A mid-May date proposed by prosecutors for the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an associate is too soon, a federal judge said Tuesday, signaling that the politically charged proceeding could be pushed back to later in the year.

Prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller, who is conducting the Russia investigation, had indicated in court papers filed last week that they would seek a trial date of May 14 for Manafort and former business partner Rick Gates. They told U.S. District Court Judge Amy Jackson on Tuesday that they needed about three weeks to try the case. 

But defense attorneys for Manafort and Gates argued that Mueller’s office had not presented them with all the evidence it possessed against their clients and that the proposed date would not give them enough time to go through everything.

“We need the time and are the least prepared of anyone here,” an attorney for Gates said. 

Judge concurs

Jackson agreed, saying the trial could be pushed back to as late as September or October.

“The discovery needs to get done and motions have to be filed,” Jackson said during a pre-trial hearing — known as a status conference — meeting with prosecutors and defense attorneys. 

In October, a federal grand jury indicted Manafort and Gates on 12 counts of conspiracy, money laundering, making false statements and other charges in connection with their lobbying for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Russia political party. They’ve pleaded not guilty. 

The charges are unrelated to the Mueller investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and allegations of collusion between then-candidate Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.

Manafort remains under house confinement. But Jackson later issued an order releasing Gates from home confinement, saying he had complied with her bond requirements.

Manafort’s attorneys filed a civil lawsuit this month against Mueller and the Justice Department, challenging the special counsel’s appointment and seeking the dismissal of the indictment. A prosecutor told Jackson that the special counsel intended to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the “proper procedure” to challenge the charges is through her court. Jackson gave the two sides until Friday to decide whether they want that case transferred and reassigned to her. 

The parties agreed to hold their next status conference with Jackson on February 14. 

Guilty pleas

In addition to bringing charges against Manafort and Gates, Mueller’s team has secured guilty pleas from two other former Trump associates.

In early October, George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy consultant for the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty of lying to federal agents about his secret efforts to secure a meeting between Trump and Russian officials.

In December, former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of making a false statement to the FBI about a series of phone conversations he had with Russia’s former ambassador to Washington during Trump’s transition.

Both are cooperating with Mueller’s team.

The special counsel has interviewed several current and former White House officials in connection with the Russia investigation. The New York Times reported Tuesday that former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon had been subpoenaed to appear before the federal grand jury investigating the Russian election meddling.

Bannon on Tuesday met behind closed doors with members of the House Intelligence Committee as part of the panel’s own investigation of the Russian election meddling.
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Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former chief White House strategist, is being questioned Tuesday by lawmakers in their probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Bannon, who was a key Trump campaign aide and for seven months a top White House adviser before he was ousted, is appearing behind closed doors at the House Intelligence Committee, one of several ongoing investigations in Washington about the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that special counsel Robert Mueller subpoenaed Bannon last week to testify before a grand jury investigating Trump campaign contacts with Russia.

Bannon has continued to avow his support for Trump. But his relations with the president frayed badly after he was quoted extensively with critical remarks about the campaign and the first months of White House operations in author Michael Wolff’s new book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”

The former Trump adviser was quoted as calling it “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” that Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner, now a White House adviser, and then campaign manager Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer in the midst of the campaign in an effort to get “incriminating” evidence against Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

After the book was published, Trump started calling Bannon “Sloppy Steve,” and said, “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency.  When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”  Bannon also was removed last week as the top executive at Breitbart News, the alt-right news site that has championed Trump’s brand of populism.

The House Intelligence panel is likely to question Bannon about the June 2016 meeting set up by the younger Trump, who has told investigators the Russian lawyer produced no damaging information about Clinton.  Investigators are also looking into then candidate Trump’s role in writing a misleading statement about the purpose of the meeting, an explanation that quickly fell apart.

Bannon is also likely to be asked about his contention in Wolff’s book that special counsel Robert Mueller, head of the criminal investigation of Trump campaign links to Russia, is focusing on alleged money-laundering by campaign officials.  Bannon could also be asked about his knowledge of former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s talks with then Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the weeks before Trump assumed power a year ago and whether Trump, despite his denials, has any intention of firing Mueller.

Trump has repeatedly said there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia, although none of the months-long congressional investigations or Mueller has reached any conclusions yet.

“Do you notice the Fake News Mainstream Media never likes covering the great and record setting economic news,” Trump said on Twitter Tuesday, “but rather talks about anything negative or that can be turned into the negative.  The Russian Collusion Hoax is dead, except as it pertains to the Dems.  Public gets it!”

Mueller has secured guilty pleas from Flynn and former foreign affairs adviser George Papadopoulos for lying to federal agents about their contacts with Russia and has charged Manafort and another campaign aide, Rick Gates, with money laundering in connection with their lobbying efforts for Ukraine that predated the 2016 presidential election campaign.

Mueller is also investigating whether President Trump obstructed justice when he fired former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey, who was heading the agency’s Russia probe before Mueller was appointed, over Trump’s objections, to take over the investigation.
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Martin Luther King Jr.’s children and the pastor of an Atlanta church where he preached decried disparaging remarks President Donald Trump is said to have made about African countries, while protests between Haitian immigrants and Trump supporters broke out near the president’s Florida resort Monday, the official federal holiday honoring King.

At gatherings across the nation, activists, residents and teachers honored the late civil rights leader on what would have been his 89th birthday and ahead of the 50th anniversary of his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee. In Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day with events aimed at coming to terms with its own history of slavery and by welcoming descendants of former slaves into the tribe.

Trump marked his first King holiday as president buffeted by claims that during a meeting with senators on immigration last week, he used a vulgarity to describe African countries and questioned the need to allow more Haitians into the U.S. He also is said to have asked why the country couldn’t have more immigrants from nations like Norway.

In Washington, King’s eldest son, Martin Luther King III, criticized Trump, saying, “When a president insists that our nation needs more citizens from white states like Norway, I don’t even think we need to spend any time even talking about what it says and what it is.”

He added, “We got to find a way to work on this man’s heart.”

In Atlanta, King’s daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, told hundreds of people who packed the pews of the Ebenezer Baptist Church that they “cannot allow the nations of the world to embrace the words that come from our president as a reflection of the true spirit of America.”

“We are one people, one nation, one blood, one destiny. … All of civilization and humanity originated from the soils of Africa,” Bernice King said. “Our collective voice in this hour must always be louder than the one who sometimes does not reflect the legacy of my father.”

