administration before Trump took office in January 2017, and then about the time he served as the president’s chief strategist until he was ousted in August.

Fall from grace

Bannon was a vocal alt-right supporter of Trump’s brand of America-first populism in the White House.  But he fell from grace with the president after voicing disparaging views of White House operations and other Trump advisers in author Michael Wolff’s recently published book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.  

Bannon was particularly critical of Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, both of whom are White House advisers, and Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., for his role in arranging a Trump Tower meeting in New York in the midst of the 2016 campaign on the premise a Russian lawyer would turn over incriminating evidence about his father’s election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” Trump said of Bannon.

Even as Bannon has feuded with the House panel over his questioning, news accounts say he plans to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Russian meddling and whether Trump obstructed justice by seeking to curb his probe.

While negotiations over Bannon’s testimony plays out, The New York Times reported that Trump’s lawyers are advising him not to agree to appear for an interview with Mueller.

Trump testimony

Mueller’s team has already talked to multiple White House officials and others involved with Trump’s campaign for president, as part of its criminal probe into the Russia interference in the U.S. election and whether Trump obstructed justice by firing James Comey, the one-time director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who was heading the agency’s Russia investigation at the time Trump dismissed him.

The Times said that according to four people briefed on the issue, Trump’s lawyers have concerns about whether the president would make false or contradictory statements and thus open himself up to possible charges of lying to federal investigators.  The report says further the lawyers believe Mueller should not be legally allowed to question the president about some aspects of the investigation.

Trump said recently he looks forward to answering Mueller’s questions under oath. Earlier, he questioned why such a step would be necessary as he rejected that there was any collusion between his campaign and Russia and said he did not obstruct justice by firing Comey.

Mueller could subpoena Trump if he does not agree to a request to speak with the investigators.  The Times said the president’s lawyers believe Mueller might not be willing to take that step and enter a legal battle with the White House to force his testimony.

 
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New York’s highest court will consider on Tuesday whether the New York Police Department can use a Cold War-era legal tactic to conceal information about whether it put Muslims under surveillance.

The Court of Appeals will hear arguments in the cases of two Muslims who say the NYPD overstepped its reach by responding to a 2012 public records request related to the surveillance by saying it could “neither confirm nor deny” the records even existed.

The lawsuits over that so-called Glomar response were prompted by a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning stories by The Associated Press that detailed how the NYPD searched for possible terrorists after 9/11, in part by infiltrating Muslim student groups and putting informants in mosques.

The cases of former Rutgers University student Samir Hashmi and Manhattan imam Talib Abdur-Rashid were initially heard separately, with two lower court judges issuing conflicting rulings. In Hashmi’s case, a court denied a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. In Abdur-Rashid’s case, the court ruled the Glomar doctrine was allowable in response to state Freedom of Information Law requests.

The cases have since been combined, with Manhattan attorney Omar Mohammedi representing the two men.

“It would be a detriment to all New Yorkers if the decision goes the NYPD’s way,” Mohammedi told The Associated Press. “We might as well not have FOIL.”

New York City’s Law Department did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Last year, spokesman Nick Paolucci told the AP after the Abdur-Rashid ruling that “the NYPD is not required to reveal the targets of counterterrorism surveillance.”

The Glomar doctrine is named for the Hughes Glomar Explorer, a massive salvage ship built by the eccentric industrialist who died in 1976. Two years earlier, the CIA had used the ship to retrieve a portion of a Soviet submarine that had sunk in the Pacific Ocean in 1968, killing everyone aboard. The Glomar featured technology designed to lift the sub more than 3 miles (4 kilometers) to the surface, but most of the sub broke apart and fell back to the ocean floor.

When a journalist sought information on the Hughes-built ship in 1976, a federal court issued a ruling that allowed the CIA to “neither confirm nor deny” whether records existed on the mission. The Glomar doctrine has since been used by agencies if information falls within certain exemptions.

But Mohammedi said the NYPD is overstepping its reach in applying the tactic to cases involving the state’s Freedom of Information Law.

“The Glomar doctrine was initiated based on national defense,” he said. “This issue should be decided by legislators, not decided by the NYPD just because they want to do this.”
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Top intelligence and law enforcement officials warn that last week’s release of a congressional memo alleging FBI surveillance abuse could have wide-ranging repercussions: Spy agencies could start sharing less information with Congress, weakening oversight. Lawmakers will try to declassify more intelligence for political gain. Confidential informants will worry about being outed on Capitol Hill.

The GOP-produced memo released last week contends that when the FBI asked a secret court for a warrant to do surveillance on a former associate in then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign, the bureau relied too heavily on a dossier compiled by an ex-British spy whose opposition research was funded by Democrats.

