The top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee sent 10 letters on Wednesday to Trump administration officials demanding documents, setting the stage for congressional investigations expected to begin in January.

Representative Elijah Cummings, who will become chairman of the House Oversight Committee in January when Democrats take majority control of the chamber, wrote to officials repeating requests that had already been made in conjunction with Republicans, but that the administration did not comply with. Cummings gave the administration until January 11 to comply.

When he becomes committee chairman, he will be able to subpoena the documents.

“Many of these requests were bipartisan, and some are now more than a year old. As Democrats prepare to take the reins in Congress, we are insisting “as a basic first step” that the Trump Administration and others comply,” Cummings said in a statement to Reuters.

The letters cover a range of topics including separation of immigrant children from their parents, the federal response to the hurricane in Puerto Rico, lead poisoning of the water in Flint, Michigan, and travel by White House staff and cabinet secretaries.

The letters indicated the committee will press the administration on these issues, as well as topics involving Trump’s personal finances and his family.

In a letter to Trump’s business the Trump Organization and his attorney Sheri Dillon, Cummings asked for details about payments from foreign governments to the president’s hotels.

Democrats have charged that Trump has been violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution by profiting through his businesses from payments from foreign governments for hotel rentals.

In a different letter, Cummings asked White House counsel Pat Cipollone to provide information about the use of private emails by administration staff, citing use of private emails by Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, and her husband Jared Kushner, both senior advisers to the president.

Cummings asked the Environmental Protection Agency for documents about former administrator Scott Pruitt’s travel and expenses, and to Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta seeking information about document preservation at his agency.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.
…

The White House and Congress appeared headed toward agreement Wednesday on a stopgap spending plan to avert a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday, but it does not include the $5 billion President Donald Trump wanted for construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate would vote later in the day on the measure funding operations for a quarter of the U.S. government until Feb. 8, when Trump and lawmakers could again face the possibility of a partial closure.

Democratic leader Charles Schumer said Democrats would support the temporary spending plan, with the remainder of the U.S. government already funded through the end of next September.

Trump made a pledge during his 2016 campaign to build a border wall to thwart illegal immigration and make Mexico pay for it. The president, however, has not been able to secure U.S. taxpayer funding for it even though both houses of Congress currently are under the control of his Republican Party.

He faces an even more daunting political challenge in the new year, when Democrats, who are adamantly opposed to the wall, take control of the House of Representatives, while Republicans retain their Senate majority.

On Twitter, Trump said, “One way or the other, we will win on the Wall!”

Trump aide Kellyanne Conway told reporters that the U.S. leader would “take a look at” the stopgap funding plan, “certainly.”

Trump last week said he would “proudly” own a shutdown in order to get $5 billion in funding for construction of a wall along the 3,200-kilometer border with Mexico; but, without enough votes in Congress, Trump retreated Tuesday, with the White House saying it would look for “other ways” to secure funding by trying to tap unused money from several federal agencies.

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump said. “It’s too early to say. We need border security.”

Democrats have proposed keeping 2019 funding at $1.3 billion for border security fencing and other improvements, but not specifically for the wall.

In a pair of tweets, Trump blamed opposition Democrats for the spending impasse, although some Republicans also oppose construction of the wall.

“In our Country, so much money has been poured down the drain, for so many years, but when it comes to Border Security and the Military, the Democrats fight to the death,” he said.

Trump wrongly claimed that “Mexico is paying (indirectly) for the Wall” through the new U.S. trade deal with Mexico and Canada, with “far more money coming to the U.S.” But the pact has yet to be ratified by Congress and has not taken effect.

Congress has approved funding for three-quarters of U.S. government operations through Sept. 30, but the remaining quarter left without a 2019 spending plan includes the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees border control operations, and the State Department handling U.S. diplomatic operations.

If a deal is not reached to avert the partial government shutdown, the affected agencies would start winding down nonessential operations Friday, with more than 800,000 federal workers furloughed or working for no pay.

On Tuesday, McConnell proposed $1.6 billion for border fencing — money already agreed upon in a bipartisan Homeland Security bill — and an additional $1 billion Trump could use to spend on the border.