Church pastor the Rev. Raphael Warnock also took issue with Trump’s campaign slogan to “Make America Great Again.”

Warnock said he thinks America “is already great … in large measure because of Africa and African people.”

Trump protesters, supporters

Down the street from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago retreat in Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday, Trump protesters and supporters yelled at each other from opposing corners. Trump was staying at the resort for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Video posted by WPEC-TV showed several hundred pro-Haiti demonstrators yelling from one side of the street Monday while waving Haitian flags. The Haitians and their supporters shouted “Our country is not a s—hole,” referring to comments the president reportedly made. Trump has said that is not the language he used.

The smaller pro-Trump contingent waved American flags and campaign posters and yelled “Trump is making America great again.” One man could be seen telling the Haitians to leave the country. Police kept the sides apart.

Cherokee Nation

The Cherokee Nation tribe — one of the country’s largest — marked the King holiday on Monday with calls to service and by confronting its slave-owning past. A federal court ruled last year that the descendants of former slaves, known as Freedmen, had the same rights to tribal citizenship, voting, health care and housing as blood-line Cherokees.

“The time is now to deal with it and talk about it,” said Cherokee Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. “It’s been a positive thing for our country to reconcile that during Dr. King’s era, and it’s going to be a positive thing for Cherokees to talk about that history as part of reconciling our history with slavery.”

One descendant of Freedmen, Rodslen Brown-King, said her mother was able to vote as a Cherokee for the first and only time recently. Other relatives died before getting the benefits that come with tribal citizenship, including a 34-year-old nephew with stomach cancer, she said.

“He was waiting on this decision,” said Brown-King, of Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. “It’s just a lot of struggle, a lot of up and down trauma in our lives. It’s exciting to know we are coming together and moving forward in this.”
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A Republican U.S. senator, who is one of President Donald Trump’s biggest critics, will this week deliver a speech comparing Trump’s treatment of the media to the behavior of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

According to excerpts of the speech obtained by media outlets, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona will say in the Wednesday speech that President Trump’s “assault” on the media is “unprecedented” and “unwarranted.”

“It is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies,” Flake will reportedly say.

That is a reference to Trump’s February 2017 tweet, in which he declared major U.S. news outlets to be the “enemy of the American People.”

“It bears noting that so fraught with malice was that phrase ‘enemy of the people,’ that even [Stalin’s successor] Nikita Khruschev forbade its use,” Flake will say in the speech.

Senator Flake will speak Wednesday, just before Trump, a former reality television entertainer, announces what he calls the “Fake News Awards.”

According to Trump, award categories will include “dishonesty and bad reporting in various categories.”

Trump regularly lashes out against individual journalists and media outlets he thinks treat him unfairly, while praising those that give him positive media coverage.

“When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn’t suit him ‘fake news,’ it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press,” Flake will say.

Flake has said he is not running for reelection in the Senate but he has refused to rule out the possibility that he will challenge Trump in 2020.
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Fallout from U.S. President Donald Trump’s reported slur against impoverished, predominantly black nations further complicates a push for bipartisan immigration legislation that has eluded U.S. lawmakers for more than a decade. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports from Washington, a failure to reach a deal on thorny immigration topics could make a partial U.S. government shutdown more likely by the end of this week, when federal funding expires.
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President Donald Trump denied he is a racist Sunday, three days after he reportedly referred to immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Africa as coming from “s—hole” countries.”

“I am the least racist person you will ever interview,” Trump responded to a reporter’s question at his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort.

According to some in the room during a White House meeting on immigration, Trump asked why the U.S. is letting in immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Africa and said he wanted more from countries such as Norway. He also apparently said he wants to exclude Haiti from an immigration reform deal.

While the White House never denied Trump used an obscenity to talk about immigrants of color, the president denied it.

“Never said anything derogatory about Haiti,” he later tweeted. “Made up by Dems. I have a wonderful relationship with Haitians. Probably should record future meetings – unfortunately no trust.”

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who was at the Oval Office meeting, claimed the president made the derogatory term.

Trump’s denial was supported in separate appearances on Sunday news programs by Republican senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia.

“I didn’t hear it, and I was sitting no further away from Donald Trump than Dick Durbin was,” Cotton said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Perdue was on ABC television and flatly denied Trump said it.

Trump also told reporters in Florida late Sunday he is still going to try to make a deal on DACA, the program that protects young immigrants illegally brought to the U.S. as children from deportation.

The president tweeted earlier Sunday that DACA is “probably dead”

“Honestly, I don’t think Democrats want to make a deal,” he told reporters.

DACA is at the center of the debate between the White House and Congress on a bill to fund the government and avoid a shutdown at the end of this week.

Trump is tying an extension of DACA to funding for a wall along the U.S. – Mexican border.

Many Democrats want extending DACA to be a separate issue from building a wall — something they oppose anyway.

The president’s reportedly harsh comments about Africa and Haiti angered Democrats and were also condemned by a number of Republicans — throwing some doubt on Congress’ willingness to make an immigration deal with the White House at this time.

Trump signed an executive order ending DACA, but gave Congress until March 5 to come up with a solution for the 800,000 young immigrants affected by the program.

Many came to the U.S. as babies and toddlers illegally with their families, but this is the only country they know. They work, go to school, pay taxes, and have served in the U.S. military.
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More than 12 million boxes of French baby milk products are being recalled from 83 countries for suspected salmonella contamination.

The recall includes Lactalis’ Picot, Milumel and Taranis brands.

The head of the French dairy Lactalis on Sunday confirmed that its products are being recalled from countries across Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia after salmonella was discovered at one of its plants last month. The United States, Britain and Australia were not affected.

Emmanuel Besnier told weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche that his family company, one of the world’s biggest dairies, would pay damages to “every family which has suffered a prejudice.”

The paper said 35 babies were diagnosed with salmonella in France, one in Spain and a possible case in Greece.

Salmonella can cause severe diarrhea, stomach cramps, vomiting and severe dehydration. It can be life-threatening, especially in young children.

Lactalis officials have said they believe the contamination was caused by renovation work at their Celia factory in Craon, in northwest France.

France’s agriculture minister said products from the factory will be banned indefinitely during the investigation.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump contended Sunday that a U.S. program to protect young immigrants from deportation is “probably dead,” saying that opposition Democrats “don’t really want it,” but just want to be able to talk about the issue.