Critics accuse Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., of abusing his power as chairman of the House intelligence committee to do the president’s bidding and undermine the investigation into whether any Trump campaign associates colluded with Russian during the 2016 election. His office rebuts that claim, saying the real abuse of power was using unverified information bought and paid for by one political campaign to justify government surveillance of former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

This is’t the first time intelligence has been politicized. Both Democrats and Republicans used the release of the so-called torture report in late 2015 outlining the CIA’s detention and interrogation program as political ammunition. In the 1960s, while intelligence agencies warned that the Vietnam War was being lost, the White House was telling the public the opposite. During the George W. Bush administration, cherry-picked intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction fueled momentum for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Former CIA Director Mike Hayden worries that the memo’s release will damage congressional oversight and the effectiveness of law enforcement.

“We are chiseling away at processes and institutions on which we currently depend — and on which we will depend in the future,” said Hayden, who has worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Hayden, who also directed the National Security Agency, wrote an op-ed in The Cipher Brief, an online newsletter focused on intelligence issues, to urge Justice Department and intelligence professionals to speak out. He wondered, though, if they would, given Trump’s penchant for honoring loyalty.

“A senior official in justice or a senior official in intelligence needs to say, ‘We need to take a knee here. We need to take a deep breath’” Hayden said. “What we are now doing is destroying the institutions we need to keep America safe.”

Josh Campbell, a former supervisory special agent with the FBI who investigated counterterrorism, recently resigned to do just that. Partisan attacks undermine the agency and national security, according to Campbell, who said he disagrees with colleagues who advised staying mum until the current controversy passes.

“FBI agents are dogged people who do not care about the direction of political winds,” Campbell said in an editorial published Feb. 2 in The New York Times. “But to succeed in their work, they need public backing. Scorched-earth attacks from politicians with partisan goals now threaten that support, raising corrosive doubts about the integrity of the FBI that could last for generations.”

FBI director Christopher Wray and the second-ranking official at the Justice Department, Rod Rosenstein, had urged Trump to keep the memo classified and out of public view, but the president declined. Last week, Trump attacked both agencies through his Twitter account, saying their leadership and investigators had “politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans.”

Wray has defended the bureau and its agents throughout the memo controversy.

Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, who is a member of the House intelligence committee, said the memo is not a rebuke of the FBI rank-and-file or special counsel Robert Mueller.

“The memo is about a process and what kinds of information should be used in order to allow the federal government to spy on Americans,” said Hurd, a former covert CIA officer. “In my opinion, unverified information, circular reporting and rumors should not be used in an application to spy on American citizens. We should be protecting our civil liberties.”

Robert Litt, the former general counsel for the director of national intelligence, said the future relationship between intelligence agencies and their congressional overseers has been put at risk.

“The precedent that’s been set here is very dangerous’ Litt said. “You can only imagine if the Democrats get control of the House in the mid-year election; they will now be able to say look, ‘We’ve established a precedent here. You’ve released classified information, and we’re going to start doing it as well.’”

Democrats have prepared their own memo in response to the one Nunes released last week and have asked the committee to authorize its release.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said he too fears lawmakers will start seeking to disclose intelligence information in politically biased memos.

Schiff also worries that confidential sources could become more reluctant to provide information to U.S. intelligence agencies for fear that Congress could out them. Moreover, the American public could start wondering whether actions that law enforcement and intelligence agencies take to protect the country will be mischaracterized for political reasons, he said.

The contract between intelligence agencies and the House intelligence committee is broken, he warned.

“I have to think that it’s going to have a chilling effect on what they’re willing to share with us,” he said “It’s also going to be very demoralizing for people at the FBI to see them being used as a piñata for partisan reasons.”
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With three days to go before U.S. government funding runs out yet again, the path to an immigration deal remained murky on Monday, with President Donald Trump rejecting core elements of a bipartisan proposal put forward in the Senate.

“Any deal on DACA that does not include STRONG border security and the desperately needed WALL is a total waste of time,” Trump tweeted, restating some of his demands for approving a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants brought to America as children.

“We’re building the wall. Believe me, we’re building the wall,” the president later emphasized during a speech in Ohio. “The ones that don’t want security at the southern border or any other border are the Democrats.”

Trump spoke out as Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware unveiled a proposal granting legal status to recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama administration program Trump set for expiration next month.

The bipartisan bill seeks to boost border security but would mandate a study to determine the most effective means to do so — neither ruling out a border wall nor providing immediate funding for one, as Trump has demanded. Setting a goal of attaining “operational control” of U.S. borders by 2020, the proposed legislation mirrors a House bill that has dozens of co-sponsors of both political parties.

Immigrant rights groups praised the proposal for its limited scope, saying a bill that focuses on DACA and border security has a better chance of passing in Congress than comprehensive legislation addressing both legal and illegal immigration.

“Narrow gets it done. A radical and massive overhaul does not,” said Frank Sharry of Washington-based America’s Voice, which urges a swift path to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.

