Mar 19, 2017
Mar 13, 2017
White House: Trump Didn't Mean Wiretapping When He Accused Obama Of Wiretapping
Press secretary Sean Spicer walked backed the president's unfounded accusation.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Monday that President Donald Trump means what he says. Except when he doesn’t.
This includes when Trump uses quotes around his words, Spicer told reporters.
He
was referring to a series of tweets that Trump wrote earlier this
month, in which he accused his predecessor, President Barack Obama, of
wiretapping the phones at Trump’s campaign headquarters last fall. The
president hasn’t provided any evidence to support his claims.
On Monday, Spicer insisted that when Trump used the term “wiretap,” he meant any sort of surveillance. “There’s
a whole host of things that fall into the category [of wire-tapping],”
he said, and “a wide range of ways in which somebody can be monitored or
followed up on.”
This,
however, is incorrect. Wiretapping is a specific term used to refer to a
third party intercepting telephone or internet conversations and or
monitoring them.
“President
Obama was tapping my phones,” Trump wrote in the wee hours of March 4.
“Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower,” he also wrote. One day
after he posted the tweets, Trump publicly asked Congress to investigate
his unfounded accusation.
Donald J Trump
Spicer also sought to soften
the intensely personal nature of Trump’s tweets about Obama. “He
doesn’t think President Obama went up and tapped his phone personally,”
Spicer said, despite the fact that Trump referred specifically to Obama
multiple times in the tweets.
“How
low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very
sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
Trump wrote.
Spicer’s
comments Monday coincided with a deadline set by congressional
committees for the Justice Department to turn over any evidence that
Trump was surveilled by the Obama administration. The White House has yet to produce any evidence that Trump’s phones were tapped.
Donald Trump
The New York Times
reported last fall that the FBI had investigated potential collusion
between Russian officials and some of Trump’s associates. But they
didn’t find evidence of coordinated activity, and they determined that
the likely intent of Russian meddling in the U.S. election was to
disrupt the democratic process, rather than specifically to elect Trump.
Mar 5, 2017
Robert Reich: Show This To Anyone Who Voted For Trump, Immediately
By
Posted on 
There are lots of reasons to follow Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on Facebook. His sharing of this post from a comment by Rosa Figueroa, and others similar to it, is just one of those reasons.
"Next time you get into a little squabble with a Trump voter, bring this into the conversation:
You might want to send this to anyone in your family, or anyone
you know, who voted for Trump. (Thanks to Rosa Figueroa who posted this
in response to one of my posts yesterday.)"
1. He called Hillary Clinton a crook.
You bought it.
Then he paid $25 million to settle a fraud lawsuit.
1. He called Hillary Clinton a crook.
You bought it.
Then he paid $25 million to settle a fraud lawsuit.
2. He said he’d release his tax returns, eventually.
You bought it.
He hasn’t, and says he never will.
3. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest.
You bought it.
He is still heavily involved in his businesses, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis, and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.
4. He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said.
You bought it.
He then proceeded to put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
5. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people.
You bought it.
He nominated theocratic loon Mike Pence for Vice President. A white supremacist named Steve Bannon is his most trusted confidant. Dr. Ben Carson, the world’s greatest idiot savant brain surgeon, is in charge of HUD. Russian quisling Rex Tillerson is Secretary of State.
6. He said he’d be his own man, beholden to no one.
You bought it.
He then appointed Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, whose only “qualifications” were the massive amounts of cash she donated to his campaign.
7. He said he would “drain the swamp” of Washington insiders.
You bought it.
He then admitted that was just a corny slogan he said to fire up the rubes during the rallies, and that he didn’t mean it.
8. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the Generals did.
You bought it.
He promptly gave the green light to a disastrous raid in Yemen- even though all his Generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year old American girl, and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained.
9. He said Hillary Clinton couldn’t be counted on in times of crisis.
You bought it.
He didn’t even bother overseeing that raid in Yemen; and instead spent the time hate-tweeting the New York Times, and sleeping.
10. He called CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy.
You bought it.
He now gets all his information from Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars.
11. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done.
You bought it.
He took his first vacation after 11 days in office.
On the taxpayer’s dime.
And went golfing.
And that’s just the first month.
You bought it.
He hasn’t, and says he never will.
3. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest.
You bought it.
He is still heavily involved in his businesses, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis, and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.
4. He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said.
You bought it.
He then proceeded to put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
5. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people.
You bought it.
He nominated theocratic loon Mike Pence for Vice President. A white supremacist named Steve Bannon is his most trusted confidant. Dr. Ben Carson, the world’s greatest idiot savant brain surgeon, is in charge of HUD. Russian quisling Rex Tillerson is Secretary of State.
