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The moment of reckoning has nearly arrived for Michael Cohen, who finds out Wednesday whether his decision to walk away from President Donald Trump after years of unwavering loyalty will spare him from a harsh prison sentence. 

 

A federal judge in New York is set to decide whether Cohen gets leniency or years in prison for crimes including tax evasion, making illegal hush-money payments to protect Trump during the campaign and lying to Congress about the president’s past business dealings in Russia. 

 

Few observers expect the hearing to go well for the 52-year-old attorney. 

 

For weeks, his legal strategy appeared to revolve around convincing the court that he is a reformed man who abandoned longtime friendships and gave up his livelihood when he decided to break with the president and speak with federal investigators.

That narrative collapsed last week. New York prosecutors urged a judge to sentence Cohen to a substantial prison term, saying he’d failed to fully cooperate and overstated his helpfulness. They’ve asked for only a slight reduction in the 4- to 5-year term he would face under federal sentencing guidelines. 

Revisiting of sentence

 

A sentence of hard time would leave Cohen with little to show for his decision to plead guilty, though experts said Wednesday’s hearing might not be the last word on his punishment. 

 

Cohen could have his sentence revisited if he strikes a deal with prosecutors in which he provides additional cooperation within a year of his sentence, said Michael J. Stern, a former federal prosecutor in Detroit and Los Angeles. 

 

“Few things spark a defendant’s renewed interest in cooperating faster than trading in a pair of custom Italian trousers for an off-the-rack orange jumpsuit,” he said.    

  

Annemarie McAvoy, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, said prosecutors appear to be angry at Cohen for limiting his cooperation. 

 

“It could be a tactic to try to break him like they’ve tried to do with [Paul] Manafort,” McAvoy said, referring to Trump’s former campaign chairman. “It kind of shows they’re putting the screws to him. If they’re not mad at him, he didn’t give them what they wanted.” 

 

Cohen’s transition from Trump’s fixer-in-chief to felon has been head-spinning.  

During the campaign, he coordinated payments to buy the silence of two women — former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult film actress Stormy Daniels — who were thinking of speaking with reporters about alleged sexual encounters with Trump. Cohen once told an interviewer he would “take a bullet” for Trump. 

 

But months after investigators began gathering evidence that he’d dodged $1.4 million in taxes, Cohen pleaded guilty in August, pledged to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and changed his party registration from Republican to Democrat.  

  

Prosecutors said Cohen orchestrated payments to McDougal and Daniels at Trump’s direction.  

  

Trump, who insists the affairs never happened, said Monday in a tweet mocked for its spelling errors that the campaign finance allegations are being made up by Democrats disappointed not to have found a “smocking gun” proving collusion between his campaign and Russia. 

 

“So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution … which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s – but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!” Trump wrote. 

‘Bring his toothbrush’

 

U.S. District Judge William Pauley III, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Bill Clinton, may allow Cohen to begin serving any prison term he receives at a later date. But legal experts said Cohen could also be taken into custody immediately.  

  

“If I were advising him, I’d encourage him to bring his toothbrush to court,” said Stern. 

 

Cohen’s lawyers have asked for no prison time, saying he has suffered enough already. 

 

“The greatest punishment Michael has endured in the criminal process has been the shame and anxiety he feels daily from having subjected his family to the fallout from his case,” his attorneys wrote in a court filing last month. “The media glare and intrusions on all of them, including his children, the regular hate correspondence and written and oral threats, the fact that he will lose his law license, the termination of business relationships by banks and insurers and the loss of friendships, are but some of this fallout.” 

 

Federal prosecutors said the request of a probation-only sentence is unbefitting of “a man who knowingly sought to undermine core institutions of our democracy.” 

 

Mueller’s office took a far kinder view of Cohen’s cooperation in a separate court filing, crediting him for useful insights about attempts by Russian intermediaries to influence Trump, among other matters.  

  

Cohen’s latest plea agreement, reached last month, requires he “provide truthful information regarding any and all matters” Mueller deems relevant. The same document bars Cohen from appealing his sentence unless his prison term exceeds federal guidelines, or he claims to have received ineffective assistance of counsel in his proceedings.  

  

David S. Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Miami, said Cohen’s lawyers miscalculated by seeking an “unreasonably lenient” sentence.   

  

“They got a little greedy,” Weinstein said. “Judges take a dim view of lawyers who have played the system. Cohen knew where the line was, and he chose to step over the line.” 
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U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted on numerous occasions that his 2016 presidential campaign had nothing to do with Russia.

“Time for the Witch Hunt to END!” Trump said in a message on Twitter last Saturday. “After two years and millions of pages of documents (and a cost of over $30 million) no collusion!” Trump tweeted earlier. 

But the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in Trump’s victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton has unearthed plenty of evidence connecting Trump associates with Russia. In the year and a half since Robert Mueller took over the investigation into possible collusion, charging documents have alleged that more than a dozen Trump associates – from former campaign manager Paul Manafort to son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner – communicated with Russians, in one form or another, during and after the election. 

While the Mueller investigation operates under grand jury secrecy, the evidence the special prosecutor has referenced in court documents points to deeper and broader than previously thought contacts between people in Trump’s orbit and Russian operatives who sought to gain influence with the Republican president.

The latest revelation on the nexus between Trump and Russia appeared in a sentencing memo for former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen who pleaded guilty last week to lying to Congress about Trump’s efforts, during the campaign, to build a Trump tower in Moscow.

Last year, Cohen told lawmakers that his efforts on behalf of Trump to win Russian approval and build a new high rise in Moscow ended in January 2016, just as the campaign was heating up, whereas in fact they continued through June 2016, shortly before Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination. In the memo, Mueller’s prosecutors wrote that Cohen, who once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump but subsequently turned on his former boss, has provided “information about his own contacts with Russian interests during the campaign and discussions with others in the course of making those contacts.”

Cohen, who broached the possibility of a meeting in New York between Putin and Trump during the U.N. General Assembly in September 2016, has told prosecutors that he had “conferred” with Trump about the idea before “reaching out to gauge Russia’s interest in such a meeting,” according to the memo. 