In his tweet, Trump noted that March 5, when DACA recipients lose protections from deportation, “is rapidly approaching.” He said Democrats “seem not to care about DACA. Make a deal!”

For their part, Democratic leaders signaled a growing resistance to key planks of the White House’s blueprint for immigration, including a reduction in legal immigration and prioritizing newcomers with advanced skills to benefit the U.S. economy.

“This is not an acceptable premise,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said on CNN. “They (Trump and some Republican lawmakers) want to cut legal immigration into the United States of family members, some of whom have waited 20 years or more to join up with their families here.”

A continued impasse would put to the test a pledge by Senate Majority Leader McConnell, a Kentucky Republican. Last month, McConnell secured enough Democratic support to end a three-day partial government shutdown by promising to start a floor debate on a DACA fix if no bipartisan immigration agreement had been reached by Feb. 8, when federal spending authority expires once again.
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The House Intelligence Committee has voted to release the Democratic rebuttal to a Republican-approved memo alleging that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) abused its power in probing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The memo now goes to U.S. President Donald Trump, who will review the Democratic rebuttal to see if it exposed classified information. Trump claims the Republican memo crafted by House Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes and others “totally vindicates” him of wrongdoing in the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the election and whether he obstructed justice in trying to limit the probe.

In a Twitter remark early Monday, Trump assailed the top Democrat on the panel, referring to him as “Little Adam Schiff.” The California congressman has called the Republican memo a “political hit job” on the FBI.

The president said Schiff “is desperate to run for higher office.” Trump claimed Schiff “is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there” with former FBI director James Comey, Virginia Senator Mark Warner, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan and former director of National Intelligence James Clapper —all of whom Trump has feuded with over national security issues.

“Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information. Must be stopped!” Trump claimed.

Schiff responded on Twitter, saying, “Mr. President, I see you’ve had a busy morning of ‘Executive Time.’ Instead of tweeting false smears, the American people would appreciate it if you turned off the TV and helped solve the funding crisis, protected Dreamers or … really anything else.”

Meanwhile, Trump praised Nunes, saying, “Representative Devin Nunes, a man of tremendous courage and grit, may someday be recognized as a Great American Hero for what he has exposed and what he has had to endure!”

Later, in a speech in Ohio extolling his tax cut legislation, Trump called Democrats “un-American” and “treasonous” for not applauding his State of the Union speech last week.

Republican memo

Several Republicans on Sunday disputed Trump’s contention that the Republican memo vindicated him in the investigation being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The four-page memo concluded the FBI relied excessively on opposition research funded by Democrats in a dossier compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, as its sought approval from a U.S. surveillance court in October 2016 to monitor Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser, and his links to Russia.

But the memo also noted that the FBI investigation that eventually led to Mueller’s probe started months earlier — in July 2016 — when agents began looking into contacts between another Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, and Russian operatives. Papadopoulos, as part of Mueller’s probe, has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his Russian contacts and, pending his sentencing, is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.

Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, one of the key authors of the Republican memo, told CBS’s Face the Nation the document does not undermine Mueller’s months-long investigation.

Gowdy said that “there is a Russia investigation without a [Steele] dossier” because of other Trump campaign links to Russia, including a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York set up by Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., on the premise that a Russian lawyer would hand over incriminating evidence on Trump’s election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. Gowdy said the Steele dossier “also doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice.”

Another Republican on the Intelligence panel, Congressman Chris Stewart of Utah, told Fox News, “I think it would be a mistake for anyone to suggest the special counsel should not continue his work. This memo, frankly, has nothing to do at all with the special counsel.”

Opposition to memo

In a letter Sunday, Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer pushed Trump to approve the release of the Democratic response to the Nunes memo, saying Americans should “be allowed to see both sides of the argument and make their own judgments.” 

Democratic lawmakers opposed to Friday’s release of the memo contend that the Republican-approved statement “cherry-picks” information and overstates the importance of the Steele dossier in the FBI’s effort to win approval from the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court for the monitoring of Page’s activities.

The FBI also opposed release of the memo, saying it had “grave concerns” about its accuracy because of omissions concerning its request to the surveillance court to monitor Page. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Mueller investigation, also opposed its release.

Nunes said last week he hoped release of the memo would “shine a light” on what he called “this alarming series of events.”

“The committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes,” Nunes said. “Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies exist to defend the American people, not to be exploited to target one group on behalf of another.”
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Washington is witnessing a moment of extreme friction between the White House and U.S. law enforcement rivaling that of the Watergate scandal of the 1970s. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, fallout continues from Friday’s release of a Republican House committee memo alleging bias and improper procedures at the FBI – a document President Donald Trump says vindicates him, but Justice Department officials called misleading and damaging to national security.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is contending that a controversial memo alleging that the FBI abused its power in probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election “totally vindicates” him, but that view was challenged Sunday by one of the memo’s own authors.