McConnell called the offer “reasonable.” Democratic leaders said no.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said she and Schumer could “not support the offer they made of a billion-dollar slush fund for the president to implement his very wrong immigration policies.”
…

Decades after the U.S. stopped institutionalizing kids because large and crowded orphanages were causing lasting trauma, it is happening again. The federal government has placed most of the 14,300 migrant toddlers, children and teens in its care in detention centers and residential facilities packed with hundreds, or thousands, of children.

As the year draws to a close, some 5,400 detained migrant children in the U.S. are sleeping in shelters with more than 1,000 other children. Some 9,800 are in facilities with 100-plus total kids, according to confidential government data obtained and cross-checked by The Associated Press.

That’s a huge shift from just three months after President Donald Trump took office, when the same federal program had 2,720 migrant youth in its care; most were in shelters with a few dozen kids or in foster programs. Some of the children may be released sooner than anticipated, because this week the administration ended a portion of its strict screening policies that had slowed the placement of migrant kids with relatives in the U.S.

Until now, public information has been limited about the number of youths held at each facility overseen by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, even for attorneys representing the kids. But the AP obtained data showing the number of children in individual detention centers, shelters and foster care programs for nearly every week over the past 20 months, revealing in detail the expanse of a program at the center of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

The data shows the degree to which the government’s approach to migrant youth has hardened, marking a new phase in a federal program originally intended to offer safe haven to vulnerable children fleeing danger across the globe. It’s been taking at least twice as long — on average two months rather than one — for youth held inside the system to get out, in part because the Trump administration added more restrictive screening measures for parents and relatives who would take them in.

That changed Tuesday when the administration ended a policy requiring every adult in households where migrant children will live to provide the government with fingerprints. All still must submit to background checks, and parents themselves still need to be fingerprinted. Nonetheless, officials said they could now process some children more rapidly, and hoped to shorten shelter stays that had dragged on so long kids sometimes wondered if their parents had abandoned them for good.

“It’s a pain we will never get through,” said Cecilio Ramirez Castaneda, a Salvadoran whose 12-year-old son, Omar, was taken from him when they were apprehended in June under the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which led to nearly 3,000 children being separated from their families. Omar feared his father had given up on him during the five months he spent in a Southwest Key shelter in Brownsville, Texas, with dozens of kids.

Ramirez was reunited with Omar last month only to learn that his son had been hospitalized for depression and medicated for unclear reasons and suffered a broken arm while in government custody.

“It’s a system that causes irreparable damage,” he said. “My son says they would tell him that because he wasn’t from here, he had no rights.”

Experts say the deep anxiety and distrust children suffer when they’re institutionalized away from loved ones can cause long-lasting mental and physical health problems. It’s dangerous for all but worse for younger children, those who stay more than a few days and those who are in larger facilities with less personal care.

“This is not a perplexing scientific puzzle. This is a moral disaster,” said Dr. Jack Shonkoff, who heads Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child. “There has to be some way to communicate, in unequivocal terms, that we are inflicting punishments on innocent children that will have lifelong consequences. No matter how a person feels about immigration policy, very few people hate children — and yet we are passively allowing bad things to happen to them.”

Administration officials said increased need has driven them to expand the number of beds available for migrant children from 6,500 last fall to 16,000 today. Mark Weber, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees ORR, said sheltering children in large facilities, while not preferable, is a better alternative than holding them for long periods at Border Patrol stations ill-suited to care for them.

“This is an amazing program with incredibly dedicated people who are working to take care of these kids,” he said. “There are a large number of children and it’s a difficult situation, and we are just working hard to make sure they are taken care of and placed responsibly.”

Weber confirmed a number of specific shelter populations from the data the AP obtained. To further verify the data, reporters contacted more than a dozen individual facilities that contract with ORR to house migrant children. Reporters also cross-referenced population numbers previously collected by AP and its partners.

The kids in government care range in age from toddlers to 17. The vast majority crossed the border without their parents, escaping violence and corruption in Central America, but some were separated from their families at the border earlier this year.

The care they receive varies greatly in the opaque network, which has encompassed 150 different programs over the last 20 months in 17 states. Some children live with foster families and are treated to Broadway shows, while others sleep in canvas tents exposed to the elements amid the Texas desert.

