U.S. President Donald Trump addressed members of all military branches deployed overseas to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving and thank them for their service. But when asked when he will visit any of them in person, he did not have a clear answer. The president paid a holiday visit to the Coast Guard near his home in Palm Beach, Florida, Thursday. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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The U.S. House Judiciary Committee has issued subpoenas for former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch to testify about investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia and Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Comey and Lynch have been ordered to appear before the House Judiciary, and Oversight and Government Reform committees on December 3 and 4. They have been ordered to participate in closed-door interviews about how federal law enforcement officials handled the two investigations.

The subpoenas, issued Wednesday but made public Thursday, made good on threats by Republican Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte earlier in the week.

Both Comey and Lynch have previously testified before congressional panels investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election campaign and have expressed willingness to appear before the two committees.

Comey, though, has raised objections to the format of the interview and suggested in a Thanksgiving Day tweet he may not appear if the interview is not conducted in a public setting.

“I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a ‘closed door’ thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion.” Comey added: “Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see.”

Republican lawmakers have been investigating the decision-making by the FBI and the Justice Department in 2016 and 2017. They maintain that anti-Trump bias among senior officials resulted in the FBI focusing more on its probe into the Trump campaign’s links to Russia and less on its investigation into Democratic candidate Clinton’s private email server.

Trump has repeatedly called the Russia probe a “witch hunt” and has accused Comey and his close colleagues of being corrupt.

Democrats complain Republicans are simply trying to fuel a conspiracy theory to protect Trump from the ongoing Russia probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Democrats say they will scrutinize Trump’s attacks on the FBI and the Justice Department when they assume control of the House in January. They have also urged their Republican counterparts to shield Mueller from any attempts by Trump or his newly-appointed acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, to impede the investigation.
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U.S. President Donald Trump started his Thanksgiving holiday by renewed his public debate over the independence of the country’s judicial system.

In a teleconference Thursday with American troops overseas, Trump said a federal appeals court in California has become “a big thorn in our side.”

The president’s remarks came one day after he and U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts engaged in an extraordinary exchange over the independence of the federal judiciary, with Roberts berating Trump for criticizing a judge who ruled against his administration as an “Obama judge.”

Roberts responded with a rare public rebuke of the president, saying Trump’s comments reflect his misunderstanding of the judiciary’s role.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a bluntly worded statement.  “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.  That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

Although it is very unusual for a president to personally criticize judges, Trump quickly responded by questioning the independence of federal judges appointed by his predecessor and confirmed by the Senate.

“Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.  It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an ‘independent judiciary,’ Trump said via Twitter from his Mar-a-lago resort in Florida. 

While Trump cited the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the ruling that drew his ire came from a district judge in California.

Trump has been particularly critical of judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers California and much of the U.S. west coast.  Trump tweeted Wednesday the court, considered by many as the country’s most liberal, has become a “terrible, costly and dangerous disgrace.”

The president has maintained the Supreme Court has overruled the 9th Circuit more than other courts, but studies conducted during the past five years show three others have a higher percentage of their rulings overturned.

The controversy began Tuesday when Trump attacked U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco, who ruled against his migrant asylum order.  The ruling prompted Trump to claim again Thursday, as he has in the past, that the 9th Circuit was biased against him.

“It’s a terrible thing when judges take over your protective services, when they tell you how to protect your border.  It’s a disgrace” he said.

Roberts had refrained from commenting on Trump’s previous attacks on judges.  But after a query Wednesday from Associated Press, Roberts defended the independence of the federal judiciary and dismissed the notion that judges are beholden to presidents who appoint them.

Roberts, who has often expressed concern about attacks on the judiciary’s impartiality, has previously been the target of criticism from Trump.  Trump often belittled Roberts during the 2016 presidential campaign, at one point calling Roberts an “absolute disaster” after Roberts voted along with liberals in 2012 to uphold President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Roberts was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush and has compiled a firmly conservative voting record during his 13 years on the Supreme Court.