Trump complained in a Saturday Twitter comment that the “Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!”

But Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, one of the key authors of the Republican memo released by the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the document does not undermine the months-long investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into the Russian campaign meddling or whether Trump obstructed justice in trying to curb the probe.

The four-page “Nunes memo,” named after the House Intelligence panel chairman, Congressman Devin Nunes of California, concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation relied excessively on opposition research funded by Democrats in a dossier compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, as its sought approval from a U.S. surveillance court in October 2016 to monitor Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser, and his links to Russia.

But the memo notes that the FBI investigation that eventually led to Mueller’s probe started months earlier, in July 2016, when agents began looking into contacts between another Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, and Russian operatives. Papadopoulos, as part of Mueller’s probe, has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his Russian contacts and, pending his sentencing, is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.

Gowdy said in the television interview that “there is a Russia investigation without a [Steele] dossier” because of other Trump campaign links to Russia, including a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York set up by Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., on the premise that a Russian lawyer would hand over incriminating evidence on Trump’s election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. Gowdy said the Steele dossier “also doesn’t have anything to do with obstruction of justice.”

Another Republican on the Intelligence panel, Congressman Chris Stewart of Utah, told Fox News, “I think it would be a mistake for anyone to suggest the special counsel should not continue his work.  This memo, frankly, has nothing to do at all with the special counsel.”

Democratic lawmakers opposed to Friday’s release of the memo say that as soon as Monday they will seek the Intelligence committee’s approval to release their counter interpretation of the classified information underlying the Nunes document.  The Democrats contend that the Republican-approved statement “cherry-picks” information and overstates the importance of the Steele dossier in the FBI’s effort to win approval from the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court for the monitoring of Page’s activities.

Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York said the memo released by the Republicans “is a disgrace. House Republicans should be ashamed.”

Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer, in a letter Sunday, pushed Trump to approve release of the Democratic response to the Nunes memo, saying Americans should “be allowed to see both sides of the argument and make their own judgments.” 

Ahead of Trump’s approval of release of the Republican-backed House Intelligence panel’s memo, the FBI said it had “grave concerns” about its accuracy because of omissions concerning its request to the surveillance court to monitor Page. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Mueller investigation, also opposed its release.

Rosenstein was one of several Justice Department officials who signed off on the request to the surveillance court to monitor Page, leaving some Trump critics to voice fears that Trump would soon fire Rosenstein.

When asked Friday whether he still had confidence in Rosenstein or was likely to fire him, Trump said, “You figure that one out.”

Later, however, White House spokesman Raj Shah, said on Fox News, “Rod Rosenstein’s job is not on the line. We expect him to continue his job as deputy attorney general.”

FBI, DOJ response

​After the memo’s release, the FBI on Friday re-issued its statement saying the agency “takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals.”

The FBI noted it was given “limited opportunity” to review the document before lawmakers voted to release it. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the agency said.

Nunes issued a statement Friday expressing hope that the actions of Intelligence Committee Republicans would “shine a light” on what he called “this alarming series of events.”

“The committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes,” Nunes said. “Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies exist to defend the American people, not to be exploited to target one group on behalf of another.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions weighed in on the memo’s release Friday, saying, he has “great confidence in the men and women of this Department [of Justice]. But no department is perfect.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump, told agency employees Friday that he stood with them. “I stand by our shared determination to do our work independently and by the book,” Wray said in a statement to 35,000 FBI staff.

Watch:

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Republicans who control a majority of the nation’s statehouses are considering a wide range of abortion legislation that could test the government’s legal ability to restrict a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

The Mississippi House passed a bill Friday that would make the state the only one to ban all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In Missouri, lawmakers heard testimony earlier in the week on a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks.

The Ohio House is expected to consider bills, already passed in the Senate, that would prohibit the most common type of procedure used to end pregnancies after 13 weeks and require that fetal remains be buried or cremated.

​Crucial question

Abortion is a perennial hot button issue in statehouses across the country. Republican-controlled states have passed hundreds of bills since 2011 restricting access to the procedure while Democratic-led states have taken steps in the other direction.

The early weeks of this year’s state legislative sessions have seen a flurry of activity around the issue. It comes as activists on both sides say they expect the U.S. Supreme Court to soon consider a question that remains unclear: How far can states go in restricting abortion in the interest of preserving and promoting fetal life?

The state bills debated since the start of the year “are all tests designed to see how far government power to legislate on behalf of a fetus can reach,” said Jessica Mason Pieklo, who has been tracking legislation as the senior legal analyst for Rewire, a website that promotes views supporting abortion rights.

She said the outcome will determine whether states can legally ban abortion after a specific time period and outlaw specific medical procedures. Advocates for abortion rights say those strategies undermine the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling that women have the right to terminate pregnancies until a fetus is viable.