Through dozens of interviews and data analysis, AP found:  

— As of Dec. 17, some 9,800 children were in facilities housing more than 100 kids; 5,405 of those were in three facilities with more than 1,000 youths — two in Texas and one in Florida.

— Texas had the most growth over the last 20 months in the number of kids under ORR custody. In April 2017, there were 1,368 migrant children in facilities or foster care in Texas. As of Dec. 17, the number was about 8,700.

— New York had the second-highest number of children: 1,653, up from 210 in April 2017. Cayuga Centers grew from about 40 kids to close to 900; all are in foster homes.

— The five largest providers, in order, are Austin, Texas-based Southwest Key; San Antonio-based BCFS Health and Human Services; Comprehensive Health Services Inc., based in Cape Canaveral, Florida; Cayuga Centers in Auburn, New York; and Chicago-based Heartland Alliance. Together they had about 11,600 children — or more than 80 percent of the 14,314 migrant youth in ORR custody as of Dec. 17.  

— The states with children in care are: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington state.

Kids continue to enter the system, though dozens of the care providers have been sued or disciplined before for mistreating children in their care. Now new litigation is piling up as attorneys fight to get migrant children released.

Staff members at a Southwest Key shelter in Phoenix allegedly physically abused three children this year, leading to the closure of the shelter in October, federal officials said. And a lawsuit filed earlier this year alleged that Latino youths at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center in Virginia were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and many experts warn against institutionalizing children in large groups. Dr. Ryan Matlow, a Stanford clinical psychologist whose work addresses the impact of early life stress, said best practices minimize the number of children in any one shelter.

“Children are being treated as cogs in a machine, and their individual backgrounds, interests and unique identities are devalued as they are lost amongst the masses. This experience then becomes internalized, with significant psychological consequences,” said Matlow, who recently met with migrant children in custody. “There is no way in which a mass detention setting can replicate the experience and support that comes from family and community.”

The number of migrant children caught by immigration officials and then turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement has dropped under Trump: there were 49,100 in fiscal year 2018 compared to a high of 59,170 in fiscal year 2016, when a surge of youth crossing the border prompted the Obama administration to open emergency shelters at military bases. The average length of stay has increased, however, from about 34 days in January 2016 to around 60 days , according to government reports. In October, the average length of stay reached 89 days, according to data HHS provided to members of Congress, who shared it with AP.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration added new screening requirements that made it harder for parents and other relatives to get approved to take custody of the migrant children — including the fingerprint policy. That information has been shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, resulting in the arrests of dozens of would-be sponsors.

Under this week’s change, only a parent or individual directly responsible for a child will have to submit fingerprints.

HHS spokesman Weber said some fingerprinting requirements were necessary to ensure children are released to a safe environment: “Given the multitude of bad actors around the children, you really have to be careful.”

The ORR migrant children’s program has already cost taxpayers more than $1.5 billion, according to federal grant disclosures. Another $1.1 billion has been requested as part of the 2019 budget.  

The facilities housing these children range from bucolic to jail-like.

In a Baltimore suburb, Board of Child Care shelters about 50 migrant children amid 28-acres of cottages and grassy lawns; Rite of Passage in Arizona has about 100 kids sheltered at facilities that look like posh, private schools surrounded by trees and fields. Youth for Tomorrow, founded in Bristow, Virginia, by former Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs to serve troubled teens, is housing about 110 migrant kids on its 215-acre campus with soccer fields and volleyball courts, music and art therapy.   

Suspected gang members can be sent to several high-security facilities. An attorney for a Guatemalan teen held in the Yolo County, California, juvenile detention center for 11 months said his client was locked in restraints when he acted out and stung with pepper spray. Attorney Travis Silva convinced a judge to release the boy in November to his mother in Ohio. He’s now being treated for trauma and mental illness, said Silva, and shelter statistics show 14 other teens remain locked inside.

“He was locked in a cell, allowed one hour a day outside,” said Silva. “And outdoor time was anxiety-provoking, because that’s when there could be fights.”

At Tornillo, Texas — the largest of all the facilities — some 2,745 teens are held in massive tents. Staff aren’t allowed to touch them, except for fist bumps. They can’t hug.