The chief justice’s statement came as he adjusts to changes on the Supreme Court.  The arrival last month of Trump’s second appointee, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, pushed Roberts to the court’s ideological center, a position that was held by Justice Anthony Kennedy until he retired in July.

Former special assistant to President George W. Bush, Scott Jennings, told CNN Thursday the ideological shift on the court may have compelled Roberts to defend the courts.

“I think what Chief Justice Roberts feels like his job is now is to look out for the integrity of and the reputation of the entire judiciary.  I mean in a world where a lot of people view most of government as being polarized, as being partisan for you or partisan against you, I think he believes it’s his job to make sure that folks view the judiciary as independent.”

Inside Elections publisher Nathan Gonzales said on CNN that Trump’s criticism of Roberts could further endear him to his conservative base, “There are some Republicans and conservatives who have already turned their back on Chief Justice Roberts because of his involvement in the decision with the Affordable Care Act.”

Gonzales added, “We have to remember that the Republican Party has become all about President Trump and whatever he does or the enemies he chooses are going to be with him and I think that remains the case in this situation.”
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Senate Republicans are working to soon fill the nation’s longest judicial vacancy with a North Carolina lawyer whose nomination has raised objections from black lawmakers and civil rights groups concerned about his work defending state laws found to have discriminated against African-Americans.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has helped push 84 of President Donald Trump’s nominees over the finish line and is itching for more. With just a few more weeks to go before Congress adjourns for the year, he has teed up a vote on the nomination of Thomas Farr, 64, to serve as a district court judge in North Carolina.

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Farr’s confirmation with a party-line vote back in January, meaning McConnell has waited about 10 months and until after the midterm elections to hold a vote on the floor.

Senators tend to save their biggest fights in the judicial arena for Supreme Court and appeals court nominees, but Farr’s nomination has proved an exception.

“It’s hard to believe President Trump nominated him, and it’s even harder to believe the Senate Republicans are considering it again,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York in one of about 20 tweets he has sent out in recent days concerning Farr.

Farr has the backing of home-state Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis, both Republicans. They have noted that Farr was also nominated to the same position by former President George W. Bush and has a “well qualified” rating from the American Bar Association. They have protested the implication that Farr is racially insensitive or biased.

“I think absolutely destroying a good man’s reputation is inappropriate,” Tillis said before the committee advanced Farr’s nomination.

In introducing Farr last year, Burr said the judiciary needs good people and he “fills every piece of the word good.”

But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., described Farr as “probably the worst of the litter” when it comes to Trump’s judicial nominees.

“Could this administration have picked an individual who is more hostile to the rights of minorities than this man? It is hard to imagine,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in the same committee hearing.

GOP leaders in charge of the North Carolina Legislature hired Farr and others at his firm to defend congressional and legislative boundaries that the Legislature approved in 2011. A federal court eventually struck some boundaries down as racial gerrymanders and the Supreme Court affirmed that decision.

Farr also helped defend a 2013 law that required photo identification to vote, reduced the number of early voting days and eliminated same-day registration during that period.

North Carolina Republicans said that requiring voter ID would increase the integrity of elections. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state provided no evidence of the kind of in-person voter fraud the ID mandate would address. The Richmond, Virginia-based court said the law targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.”

Farr told lawmakers that, as an advocate, he vehemently disagreed with the argument that the North Carolina Legislature sought to curtail the voting rights of people of color or any other voter. But, said, “I am obligated to follow the decision by the 4th Circuit and pledge that I will do so.”

The history of the particular judicial opening Farr would fill has also contributed to the acrimony.

President Barack Obama nominated two African-American women to serve on the court, but neither was granted a hearing and their nominations stalled. If confirmed, they would have been the first blacks to serve in that particular district, which is about 27 percent black.

Farr also served as a lawyer for the re-election campaign of Republican Sen. Jesse Helms in 1990. The Justice Department alleged that about 120,000 postcards sent overwhelmingly to black voters before that election was intended to intimidate them from voting.