​Women speak out

In Utah, critics have warned that a pending bill to prevent doctors from performing abortions on the basis of a Down syndrome diagnosis is unconstitutional. But its co-sponsor, Republican state Sen. Curt Bramble, said he is willing to defend the bill in court because its goal is to protect unborn children.

“There are times if the Supreme Court got it wrong, it is appropriate to push back,” said Bramble, an accountant from Provo.

The anti-abortion bills have drawn opposition from women who say they have made the excruciating choice to terminate a pregnancy, often after discovering serious fetal abnormalities.

“A 20-week abortion ban sounds OK, but if that gets passed, what’s next — 18 weeks, 15 weeks? At what point does it make abortion truly illegal?” said Robin Utz of St. Louis, 38, who submitted testimony this week against the Missouri bill. “It’s terrifying and it’s willfully ignorant.”

Utz recounted terminating her pregnancy in its 21st week in November 2016, after learning her daughter would be born with a fatal kidney disease if she survived birth. She said doctors told her that dilation and evacuation, the most common abortion procedure in the second trimester, was the safest way to terminate the pregnancy.

Court challenges underway

Undeterred by such stories, the National Right to Life Committee and its allies have been pushing for state laws that ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy and outlaw dilation and evacuation. Supporters of both measures argue that fetuses are capable of feeling pain after 20 weeks and call the procedure “dismemberment abortion.”

Several court challenges to both types of laws are underway, with federal appeals courts considering the “dismemberment abortion” bans approved last year in Texas and Arkansas. The Kansas Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the first-in-the-nation ban passed in that state three years ago.

Ingrid Duran, director of state legislation at the National Right to Life Committee, said the model state laws drafted by her group are aimed at U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote who wrote the court’s 2007 opinion upholding a federal ban on a procedure critics call partial-birth abortion.

She said the court could use similar reasoning to prohibit dilation and evacuation and noted it has never considered whether states have an interest in protecting fetuses from pain.

“We did draft these laws with the bigger picture in mind,” Duran said.

Texas ruling shifts focus

The shifted focus comes after the court dealt the anti-abortion movement a blow in 2016 by ruling that strict Texas regulations on abortion clinics and doctors were an undue burden on abortion access and unconstitutional.

Anti-abortion groups hope President Donald Trump will be able to nominate one or more justices to the Supreme Court following last year’s confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, potentially making the court more conservative on the issue for decades to come.

In the meantime, some of them are cautioning their allies not to go too far.

Duran said the proposed 15-week ban in Mississippi, which now goes to the state Senate, caught her by surprise. She noted that prior state laws banning abortion after 12 weeks or once a heartbeat was detected have been found unconstitutional.

In South Carolina this past week, state senators tabled a bill that would have banned most abortions to give lawmakers more time to study the consequences. Also last week, a legislative committee in Tennessee amended a bill to remove language that would have outlawed abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detectable, which is usually around six weeks. The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Micah Van Huss, said he would be back.

“I will not stop fighting for the lives of babies until abortion is abolished in this state,” he said.
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The White House late Saturday confirmed plans to withdraw the nomination of a climate change skeptic with ties to the fossil fuel industry to serve as President Donald Trump’s top environmental adviser.

Kathleen Hartnett White was announced last October as Trump’s choice to chair the Council on Environmental Quality. She had served under former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, now Trump’s energy secretary, for six years on a commission overseeing the state environmental agency.

But White’s nomination languished in the Senate, and was among a batch of nominations the Senate sent back to the White House at the end of 2017 when Congress closed up for the year. Trump resubmitted White’s nomination in January.

Pollution defended

White, who is not a scientist, has compared the work of mainstream climate scientists to “the dogmatic claims of ideologues and clerics.” In a contentious Senate hearing last November, she defended past statements that particulate pollution released by burning fuels is not harmful unless one were to suck on a car’s tailpipe.

Critics of White’s nomination to head the council pointed to her praise of fossil fuels as having improved living conditions around the world and helping to end slavery. She has called carbon dioxide not a pollutant but “a necessary nutrient for plant life.” 

During Perry’s tenure as governor of Texas, White often was critical of what she called the Obama administration’s “imperial EPA,” the Environmental Protection Agency, and she opposed stricter limits on air and water pollution.

White was a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that received funding from Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, Chevron and other fossil-fuels companies. White could not immediately be reached late Saturday for comment.

Nomination withdrawn

The Washington Post first reported late Saturday on plans by the White House to pull White’s nomination, citing two administration officials who had been briefed on the matter but spoke on condition of anonymity because the White House has not formally announced its decision.

A White House official later confirmed the Post report. The official was not authorized to discuss personnel decisions by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump himself has called climate change a hoax and has laid the groundwork for withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accords. 