“The programs vary wildly from place to place,” said Shana Tabak, who directs the Atlanta office of the Tahirih Justice Center, which represents immigrant women and girls. “The federal government has taken a haphazard approach to caring for these human beings.”

Republican Congressman Will Hurd, whose district includes Tornillo, demanded that the government reunite the children with their families and shut down the detention camp by the end of the year, when the contract expires.

“Unnecessarily holding children for prolonged periods of time is no deterrent to illegal immigration,” he said. “All of this is a symptom of a broader problem, and that is that we’re not doing enough to address root causes of migration. We are the United States. We are better than this.”

Every kid comes with their own set of needs, many severe.

“We mostly have housed teenagers, some with their babies, and some sibling pairs whose parents have been murdered,” said Regina Moller, executive director of Noank Community Support Services in Groton, Connecticut. Noank can house up to 12 of the kids at a time and has been at or near capacity for weeks now.

Abbott House in Irvington, New York, takes kids with medical needs such as diabetes, cerebral palsy, depression and anxiety. It is housing 51 migrant boys and girls; the youngest is 3 years old, said medical director Dr. Luis Rodriguez.  

A handful of boys are getting therapeutic intervention for sexual behavior or mental health issues at Friends of Youth in Seattle. “Most of these children are coming from great trauma and really terrible things have happened to them in their short lives,” said president Terry Pottmeyer. “They respond so positively, we see incredible results.”

This December, many will be enduring their first holidays without family.

Manuel Marcelino Tzah, a Guatemalan father whose 12-year-old daughter, Manuela, was taken from him and held in a Southwest Key facility in Houston for nearly two months, said his family is still processing the pain of separation and detention.

“She’s doing OK now; she is going to school and learning some English,” said Marcelino, whose immigration case is pending in a New York court near his new home in Brooklyn. “We really went through some difficult times, and sometimes she remembers it and is hit with the sadness of it. I tell her what happened, happened, and now we are here and struggling for a better life.”
…

The White House said on Tuesday it was searching for ways to unilaterally fund the building of a controversial wall on the U.S.-Mexico border that Congress is balking at, possibly easing chances of a government shutdown this weekend.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters President Donald Trump has asked his Cabinet agencies to “look and see if they have money that can be used” to begin building the wall.

Previously, Trump had demanded that Congress approve $5 billion in new funds for the wall that he argues is needed to stop illegal immigrants and drugs from entering through the southwest border.

On Tuesday, Trump said it was too early to say whether a partial government shutdown will be averted by a Friday midnight deadline when existing funds for several agencies expire. “We’ll see what happens,” he told reporters.

But some Republican senators said they thought the president could be persuaded to sign a bill that does not fund his wall, and several Republican and Democratic senators spoke of the possibility of a stop-gap funding bill passing this week that would simply extend government operations into the new year.

The new Congress that convenes on Jan. 3 would then have to grapple with the budget impasse.

Given the continued uncertainty, however, federal agencies began publicizing their plans in case of a partial government shutdown.

The State Department, for example, said its consular operations, both domestic and abroad, would continue “as long as there are sufficient fees to support operations.” However, passport agencies might not operate if they are located in government buildings affected by the lapse in appropriations.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had proposed a plan that would have had Congress approve $1 billion in unspecified money that Trump could use to advance his border security priorities.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called it a “slush fund” that was promptly rejected.

Democrats, along with some Republicans, oppose the wall as a costly, ineffective border security tool.

Even some Republicans balked at the $1 billion fund. “I’m not sure I would insist on that,” Senator Roger Wicker told reporters.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, referring to the prospects of a bill to extend current spending for a short period, such as a few weeks “might be the only route forward considering the time constraints we face.” Schumer said Democrats would “very seriously consider” such a move.

Congress has been trying to approve around $450 billion in funds to keep a variety of federal agencies operating beyond Friday. Included is the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for border security.

Failure to agree to new appropriations by that deadline could leave about a quarter of the federal workforce without paychecks and some federal programs shuttered until the impasse is resolved.

Trump has demanded $5 billion as a down payment on construction of a wall, which was a key pledge of his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump originally said Mexico would pay for the wall, but Mexico has refused.