Farr said he was not consulted about the postcards and did not have any role in drafting or sending them. He said that after he had been asked to review the card, “I was appalled to read the incorrect language printed on the card and to then discover it had been sent to African Americans.”

The explanation has failed to win over the NAACP.

“The courts are supposed to be where we can find and seek justice. But Farr’s lifetime crusade is to disenfranchise African Americans and deprive them of their rights,” said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau. “He belongs nowhere near a bench of justice.”

Democratic lawmakers called on the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to schedule Farr for another round of testimony about his role in the Helms’ campaign, but Grassley declined.

With a 51-49 majority, Republicans will have little margin for error in confirming Farr.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., has already pledged to oppose all judicial nominees until he gets a vote on legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller.
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Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has warned Central American migrants seeking political asylum at the U.S. border with Mexico that the Trump administration will not tolerate “frivolous asylum claims” or illegal entry. Her warning came Tuesday as a U.S. federal judge temporarily prevented the administration from blocking asylum status for people who do not enter at a designated port of entry. VOA’s Celia Mendoza is in Tijuana, Mexico, where she spoke to some of the migrants.
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For congressional Republicans, this month’s elections ushered in the year of the woman — literally. 

West Virginia’s Carol Miller will be the only Republican woman entering the 435-member House as a newcomer in January. She’ll join what may be the chamber’s smallest group of female GOP lawmakers since the early 1990s — as few as 13 of at least 199 Republicans. Democrats will have at least 89. 

Numbers like those have Republicans searching for answers to the glaring gender disparity in their ranks — and fast. The concern is that Democrats’ lopsided edge among female voters could carry over to 2020, when President Donald Trump will be seeking a second term and House and Senate control will be in play. If the current trend continues, Republicans risk being branded the party of men. 

“You will see a very significant recruiting effort occur” for female candidates, said David Winston, a pollster who advises GOP congressional leaders. “It’s a natural conclusion. An environment has got to be created where that can be a success.” 

Evidence of the GOP gender gap was just as clear in the 100-member Senate, where Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn will be the only Republican freshman. If Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith wins a runoff later this month there will be record-setting seven GOP women in the Republican-run Senate. But even that record is less than half the class of 17 Democratic women, which includes two freshmen. 

The search for answers leads to some familiar places. Trump’s fraught history with women, combined with the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment, helped motivate Democratic women to seek office but did not appear to have the same effect with GOP women, politicians and analysts say. More broadly, the president’s brash style doesn’t sit well many female voters or potential candidates.  

“Women don’t like the tweets,” said Sarah Chamberlain, president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, a moderate GOP group. “I don’t know how to tone down the rhetoric. If I could have a fantasy, one wish, that would be my one wish.” 

Women backed Democratic candidates over Republicans on Election Day by a telling 57 percent to 41 percent, according to AP VoteCast, a wide-ranging survey of the electorate conducted by The Associated Press. Women broke by similar margins in the crucial suburbs, where Democratic victories in swing districts helped power the gains they needed to win House control. Men supported Republicans over Democrats, 51 percent to 46 percent. 

Strategists note the issue isn’t just about current personalities; it’s about party infrastructure. 

“We as a party have to make recruiting women candidates who can win a high priority,” said Andrea Bozek, spokeswoman for Winning for Women, a fledging GOP group that tries bolstering female Republican candidates. She added, “Unless people in leadership really make it a priority, I don’t think it will happen.” 

A record number of women ran for the House as major-party candidates this year. But Democrats outnumbered Republicans by nearly 3 to 1, according to AP data, and Democratic women were more likely to win their primaries. 

Of those contenders who ran in November, 183 were Democrats, the most ever, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Fifty-two were Republicans, a near-record but far smaller than the number of  female Democrats running. 

That partisan imbalance was made greater by Democrats’ superior campaign infrastructure for helping female candidates. 

Winning for Women, created in early 2017, says it spent more than $1 million helping female candidates for the recent election. That and other GOP groups assisting female candidates couldn’t match Democrats’ 33-year-old Emily’s List, a well-financed organization that poured tens of millions into primaries and general elections and provided recruiting, training and other services to female candidates. 