The fate of the program protecting nearly 800,000 immigrants from deportation who were brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents years ago when they were children is at the forefront of the Washington political debate this week. It is part of discussions between the White House and Congress over new funding for the government to avert a partial government shutdown when U.S. agencies run out of money at midnight Friday.

Trump last week rejected a bipartisan proposal offered him by three Republican and three Democratic senators to extend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to protect the young immigrants from deportation. The lawmakers also called for other immigration policy changes, including increased funding for security along the southern U.S. border with Mexico, where Trump is demanding that a wall be built to thwart more illegal immigration.

But in the course of the White House meeting, Trump sparked an international uproar by reportedly describing Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as “s—hole countries,” questioning why more immigrants from those countries should be allowed into the United States.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois who was at the Oval Office meeting claimed the president made the derogatory term. Trump admtted to using “tough” language but has denied making the statement.

Trump’s denial was supported in separate appearances on Sunday news programs by Republican senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia.

In an appearance on the CBS news program “Face the Nation” Cotton said,  “I didn’t hear it, and I was sitting no further away from Donald Trump than Dick Durbin was.” Cotton added that people shouldn’t be surprised by Durbin’s comments because the Illinois senator “has a history of “misrepresenting what happens in White House meetings.”  On ABC’s “This Week” Republican Senator Perdue flatly denied Trump made the comment.

In a pair of Twitter comments Sunday, Trump accused Democrats of trying to “take desperately needed money away from our Military” as part of the immigration and funding discussions.

He said that as president he wants “people coming into our Country who are going to help us become strong and great again, people coming in through a system based on MERIT. No more Lotteries! #AMERICA FIRST.”

Trump is calling for the end of of an immigration lottery program under which some foreigners have through a yearly drawing been able to legally emigrate to the U.S. Trump claims that other countries have sent potential terrorists and their most poorly educated citizens to America.

Trump last year ended the DACA program that was created by his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, but delayed deportations to give Congress until March 5 to weigh in on the issue. Trump, at an unusual televised meeting with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers last week, told them he would sign whatever immigration legislation they could agree on, but then rebuffed the first compromise offered him by the six senators, with more conservative Republican lawmakers calling for tougher immigration restrictions.

Meantime, a U.S. district court judge in California last week, over protests from Trump, ruled that for the moment at least he cannot end the DACA program.

On Saturday, the government said it has resumed accepting requests to renew grants from the young immigrants to protect them from deportation. Many of the immigrants, called Dreamers by their advocates, have only known the U.S. as their home.  

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a statement on its website, “Until further notice . . . the DACA policy will be operated on the terms in place before it was rescinded” by Trump last September 5.

The statement said that people who were previously granted deferred action under DACA may request renewal, but added that the agency is not accepting requests from individuals who were never granted deferred action under DACA.

A DACA deferment gives prosecutors discretion on enforcing immigration laws, effectively allowing the undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S. 

 
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Transgender whistleblower Chelsea Manning is seeking to become a U.S. senator representing the state of Maryland, according to federal election filings.

She would run as a Democrat, challenging two-term Senator Ben Cardin in Maryland’s June primary. Manning would have to file with the state election board by February 27 to get her name on the ballot.

Cardin is the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was first elected to the Senate in 2006.

Cardin spokeswoman Sue Walitsky, without speaking about Manning directly, said Cardin “is looking forward to a vigorous debate of the issues and a robust conversation with Maryland voters.”

Manning, a former army intelligence analyst, originally known as Bradley Manning, is the U.S. soldier who released more than 700,000 secret military documents and battlefield videos to WikiLeaks. She said she released the information to raise public awareness about the impact of war on civilians. Prosecutors said Manning was a traitor who put the U.S. and its armed forces at risk.

In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for releasing the classified documents. U.S. President Barack Obama granted Manning clemency before leaving office last year.

After her conviction, Manning said she identified as a woman. During her imprisonment, she battled for and won the right to start hormone treatment.

U.S. President Donald Trump says Manning is a traitor.

Trump has attempted to bar transgender people from the military, but federal courts have ruled against that ban.
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The U.S. said Saturday that it has resumed accepting requests to renew grants of deferred action under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announcement comes after a judge last week temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s decision to end the program later this year. 

“Until further notice … the DACA policy will be operated on the terms in place before it was rescinded on Sept. 5, 2017,” the agency said in a statement on its website.

The statement said that people who were previously granted deferred action under DACA may request renewal, but added that the agency is not accepting requests from individuals who were never granted deferred action under DACA.

A DACA deferment gives prosecutors discretion on enforcing immigration laws.

In September 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump rescinded DACA, which was instituted by former President Barack Obama to protect nearly 800,000 immigrants from deportation who were brought to the U.S. as children and remain illegally. DACA allows them to live, work and go to school in the United States. Many of the young immigrants, often called Dreamers, have only known the U.S. as their home.

In announcing the end of the program, Trump gave Congress until March 5 to agree on legislation that would provide equivalent protections to those offered under DACA.
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Reactions to President Donald Trump’s use of a vulgar slur to explain his opposition to Haitian and African migration to the United States were continuing to circulate Saturday.

Trump stunned lawmakers Thursday in a White House meeting on immigration when, according to multiple reports and confirmation from attendees, he asked, “Why are we having all these people from s—hole countries come here?”

Ninety-five percent of Haitians are black, as are the vast majority of Africans.

Trump said the United States should allow in more people from places such as Norway, whose population is mostly white.

Trump took to Twitter on Friday to deny using the vulgar term, which is slang for an extremely dirty or shabby place and includes a synonym for excrement. He said his language was “tough,” but denied using the vulgarity.

Since then, reactions to his remark have continued to come via Twitter and statements to the media. Trump’s former presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, noted that Friday was the anniversary of a devastating earthquake in Haiti, from which the island has never fully recovered.

“The anniversary of the devastating earthquake 8 years ago is a day to remember the tragedy, honor the resilient people of Haiti, & affirm America’s commitment to helping our neighbors. Instead, we’re subjected to Trump’s ignorant, racist views of anyone who doesn’t look like him,” she tweeted Friday.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright tweeted Friday, “I hope our next president will rehire all the diplomats who have resigned over Trump’s racist words and harmful actions. We will need all the help we can get to repair the damage he is doing to our country’s international reputation and interests.”

‘No change in our dedication’

And the U.S. Embassy in South Africa tweeted Friday that “the U.S. deeply respects the people of Africa & values partnerships w/them. There has been no change in our dedication to partners & friends across the Continent.”