It was unclear whether any Cabinet heads, such as Defense Secretary James Mattis, would find money in their existing accounts to funnel to a wall, or whether they even had the authority to do so.
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U.S. President Donald Trump told his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan that Washington “would take a look at” the possibility of extraditing a U.S.-based Muslim cleric who Ankara suspects of being behind a 2016 coup attempt, but he made no commitment, the White House said on Tuesday.

“The only thing he said is that we would take a look at it,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. “Nothing further at this point beyond that … nothing committal at all in that process.”

Turkey’s foreign minister said on Sunday that Trump told Erdogan that Washington was working on extraditing the cleric, Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who has lived in self-imposed U.S. exile for nearly two decades.

No commitment

Asked about the comment on Monday, another White House official said only that Trump did not commit to extraditing Gulen when he spoke to Erdogan at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires last month. The official offered no further detail on the conversation.

Turkish officials blame Gulen for a failed coup in Turkey in which rogue soldiers attacked parliament and shot unarmed civilians. Gulen denies any involvement.

The United States and Turkey, NATO allies, have gone through a rough patch in 2018, exacerbated by the Turkish detention of a U.S. pastor. Turkey’s release of the pastor, Andrew Brunson, was a “tremendous step” toward improved relations, Trump said in October, while denying he made a deal with Ankara for the move.

Tension builds … again

But tensions flared again last week over the two countries’ positions on Syria. The Pentagon warned that unilateral military action into northeast Syria by any party would be “unacceptable,” after Turkey said it would launch a new military operation in the region.

Trump said last month he was not considering extraditing Gulen as part of efforts to ease Turkish pressure on Saudi 

Arabia over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. 
…

Bijan Rafiekian, the ex-business partner of former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges he covertly lobbied for Turkey to discredit and extradite a Muslim cleric living in the United States.

Rafiekian, a former director at the U.S. Export-Import Bank who worked on U.S. President Donald Trump’s transition, was indicted on Monday along with a Turkish-Dutch businessman for undisclosed lobbying and for allegedly lying about their work.

Trial set to start Feb. 11

Rafiekian, 66, entered the plea at an arraignment in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, and is set to fight the charges at a trial starting on Feb. 11, court records show.

The indictment alleges that Rafiekian and the businessman, Ekim Alptekin, worked with Turkish government officials on a secret plan to return Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is living in exile in Pennsylvania, to Turkey.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has blamed Gulen for stoking a failed coup against him in 2016, and has been pushing for his extradition for more than two years. The United States has rejected the plea, citing a lack of evidence.

Rafiekian, a co-founder of the Flynn Intel Group, the consultancy at the heart of the lobbying case, has become one of the few people prosecuted for a rarely enforced law requiring that lobbyists disclose their work for a foreign power.

Prosecutors contend that Rafiekian provided false statements to the Justice Department about his work, citing emails with Alptekin that appeared to show Alptekin was coordinating the $600,000 project with two Turkish government ministers.

The case against Rafiekian and Alptekin was built in part on information provided by Flynn, who has admitted to lying about his role in the lobbying effort and has been cooperating with the investigation of Rafiekian and Alptekin.

Flynn was to be sentenced on Tuesday for lying to the FBI related to his contacts with the then Russian ambassador to the United States. But the judge in his case gave him the option of a delay so he could cooperate with any pending investigations and bolster his case for leniency.

Flynn accepted the offer, and his lawyer said he was expecting to testify at Rafiekian’s trial.

Where is Alptekin?

U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga, who will oversee Rafiekian’s trial, asked prosecutors about the whereabouts of Alptekin, who through a spokesman denied the charges against him on Monday.

Alptekin was believed to be in Turkey and was not expected to appear in court, a prosecutor told the judge, said a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, which is prosecuting the case.
…

Michael Flynn may have given extraordinary cooperation to prosecutors, but the run-up to his sentencing hearing Tuesday has exposed raw tensions over an FBI interview in which the former national security adviser lied about his Russian contacts.

Flynn’s lawyers have suggested that investigators discouraged him from having an attorney present during the January 2017 interview and never informed him it was a crime to lie. Prosecutors shot back, “He does not need to be warned it is a crime to lie to federal agents to know the importance of telling them the truth.”