“Democrats have been doing a much better job of getting women elected,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics. 

Asked to explain her success against other female candidates’ defeats, West Virginia’s Miller sent an email lauding Trump and other Republicans and GOP women’s groups and saying “liberal special interests” had spent heavily to defeat Republican women. Officials at the White House and the GOP did not provide answers to requests for comment. 

Republicans have displayed a sensitivity this year to their overwhelmingly male numbers. That includes hiring a female prosecutor to question Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s chief accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, when she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and its all-male Republicans about her allegations of sexual misconduct against him. 

Within days of the elections, Republicans vaulted women into congressional leadership positions. 

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, will be No. 3 House GOP leader next year, that chamber’s highest-ranking Republican woman ever. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, will be vice chairwoman of the Senate GOP conference, a lower-tier post, making her the first Republican woman in a Senate leadership job in eight years. 

Cheney said Republicans must better communicate that their policies on national security, the economy and health care are best for men and women. She called it “fundamentally offensive and paternalistic” to think women’s votes are driven by their gender. 

Asked on CBS’s Face the Nation last week whether Trump’s rhetoric alienated women, Ernst said, “We could do a better job of communicating clearly that we support women.”  
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Before joining the Justice Department, acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker earned more than $1.2 million from a right-leaning nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings. Whitaker’s earnings represented a sizable chunk of the charity’s revenue.

Financial disclosure forms released Tuesday show Whitaker received $904,000 in income from the Foundation for Accountability & Civic Trust from 2016 through nearly the end of 2017. He also received $15,000 from CNN as a legal commentator, according to the documents released by the Justice Department.

The nonprofit group, known as FACT, styles itself as a nonpartisan government watchdog promoting ethics and transparency. The tax-exempt group is supposed to serve the public interest without supporting or opposing specific candidates for office. However, its challenges and its website have focused largely, though not exclusively, on Democrats and their party.

Whitaker used his role as president and executive director of FACT in 2016 as a platform to question the ethics of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

From 2014 through 2016, FACT paid out nearly 30 percent of its total revenue to Whitaker. In 2015 alone, Whitaker’s $252,000 salary made up half of what the group brought in. Whitaker’s salary also grew each year from $63,000 in 2014 to as much as $502,000 in 2017, according to the tax filings and public financial disclosures released by the Justice Department.

Separately, Whitaker is also facing criticism about whether he violated federal law because a campaign committee set up for his failed 2014 U.S. Senate bid accepted $8,800 in donations this year, while Whitaker was serving as a top Justice Department lawyer.

On Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., called for an investigation into whether Whitaker violated the Hatch Act, a statute that generally prohibits executive branch employees from accepting or soliciting campaign donations.

Whitaker’s campaign committee, which still carries about $49,000 in debt, hadn’t received any contributions between 2015 through 2017, according to Federal Election Commission data.

The campaign committee, Whitaker for U.S. Senate Inc., also reported paying $500 to Whitaker’s old law firm, Whitaker, Hagenow & Gustoff, for space rental on Febraury 2. The campaign paid a $228 reimbursement to Christopher Hagenow — an Iowa legislator and founding partner of the law firm — for data services that same day.

Several news outlets, including The Associated Press, and outside groups had requested Whitaker’s financial disclosure forms from the Justice Department after President Donald Trump ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and elevated Whitaker to the agency’s top post on Nov. 7.

Those documents show Whitaker began revising his public disclosures the day he was appointed acting attorney general. He revised the forms four more times, including on Tuesday.

In a disclosure form Whitaker completed when he joined the Justice Department in September 2017, he reported receiving $1,875 in legal fees from a company called World Patent Marketing. Whitaker has come under scrutiny for his involvement with the company, which was accused of misleading consumers and is under investigation by the FBI.

Whitaker also disclosed his partial interest in a family farm in Ely, Iowa, that he valued at between $100,000 and $250,000. The forms also included disclosures of $20,000 to $30,000 in credit card debt in 2017.