Also Friday, the U.N. human rights spokesman, Rupert Colville, called the comments racist, but he added that the episode was “not just a story about vulgar language. It’s about opening the door wider to humanity’s worst side, about validating and encouraging racism and xenophobia that will potentially disrupt and destroy the lives of many people.”

The African Union said Friday that it was “frankly alarmed” by the president’s reported statement. AU spokeswoman Ebba Kalondo told The Associated Press, “Given the historical reality of how many Africans arrived in the United States as slaves, this statement flies in the face of all accepted behavior and practice.”

“This is particularly surprising,” she added, “as the United States of America remains a global example of how migration gave birth to a nation built on strong values of diversity and opportunity.”

The U.S. State Department said Friday that American diplomats in Haiti and in Botswana had been summoned by government officials to discuss the remarks. 

U.S. Republican Representative Mia Love of Utah, whose family came from Haiti, said the president’s comments were “unkind, divisive, elitist, and fly in the face of our nation’s values. This behavior is unacceptable from the leader of our nation.”

Love called on Trump to apologize to the people of Haiti.

U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, said in an interview, “It’s incomprehensible that these words came out of the mouth of the president of the United States of America, a country that was founded on being free from discrimination and treating people fairly and having people come here, the land of the free. … This is a president that has had a sordid, terrible history of making racist statements.” 

Ros-Lehtinen also tweeted that Trump’s “calling #Haiti a ‘s**thole country’ ignores the contributions thousands of Haitians have made to our #SoFla community and nation. Language like that shouldn’t be heard in locker rooms and it shouldn’t be heard in the White House.”

‘Ashamed’ of Trump’s position

Minnesota state Representative Ilhan Omar, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party who in 2016 became the first Somali-American elected to a state legislative office in the United States, released a statement saying, “I am not ashamed of the country where I was born. I am not ashamed to call myself an American now. I am a proud immigrant, refugee, Minnesotan and a proud State Legislator.

“But make no mistake, I am ashamed, disturbed, and outraged that the leader of the United States can’t see beyond his own embarrassing privilege to embrace the diversity that has made this country great for generations.”

U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, said he wanted more details “regarding the president’s comments.”

“Part of what makes America so special is that we welcome the best and brightest in the world, regardless of their country of origin,” Hatch added.

U.S. Senator Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, tweeted late Thursday, “My ancestors came from countries not nearly as prosperous as the one we live in today. I’m glad that they were welcomed here.”

U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, a California Democrat, said in a tweet, “Immigrants from countries across the globe — including and especially those from Haiti and all parts of Africa — have helped build this country. They should be welcomed and celebrated, not demeaned and insulted.”

U.S. Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, a Democrat who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, “President Trump’s comments are yet another confirmation of his racially insensitive and ignorant views. It also reinforces the concerns that we hear every day, that the president’s slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ is really code for ‘Make America White Again.’ ”

The White House released a statement Thursday that defended the president’s views, without referencing his specific comments.

“Like other nations that have merit-based immigration, President Trump is fighting for permanent solutions that make our country stronger by welcoming those who can contribute to our society, grow our economy and assimilate into our great nation. He will always reject temporary, weak and dangerous stopgap measures that threaten the lives of hardworking Americans, and undercut immigrants who seek a better life in the United States through a legal pathway.”

VOA correspondents Cindy Saine, Natalie Liu, Steve Herman and Michael Bowman contributed to this report.
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On Friday, President Donald Trump waived economic sanctions on Iran, the third time he’s issued a sanctions waiver under a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major world powers.

The agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, restricted Iran’s controversial nuclear program in exchange for broad relief from international sanctions.

While the United States, the United Nations and the European Union have lifted most nuclear-related sanctions, unilaterally imposed U.S. sanctions going back decades remain in place. These restrictions were levied because of Iran’s human rights violations, support of terrorism, and pursuit of a ballistic missile program.

Sorting out the myriad sanctions requires “a team of lawyers,” said Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

“It’s a maze, in many ways,” Vatanka said.

Here is the status of key sanctions on Iran, based largely on a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, as well as those with the Treasury and State departments:

​What sanctions relief Iran has received under the nuclear deal

As part of the deal, the U.S. agreed to waive several key Iran sanctions laws and revoke related presidential executive orders.

The U.S. waived all provisions of the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), a 1996 law that imposed sanctions on foreign investment in Iran’s energy sector. Among other things, the sweeping legislation mandated penalties on persons and entities that invested more than $20 million in one year in Iran’s energy sector.

The U.S. waived the Iran sanctions provisions of the fiscal year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Among its other stipulations, the law targeted foreign banks that conducted transactions with Iran’s central bank.

The U.S. waived all provisions of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (ITRSHR) of 2012 except for those that applied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its affiliates. The law had imposed sanctions on companies that provided insurance or reinsurance services for Iran’s national oil company and national tanker company.

The U.S. waived the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act (IFCA), a 2012 law that penalized companies that did business with Iran’s energy, shipbuilding and shipping sectors, exported precious metals to Iran, and allowed Iran to deal in U.S. banknotes.

The president revoked a 2012 presidential executive order that slapped sanctions on companies that purchased oil from Iran, conducted transactions with its national oil company or helped Iran buy previous metals and U.S. banknotes.

The president revoked a 2013 executive order that punished companies that do business with Iran’s automotive sector, expanded penalties on sales of precious metals to Iran, and prohibited regional banks that conduct business in the Iranian currency from holding U.S. bank accounts.

Also, the U.S. released Iranian assets frozen because of Iran’s nuclear deal. The CRS report puts the figure around $1.7 billion.

​What sanctions remain in place

The 2015 U.N. Security Council resolution that endorsed the Iran nuclear deal left intact sanctions on Iran’s development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles as well as Iran’s arms exports and imports.

U.S. and EU sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its affiliates and commanders remain in place.

The Iran-Iraq Arms Non-Proliferation Act of 1992 remain intact. The act imposes penalties on companies that provide Iran with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) technology or advanced conventional weaponry.

Under JCPOA, the U.S. relaxed a ban on imports of Iranian luxury goods, such as carpets and caviar, but most U.S. restrictions on trade with and investment with Iran remain in place, according to the CRS report.

A ban on U.S. financial institutions doing business with Iranian banks remains in place.

The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act (CISDA) of 2010 and a related executive order punishing Iranian human rights violators have survived the nuclear deal.

The legislation allows the Treasury Secretary to imposes travel bans and other sanctions on Iranian individuals and entities accused of human rights violations and other abuses. The Treasury Department announced on Friday that it had designated 14 Iranian individuals and entities under the executive order.