The mere insinuation of underhanded tactics was startling given the seemingly productive relationship between the two sides, and it was especially striking since prosecutors with special counsel Robert Mueller’s office have praised Flynn’s cooperation and recommended against prison time. The defense arguments spurred speculation that Flynn may be trying to get sympathy from President Donald Trump or may be playing to a judge known for a zero-tolerance view of government misconduct.

“It’s an attempt, I think, to perhaps characterize Flynn as a victim or perhaps to make him look sympathetic in the eyes of a judge — and, at the same time, to portray the special counsel in a negative light,” said former federal prosecutor Jimmy Gurule, a University of Notre Dame law school professor.

Until the dueling memos were filed last week, the sentencing hearing for Flynn — who pleaded guilty to lying about conversations during the transition period with the then-Russian ambassador — was expected to be devoid of the drama characterizing other of Mueller’s cases.

Prosecutors, for instance, have accused former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort of lying to them even after he agreed to cooperate. Another potential target, Jerome Corsi, leaked draft court documents and accused Mueller’s team of bullying him. And George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser recently released from a two-week prison sentence, has lambasted the investigation and publicly claimed that he was set up.

Flynn, by contrast, has been notably silent even as his supporters advocated a more combative stance. He met privately with investigators 19 times and provided cooperation so extensive that prosecutors said he was entitled to avoid prison altogether.

Then came his sentencing memo.

Although Flynn and his attorneys stopped short of any direct accusations of wrongdoing, they took pains to note that Flynn, unlike other defendants in Mueller’s investigation, was not informed that it was against the law to lie to the FBI. They suggest the FBI, which approached Flynn at the White House just days after Trump’s inauguration, played to his desire to keep the encounter quiet by telling him the quickest way to get the interview done was for him to be alone with the agents — rather than involve lawyers.

They also insinuate that Flynn, of Middletown, Rhode Island, deserves credit for not publicly seizing on the fact that FBI officials involved in the investigation later came under scrutiny themselves. Former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who contacted Flynn to arrange the interview, was fired this year for what the Justice Department said was a lack of candor over a news media leak. Peter Strzok, one of the two agents who interviewed Flynn, was removed from Mueller’s team and later fired for trading anti-Trump texts with another FBI official.

Mueller’s team has rejected any suggestion that Flynn was duped, with prosecutors responding in a sentencing memo Friday that there was no obligation to warn Flynn against lying.

“A sitting National Security (Adviser), former head of an intelligence agency, retired Lieutenant General, and 33-year veteran of the armed forces knows he should not lie to federal agents,” prosecutors wrote.

Former FBI Director James Comey criticized the broadsides on the Flynn investigation during a Monday appearance on Capitol Hill, saying, “They’re up here attacking the FBI’s investigation of a guy who pled guilty to lying to the FBI.”

Trump has made no secret that he sees Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt” and has continued to lash out at prosecutors he sees as biased against him and those who help them. He’s shown continued sympathy for Flynn, though, calling him a “great person” and asserting erroneously last week that the FBI said he didn’t lie.

Flynn has not tried to retract his guilty plea, and there’s every indication the sentencing will proceed as scheduled.

Arun Rao, a former Justice Department prosecutor in Maryland, said the defense memo is striking because it’s “inconsistent” with Flynn’s cooperative stance so far.

“You also wonder in this very unusual situation,” he said, “whether it is a play for a pardon.”

It’s possible at least some of the defense arguments may resonate with U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who directed prosecutors to produce FBI records related to Flynn’s interview. That included portions of the notes from Flynn’s Jan. 24, 2017 interview with FBI agents.

Responding to Sullivan’s order, prosecutors filed a redacted copy of the FBI interview notes Monday evening. The notes show FBI agents interviewed Flynn about his Russian contacts, including past trips to the country and his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.

Last year, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying about the contents of his conversations with Kislyak during the presidential transition.

The notes show Flynn told agents he didn’t ask Kislyak not to escalate Russia’s response to sanctions imposed by the Obama administration over election interference. But Flynn admitted as part of his guilty plea that he did.