6. He said he’d be his own man, beholden to no one.
You bought it.
He then appointed Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, whose only “qualifications” were the massive amounts of cash she donated to his campaign.
7. He said he would “drain the swamp” of Washington insiders.
You bought it.
He then admitted that was just a corny slogan he said to fire up the rubes during the rallies, and that he didn’t mean it.
8. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the Generals did.
You bought it.
He promptly gave the green light to a disastrous raid in Yemen- even though all his Generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year old American girl, and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained.
9. He said Hillary Clinton couldn’t be counted on in times of crisis.
You bought it.
He didn’t even bother overseeing that raid in Yemen; and instead spent the time hate-tweeting the New York Times, and sleeping.
10. He called CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy.
You bought it.
He now gets all his information from Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars.
11. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done.
You bought it.
He took his first vacation after 11 days in office.
On the taxpayer’s dime.
And went golfing.
And that’s just the first month.
Trump, Offering No Evidence, Says Obama Tapped His Phones.
WEST
PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump on Saturday accused former President
Barack Obama of tapping his phones at Trump Tower the month before the
election, leveling the explosive allegation without offering any
evidence.
Mr.
Trump called his predecessor a “bad (or sick) guy” on Twitter as he
fired off a series of messages claiming that Mr. Obama “had my ‘wires
tapped.’” He likened the supposed tapping to “Nixon/Watergate” and “McCarthyism,” though he did not say where he had gotten his information.
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
A spokesman for Mr. Obama said any suggestion that the former president had ordered such surveillance was “simply false.”
During
the 2016 campaign, the federal authorities began an investigation into
links between Trump associates and the Russian government, an issue that
continues to dog Mr. Trump. His aides declined to clarify on Saturday
whether the president’s allegations were based on briefings from
intelligence or law enforcement officials — which could mean that Mr.
Trump was revealing previously unknown details about the investigation —
or on something else, like a news report.
Continue reading the main story
But
a senior White House official said that Donald F. McGahn II, the
president’s chief counsel, was working to secure access to what Mr.
McGahn believed to be an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court authorizing some form of surveillance related to Mr.
Trump and his associates.
The
official offered no evidence to support the notion that such an order
exists. It would be a highly unusual breach of the Justice Department’s
traditional independence on law enforcement matters for the White House
to order it to turn over such an investigative document.
Any
request for information from a top White House official about a
continuing investigation would be a stunning departure from protocols
intended to insulate the F.B.I. from political pressure. It would be
even more surprising for the White House to seek information about a
case directly involving the president or his advisers, as does the case
involving the Russia contacts.
After
the White House received heavy criticism for the suggestion that Mr.
McGahn would breach Justice Department independence, a different
administration official said that the earlier statements about his
efforts had been overstated. The official said the counsel’s office was
looking at whether there was any legal possibility of gleaning
information without impeding or interfering with an investigation. The
counsel’s office does not know whether an investigation exists, the
official said.
Last
month, Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, came under fire
for asking a top F.B.I. official to publicly rebut news reports about
contacts between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government.
Sean
Spicer, the White House press secretary, said in a statement that the
“White House counsel is reviewing what options, if any, are available to
us.” Mr. McGahn did not respond to a request for comment. He was
traveling on Saturday to Florida to join the president at his estate,
Mar-a-Lago.
The
president’s decision on Saturday to lend the power of his office to
accusations against his predecessor of politically motivated wiretapping
— without offering any proof — was remarkable, even for a leader who
has repeatedly shown himself willing to make assertions that are false
or based on dubious sources.
It
would have been difficult for federal agents, working within the law,
to obtain a wiretap order to target Mr. Trump’s phone conversations. It
would have meant that the Justice Department had gathered sufficient
evidence to convince a federal judge that there was probable cause to
believe Mr. Trump had committed a serious crime or was an agent of a
foreign power, depending on whether it was a criminal investigation or a
foreign intelligence one.
Former
officials pointed to longstanding laws and procedures intended to
ensure that presidents cannot wiretap a rival for political purposes.
“A
cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House
official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the
Department of Justice,” said Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Mr. Obama. “As
part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House
official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.”
Mr.
Trump asserted just the opposite in a series of five Twitter messages
beginning just minutes before sunrise in Florida, where the president is
spending the weekend.
In
the first message, the president said he had “just found out” that
“Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” before the election. Mr.
Trump’s reference to “wires tapped” raised the possibility that he was
referring to some other type of electronic surveillance and was using
the idea of phone tapping loosely.
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
The
president was adamant in conversations with several people throughout
the day on Saturday that he believed he was right about the wiretaps,
according to three people with direct knowledge of those conversations.