The meeting did not take place for reasons that prosecutors did not reveal. 

Russian attempts to set up such a meeting persisted, however. In November 2016, Cohen spoke with a Russian who offered “political synergy” with the campaign and “repeatedly proposed a meeting between Putin and Trump. 

“The person told Cohen that such a meeting could have a ‘phenomenal’ impact ‘not only in political but in a business dimension’… because there is ‘no bigger warranty in any project than consent of [the President of Russia,]’” according to the memo. 

Cohen did not follow up on the invitation, according to the court filing, explaining to prosecutors that “he was working on the Moscow Project with a different individual who Cohen understood to have his own connections to the Russian government.” 

The unidentified individual is believed to be Felix Sater, a Russian-born real estate developer who worked as an adviser for the Trump Organization.

Trump’s interest in doing business with Russia goes back decades. In 2013, he brought the Miss Universe beauty pageant to Moscow. Throughout the 2016 campaign Trump repeatedly praised Putin and reveled in the Russian president’s compliments before the relationship soured after the election. 

The latest filings came at the end of a whirlwind week in the Russia investigation that saw similar documents filed in criminal cases involving Manafort and former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in denying he had conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. shortly after the election and before Trump took office, at a time Russia was trying to get out from under U.S. sanctions. 

The Cohen sentencing memo represents the first time the special counsel has alleged a discussion between Trump and his lawyer about a meeting with Putin during the 2016 election.It suggests that Trump remained focused on his business interests even as he was running for the White House. 

“If the project was completed, the Company could have received hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues,” the Cohen sentencing memo says. 

Other Trump associates accused of interacting with Russia during and after the 2016 campaign include former attorney general Jeff Sessions who met with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign and former campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos who tried to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin during the campaign.
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A group of former U.S. Senate members from both the Democratic and Republican parties is urging current members to be “guardians of our democracy” and not let party affiliation get in the way of the interests of the country as it faces a “critical juncture.”

The 44 former lawmakers wrote in an op-ed published Monday by the Washington Post that the United States is “entering a dangerous period” and they felt they needed to “speak up about serious challenges to the rule of law, the Constitution, our governing institutions and our national security.”

They cited the eventual conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion with President Donald Trump’s campaign, as well as the planned investigations of the Trump administration by the Democrat-led House of Representatives that will be in place next month as challenges that are coming amid regional and global conflicts.

“We are at an inflection point in which the foundational principles of our democracy and our national security interests are at stake, and the rule of law and the ability of our institutions to function freely and independently must be upheld,” they wrote.

The group includes Democrats John Kerry, Tom Daschle and Chris Dodd, as well as Republicans John Warner, Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel.
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U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Democratic leaders Tuesday in a final effort to secure border wall funding as part of a larger government spending package that must be passed by Dec. 21. The funding marks the final legislative action of the Republican-controlled Congress and a must-pass bill to avert a partial government shutdown ahead of the holidays.

 

Both parties face a delicate balancing act tackling the latest fight over immigration with just weeks until control of the House of Representatives shifts to Democrats.

Trump will meet with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to see if there is room for compromise on his request for up to $5 billion in funding for the wall in fiscal year 2019. The meeting will be the first test of Trump’s ability to negotiate bipartisan deals following significant Democratic gains in November’s congressional midterm elections.

Trump and Pelosi initially expressed interest in working with each other on bills addressing infrastructure and prescription drug prices. But Pelosi — who is expected to become Speaker of the House when the new Congress is sworn in next month — rejected the possibility of compromise on border wall funding.

Democrats consider a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border “immoral, ineffective and expensive,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday. She also made clear Democrats would not link a compromise on the border wall with a legislative solution addressing the legal status of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients, the more than 800,000 undocumented young people brought to the United States as children.

Compromise on a solution for DACA recipients stalled in Congress throughout 2018. The House failed to pass a bill after a group of Republicans organized an effort to defy House Speaker Paul Ryan and force the issue.

Pelosi proposed lawmakers pass the six funding bills that have already cleared key committee votes while funding the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that would oversee the border wall funding, on another temporary spending measure.

“I can’t imagine the president is willing to accept that,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told reporters Thursday.

Trump says the border wall with Mexico will stop an invasion of migrants from Central America into the United States.

 

“Could somebody please explain to the Democrats (we need their votes) that our Country loses 250 Billion Dollars a year on illegal immigration, not including the terrible drug flow. Top Border Security, including a Wall, is $25 Billion. Pays for itself in two months. Get it done!” Trump tweeted on Dec. 4.

The administration received $1.375 billion in funding for border security in the fiscal year budget that ended on Sept. 30. It did not include money for building a wall.

“The idea that they haven’t spent last year’s money and they’re demanding such a huge amount this year makes no sense at all,” Schumer said.

 

Trump and Republicans in a lame-duck Congress face a tough choice. Forcing the issue of the border wall will trigger a partial government shutdown just four days before Christmas.

Lawmakers will not relish the prospect of being trapped in Washington figuring out a solution. But some Republicans see the shutdown as an opportunity to slow Democratic momentum coming into the new year with a new legislative agenda. Democrats will not want to be blamed for a shutdown before they have even taken control of the House.

Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, Pelosi and Schumer issued a joint statement saying Trump’s border wall proposal does not have sufficient support and he should not make it “an obstacle to bipartisan government.”

“Republicans still control the House, the Senate, and the White House, and they have the power to keep the government open,” the statement said.
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Editorial cartoons — also known as political cartoons — have been around as long as there’s been political discourse and dissent. In the U.S. they’re a vibrant part of American culture and history, and no matter how controversial, are protected as free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. VOA’s Julie Taboh spoke with a Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist about the current state of cartooning in the U.S. — and overseas.
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Editorial cartoons — also known as political cartoons — have been around as long as there’s been political discourse and dissent. 

In the U.S., they’re a vibrant part of American culture and history, and no matter how controversial, are protected as free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the late Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist Doug Marlette described them as “the acid test of the First Amendment.” 

An unusual calling

Matt Wuerker is a staff cartoonist for Politico, an American political journalism company based just outside the nation’s capital. 