The notes also show Flynn told agents he didn’t ask Kislyak to see if Russia would vote a certain way on a United Nations resolution involving Israeli settlements. But last year he admitted having asked Kislyak to see if Russia would vote against or delay the resolution. Court papers show Flynn made the request at the direction of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Sullivan was the judge in the Justice Department’s botched prosecution of now-deceased Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska. He dismissed the case after prosecutors admitted that they withheld exculpatory evidence, prompting the judge to say that in nearly 25 years on the bench, “I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case.”

In an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal last year, Sullivan said the experience inspired him to explicitly remind prosecutors in every criminal case before him of their obligation to provide defendants with favorable evidence. He says he has encouraged colleagues to do the same.

But while Sullivan has proved especially sensitive to hints of government overreach, nothing about the Flynn case comes close, said Gurule, the law professor.

“To portray him as somehow an innocent dupe, as somehow just this innocent victim in the process, this suggestion that there was a perjury trap — it’s an absurd allegation,” he said.
…

The fight over President Donald Trump’s $5 billion wall funds deepened Monday, threatening a partial government shutdown in a standoff that has become increasingly common in Washington.

It wasn’t always like this, with Congress and the White House at a crisis over government funding. The House and Senate used to pass annual appropriation bills, and the president signed them into law. But in recent years the shutdown scenario has become so routine that it raises the question: Have shutdowns as a negotiating tool lost their punch?

Monday brought few signs of progress. A partial shutdown that could occur at midnight Friday risks disrupting government operations and leaving hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay over the holiday season. Costs would be likely in the billions of dollars.

Trump was meeting with his team and getting regular updates, said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Trump was also tweeting Monday to keep up the pressure.

Exiting a Senate Republican leadership meeting late Monday, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota said, “It looks like it probably is going to have to build for a few days here before there’s a solution.”

The president is insisting on $5 billion for the wall along the southern border with Mexico, but he does not have the votes from the Republican-led Congress to support it. Democrats are offering to continue funding at current levels, $1.3 billion, not for the wall but for fencing and other border security.

It’s unclear how many House Republicans, with just a few weeks left in the majority before relinquishing power to House Democrats, will even show up mid-week for possible votes. Speaker Paul Ryan’s office had no update. Many Republicans say it’s up to Trump and Democrats to cut a deal.

​Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump talk most days, but the senator’s spokesman would not confirm if they spoke Monday about a plan. McConnell opened the chamber hoping for a “bipartisan collaborative spirit” that would enable Congress to finish its work.

“We need to make a substantial investment in the integrity of our border,” McConnell said. “And we need to close out the year’s appropriation process.”

Meanwhile more than 800,000 government workers are preparing for the uncertainty ahead.

The dispute could affect nine of 15 Cabinet-level departments and dozens of agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, Interior, Agriculture, State and Justice, as well as national parks and forests.

About half the workers would be forced to continue working without immediate pay. Others would be sent home. Congress often approves their pay retroactively, even if they were ordered to stay home.

“Our members are asking how they are supposed to pay for rent, food, and gas if they are required to work without a paycheck,” said a statement from J. David Cox, Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the large federal worker union. “The holiday season makes these inquiries especially heart-wrenching.”

Many agencies, including the Pentagon and the departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services, are already funded for the year and will continue to operate as usual, regardless of whether Congress and the president reach agreement this week.

Congress already approved funding this year for about 75 percent of the government’s discretionary account for the budget year that began Oct. 1.

The U.S. Postal Service, busy delivering packages for the holiday season, wouldn’t be affected by any government shutdown because it’s an independent agency.

Trump said last week he would be “proud” to have a shutdown to get Congress to approve a $5 billion down payment to fulfill his campaign promise to build a border wall.

​During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Mexico has refused.

Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, in a meeting last week at the White House, suggested keeping funding at its current level, $1.3 billion, for improved fencing. Trump had neither accepted nor rejected the Democrats’ offer, telling them he would take a look.

Schumer said Monday he had yet to hear from Trump. Speaking on the Senate floor, Schumer warned that “going along with the Trump shutdown is a futile act” because House Democrats would quickly approve government funding in January.