Two people close to Mr. Trump said they believed he was referring to a Breitbart News article, which
aides said had been passed around among his advisers. Mark Levin, a
conservative radio host, had also embraced the theory recently in a push
against what right-leaning commentators have been calling the “deep
state.”
The
Breitbart article, published on Friday, claimed that there was a series
of “known steps taken by President Barack Obama’s administration in its
last months to undermine Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and,
later, his new administration.” Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief
strategist, once led Breitbart News.
If
Mr. Trump was motivated to take to Twitter after reading the Breitbart
article or listening to Mr. Levin, he was using a presidential megaphone
to spread dark theories of a broad conspiracy aimed at undermining his
presidential ambitions, and later his presidency.
Even
with the Breitbart article circulating, several of Mr. Trump’s advisers
were stunned by the president’s morning Twitter outburst. Those
advisers said they were uncertain about what specifically Mr. Trump was
referring to; one surmised that he may also have been referring to a
months-old news report about a secret surveillance warrant for
communications at his New York offices.
One
senior law enforcement official from the Obama administration, who has
direct knowledge of the F.B.I. investigation into Russia and of
government wiretapping, said that it was “100 percent untrue” that the
government had wiretapped Mr. Trump. The official, who asked for
anonymity to discuss matters related to investigations and intelligence,
said the White House owed the American people an explanation for the
president’s allegations.
Ben Rhodes, a former top national security aide to Mr. Obama, said in a Twitter message
directed at Mr. Trump on Saturday that “no president can order a
wiretap” and added, “Those restrictions were put in place to protect
citizens from people like you.”
The
House and Senate Intelligence Committees are moving forward with their
own investigations into Russia’s efforts to influence the election, and
they have said they will examine links between Mr. Trump’s associates
and the Russians.
Senator
Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said on Friday that he believed
there were “transcripts” that would help document those contacts, though
he said he had not yet seen them.
“There
are transcripts that provide very helpful, very critical insights into
whether or not Russian intelligence or senior Russian political leaders —
including Vladimir Putin — were cooperating, were colluding, with the
Trump campaign at the highest levels to influence the outcome of our
election,” Mr. Coons told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC. “I believe they
exist.”
Comey Asks Justice Dept. to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claim
WASHINGTON
— The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department
this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that
President Barack Obama
ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials
said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is
false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not
released any such statement.
Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation
on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock
down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the
law, the officials said.
A
spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment. Sarah Isgur Flores, the
spokeswoman for the Justice Department, also declined to comment.
Mr.
Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting
the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning
Mr. Trump’s truthfulness. The confrontation underscores the high stakes
of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the
former president of a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump’s young
administration.
Continue reading the main story
The
White House showed no indication that it would back down from Mr.
Trump’s claims. On Sunday, the president demanded a congressional
inquiry into whether Mr. Obama had abused the power of federal law
enforcement agencies before the 2016 presidential election. In a
statement from his spokesman, Mr. Trump called “reports” about the
wiretapping “very troubling” and said that Congress should examine them
as part of its investigations into Russia’s meddling in the election.
Along
with concerns about potential attacks on the bureau’s credibility,
senior F.B.I. officials are said to be worried that the notion of a
court-approved wiretap will raise the public’s expectations that the
federal authorities have significant evidence implicating the Trump
campaign in colluding with Russia’s efforts to disrupt the presidential
election.
One
problem Mr. Comey has faced is that there are few senior politically
appointed officials at the Justice Department who can make the decision
to release a statement, the officials said. Attorney General Jeff
Sessions recused himself
on Thursday from all matters related to the federal investigation into
connections between Mr. Trump, his associates and Russia.
Mr.
Comey’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering is certain to invite contrasts to
his actions last year, when he spoke publicly about the Hillary Clinton
email case and disregarded Justice Department entreaties not to.
In
his demand for a congressional inquiry, the president, through his
press secretary, Sean Spicer, issued a statement on Sunday that said,
“President Donald J. Trump
is requesting that as part of their investigation into Russian
activity, the congressional intelligence committees exercise their
oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative
powers were abused in 2016.”
Mr.
Spicer, who repeated the entire statement in a series of Twitter
messages, added that “neither the White House nor the president will
comment further until such oversight is conducted.”
A
spokesman for Mr. Obama and his former aides have called the accusation
by Mr. Trump completely false, saying that Mr. Obama never ordered any
wiretapping of a United States citizen.
“A
cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House
official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the
Department of Justice,” Kevin Lewis, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, said in a
statement on Saturday.
Mr.
Trump’s demand for a congressional investigation appears to be based,
at least in part, on unproved claims by Breitbart News and conservative
talk radio hosts that secret warrants were issued authorizing the
tapping of the phones of Mr. Trump and his aides at Trump Tower in New
York.