Other top Trump administration officials who question the scientific consensus that carbon released in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of global warming include Perry, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

U.S. Senator Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said it was “abundantly clear very early on” that heading the Council on Environmental Quality wasn’t the right job for White. Carper called withdrawing White’s nomination “the right thing to do” and urged the Trump administration to nominate a “thoughtful environmental and public health champion to lead this critical office in the federal government.”
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A controversial memo alleging FBI investigators abused their powers in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is “embarrassingly flawed,” the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said Saturday.

The memo released by the House Intelligence Committee “is a disgrace,” Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler said in a response to the document that has obsessed the U.S. political world this week. “House Republicans should be ashamed.”

Nadler’s six-page memo, addressed to his Democratic colleagues and obtained by television news networks, said the document — known as “the Nunes memo,” produced by House Republican Devin Nunes, chairman of the Intelligence Committee — “is deliberately misleading and deeply wrong on the law.”

The memo, released to the public Friday, alleges that the FBI overstepped its authority in obtaining a surveillance warrant for an aide to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The Nunes memo says the FBI relied heavily on a dossier of information assembled by Christopher Steele, a Russia expert and former British spy, for the campaign of Trump rival Hillary Clinton, via the law firm Perkins Cole and the research firm Fusion GPS.

The release of the memo intensified the battle between Trump and his Republican allies in Congress on one side and Democrats and top FBI officials on the other about whether the probe into Russian interference in the presidential election was affected by political bias on the part of investigators.

In his rebuttal, Nadler said the Republicans failed to show that the FBI relied substantially or solely on the dossier in question. Further, he said, “the Nunes memo does not provide a single shred of evidence that any aspect of the Steele dossier is false or inaccurate in any way.”

New Trump tweets

Joining the furor Saturday evening, President Trump, who is spending the weekend at his Florida golf resort, tweeted quotes of an editorial that appeared a day earlier in the Wall Street Journal. It said, in part, “The four page memo released Friday reports the disturbing fact [misquote in tweet; WSJ said “reports disturbing facts”] about how the FBI and FISA [in WSJ, “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court” was spelled out] appear to have been used to influence the 2016 election and its aftermath.”

Trump did not quote a later paragraph in the editorial, in which the Wall Street Journal called for the release of the Democratic rebuttal to the Nunes memo.

“Democrats are howling that the memo, produced by Republican staff, is misleading and leaves out essential details,” the Journal said. “By all means let’s see that, too. President Trump should declassify it promptly.” The editorial also called for release of a referral for criminal investigation of the dossier’s author.

Earlier in the day, Trump tweeted that the disputed Republican memo “totally vindicates” him, despite a contrary view by most Democrats.

“This memo totally vindicates ‘Trump’ in probe,” the president tweeted Saturday morning. “But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their [sic] was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!”

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted back at the president, saying, “Quite the opposite, Mr. President. The most important fact disclosed in this otherwise shoddy memo was that FBI investigation began July 2016 with your advisor, Papadopoulos, who was secretly discussing stolen Clinton emails with the Russians.”

A significant part of the document focuses on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants that permitted FBI surveillance of former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, a businessman with interests in Russia.

There had been concerns about Page’s alleged contacts with Russian intelligence agents.

The memo asserts that the dossier was an “essential part” of the FISA application on Page.

​FBI, DOJ response

After the memo’s release, the FBI on Friday re-issued its statement from earlier this week, saying the agency “takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals.”

The FBI noted it was given “limited opportunity” to review the document before lawmakers voted to release it.

“As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the agency said.

Rep. Nunes issued a statement Friday expressing hope that the actions of Intelligence Committee Republicans would “shine a light” on what he called “this alarming series of events.”

“The committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes,” Nunes said. “Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies exist to defend the American people, not to be exploited to target one group on behalf of another.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions weighed in on the memo’s release Friday, saying, he has “great confidence in the men and women of this Department (of Justice). But no department is perfect.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray told agency employees Friday that he stood with them after the release of the memo.

“I stand by our shared determination to do our work independently and by the book,” Wray said in a statement to 35,000 FBI staff members.
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Congressional Republicans released a classified memo related to the Russia investigation Friday after President Donald Trump decided that the document should be available to the general public. The memo from Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee alleges U.S. law enforcement officials including the FBI abused their authority in seeking to put a Trump campaign associate under surveillance for possible ties to Russia. The release of the memo has set off yet another political firestorm over the Russia probe in Washington, as we hear from VOA National correspondent Jim Malone.
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A controversial document prepared by Republican members of Congress accuses U.S. law enforcement officials of abusing their surveillance authorities during the Russia investigation.

The 3½-page secret memo, written by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, was released Friday after President Donald Trump authorized its declassification.

What the memo alleges

The memo’s key allegation is that the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI improperly obtained a series of electronic surveillance warrants on former Trump associate Carter Page as part of the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Page served as a foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign and came under U.S. intelligence suspicion after traveling to Moscow and meeting with Russian officials.  