“President Trump still doesn’t have a plan to keep the government open,” Schumer said Monday. “No treat or temper tantrum will get the president his wall.”

One option for lawmakers would be to provide stopgap funding for a few weeks, until the new Congress convenes Jan. 3, when Pelosi is poised to become House speaker.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, who is in line to become the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, suggested a stopgap bill could be one way to resolve the issue or a longer-term bill that includes money for border security.

GOP leaders, though, were frustrated as the clock ticked away. Leaving the weekly leadership meeting, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said any planning was a “very closely held thing. That’s why we should never let this happen. We should pass the bills the way we’re supposed to pass them.”
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The U.S. Senate advanced a bipartisan bill Monday that would decrease America’s large prison population by lowering some mandatory federal sentences and giving prisoners added opportunities to earn reductions in jail time.

With the 82-12 procedural vote, the Senate formally took up the First Step Act, which is backed by President Donald Trump but has fewer than two weeks to reach his desk before the end of the current Congress.

“This landmark legislation restores fairness in sentencing by ensuring that penalties fit their crimes, gives low-level, non-violent offenders a better chance to turn over a new leaf upon release from prison, and ultimately reduces crime and makes our streets and neighborhoods safer,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in a statement.

“These historic changes will make communities SAFER and SAVE tremendous taxpayers dollars,” Trump tweeted. “It brings much needed hope to many families during the Holiday Season.”

The First Step Act would retroactively end the discrepancy in federal sentences for drug offenses involving crack and the powder form of cocaine, reducing jail time for thousands of prisoners already serving time for crack offenses.

The bill also would reduce some mandatory sentences, give federal judges more flexibility to make exceptions to mandatory prison terms, and allow prisoners to earn greater sentence reductions through good behavior and vocational training.

“The vast majority of prison inmates will one day be released back into our communities after serving their sentence,” Grassley said. “It is in everyone’s best interest to equip inmates with the skills and training needed to be become productive citizens, rather than returning to a life of crime.”

Proponents say the bill aims to correct a failed 1980s-era attempt to deter illegal drug use that established long mandatory prison sentences for drug convictions.

“Since 1980, the federal prison population has grown by over 700 percent,” Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin said. “Today, the United States of America holds more prisoners by far than any country in the world, more than Russia or China.”

Durbin added that existing law has unfairly targeted people of color, saying, “The majority of illegal drug users and dealers in America are white. But three-quarters of the people serving time in prison for drug offenses are African-American or Latino.”

The House of Representatives passed a similar version of the bill earlier this year. Now, the Senate is racing to complete work on the legislation before the chamber adjourns for the Christmas holiday.

Criticism of bill

The First Step Act has robust but not universal Senate support in its current form. Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton is demanding the bill stipulate that some prisoners will be barred from early release.

“Unfortunately, the bill still has major problems & allows early release for many categories of serious, violent criminals,” Cotton tweeted. “This includes felons who commit violent bank robberies with dangerous weapons, who assault children, & who commit carjacking with the intent to cause death.”

Cotton and several other Republicans are pressing an amendment that would specify which offenders are ineligible for sentence reductions, something that proponents of the First Step Act say the bill already sets forth.

“This bill will not allow dangerous, violent criminals to be released early — that [assertion] is pure fiction,” said the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn of Texas. “It’s important that we look at people who are low risk of recidivism [committing more crimes] and low risk to public safety, because what we can do is use the resources — not to keep people like that behind bars unnecessarily — but to focus on the truly violent criminals.”

America’s prison population exceeds 2 million people, and incarceration consumes vast resources within the nation’s justice system. Even if it becomes law, the First Step Act would have a modest impact on incarceration numbers, as the bill only applies to federal inmates, who account for less than 10 percent of the national total. Other initiatives seek to achieve similar results at the state level.

Support for bill

A wide array of law enforcement organizations support the bill, as do both right-leaning and left-leaning advocacy groups.

Durbin hailed “the most extraordinary political coalition I’ve ever witnessed in the time I’ve been in Washington” joining forces to back the legislation.

“Every once in a while, the stars line up, and the Democrats and the Republicans, and the conservatives and the progressives, and the president and the Congress agree on something,” the Illinois Democrat said.
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