More than $3.7 billion worth of Iranian assets, blocked because of Iran’s human rights record, support for terrorism and missile technology, remain frozen, according to the Congressional Research Service report.
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The U.S. president is in hot water once again — this time on an international stage — following his reported use of a vulgarity that disparaged poorer nations during a discussion on immigration reform. Global leaders and citizens have been swift and unequivocal in their condemnation. VOA’s Ramon Taylor reports.
…

The White House on Friday decided to continue to waive sanctions on Iran that targeted its nuclear weapons program, preserving the 2015 deal between Tehran and six world powers. But Trump administration officials warn this is the last waiver the U.S. will issue. That means Washington could leave the deal within months, reports VOA’s Bill Gallo.
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The on-again, off-again effort to decide the future of almost 800,000 undocumented youths in the United States swung wildly from Thursday to Friday, with one of the top Republicans in Congress calling President Donald Trump’s reported use of an expletive to disparage some immigrants’ home countries “unfortunate” and “unhelpful.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan joined politicians from both parties who were critical of the president following the remark, made Thursday during a meeting on immigration policy at the White House. Trump allegedly referred to Haiti and African nations as “s—hole” countries.

While Trump denied the widely reported comment in a tweet, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, one of the top-ranking Democrats and a longtime supporter of immigration reform, said he “personally heard” the president’s comment, and that Trump had repeatedly used “hate-filled, vile and racist” words.

No one is denying, however, that Trump rejected a bipartisan immigration deal brought to him by six senators that addressed not only the now-ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, but also the diversity lottery and temporary protected status programs, funding for border security, and some aspects of the family-based migration system. The deal was a nonstarter for conservative senators at the meeting and also for Trump.

“This is like throwing gasoline to the fire,” Representative Adriano Espaillat, a New York Democrat, said of Trump’s reported language. Espaillat immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic, located next to Haiti on the island of Hispaniola.

​A week to get it done

Next Friday is the deadline for Congress to pass a national budget, something many Democrats, whose votes are needed, have said they will not do unless there is a fix for DACA. Absent a budget, the federal government will have to shut down.

Durbin said Friday that he had hoped for White House approval of the bipartisan deal. Without it, “here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to prepare our bipartisan agreement for introduction into the Senate next week. If the Republican leadership has a better alternative, bring it forward. If they don’t, for goodness’ sake, give us a vote.”

He said he would be on the phone Friday “begging” his colleagues in both parties to support the measure.

But Trump, meanwhile, was disparaging the plan on Twitter as a “big step backwards.”

In a statement Friday, conservative Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia had a different take on the previous day’s meeting.

“What he did call out was the imbalance in our current immigration system, which does not protect American workers and our national interest. We, along with the president, are committed to solving an issue many in Congress have failed to deliver on for decades,” the statement said.

What now?

In a statement Friday, the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC), which held events to help DACA applicants process their paperwork, said, “It is unacceptable that the president of the United States would attack a bipartisan effort with his racist, xenophobic, and ill-informed language and beliefs.”

One of the overarching questions as the vote on the federal budget approaches is which components of immigration reform and border security will be included.

NAKASEC joined other groups in calling for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act to be attached to the federal budget vote, in lieu of a massive reform bill that would include cuts to other aspects of the U.S. immigration system.

“The DREAM Act must not be used to implement a family ban by altering the current family sponsorship system, cancel the diversity visa program or allocate our hard-earned taxpayer dollars to building a wall,” the statement read.

Each of these issues has been discussed as a component — in some cases referred to as bargaining chips — of a broader reform package.

Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in restricting immigration levels. Republican lawmakers introduced legislation in 2017 that would cut or eliminate some long-standing parts of the U.S. immigration system, but none of the bills passed.

The White House has also led a nearly yearlong campaign to reduce the number of refugees allowed into the United States, as part of broader immigration restriction efforts.

The turmult comes after a court ruling earlier this week that buoyed the hopes of advocates for the DACA program, which Trump rescinded in September. As VOA reported Wednesday, a federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to again process DACA renewal applications.

But recipients may not see any benefits soon, or at all. The ruling applies only to those who had been enrolled in DACA before Trump rescinded the program and does not apply to first-time applicants. Moreover, the Trump administration has already announced its intention to appeal.
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President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer brokered a $130,000 payment to a porn star to prevent her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Trump, according to a report Friday in The Wall Street Journal.

Trump met Stephanie Clifford, whose goes by the name Stormy Daniels in films, at a golf event in 2006 — a year after Trump’s marriage to his wife, Melania.

According to the Journal’s report, Clifford began talking with ABC News in the fall of 2016 for a story involving an alleged relationship with Trump, but reached a $130,000 deal a month before the election, which prevented her from going public.

Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen arranged for the payment through Clifford’s lawyer, Keith Davidson, the Journal reported.

In a statement to the Journal, Cohen did not address his role in negotiating the supposed payment but said Trump denies any such relationship with Clifford. Clifford has previously denied an alleged relationship with Trump.

On Friday afternoon, the White House issued a statement calling the Journal’s story “old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election.”

Cohen also accused the Journal of perpetuating “a false narrative for over a year.”

Just days before the 2016 election, the Journal published a story stating that the National Enquirer — run by David Pecker, a fervid supporter of Trump — had paid $150,000 to silence former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal about a sexual relationship she allegedly had with Trump a decade ago. 
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Americans may love Oprah Winfrey, but most don’t want the chat show queen to run for president, although if she did she would beat Donald Trump, a poll revealed Friday.

Winfrey’s rousing speech at Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards ceremony ignited speculation that the billionaire entertainment mogul, the first black woman to own a television network, is harboring Oval Office ambitions.

Sixty-four percent of respondents have a favorable view of Winfrey, including 43 percent of Trump supporters, according to the NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist survey.

But when asked if they wanted Winfrey to run in 2020, only 35 percent said yes. A majority — 54 percent — said no and 11 percent said they were unsure.

Yet if a hypothetical presidential head-to-head was held today, 50 percent of national registered voters said they would vote in Winfrey as a Democrat. Only 39 percent said they would return Trump to office.

Voters were predictably split along party lines. Ninety-one percent of Democrats backed Winfrey. Eighty-five percent of Republicans said they would vote for Trump.

While there is little indication that 63-year-old Winfrey wants the job, Hollywood’s loathing of Trump and Democrats’ bafflement that a reality TV star could win with no previous government experience has fueled talk of finding their own celebrity candidate.