He says it’s an unusual job.

“We’re a strange mix of things in that we are making serious commentary on serious topics, but we’re doing it not so seriously,” he says. “We like to see ourselves as opinion columnists that you’d see in a newspaper or somebody on TV who’s offering their opinion… and we get to draw our opinions with silly pictures!”

The Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist says the main advantage of a political cartoon is being able to communicate an opinion very quickly. 

“I can draw a picture and put in a little word bubble and you can read it in about four seconds and you get it,” he says. “So it’s a very interesting vehicle for expressing an opinion if you do it right.”

“It has to hit you in the face kind of hard and fast and you know it when you’ve been hit.”

A good example of that is his popular Thanksgiving cartoon where he shows a family gathered around the dinner table about to partake in the much-revered Thanksgiving meal. While Mother brings the turkey to the table, family members are shown immersed in their mobile phones instead of paying attention to this time-honored ritual.

He was inspired by a popular painting by American artist Norman Rockwell who painted idyllic scenes reflecting American culture. 

While Wuerker created the cartoon for an American audience, its message is universal; a striking example of how technology is disrupting such simple rituals as meal time.

A variety of styles

Wuerker’s cartoons are very ornate and detailed and painted in a variety of colors. But he’s a bit envious of other cartoonists he says, who can express themselves with a simple line drawing. They can “make the statement with very little drawing and it can be just as effective, if not maybe more effective,” he says.

The format of cartoons has evolved, he says.

“When I started 40 years ago doing cartoons, an editorial cartoon was a black-and-white single-panel cartoon in a newspaper. And now cartoons can be color, they can be animated, they can be graphic novels that are political.”

Like the 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning work by journalist Jake Halpern and illustrator Michael Sloan currently on display at the Newseum in Washington. 

“They did something quite extraordinary,” says Patty Rhule, Vice President of Exhibits at the Newseum. “They did a 20-part series in the New York Times following the story of two Syrian immigrants who fled the war in Syria to come to this country and start a new life with their families.”

It marked the newspaper’s first Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.

Rhule says editorial cartoons “bring faces and art to current events and tell stories in a way that journalists who are reporting strict facts can’t always do,” adding that the graphic novel format the two journalists used “takes cartooning to a whole new level; they add a note of commentary on what is happening in the world.”

Editorial cartoons have always been an important part of American culture, she adds.

“Since the beginning of this country, editorial cartoons have been framing issues and framing debate — from Ben Franklin’s Live Free or Die [Join, or Die], the segmented snake that rallied the 13 colonies together. So it’s always been a part of this country and the world’s way of freely expressing ideas and debate, and so I hope they never go away.”

Cartoon backlash 

But free expression sometimes comes at a heavy price. 

In 2015, Islamic terrorists attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine, after it published unflattering cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. Twelve people were killed in the attack, including several prominent cartoonists.

“And within their [Islamic] culture they are certainly entitled to be offended, but they’re not entitled to decide that they’re going to go to Paris and kill the people who created that cartoon that was really intended for a French audience,” Wuerker says.

He has great respect, he says, for cartoonists who keep working despite the dangers.

“In the course of my career I’ve gotten to know a lot of cartoonists from different parts of the world, and the ones that really impress me are the ones that keep drawing despite having to live with constant threats all the time.” 

“Many cartoonists have had to flee their country because they were brave enough to take on regimes or political figures that don’t understand that a free press is a salutary thing,” he adds.

He hopes that in these troubled times, people will appreciate cartoons for what they are.

“The times have become so vitriolic and people are so quick to anger. I think the good kind of political cartooning is something that slips in a really good political point with a certain amount of good humor and wit that people will process and hopefully won’t make them angry but will make them think.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump sought Monday to diminish allegations he directed his lawyer to criminally violate campaign finance laws by making $280,000 in payments to two women to remain silent before the 2016 election about alleged affairs with him.

Trump said on Twitter the payments made by his former attorney, Michael Cohen, were “a simple private transaction,” and that opposition Democrats and federal prosecutors “wrongly call it a campaign contribution, which it was not.”

The U.S. leader said that “…even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE,” comparing it to campaign finance violations committed in 2008 by his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama. But Trump said the payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal were “done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me.”

He said, “Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!”   

Trump’s comments on Cohen came after federal prosecutors said Friday the Trump attorney, “in coordination with and at the direction” of then-candidate Trump, made the hush money payments shortly before the 2016 presidential election. Cohen is being sentenced Wednesday for making the payments, along with several other criminal offenses, and faces several years in prison.

Trump, as he often does, derided special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing 19-month investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to help him win the election and whether, as president, Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.

Quoting a Fox News report, Trump said, “Democrats can’t find a Smocking (sic) Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia… No Smocking Gun…No Collusion. That’s because there was NO COLLUSION.”

‘Impeachable offenses’

A key U.S. lawmaker said Sunday Democrats in the House of Representatives could pursue impeachment hearings against Trump, saying that he had “surrounded himself with crooks” and was part of a broad “conspiracy against the American people” to win the 2016 election.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat set to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee when Democrats take control of the chamber next month, told CNN that lawmakers have to decide “how important” allegations are against Trump, but should pursue impeachment charges “only for serious offenses.”

Nadler said that if proven, the payments to the two women were “certainly impeachable offenses.” That could lead to his removal from office, if the Senate were to convict him by at least a two-thirds vote, a doubtful proposition with Republican control of the Senate continuing in the Congress that takes office in January.

Nadler said lawmakers will have “to look at all this,” along with weighing what Mueller eventually concludes about Trump campaign links with Russia and whether Trump obstructed justice.

The U.S. Justice Department has a standing guideline against indicting sitting presidents, although they can be charged after leaving office. Nadler said, however, “There’s nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the president from being indicted. Nobody should be above the law.”

Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, set to assume control of the House Intelligence Committee next month, told CBS News on Sunday, “My takeaway is there’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time.”

Trump has called for the end to the Mueller probe, but a Republican lawmaker, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, told ABC News, “I’ve always supported the Mueller investigation and continue to do so because I think it’s in the best interest of everyone involved, including, by the way, the president.”