FBI surveillance of foreign spies and other foreign targets in the United States is overseen by a secret court known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). To obtain a warrant from the court, the FBI must furnish evidence that the target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign government. 

In Carter’s case, the memo alleges, the FBI substantially relied on information from a research dossier compiled by a former British intelligence officer for the election campaign of Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton. The bureau used the information in its initial warrant application in October 2016 after Page had left the campaign as well as three subsequent renewal applications.

The author of the dossier, Christopher Steele, was a longtime FBI source who was paid by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, via the law firm Perkins Cole and the research firm Fusion GPS, to “obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia,” according to the memo.

Steele is also accused of harboring an anti-Trump bias during the campaign, telling a senior Justice Department official two months before the 2016 election that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” Trump has called the dossier’s allegations about his personal and financial ties to Russia a “Crooked Hillary Pile of Garbage.” 

But while the dossier formed an “essential part” of the Page surveillance applications, the memo says, FBI and DOJ officials failed to disclose that the underlying information had been funded by the Democrats “even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.”  

The government “had at least four independent opportunities before the FISC to accurately provide an accounting of the relevant facts,” the Republicans wrote in the memo. “However, our findings indicate that … material and relevant information was omitted.” 

To support their claim that the dossier was central to obtaining the warrants, the Republicans cited December 2017 testimony by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that “without the dossier information,” no surveillance warrant would have been sought.  

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee who unsuccessfully tried to block the memo’s release blasted the document for “serious mischaracterizations.” 

In a statement, Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence panel, said the FBI “would have been derelict in its responsibility to protect the country had it not sought a FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrant.” 

What the memo doesn’t say 

While the memo says the application relied on unsubstantiated information from the Steele dossier, it doesn’t say what other pieces of evidence the FBI invoked to obtain the warrants. A FISA warrant application typically contains multiple sources of classified information to establish probable cause that the target of a proposed surveillance works for a foreign government. 

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said a key question that is left unanswered in the memo is whether other information used in the application was enough to warrant its approval.

“There is a lot of questions raised by the information that I’d like to get answers to,” Gonzales told VOA. 

Ahead of the memo’s public release, Trump tweeted that the “top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans — something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!”

But the memo does not directly accuse the top brass at the FBI and Justice Department of any wrongdoing, though it does say that senior officials, including former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, all signed off on the Page warrant applications. 

Gonzales said that top officials who sign FISA warrant applications don’t always get to read every fact included in them.

“You’re not necessarily going to know what’s not included in the application and nonetheless you go ahead and sign the FISA application,” he said.

Gonzales said criticism of the department’s top brass can trickle down to its rank and file.

“Whatever one might say about being for the rank and file at the department, the line prosecutors and line investigators, anytime you attack the leadership or the work of the department, it does hurt the morale of the rank and file,” he said.

“I’m worried that the public’s confidence in the integrity of investigations and prosecutions by the Department of Justice has been eroded,” Gonzales said. “I think that’s a terrible place to be, quite frankly.”
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FBI Director Christopher Wray told agency employees Friday that he stood with them after the release of a memo outlining allegations by Republican lawmakers that FBI investigators abused their powers in their probe of Russian interference in the presidential election.

“I stand by our shared determination to do our work independently and by the book,” Wray said in a statement to 35,000 FBI staff.

“You’ve all been through a lot in the past nine months and I know it’s often been unsettling, to say the least. And the past few days haven’t done much to calm those waters,” he said. “Talk is cheap; the work you do is what will endure.”

Wray’s letter made no direct reference to the memo released Friday. He also gave no indication that he planned to leave the agency.

President Donald Trump lashed out at the FBI and Justice Department on Friday after the memo was made public.

He tweeted: “The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans — something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people.”

When asked by a reporter whether releasing the memo made it more likely Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would be fired, Trump replied, “You figure that one out.”

Rosenstein supervises the Russia probe and named special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the investigation.

White House officials said later that the administration expected Rosenstein to remain in his job.

“No changes are going to be made at the Department of Justice. We fully expect Rod Rosenstein to continue on as the deputy attorney general,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told CNN.
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 The U.S. House of Representatives plans to vote on Tuesday on legislation to keep federal agencies operating beyond Feb. 8, when existing funds expire, a senior House Republican aide said on Friday.

The aide did not provide details, however, on the duration of this latest-in-a-series of temporary funding measures.

Congressional negotiators are fighting over defense and non-defense spending levels for the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30, as well as other unrelated matters.
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President Donald Trump says K.T. McFarland has withdrawn from consideration to be ambassador to Singapore. 

Trump issued a statement Friday. He said McFarland served his administration “with distinction” and said Democrats “chose to play politics rather than move forward with a qualified nominee for a critically important post.”  

McFarland is a former deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration and former Fox News analyst. She was nominated in May.