Trump said Tuesday he doubted Winfrey would run, but if she did, he would win.

The survey was carried out among 1,350 adults earlier this week, after Oprah’s speech made headlines. The poll carried a margin of error of 2.7 percent and three percent among registered voters.
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Finger-pointing and acrimony surrounding probes of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election intensified Thursday, with the Trump White House and Democratic lawmakers trading accusations of undermining and manipulating investigations that require bipartisan buy-in to succeed.

“There’s been a lot of comments about obstruction of justice, and frankly the only people we’ve seen trying to influence the investigation are former [FBI] director [James] Comey and Democrats in Congress, and that would include Senator Feinstein,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a briefing.

Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California caused an uproar earlier this week by releasing the transcript of private conversations between congressional investigators and a political researcher who, on behalf of Democrats, hired a former British spy in 2016 to document any ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

In the transcript, Fusion GPS co-founder Glen Simpson said Christopher Steele uncovered “alarming” evidence of collusion between the Kremlin and Trump’s team and informed the FBI of his findings.

Trump weighed in on Twitter, blasting “Sneaky Dianne Feinstein” for releasing the transcript “in such an underhanded and possibly illegal way, totally without authorization” — an act he called “a disgrace.

The president also called the Russia probe the “greatest single Witch Hunt in American history” and urged congressional Republicans to “finally take control” of the investigation.

Democrats pushed back, defending Feinstein and saying she was forced to act in the face of mounting Republican efforts to thwart and cut short multiple Russia probes on Capitol Hill.

“Their [Republicans’] goal, it seems, is to discredit the investigation so that, ultimately, they can discredit any findings that are detrimental to their party or their president,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat. “President Trump makes this strategy manifest clear as day almost every day on his Twitter feed.”

Schumer continued, “Here is the president of the United States imploring his party to take control of the investigation. You never thought you’d hear a president saying something like this. And, frankly, you never thought you’d hear such silence from the other side of the aisle [Republicans]. All of us must choose country over party.”

While Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating ties between Russia and Trump’s inner circle on behalf of the Justice Department, House and Senate investigations were launched with the hope that Republicans and Democrats would set party interests aside and join forces in search of the truth.

“It [bipartisanship] has largely been broken,” said political analyst Norman Ornstein of the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. “This has gotten more than acrimonious.”

Ornstein compared the Russia probes to Congress’ investigation of the Watergate scandal that caused former President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974.

“What we saw with Watergate was the model of a committee where the ranking Republican set the tone by saying the key here is what did the president know and when did he know it? — and followed through with an investigation with integrity,” he said.

Ornstein added, however, that even if congressional Russia’s probes falter on partisan lines, “The real test comes with whether the integrity of the Mueller investigation is protected and a bipartisan group of members [of Congress] make it clear that the president can’t fire [Mueller] or close off the investigation.”
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President Donald Trump stunned lawmakers in a White House meeting on immigration Thursday when he reportedly referred to Haiti and African nations as “s—hole countries.”

“Why are we having all these people from s—hole countries come here,” the president asked as was first reported by media including The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN. The crude term means dirty and impoverished.

Trump said the United States should let in more people from places such as Norway, whose prime minister met with him in the White House Wednesday.

White House response

After being asked by media, including VOA, to respond, White House spokesperson Raj Shah issued a statement saying the president will only accept an immigration deal that “adequately addresses the visa lottery system and chain migration — two programs that hurt our economy and allow terrorists into our country.” Chain migration is a term used by immigration critics to refer to the system that allows relatives to sponsor family members to come to the United States.

Shah’s statement did not deny reports that the president used crude language when talking about Haiti and Africa.

It also said Trump will always reject “temporary, weak and dangerous stopgap measures that … undercut immigrants who seek a better life in the United States through a legal pathway.”

VOA also reached out to the offices of U.S. lawmakers who were reportedly present at the meeting. Aides to lawmakers who attended the meeting declined to provide comment on Trump’s remarks, according to the Associated Press.

Trump reportedly made the remark as Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, was explaining the outlines of an agreement reached by six bipartisan senators that would protect nearly 800,000 young immigrants from deportation as well as bolster border security, according to the Post.

Bipartisan comments

By late Thursday, lawmakers were reacting to the reported comments.

Minnesota state Rep. Ilhan Omar, who in 2016 became the first Somali-American elected to a state legislative office in the United States, released a statement, saying, “I am not ashamed of the country where I was born. I am not ashamed to call myself an American now. I am a proud immigrant, refugee, Minnesotan and a proud State Legislator.

“But make no mistake, I am ashamed, disturbed, and outraged that the leader of the United States can’t see beyond his own embarrassing privilege to embrace the diversity that has made this country great for generations,” added Omar, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

Republican Rep. Mia Love, whose family came from Haiti, said the president’s comments are “unkind, divisive, elitist, and fly in the face of our nation’s values. This behavior is unacceptable from the leader of our nation.”

Love, of Utah, called on Trump to apologize to the people of Haiti.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, also a Republican, said he wanted more details “regarding the president’s comments.”

“Part of what makes America so special is that we welcome the best and brightest in the world, regardless of their country of origin,” Hatch added.

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican, tweeted late Thursday, “My ancestors came from countries not nearly as prosperous as the one we live in today. I’m glad that they were welcomed here.”

Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida tweeted Trump’s “calling #Haiti a ‘shithole country’ ignores the contributions thousands of Haitians have made to our #SoFla community and nation. Language like that shouldn’t be heard in locker rooms and it shouldn’t be heard in the White House.”

California Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democrat, said in a tweet, “Immigrants from countries across the globe — including and especially those from Haiti and all parts of Africa — have helped build this country. They should be welcomed and celebrated, not demeaned and insulted.’’

Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, “President Trump’s comments are yet another confirmation of his racially insensitive and ignorant views. It also reinforces the concerns that we hear every day, that the President’s slogan Make America Great Again is really code for Make America White Again.”

New Mexico Rep. Michelle Lujan Gisham, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, responded in a statement, “The President’s statement is shameful, abhorrent, unpresidential, and deserves our strongest condemnation. We must use our voices to ensure that our nation never returns to the days when ignorance, prejudice, and racism dictated our decision making.

“Our nation’s strength and the American Dream stem from our immigrant roots and diversity,” she added.