Aside from Cohen, Mueller so far has secured guilty pleas or won convictions of Trump’s first national security adviser, his former campaign manager, his former deputy campaign manager, a foreign policy adviser and other lesser figures.

Blaming Comey

On Sunday, Trump assailed former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey, whom Trump fired while he was heading the Russia investigation before Mueller was named to lead the probe. Comey testified to a House panel on Friday about his role in 2016 election-related investigations of Trump’s campaign and that of his challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state.

“On 245 occasions, former FBI Director James Comey told House investigators he didn’t know, didn’t recall, or couldn’t remember things when asked,” Trump said on Twitter.

“Leakin’ James Comey must have set a record for who lied the most to Congress in one day. His Friday testimony was so untruthful!  This whole deal is a Rigged Fraud headed up by dishonest people who would do anything so that I could not become President. They are now exposed!”

Late Sunday, Comey said Americans “should use every breath we have to make sure” Trump is defeated in 2020 when he is running for re-election to a second term.

 
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Washington is absorbing new revelations concerning the Russia probe revealed in court documents regarding U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager as well as his former personal attorney, both of whom have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal crimes and provided information to prosecutors. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, Trump himself continues to deny wrongdoing.
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A key U.S. lawmaker said Sunday that Democrats in the House of Representatives could pursue impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump, saying that the U.S. leader had “surrounded himself with crooks” and was part of a broad “conspiracy against the American people” to win the 2016 election.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat set to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee when Democrats take control of the chamber next month, told CNN that lawmakers have to decide “how important” allegations are against Trump, but should pursue impeachment charges “only for serious offenses.”

Nadler offered his thoughts two days after federal prosecutors accused former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, “in coordination with and at the direction” of Trump, of orchestrating $280,000 in hush money payments shortly before the 2016 election to two women who alleged they had affairs with Trump so they would stay silent before Election Day.

Nadler said that if proven, the allegations against Trump were “certainly impeachable offenses.” That could lead to his removal from office, if the Senate were to convict him by at least a two-thirds vote, a doubtful proposition with Republican control of the Senate continuing in the Congress that takes office in January.

Nadler said lawmakers will have “to look at all this,” along with weighing what special counsel Robert Mueller concludes about allegations that Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to help him win and that, as president, Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart the ongoing 19-month probe.

The U.S. Justice Department has a standing guideline against indicting sitting presidents, although they can be charged after leaving office. Nadler said, however, “There’s nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the president from being indicted. Nobody should be above the law.”

Trump has dismissed the latest allegations against him in connection with the payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal and allegations of Trump campaign contacts with Russia to help him win the election.

“We’re very happy with what we’re reading,” Trump said Saturday, following a Twitter comment Friday night, “Totally clears the President. Thank you!”

Trump has called for the end to the Mueller probe, but a Republican lawmaker, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, told ABC News, “I’ve always supported the Mueller investigation and continue to do so because I think it’s in the best interest of everyone involved, including, by the way, the president.”

Aside from Cohen, who is set to be sentenced Wednesday and faces several years of imprisonment, Mueller so far has secured guilty pleas or won convictions of Trump’s first national security adviser, his former campaign manager, his former deputy campaign manager, a foreign policy adviser and other lesser figures.

On Sunday, Trump assailed former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey, whom Trump fired while he was heading the Russia investigation before Mueller was named to lead the probe.

Comey testified to a House panel on Friday about his role in 2016 election-related investigations of Trump’s campaign and that of his challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state.

“On 245 occasions, former FBI Director James Comey told House investigators he didn’t know, didn’t recall, or couldn’t remember things when asked,” Trump claimed on Twitter.

“Leakin’ James Comey must have set a record for who lied the most to Congress in one day. His Friday testimony was so untruthful! This whole deal is a Rigged Fraud headed up by dishonest people who would do anything so that I could not become President. They are now exposed!”

 

 
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The latest impending White House high-profile departure is the top official who traditionally controls access to the Oval Office.

Chief of Staff John Kelly is exiting by the end of this month, President Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday.

“John Kelly will be leaving — I don’t know if I can say ‘retiring.’ But, he’s a great guy,” Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn. 

Kelly’s successor is widely expected to be Nick Ayers, the young, politically savvy chief of staff for Vice President Mike Pence.

New staff

Trump, before boarding Marine One, said he would announce his next chief of staff “over the next day or two.”

Kelly’s imminent departure comes as no surprise. There had been speculation for months — which had grown more intense in recent days — that the former Marine general would soon exit amid a further chill between him and the president, a deterioration in a relationship that had never been described as overly warm.

“It would have been a bad fit for anybody. He was essentially tasked with mission impossible,” said professor David Cohen, a presidential historian at the University of Akron in Ohio. “Trump never gave him the tools to succeed in the job,” in which the chief of staff is supposed to be empowered to speak for the president and to have unfettered authority in organizing the White House and instilling stability and order.

“The cause of the chaos is Donald Trump himself, who is never willing to be reined in by anybody,” and considered Kelly and his predecessor, Reince Priebus, to be more “staff than chief,” said Cohen, who is writing a book about White House chiefs of staff.

Although the Trump administration has a reputation for a higher rate of staff turnover than its predecessors, Kelly’s total time of 16 months in the job will not be unusually short in a high-stress position where two years is considered a decent run. Priebus lasted just six months.

“There’s a lot of burnout in the position,” Cohen told VOA. “More often than not the individual that’s serving in that position can’t wait to find a new position, in the president’s Cabinet or maybe simply retiring from the rigors of the White House and a presidential administration.”

The departing chief of staff, during his time inside the White House was “a force for order, clarity and good sense,” said outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican. “He is departing what is often a thankless job, but John Kelly has my eternal gratitude.”

Kelly’s service

Kelly’s tenure has been “the definition of selfless service and he served President Trump well from day one,” Heritage Foundation Vice President James Jay Carafano told VOA, noting the administration’s foreign policy that “has been tough, focused, realistic and successful.”

A former high-ranking official from the administration of Barack Obama, Trump’s predecessor, saw it differently.