FACT drew its funds from 2014-2016 mainly from Donor’s Trust, another nonprofit designed to provide anonymity to conservative and libertarian donors. Though such tax-exempt groups can legally withhold the identity of their contributors and generally do so, there may be a distinct irony when a group dedicated to transparency keeps its funding sources in the shadows.

Whitaker’s appointment has been criticized by Democrats who have challenged its constitutionality and are concerned that he will interfere with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

On Tuesday, the Senate’s top Democrat, Sen. Charles Schumer, asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate communications between Whitaker and the White House and to look into whether Whitaker had access to confidential grand jury information in Mueller’s probe.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the second-ranking Justice Department official, had been overseeing the special counsel’s Russia investigation until Whitaker’s appointment. Whitaker is now overseeing the investigation.

Schumer and other Democrats have said they are concerned about Whitaker’s past criticism of the Mueller probe, which is looking at Russian interference in the 2016 election and ties to Trump’s campaign.

Whitaker’s past public statements have included an op-ed article in which he said Mueller would be straying outside his mandate if he investigated Trump’s family finances. In a talk radio interview he maintained there was no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
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President Donald Trump frequently credits himself with accomplishing more for the military and veterans than any other president in recent memory. But he has yet to embark on what has long been a traditional presidential pilgrimage important to the military: a visit to troops deployed in a war zone. 

As he departed Tuesday for Florida to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday at his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., Trump said he’d soon correct the oversight. 

“I’m going to a war zone,” he said in response to a reporter’s question about his support for the troops. 

He did not say when he would be making the trip or where he planned to go. An official said a White House team recently returned from beginning to plan for such a visit. 

The omission is one of a list of norm-breaking moves that underscore the Republican president’s increasingly fraught relationship with the military, which has celebrated Trump’s investments in military spending but cringed at what some see as efforts to politicize their service. 

Just this week, Trump criticized the storied commander of the 2011 mission that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, retired Adm. William McRaven. “Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn’t it have been nice?” Trump said. 

The latest controversy followed a pattern of concerns raised by former senior military officers about Trump’s grasp of the military’s role, and it came as White House aides and defense officials have raised alarm about what they view as the president’s disinterest in briefings about troop deployments overseas. 

Shortly after taking office, Trump appeared to try to deflect responsibility for the death of a service member, William “Ryan” Owens, in a failed operation in Yemen, saying planning for the mission began under his predecessor and was backed by senior military commanders. 

“They explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected,” he told Fox & Friends at the time. “And they lost Ryan.” 

Trump won the White House on a platform of ending U.S. military commitments abroad, but he’s been bedeviled by many of the same challenges as his predecessors. More American troops are now deployed in conflict zones than when he took office. 

Aides have suggested that Trump is wary of traveling to conflict zones where he doesn’t fully support the mission. Trump begrudgingly backed a surge of troops in Afghanistan last year and boosted U.S. deployments in Iraq, Syria and Africa to counter the Islamic State and other extremist groups. 

Trump said last week in a Fox News Sunday interview that he was “very much opposed to the war in Iraq. I think it was a tremendous mistake, should have never happened.” Trump, in fact, offered lukewarm support for the invasion at the time but began offering public doubts about the mission after the conflict began in March 2003. 

At home, some assert that Trump’s decision to send thousands of active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border shortly before the Nov. 6 midterm elections was a political stunt. And Defense Department officials said they rejected requests by the Department of Homeland Security — and backed by the White House — for armed active-duty troops to bolster Border Patrol agents, saying it ran afoul of federal law. 

Trump also drew criticism for his decision not to visit Arlington National Cemetery to mark Veterans Day, following his trip to Europe. He said later he “should have” visited the cemetery but was too busy with official business. His public schedule that day listed no events. 

In the “Fox News Sunday” interview, Trump was asked why he hadn’t visited the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan in the two years he’s served as commander in chief. 

“Well, I think you will see that happen,” he said. “There are things that are being planned.” 

He also touted his support for the men and women in uniform. 