Brian Concannon, executive director of the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, told VOA he is “outraged” at what he regards as an insult to the Haitian people. He said Trump’s apparent description of Haiti as a “s—hole” is “not an accurate description of Haiti.”

The NCAAP said in a statement, “The United States’ position as a moral leader throughout the world has been thoroughly damaged by the continuous lowbrow, callous and unfiltered racism repeatedly espoused by President Trump. His decision to use profanity to describe African, Central American and Caribbean countries is not only a low mark for this president, it is a low point for our nation.’’

The White House statement released Thursday:

“Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people. The President will only accept an immigration deal that adequately addresses the visa lottery system and chain migrationtwo programs that hurt our economy and allow terrorists into our country. Like other nations that have merit-based immigration, President Trump is fighting for permanent solutions that make our country stronger by welcoming those who can contribute to our society, grow our economy and assimilate into our great nation. He will always reject temporary, weak and dangerous stopgap measures that threaten the lives of hardworking Americans, and undercut immigrants who seek a better life in the United States through a legal pathway.”

VOA correspondents Steve Herman and Michael Bowman contributed to this report.
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Police and immigrant-rights protesters clashed Thursday outside 26 Federal Plaza, New York City’s immigration court, after word spread that Ravi Ragbir, a well-known activist known to protect immigrant families from deportation, had himself been detained by immigration authorities inside the building.

City leaders said Ragbir passed out while in detention, which occurred during a routine check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Some supporters, who were already gathered outside the building for a scheduled prayer march and “vigil against deportation,” confronted a departing ambulance, resulting in multiple arrests, including those of two city councilmen. 

Others joined hands and prayed, led by the Reverend Donna Schaper, senior minister of Judson Memorial Church and co-founder of the New Sanctuary Coalition of NYC.

“When ICE does things that are just beyond understanding, when they had other choices, they only make us stronger,” Schaper told VOA. “They need to understand that.”

Ragbir, an immigrant from Trinidad, has faced the threat of deportation since he was convicted of wire fraud 16 years ago. Following removal proceedings in 2006, he spent nearly two years in immigration detention before his release in February 2008, a period during which he became a rising voice for the country’s immigrant community. He is now executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition.

Until his detention, Ragbir had an administrative stay of removal in place, which suspends an order of removal. His attorneys said they had already filed a lawsuit.

“We came into the check-in with the hope that they would allow him to continue checking in as he has for many years, complying with all the rules that have been required of him,” said Alina Das, one of Ragbir’s attorneys who was present with him in the meeting, along with Ragbir’s wife.

“Obviously we are incredibly disappointed and, frankly, outraged by this decision,” Das told VOA. “We continue to pursue our options — the legal challenges — to see that he will hopefully be freed soon and back with his wife and with the community that loves him.”

At the time this report was published, ICE had not responded to VOA’s request for comment regarding Ragbir’s arrest.

‘Crippling’ for the immigrant community

Ragbir’s arrest followed that of Jean Montrevil, an immigrant activist from Haiti who was taken into custody last week near his Far Rockaway, New York, home, and just one day after The Associated Press reported a wave of ICE raids at convenience stores across the country.

Barbara Young, a Barbadian-American immigrant and organizer with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, was present for Thursday’s vigil in lower Manhattan. As she spoke of Ragbir and the nationwide workplace raids, tears rolled down beneath her sunglasses.

“It is crippling for the immigrant community,” Young said. “If you are here in the country and you decide to go find a job, and they’re targeting your workplace, you’re not a criminal.”

Following a group prayer, Schaper, who works closely with Ragbir, remained resilient, asserting the strength of her surrounding community.

“We have so many leaders, in addition to Ravi, whom Ravi has built up over these many, many years,” she said. “We’re not even one bit afraid.”

More protests were scheduled for Thursday evening in front of the detention center where Ragbir was being held.
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U.S. lawmakers are running short on time to agree on a plan to fund the government and achieve a bipartisan immigration deal.

The budget battle could lead to a government shutdown next week, and Democrats in Congress want any funding agreement to include a legislative fix for the more than 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who have been protected from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

On Wednesday, a group of House Republicans introduced a bill that would institute a much more wide-ranging immigration reform that includes a three-year renewable status for those covered under DACA, but offer no path for any kind of permanent residency.

The bill led by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte would also restrict relatives of immigrants from coming to the United States, mandate that companies use an electronic system to verify the immigration status of employees, reduce overall immigration, and boost the number of green cards for skilled workers.

“The bill we’re proposing is strong but it’s also a fair bill – it’s strong because it gets serious about enforcing our immigration laws and making it tougher for people to enter our country illegally and stay here,” said Rep. Raul Labrador, one of the Republican co-sponsors. 

A White House statement said President Donald Trump is “grateful” for the introduction of the bill and that it would accomplish his “core priorities for the American people.” The measure would also authorize construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, something Trump told reporters Wednesday is a necessary part of any immigration plan.

But the legislation seems unlikely to make it to Trump’s desk. It would need some Democratic support in the Senate and the party has focused much of its immigration energy on finding a solution for the immigrants who came to the United States illegally when they were children.

Trump in September rescinded the DACA program and gave Congress until March to figure out how to address those immigrants, sometimes referred to as “Dreamers.”

“The president agreed we ought to do it in two phases because we have an emergency,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer. “We can’t wait until March. We need to make sure they’re protected and included and welcomed now.”

A group of 100 chief executive officers sent a letter Wednesday to Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress calling on them to immediately pass a permanent, bipartisan legislative solution to allow the young undocumented immigrants to continue living and working in the United States.

“While delay or inaction will cause significant negative impact to businesses, hundreds of thousands of deserving young people across the country are counting on you to work in a bipartisan way to pass permanent legislative protection for Dreamers without further delay,” the letter said.

Those signing it include the CEOs of Facebook, General Motors, Apple, Target, Amazon, Google and the National Association of Manufacturers.

A federal judge in California issued a ruling Tuesday temporarily blocking the Trump administration from ending DACA, saying the program should remain in place until legal challenges against Trump’s decision are resolved.

Tuesday’s order specifies that the terms of the DACA program are to be maintained for anyone who was already covered by the program before Trump’s September action, and that those people are allowed to renew their enrollments. 

But the government does not have to process any new applications for people trying to enroll under DACA for the first time, and remains free to deport anyone it determines to be a national security or public safety risk.

Trump rejected the court ruling Wednesday, saying the judicial system is “broken and unfair.”
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North Korea has found good material to attack U.S. President Donald Trump: Michael Wolff’s bombshell new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.