Kelly “failed to contain or restrain the president, and supported and encouraged the abhorrent family separation policy as a deterrent to asylum seekers,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a former senior director for arms control on the National Security Council.

Kelly previously was Trump’s secretary of homeland security, where his hard-line stance on immigration earned praise from the president.

Trump in recent days has been negotiating with Ayers to succeed Kelly — who lacked experience in partisan politics — but the vice president’s 36-year-old chief of staff is reluctant to make a two-year commitment to the job, according to White House sources.

Ayers has the support of the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, but some key West Wing officials will not be welcoming to the hard-charging operative, according to administration insiders.

Ayers likely would be a chief of staff who “is politically savvy and willing to help with the president’s campaign operation,” but his age is likely to prompt senior staff to question: “Who does this kid think he is?” Cohen said.

Asked to assess Ayers’ chances of success, Wolfsthal replied, “Zero. Trump listens to Trump because he cares about his self-interest, not that of the country.”

The bottom line is that Trump will soon have his third chief of staff in two years, a turnover rate for which he harshly criticized Obama in January 2012.
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The FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia initially focused on four Americans and whether they were connected to Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, former FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers during hours of closed-door questioning.

Comey did not identify the Americans but said President Donald Trump, then the Republican candidate, was not among them.

The House Judiciary Committee released a transcript of the interview on Saturday, just 24 hours after privately grilling the fired FBI chief about investigative decisions related to Hillary Clinton’s email server and Trump’s campaign and potential ties to Russia. The Russia investigation is now being run by special counsel Robert Mueller, and Comey largely dodged questions connected to that probe — including whether his May 2017 firing by Trump constituted obstruction of justice.

The Republican-led committee interviewed Comey as part of its investigation into FBI actions in 2016, a year when the bureau — in the heat of the presidential campaign — recommended against charges for Clinton and opened an investigation into Russian interference in the election.

The questioning largely centered on well-covered territory from a Justice Department inspector general report, Comey’s own book and interviews and hours of public testimony on Capitol Hill. But Comey also used the occasion to take aim at Trump’s public barbs at the criminal justice system, saying “we have become numb to lying and attacks on the rule of law by the president,” and Trump’s suggestion that it should be a crime for subjects to “flip” and cooperate with investigators.

“It’s a shocking suggestion coming from any senior official, no less the president. It’s a critical and legitimate part of the entire justice system in the United States,” Comey said.

In offering some details of the investigation’s origins, Comey said it had started in July 2016 with a look at “four Americans who had some connection to Mr. Trump during the summer of 2016” and whether they were tied to “the Russian interference effort.”

He reiterated that the investigation was not prompted by a Democratically funded opposition research — often referred to as the “Steele dossier” — but rather contacts former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos had with an intermediary during the campaign, a finding confirmed by House Republicans.

The investigation was prompted by “information we’d received about a conversation that a Trump foreign — campaign foreign policy adviser had with an individual in London about stolen emails that the Russians had that would be harmful to Hillary Clinton,” Comey said.

Papadopoulos was released from prison on Friday after serving a brief sentence for lying to the FBI about that conversation.

“It was weeks or months later that the so-called Steele dossier came to our attention,” he added.

He also said that President Barack Obama never ordered him to have the FBI surveil or infiltrate the Trump campaign.

Comey said that by the time of his firing, the FBI had not come to a conclusion about whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia’s efforts to sway the presidential election.

He insisted that the FBI would recover from the president’s steady attacks on the bureau.

“The FBI will be fine. It will snap back, as will the rest of our institutions,” Comey said. “There will be short-term damage, which worries me a great deal, but in the long run, no politician, no president can, in a lasting way, damage those institutions.”
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President Donald Trump says chief of staff John Kelly will leave his job at the end of the year.

Trump isn’t saying immediately who will replace Kelly, a retired Marine general who has served as chief of staff since July 2017. But the president says an announcement about a replacement will be coming in the next day or two.

Trump spoke to reporters at the White House before departing for the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia.

He calls Kelly “a great guy.”

The West Wing shake-up comes as Trump is anticipating the challenge of governing and oversight when Democrats take control of the House in January, and as gears up for his own campaign for re-election in 2020.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied to federal investigators about a payment and contacts with Trump administration officials, the U.S. special counsel investigating whether Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia said in a court filing on Friday.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office submitted the filing to a U.S. District Court judge in Washington who had asked for more details on Mueller’s allegations last month that Manafort had breached a plea agreement by lying.

“In his interviews with the Special Counsel’s Office and the FBI, Manafort told multiple discernible lies — these were not instances of mere memory lapses,” Mueller’s office said in the filing.

According to the filing, Manafort lied about his interactions with Russian-Ukranian political consultant Konstantin Kilimnik, Kilimnik’s efforts to tamper with witnesses, the circumstances surrounding a $125,000 payment to a firm working for Manafort, and Manafort’s contacts with officials in the Trump administration.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders released a statement late Friday, saying, “The government’s filing in Mr. Manafort’s case says absolutely nothing about the President. It says even less about collusion and is devoted almost entirely to lobbying-related issues. Once again the media is trying to create a story where there isn’t one.”

Manafort also provided investigators with shifting accounts about information relevant to another Department of Justice investigation.

The filing also said that Manafort, who maintains he has been truthful to Mueller, appeared before a grand jury twice.
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U.S. President Donald Trump Friday sharply criticized his former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, after the nation’s former top diplomat described the president as “undisciplined” and someone who suggested policies and actions that violated the law. 

The president, who fired Tillerson by tweet in March of this year after months of turmoil between the two men, returned to twitter Friday to hit back at the former Exxon CEO, calling him “dumb as a rock.”

The president appeared to be responding to Tillerson’s first on-camera interview since leaving office. In the interview, which was taped Thursday evening, the former secretary of state publicly recounted that it was a challenge for him to switch from working at a highly disciplined corporation, and go to work for a president, “who doesn’t like to read, doesn’t like briefing reports.” 

“So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do, and here’s how I want to do it,’ and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.'”
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While there may be a change in U.S. leadership at the United Nations as Ambassador Nikki Haley departs and State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert takes her place, analysts say there is unlikely to be a change in the direction of U.S. policy and attitude at the organization. 