“I don’t think anybody’s been more with the military than I have, as a president,” Trump said. “In terms of funding, in terms of all of the things I’ve been able to get them, including the vets, I don’t think anybody’s done more than me.” 

Trump received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War, four for education and one for a diagnosis of bone spurs — though he later told The New York Times he could not remember which foot was affected by the malady or how long it lasted. 

Trump told The Associated Press in a recent interview that he doesn’t think visiting troops in a war zone is “overly necessary.” 

“I’ve been very busy with everything that’s taking place here,” he added. 
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Abandoning Saudi Arabia, despite its responsibility for killing a U.S.-based journalist, “would be a terrible mistake,” President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday.

Any human rights concerns are outweighed by U.S. national security and economic interests, the president said. 

“We’re staying with Saudi Arabia,” Trump announced, noting the kingdom’s mutual opposition to Iran and Riyadh’s purchases of American military equipment that mean, according to the president, “hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of investment.”

Russia and China “are not going to get that gift,” Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn before departing for the Thanksgiving holiday.

“We’ve kept oil prices down,” Trump said, claiming they would soar if the U.S.-Saudi relationship was broken up.

“I’m not going to destroy the world economy and destroy the economy for our country by being foolish with Saudi Arabia,” he added.

​’Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t’

Asked about a reported conclusion by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman most likely knew about or ordered the plot to kill dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside Riyadh’s consulate in Istanbul, Trump replied: “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t” and stated, concerning the CIA’s finding: “They have nothing definitive.”

The president denied that his decision to avoid harshly punishing the Saudis for the Oct. 2 killing had anything to do with his personal business interests.

“I don’t make deals with Saudi Arabia. I don’t make money from Saudi Arabia,” Trump said. “Being president has cost me a fortune.” 

Earlier in the day, in a statement issued by the White House, Trump said he understood that some lawmakers in Congress — who “for political or other reasons” — wanted to pursue sanctions against Riyadh for the killing. “They are free to do so,” he said.

“I will consider whatever ideas are presented to me, but only if they are consistent with the absolute security and safety of America,” Trump said.

But the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republican Bob Corker and Democrat Bob Menendez, sent a letter to Trump Tuesday reminding him U.S. law requires him to examine whether the crown prince ordered Khashoggi’s death.

The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act requires the president to determine if a foreign official is responsible for a human rights violation.

The act is named for Russian accountant Sergei Magnitsky who was apparently beaten to death in prison in 2009  after accusing Russian officials of tax fraud.

“I never thought I’d see the day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” Senator Corker tweeted Tuesday. He added that  Congress will consider “all the tools at our disposal” to determine the role of the crown prince in the Khashoggi killing.

Khashoggi lived in the United States, writing opinion articles for The Washington Post that were critical of the crown prince and Riyadh’s involvement in the long-running Yemen conflict.

His editor at the newspaper, Karen Attiah, described Trump’s statement as “full of lies and a blatant disregard for his own intelligence agencies. It also shows an unforgivable disregard for the lives of Saudis who dare criticize the regime. This is a new low.”

U.S. intelligence community

Veterans of the U.S. intelligence community are also expressing their disdain with the president’s stance.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, who has repeatedly clashed with Trump, after Tuesday’s statement said on Twitter that Trump “excels in dishonesty,” so now it is up to Congress to obtain and declassify the CIA findings on Khashoggi’s death.

“No one in Saudi Arabia — most especially the Crown Prince — should escape accountability for such a heinous act,” Brennan wrote.

Former CIA officer Ned Price said in the wake of the president’s statement, which puts the agency’s reported high confidence assessment on par with Saudi denials, “how appointed intelligence leaders could continue to serve after this betrayal is beyond me.”

A Saudi prosecutor cleared the crown prince of wrongdoing last week while calling for the death penalty for five men, among the 11 indicted in the case. The prosecutor said a total of 21 people had been detained in connection with the killing.

Turkish officials concluded that Khashoggi was tortured and killed, with his body then dismembered.