After the Republican-majority Senate did not act on the nomination by the end of last year, McFarland was re-nominated in January.

McFarland’s nomination was in doubt amid questions about her communications with ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn. 
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After phone calls with the leaders of Japan and South Korea, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke Friday in the Oval Office with a group of North Koreans who had escaped their repressive country.

“Their story is amazing,” Trump said before asking the eight Koreans to speak about their ordeals.  The president listened intently as they spoke for 20 minutes.

“We actually have two other people outside and they are literally afraid of execution — they didn’t want to be with cameras,” the president told reporters.

Those defectors who decided to appear on camera thanked Trump for highlighting North Korean human rights abuses. Trump addressed the subject during his speech last November in the South Korean National Assembly and in his State of the Union address last week.

Several appealed to Trump to do more.

Those who escape North Korea to China “would rather die and kill themselves than be repatriated to North Korea,” said Lee Hyeon-soo, adding many carry poison with them in case they are caught.

“Please help us to stop the repatriations from China to North Korea,” she implored Trump.

Lee added that “escaping North Korea is not like leaving another country, it’s more like leaving another universe. I’ll never truly be free of its gravity no matter how far my journey.”

She told Trump that she fled an arranged marriage and a brothel in China.

Lee, now a student in South Korea, has written a memoir about her experience, The Girl with Seven Names.

Kim Kwang-jin, who was a banking agent in Singapore for the North Korean government and defected in 2003, told Trump his attention to the human rights issue “will be an inspiration” to many in his native country.

Ji Seong-ho, a double amputee who attended Trump’s State of the Union address, where he stood to wave his old crutches when he received an ovation, told Trump: “I’ve been crying a lot these past few days since the speech, as I was so moved by the whole experience.”

Ji also thanked the president “for paying attention and trying to help us.”

Peter Jung, who escaped to China in 2000, told Trump he is now a broadcaster for the U.S.-government-supported Radio Free Asia, which — as does VOA — broadcasts to North Korea in the Korean language.

“I was very honored to become a United States citizen” last year, he told Trump.

U.S. efforts

The president, during the Oval Office meeting, refrained from making provocative comments about North Korea or its leader.

In the past, he has threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on the country — which is building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles — and has belittled North Korea’s leader as “Little Rocket Man.”

During the meeting, Trump said, “We’re doing a lot” regarding North Korea. “We have many administrations that should have acted on this a long time ago.”

The president indicated his patience remains limited regarding North Korea’s activities.

“We have no road left,” Trump said.

“It’s a very tricky situation,” the president added. “We’re going to find out how it goes, but we think the Olympics will go very nicely and, after that, who knows?”

South Korea, Japan efforts

Vice President Mike Pence will lead the official U.S. government delegation to the opening of the Winter Games next week in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Athletes from the North and South are to march together under a common flag and will put a unified women’s hockey team on the ice.

A state of war has technically persisted on the Korean Peninsula since 1953, when the armies of China and North Korea signed an armistice with the United States and U.N. Command, which had defended the South during a three-year war.

North Korea has been under a totalitarian government since then. According to U.N. inquiries, the country’s violations of human rights are widespread, grave and systematic, rising to the level of crimes against humanity.

In his phone call Friday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the U.S. president thanked him “for Japan’s efforts to maintain international pressure on North Korea. This includes recent efforts to clamp down on North Korea’s attempts to circumvent sanctions in the waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula,” according to the White House. “Both leaders agreed on the need to intensify the international maximum pressure campaign to denuclearize North Korea.”

They also discussed expanding Japan’s missile defense capabilities, it said.

Trump, in a call with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, “discussed the importance of improving the human rights situation in North Korea and underscored their commitment to work together on this issue,” according to a readout of the discussion issued by the White House.
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U.S. President Donald Trump addressed the Republican Party’s winter dinner in Washington Thursday, aiming barbs at Democrats and touting some of the legislative successes for the party.

It was the second time in the day that Trump addressed the Republicans. Earlier he spoke to the Republicans at their retreat in West Virginia, urging those present to back his immigration proposal and help elect more Republicans.

At the dinner, Trump criticized the Democrats for “stonewalling” the critical immigration reform bill. He said while he is pushing to reach a deal, “The Democrats are AWOL. They’re missing in action,” he said.

Trump said all Democrats do is resist, taking a jab at the “resist” movement opposing him.

The president also spoke of how well his State of the Union speech had gone earlier in the week. He said, “Even the haters back there [members of the press corps] gave us good reviews on that one [State of the Union address]. It’s hard for them to do it. They came up with some fake polls, you know that fake polls. But the fake polls were even good.”

But the president’s full remarks were unavailable as the reporters present were told to shut down their cameras and were escorted out. The live feed carried by CSPAN was also cut.

The president routinely criticizes the media as being biased against him and his administration.
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