“For better or worse, the administration’s U.N. policy is pretty established at this point, and there’s no reason to expect that Nauert will deviate from the ‘America First’ course that Haley, [National Security Adviser John] Bolton and [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo have set,” Stephen Pomper, the International Crisis Group’s U.S. program director said in an email to journalists Friday. 

“The question is whether she has the negotiating skills to deal behind the scenes with the Russians and the Chinese over issues like North Korea,” Richard Gowan, senior fellow at the U.N. University Center for Policy Research in New York, told VOA. “Nikki Haley did not have diplomatic experience, but she did have experience of political negotiation in South Carolina, Nauert doesn’t have that sort of background.” 

Influential role

Haley, who plans to leave her U.N. post by the end of this year, has had an unusually influential and high-profile role as ambassador. During the first year of the Trump administration, she stepped into a void left by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and elevated her profile both domestically and internationally. She has had President Donald Trump’s ear and support and became instrumental on important issues, including North Korea, Iran and moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. 

But with the arrival of Pompeo and Bolton in the past year, Haley’s influence has declined. 

“Haley lost a degree of autonomy when John Bolton became the national security adviser, because he had strong views about the U.N.,” the International Crisis Group’s Pomper noted.  

Bolton is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and he famously holds a great deal of disdain for the organization. He once said that if the U.N. building “lost 10 stories [floors], it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” 

Nauert will also have to carve out her own style of leadership at the U.N. While Haley has been tough in public, “taking names” of countries who do not align with U.S. interests, she is by most accounts collegial in private. Nauert, a former Fox News journalist, lacks political or diplomatic experience. 

“The upside is that this could mean a bit less grandstanding for the domestic base,” said Pomper. “The downside is that she is likely to have less weight with counterparts, Congress and the president.” 

Guterres ‘ready’ for U.S. diplomat

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who took office a few weeks before Trump in 2017, told VOA on Friday that “I cannot make any comments before the Senate confirmation, but I am ready to work very effectively with any ambassador of the United States.” 

The secretary-general has cultivated a close working relationship with Haley. The United States is the largest single donor to the U.N.’s regular budget, contributing more than $1.2 billion annually, and Haley and Guterres have worked together to implement reforms to make the U.N. more efficient, in part to save U.S. taxpayers money. 

“That process is still ongoing, and Nauert is going to need to work closely with Guterres to make sure these reforms are fulfilled and they do have financial benefits for the U.S.,” the U.N. University’s Gowan said. 
…

House Republicans are set to interview former FBI Director James Comey behind closed doors Friday, the last time before they cede power to Democrats in January.

The committee subpoenaed Comey last month to testify about investigations into the Donald Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia and Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Comey resisted, arguing the GOP-led investigation in the decision-making by the FBI and the Justice Department in 2016 and 2017 was politically motivated.

​Call for public setting

He said in a Thanksgiving Day tweet that 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.”

But Comey relented to the closed-door interview after gaining a promise that a transcript of the session would be released to the public after 24 hours. 

Republican lawmakers 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.

It a series of tweets early Friday, the president blasted Comey and the Mueller probe into Russia’s hacking of the 2016 U.S. national election.

​Conspiracy theory?

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.

Wayne Lee contributed to this report.
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Former President H.W. Bush managed the peaceful aftermath of the Soviet Union’s breakup in 1991 and used American military force to oppose Iraqi aggression. Yet, as VOA’s Brian Padden reports, Bush’s legacy as a successful foreign policy president is complicated by the hardline campaign politics he practiced at home and by how the Republican Party under President Donald Trump seems to have turned away from his internationalist world view.
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President Donald Trump is now blaming the Russia probe for his historically weak poll ratings. Trump’s latest attack on the investigation comes as prosecutors are expected to reveal more information about two key figures in the probe, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. VOA National Correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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The family of George Herbert Walker Bush celebrated the life of the 41st U.S. president at a funeral service in his home church Thursday in Houston, Texas, before transporting his remains on a train to his final resting spot.

Bush’s friend of 60 years, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, told 1,200 mourners at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church that Bush “had the courage of a warrior, but the greater courage of a peacemaker.”

Baker said Bush, in office in 1991 at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall separating democratic West Germany from communist East Germany, understood that humility toward a fallen adversary “is the very best path.”

Thursday’s service in Bush’s adopted Texas home in the southwestern United States followed the larger state funeral Wednesday in Washington that was attended by President Donald Trump and four living former U.S. presidents, including Bush’s son, George W. Bush, the 43rd president who delivered an emotional eulogy to his father.  Current and former world leaders and other American dignitaries were among the 3,000 mourners in the cavernous Washington National Cathedral.

The flag-draped casket of the elder Bush lay in repose overnight ahead of the service at the Houston church so mourners could file past it.

After the service, the former president’s casket was taken by a specially-designed train 120 kilometers north to the city of College Station for burial at his presidential library on the grounds of Texas A&M University.  He is being laid to rest alongside his wife of 73 years, Barbara, who died earlier this year, and their daughter Robin who succumbed to leukemia in childhood.  

At the Wednesday state funeral, the younger President Bush said of his father, “He taught us public service was noble and necessary.  He had an enormous capacity to give of himself.”

President Donald Trump had no speaking role during the Episcopalian service, a break from recent tradition and in accordance with George H.W. Bush’s wishes.

Trump had tweeted before the service:

The current president, who has had a contentious public feud with the Bush family, earlier had declared Wednesday a national day of mourning, closing federal agencies, suspending regular mail delivery and closing stock markets.

Trump, the day before, spent 20 minutes visiting Bush family members, who were staying at Blair House, across the street from the White House. Blair House is also known as the President’s Guest House.

Trump, accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, shook hands inside the cathedral with his immediate two-term predecessor, Barack Obama, and wife Michelle, but the tension between the Trumps and Obama was palpable in the pews, epitomizing the nation’s political divide.

 

WATCH: US Bids Farewell to President George HW Bush

Also, in the front row was Democrat Bill Clinton, who defeated the elder incumbent Bush in 1992 to become president, and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom Trump defeated in the 2016 election. Sitting next to the Clintons was fellow Democrat Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn.