Turkey Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday that Ankara might formally seek a U.N. investigation of the killing if cooperation with Riyadh reached an impasse.

VOA’s Chris Hannas and Katherine Gypson contributed to this report.
…

New revelations about the extent of Ivanka Trump’s personal email use in the White House will be getting a hard look from House Democrats when they take power in January.

The House Oversight and Government Reform committee began looking into private email use last year after reports by Politico revealed that Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, and other White House officials had been using private email for government purposes in possible violation of the Presidential Records Act and other federal record-keeping laws.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the likely incoming chairman of the Oversight panel, said Tuesday that he will resume that bipartisan investigation, which was dropped by Republicans. And he will pressure President Donald Trump’s administration to turn over records about the use of private email for public business by Ivanka Trump, Kushner and other senior officials.

“My goal is to prevent this from happening again — not to turn this into a spectacle the way Republicans went after Hillary Clinton,” Cummings said. “My main priority as Chairman will be to focus on the issues that impact Americans in their everyday lives.”

The issue resurfaced this week when The Washington Post reported that the president’s daughter, while a top White House adviser, sent hundreds of emails about government business from a personal email account last year. The emails were sent to White House aides, Cabinet members and Ivanka Trump’s assistants, many in violation of public records rules, according to the Post.

In comments to reporters, the president, who has spent years railing against Clinton’s use of private email for public business while secretary of state, sought to downplay — and differentiate — his daughter’s email use from his former opponent’s.

“They aren’t classified like Hillary Clinton. They weren’t deleted like Hillary Clinton,” Trump said, adding: “What Ivanka did, it’s all in the presidential records. Everything is there.”

A spokesman for Ivanka Trump’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, didn’t dispute the Post report. The spokesman, Peter Mirijanian, said no classified information was transmitted in the messages, no emails were deleted and the emails have since been “retained” in conformity with records laws. He also said Ivanka Trump did not set up a private server for the account, which he said was “never transferred or housed at Trump Organization.”

Mirijanian said that while transitioning into the government, Ivanka Trump “sometimes used her private account, almost always for logistics and scheduling concerning her family.”

“When concerns were raised in the press 14 months ago, Ms. Trump reviewed and verified her email use with White House Counsel and explained the issue to congressional leaders,” he said. He did not say which congressional leaders were briefed.

On Tuesday, Republican Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a fierce defender of the president as the leader of the House Freedom Caucus, also downplayed the matter.

“There are over 30,000 BleachBit reasons why the Hillary Clinton email scandal isn’t even close to the Ivanka email issue,” Meadows tweeted, referring to a computer program used to delete emails from her server.

The House Oversight investigation into private email used by Trump White House officials was launched in early 2017 with the support of then-Republican chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz. After Chaffetz retired from Congress, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina joined with Cummings in demanding that the White House provide the identities of staff members who had used their personal emails to conduct official business.

In October 2017, the White House dispatched counsel’s office lawyers Stefan Passantino, Uttam Dhillon and Daniel Epstein to brief bipartisan committee staff, but the attorneys refused to identify any officials who had used private email for official business. The lawyers only said that several White House employees had “confessed” to failing to following the Presidential Records Act, according to a letter summarizing the briefing released by Cummings earlier this year.

The White House lawyers said they couldn’t provide additional information on specific employees while an internal review was under way, according to the letter.

But the White House lawyers said they would share the findings of the internal review with the committee once it concluded, according to a separate letter sent to the White House by Gowdy.

Cummings has said the committee never received that information, and Democrats have said Gowdy dropped the issue and never followed up.

The discovery of the extent of Ivanka Trump’s email use was prompted by public records requests from the liberal watchdog group American Oversight. The group’s executive director, Austin Evers, said in a statement that “The president’s family is not above the law,’” and he called on Congress to investigate.

“For more than two years, President Trump and senior leaders in Congress have made it very clear that they view the use of personal email servers for government business to be a serious offense that demands investigation and even prosecution, and we expect the same standard will be applied in this case,” he said.

The emails the group uncovered include correspondence between Ivanka Trump and Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
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