The book paints Trump as a leader who doesn’t understand the weight of his office and whose competence is questioned by aides. Trump and other White House aides have blasted it as inaccurate trash. But it was the top-selling book in the U.S. last week, and its numbers are likely to grow far higher.

On Thursday, the North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper, run by its ruling Workers’ Party, carried an article about the book’s subject matter, how Trump reacted and why it is selling so well.

Traded threats

Its sales reflect “rapidly surging anti-Trump sentiments in the international community,” the article said. “The anti-Trump book is sweeping all over the world so Trump is being massively humiliated worldwide.”

The book’s popularity “foretells Trump’s political demise,” the article said.

Last summer, Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” in an exchange of taunts with the North, which claimed it was examining plans to launch missiles toward the American territory of Guam.

Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have since traded threats of war and crude insults, as the North conducted nuclear and long-range missile tests.

Trump called Kim “Rocket Man” on a “suicide mission.” Kim called the 71-year-old American president “the mentally deranged U.S. dotard.” In his New Year’s address last week, Kim said he has a “nuclear button” that could fire weapons anywhere in the United States, and Trump responded that he has a much bigger and more powerful “nuclear button.”

Ties with the South

Recently, North Korea has taken steps toward improving ties with rival South Korea in what critics call a tactic to divide Seoul and Washington and weaken U.S.-led international pressure and sanctions on the country. On Tuesday, it had its first formal talks with South Korea in about two years and agreed to send a delegation to next month’s Winter Olympics in the South and hold military talks aimed at easing front-line animosity.

But North Korea hasn’t stopped its rhetoric against Trump. Last week, the North’s state media called Trump a “war maniac” and “madman.”

After Tuesday’s inter-Korean talks, Trump said during a phone conversation with South Korean President Moon Jae-in that the United States was open to talks with North Korea “at the appropriate time, under the right circumstances,” according to a White House statement.

Fire and Fury was released last Friday and sold 29,000 copies through Saturday, NPD BookScan told The Associated Press. Digital sales already top 250,000 and audio sales exceed 100,000, according to John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, the parent company of the book’s publisher, Henry Holt and Co. It has raised an initial announced printing of 150,000 to more than 1 million.
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The U.S. Congress has five working days left to negotiate a deal funding the government past a Jan. 19 deadline. Democrats are pushing an agreement that includes a legislative fix for the fate of more than 800,000 undocumented young people brought to the U.S. as children. VOA’s congressional reporter Katherine Gypson has more on the immigration fixes Republicans want in return as time runs out.
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U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his attacks Wednesday on the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, saying they are “the single greatest Witch Hunt in American history.”

In Twitter comments, Trump reiterated his contention that there “was no collusion” between his campaign and Russia, saying “everybody,” including opposition Democrats, “knows there was no collusion, & yet on and on it goes. Russia & the world is laughing at the stupidity they are witnessing.”

He said Republican lawmakers “should finally take control” of the probes, which include several in Congress and a months-long criminal investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the country’s top law enforcement agency. None of the investigations has been completed or reached conclusions.

Trump also assailed California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, calling her “sneaky” because on Tuesday, she released a transcript of an August interview with the head of a firm that produced a dossier containing allegations about Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. Feinstein is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which received the documents from Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of research group Fusion GPS. Simpson said he gave the dossier about Trump to the FBI because he was “very concerned” about a potential national security matter.

“The fact that Sneaky Dianne Feinstein, who has on numerous occasions stated that collusion between Trump/Russia has not been found, would release testimony in such an underhanded and possibly illegal way, totally without authorization, is a disgrace,” Trump said. He called for a “tough primary” election against her, although she is a Democrat and the Republican Trump holds no sway over Democratic political affairs.

Feinstein unilaterally released a lengthy transcript of Simpson’s testimony without telling the majority Republican bloc on the Judiciary Committee.

‘Illegal conspiracy?’

Simpson’s firm hired Christopher Steele, a former British spy, to produce the dossier, and that research was paid for by Democrats, including the campaign of Trump’s election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

A conservative website had earlier sought information about Trump but stopped its investigation of the then-Republican candidate once it became apparent that he would be his party’s nominee. Later, a lawyer for Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired Fusion GPS to investigate Trump’s past.

“From my perspective there was a law enforcement issue about whether there was an illegal conspiracy to violate the campaign laws,” Simpson said.

Trump has dismissed the dossier and repeatedly denied that his campaign colluded with Russia. Trump has contended that the investigations are an excuse by Democrats to explain his upset win over Clinton, a former secretary of state.

Simpson said Steele also told him the FBI believed information in the dossier “might be credible” because they had a source inside the Trump organization who “indicated the same thing.”

“It was someone like us who decided to pick up the phone and report something,” Simpson said.

Setting the record straight

Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said Simpson requested the transcript of his testimony be released to the public and that the American people deserved the chance to see his words and judge for themselves.

“The innuendo and misinformation circulating about the transcript are part of a deeply troubling effort to undermine the investigation into potential collusion and obstruction of justice. The only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public,” Feinstein said in a statement.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, objected to Feinstein’s release of the testimony. A Grassley spokesman, Taylor Foy, called Feinstein’s actions “confounding” and said she had undermined the committee’s “ability to secure candid voluntary testimony relating to the independent recollections of future witnesses.”

The committee is conducting one of several investigations into Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election and possible connections with the Trump campaign.

U.S. intelligence agencies assessed last year that Russia had conducted a campaign targeting the election with the goal of hurting Clinton’s chances of winning while boosting Trump. In addition, Mueller is investigating whether Trump obstructed justice by firing former FBI chief James Comey when Comey was heading the agency’s Russia probe before Mueller was appointed to take over the investigation.

‘Unquestionably real news’

The website BuzzFeed published the entire dossier last year amid criticism that it contained unverified information. Ben Smith, the site’s editor in chief, wrote Tuesday in a New York Times op-ed that he stands behind that decision and that his organization believed it was in the public interest to release information that BuzzFeed and other outlets were citing in stories.

“A year of government inquiries and blockbuster journalism has made clear that the dossier is unquestionably real news. That’s a fact that has been tacitly acknowledged even by those who opposed our decision to publish,” Smith said.

One item in the dossier is a claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to meet with Russian officials.

Cohen denies he made such a trip, and on Tuesday sued BuzzFeed in a New York state court, saying the website defamed him and harmed him financially. In a separate defamation lawsuit in federal court, Cohen sued Fusion GPS.

 
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