George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton eventually became close friends and traveled together internationally.

Another close friend of the elder Bush, former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson, recalled that the 41st president was “a class act from birth to death … one of nature’s noble men.”

Bush was hailed by presidential historian Jon Meacham as “America’s last great soldier-statesman,” who “made our lives and the lives of nations freer, better, nobler and warmer.”

Among the foreign dignitaries inside the cathedral were Britain’s Prince Charles, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Queen Rania, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Polish President Andrzej Duda and former presidents of Estonia, Mexico and Portugal, as well as former prime ministers of Britain, Canada, Japan and Kuwait.

Bells tolled 41 times as Bush’s casket entered the cathedral after being transported in a family motorcade from the U.S. Capitol and past the White House for the first state funeral for a president in a dozen years.

Around the clock in the Rotunda over two days, thousands — many who had lined up in near-freezing temperatures for hours to enter the Capitol — paid their final respects to Bush, whose flag-draped coffin rested on the wooden catafalque built in 1865 for the casket of assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

The four entrances to the Rotunda were draped in black as Bush’s body lay in state, an honor bestowed to only 31 others in the history of the United States (Lincoln being the first president).

One of those who entered the Rotunda Tuesday was former Senator Bob Dole, a rival to Bush in the 1988 Republican presidential primary. Dole, who is 95, was helped from his wheelchair to stand and salute his fellow World War II veteran.

Bush was born into privilege and politics (his father a U.S. senator and grandfather a top industrialist). He served in Congress, as ambassador to the United Nations, chaired the Republican National Committee, was an envoy to China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and vice president before being elected president in 1988.
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A key Democratic senator is warning the Trump administration not to lift sanctions against a Russian oligarch or the companies he controls.

Oleg Deripaska holds large stakes in the Russian aluminum giant Rusal and the automobile conglomerate GAZ Group.

New Jersey’s Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a letter to the Treasury Department that it would face strong opposition in Congress if it waives sanctions against Deripaska and the companies.

“How the Treasury Department manages this delisting exercise will shape our perceptions about the administration’s seriousness in implementing the Russian sanctions regime,” Menendez wrote.

There has been no comment from Treasury.

The administration slapped sanctions on Deripaska in April for what it called Russian “malign activity” — including election meddling — and crimes by Deripaska himself. Those include allegations of bribery, extortion, links to organized crime and murder.

Deripaska has denied the charges.

The sanctions were supposed to have taken hold immediately. But after an appeal from Rusal, Treasury gave it an October deadline to cut ties to Deripaska. That deadline has been extended three times. 
…

Feverish media speculation had raged ahead of Robert Mueller’s sentencing recommendations for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, fueled by hopes the court filing would provide fresh insight into the special counsel’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

What emerged instead from the heavily redacted document was a deepening mystery and a few hints that the nearly 18-month-old probe is headed in unknown and previously unexpected directions.

In the sentencing memo filed in federal court late Tuesday, Mueller’s prosecutors recommended that Flynn, an early cooperating witness in the sweeping Russia probe, receive no prison time for lying to the FBI because he has provided “substantial assistance” to several ongoing investigations since pleading guilty last December.

Flynn sat for 19 interviews with lawyers from the special counsel’s office, as well as the Justice Department, providing “firsthand information” on interactions between President Donald Trump’s transition team and Russian government officials in December 2016, prosecutors wrote.

They also praised the “timeliness” of Flynn’s cooperation, saying it had persuaded other witnesses to cooperate.

But prosecutors disclosed little else, blacking out large portions of the memo due to “sensitive information about ongoing investigations.”

“While this addendum seeks to provide a comprehensive description of the benefit the government has thus far obtained from the defendant’s substantial assistance, some of that benefit may not be fully realized at this time because the investigation in which he has provided assistance is ongoing,” the memo said.

That left analysts reading tea leaves (trying to predict the future) as they sought to unravel a riddle shrouded in mystery: two separate investigations unrelated to the Russia probe with which Flynn has cooperated.

“I don’t believe we’ve learned anything” from the sentencing memo, said Hans von Spakovsky, a legal expert at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based conservative think tank.

Flynn, a former Army general and head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, served as Trump’s national security adviser for less than a month. He was forced to resign after news surfaced that he had lied to administration officials about his talks with Sergey Kislyak, former Russian ambassador to Washington, during the presidential transition.

Flynn had drawn investigators’ scrutiny before he ran afoul of the FBI in January 2017. While serving as an adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016, he lobbied for a Dutch company linked to the Turkish government without registering as a foreign agent.

Flynn began cooperating with the special counsel after pleading guilty to lying to federal agents about his conversations with Kislyak. He became the first of five former Trump associates who have entered guilty pleas with the special counsel’s office.

The sentencing recommendation by Mueller, if approved by a federal judge later this month, could spell an end to Flynn’s legal troubles. Sentencing is set for Dec. 18.

But as part of his agreement with the special counsel, Flynn is required to testify “at any and all trials” where his testimony is deemed relevant.

Von Spakovsky said that while the Mueller investigation remains cloaked in secrecy, it is unlikely to wrap up by year’s end and could well drag on as late as next spring. He said he expects the special counsel to write a report on his findings at some point next year without issuing any major indictments.

Trump recently provided the special counsel with written answers about his knowledge of the Russian interference, raising speculation that Mueller’s team may have received what they need to complete their report.

But recent developments in the probe paint a different picture.

Last week, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a Trump Tower project in Moscow, and prosecutors revealed that Cohen had spent 70 hours in interviews with investigators.

On Friday, Mueller’s prosecutors are expected to disclose how former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort “repeatedly lied” to them in recent weeks in breach of a cooperation agreement.

“So all of that tells me that this is very complicated, that there is more to come,” said Chris Edelson, an assistant professor of government at American University School of Public Affairs. “I would not expect Mueller’s investigation or the other investigations that are referred to in the Flynn sentencing memo to end anytime soon. Hopefully, we’ll get more information, but I don’t see things wrapping up.”

 
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“I’m not going to put the country out of business trying to maintain certain standards that probably don’t matter,” President Donald Trump told VOA when asked about the economic impacts of climate change.

When not denying its existence, the Trump administration’s approach to

climate change essentially comes down to three arguments: the United States has already cut its greenhouse gas emissions more than other countries, regardless of any international agreement; regulations to cut emissions come with high costs and few benefits; and those regulations would put the United States at a disadvantage because other countries will not follow.

“When you look at China, and when you look at other countries where they have foul air,” Trump added, “we’re going to be clean, but they’re not, and it costs a lot of money.”

As U.N. climate negotiations get under way in Poland to work out rules for implementing the Paris climate agreement — from which Trump intends to withdraw the United States — experts weigh in on the administration’s claims.

Emissions cuts

It’s true that the United States has reduced its greenhouse gas production more than any other country. U.S. emissions peaked in 2005. In the last decade, they have fallen by about 13 percent, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

But the United States was the world’s leading producer of greenhouse gases until 2006. And, others have made bigger cuts by percentage. Hungary’s levels, for example, decreased 14 percent.

U.S. emissions started to fall when the fracking boom took off.

The new technique of hydraulic fracturing turned the United States into a major natural gas producer. As the price of natural gas has dropped, it has been steadily replacing coal as the dominant fuel for electricity generation. Because burning natural gas produces far less carbon dioxide than coal, greenhouse gas emissions have decreased.

More recently, renewable sources such as solar and wind power have started to make inroads on the power grid.

While U.S. emissions have fallen since the 2000s, China’s have soared.

The country pursued astonishing economic growth with an enormous investment in coal-fired power plants. China is now the leading producer of greenhouse gases by far, roughly doubling U.S. output.

Cost-benefit

Trump has argued that regulations aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions would hobble the U.S. economy. He has moved to undo the Obama administration’s proposed rules on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and efficiency standards for vehicles and appliances, among others.

Critics question whether those regulations would cost as much Trump suggests.

“None of these policies were going to have dramatic increases in the prices that consumers would see,” Duke University public policy professor Billy Pizer said. He added that normal price swings would likely swamp the cost of the regulations Trump targets.

The emissions reductions the Obama administration pledged in Paris “were built largely on a continuation of the coal-to-gas transition and a continuation of growth in renewable energy that’s already happening,” said Alex Trembath of the Breakthrough Institute research center. As such, he added, they “don’t imply a large cost. In fact, they imply a marginal increased benefit to the U.S.”

Those benefits come, for example, because burning less coal produces less air pollution, which lowers health costs.

Not to mention the direct results of climate change: wildfires, floods, droughts and so on.

“We have enough science and enough economics to show that there are damages resulting from us releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. We know that that is not a free thing,” University of Chicago public policy professor Amir Jina said. “And yet, we are artificially setting it as free because we’re not paying the price of that externality.”

He said economists nearly unanimously support a carbon tax, a cap-and-trade program or some other way to put a price on carbon emissions.

Collective action

Few nations have taken the necessary steps to meet the emissions reduction pledges they made in Paris, according to the most recent United Nations emissions gap report.

Even those pledges would fall far short of the Paris goal of limiting global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, the report adds. Reaching that target will take “unprecedented and urgent action.” A 2016 report said an additional $5.2 trillion investment in renewable energy will be necessary worldwide over the next 25 years.

Trump’s statement — “we’re going to be clean, but they’re not, and it costs a lot of money” — sums up why nations are reluctant to act: no one wants to take on burdens that they think others won’t.

“It’s the thing which has been dogging action on climate change for generations,” Jina said.

“We only really solve the problem if everybody acts together,” he added. “And if enough people are not acting, then we don’t.”

Paris depends on countries following through on increasingly ambitious emissions cuts.

Each country decides what it is willing to do. Every five years, countries come together and show their progress.

“You over time build confidence in each other,” Pizer said. “Ideally, you ratchet up the commitments as you see your actions reciprocated by other countries.”

Trump’s backpedaling on the U.S. commitment raises questions about the prospects.

However, the first of these check-ins is five years away. Trump can’t formally withdraw the United States from the agreement until 2020.

Pizer notes that the predecessor to the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, failed in part because it imposed caps on countries’ carbon emissions, and most of the world balked.

“In my mind, this is the best we can do,” he said. “If there were a different way to do it, I’d be all over that.”
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Five living American presidents will come together Wednesday to pay final tribute to George Herbert Walker Bush, the nation’s 41st president, who died last Friday at the age of 94.

Former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will join the current commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, for Bush’s funeral services at the Washington National Cathedral, where they will hear a eulogy from George W. Bush, the late president’s son and the 43rd president.

Also scheduled to speak at the state funeral will be former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada, former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson, and historian Jon Meacham, the elder Bush’s biographer. Among the dignitaries who will be in attendance include Britain’s Prince Charles, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Lech Walesa, Poland’s former president.

WATCH: Mourners give their condolences

​Wednesday’s services will begin when a motorcade will deliver the ex-president’s flag-draped casket to the cathedral from the U.S. Capitol, where it lay in state Tuesday as thousands of mourners filed through the Rotunda to pay their final respects. An emotional moment during the public viewing occurred when 95-year-old former Senator Bob Dole was helped from his wheelchair and saluted his fellow Republican and World War Two veteran. 

After the funeral, former President Bush’s casket will be taken to Andrews Air Force Base and flown back to Houston, Texas for a second and final service on Thursday.

He will be laid to rest at his presidential library and museum at Texas A&M University in nearby College Station, next to his wife of 73 years, Barbara, who passed away in April, and their daughter Robin, who died of leukemia in 1953 when she was only three years old. 

President Trump has designated Wednesday as a national day of mourning in Bush’s honor. The New York Stock Exchange will be closed, as are most government offices.
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The body of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush returns to Texas for burial Wednesday after the funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral. Thousands of visitors paid their respect to the 41st U.S. president while his body was lying in state at the U.S. Capitol from Monday evening until Wednesday afternoon. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports dignitaries and the general public mingled in the Capitol’s Rotunda as they parted with the former leader.
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