In
a series of Twitter messages on Saturday, the president seemed to be
convinced that those claims were true. In one post, Mr. Trump said, “I’d
bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that
President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to
Election!”
On
Sunday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary,
said the president was determined to find out what had really happened,
calling it potentially the “greatest abuse of power” that the country
has ever seen.
“Look,
I think he’s going off of information that he’s seen that has led him
to believe that this is a very real potential,” Ms. Sanders said on
ABC’s “This Week” program. “And if it is, this is the greatest overreach
and the greatest abuse of power that I think we have ever seen and a
huge attack on democracy itself. And the American people have a right to
know if this took place.”
The
claims about wiretapping appear similar in some ways to the unfounded
voter fraud charges that Mr. Trump made during his first days in the
Oval Office. Just after Inauguration Day, he reiterated in a series of
Twitter posts his belief that millions of voters had cast ballots
illegally — claims that also appeared to be based on conspiracy theories
from right-wing websites.
As
with his demand for a wiretapping inquiry, Mr. Trump also called for a
“major investigation” into voter fraud, saying on Twitter that
“depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!” No
investigation has been started.
Senior
law enforcement and intelligence officials who worked in the Obama
administration have said there were no secret intelligence warrants
regarding Mr. Trump. Asked whether such a warrant existed, James R.
Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence, said on NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, “Not to my knowledge, no.”
“There
was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the
time as a candidate or against his campaign,” Mr. Clapper added.
Mr.
Trump’s demands for a congressional investigation were initially met
with skepticism by lawmakers, including Republicans. Appearing on CNN’s
“State of the Union” on Sunday, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of
Florida, said he was “not sure what it is that he is talking about.”
“I’m not sure what the genesis of that statement was,” Mr. Rubio said.
Pressed
to elaborate on “Meet the Press,” Mr. Rubio said, “I’m not going to be a
part of a witch hunt, but I’m also not going to be a part of a
cover-up.”
Mar 3, 2017
Trump Administration Repeatedly Denied There Was Any Contact With Russia During Campaign
It wasn’t just one person. Or two. There’s a growing list of people who had such communications.
President Donald Trump’s administration has now conceded that some of its top officials did indeed have contact with Russia during the campaign. Michael Flynn lost his job
as national security adviser over the admission last month, and on
Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions had his power diminished when
he promised to recuse himself from investigations into Russia’s interference in U.S. elections.
But it’s not just Flynn and
Sessions. On Thursday, officials admitted there were three other people
who communicated with Russia during the campaign as well.
Two Trump campaign aides, Carter Page and J.D. Gordon, met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in Cleveland during the GOP convention last summer. In December, Trump’s senior aide and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, joined Flynn for a meeting with Kislyak.
The Trump administration
has maintained that there was nothing improper about these meetings and
that they were not, for example, talking about how Russia could help
Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton
for the presidency. U.S. intelligence agencies have said they believe
Russia interfered to do precisely that, although they have not yet
revealed any evidence directly linking the Trump campaign to such
efforts.
But on at least three occasions, the Trump administration ― including the president himself ― had said no one from the campaign had any contact with Russian officials last year.
On Jan. 15, shortly before Trump took office, Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly said on television that there was zero contact between the campaign and Russian officials.
“Just to button up one question, did any adviser or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?” CBS “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson asked.
“Of course not,” Pence replied.
Pence also answered “of
course not” when asked a similar question that day by “Fox News Sunday”
host Chris Wallace, adding, “All the contact by the Trump campaign and
associates were with the American people.”
Trump himself denied these interactions, according to NBC News on Jan. 11:
Trump did not specifically address questions regarding whether members of his staff were in contact with Russian officials during the campaign. When NBC News repeated that question to Trump afterwards as the president-elect approached the elevator to exit the room, he answered “No.”
In February, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer seemed to stand by those earlier denials.
“There’s nothing that would conclude me that anything different has changed with respect to that time period,” Spicer said.
These statements have been proved wrong now over and over.
Both Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the intelligence community’s findings that there was “repeated” contact
between Russian intelligence operatives and the Trump aides during the
campaign, although it’s not clear when those briefings took place.
It’s also not known whether Trump specifically knew which members of his inner circle were having these meetings.
Pence, for example, has said
he did not know Flynn had lied about his contacts with the Russian
ambassador. That misrepresentation is the reason Trump said he fired his
national security adviser, maintaining that there was nothing wrong
with the two men talking.
On Thursday night, Trump tweeted that he stood by Sessions despite his admission.
Jeff Sessions is an honest man. He did not say anything wrong. He could have stated his response more accurately, but it was clearly not....
...intentional. This whole narrative is a way of saving face for Democrats losing an election that everyone thought they were supposed.....
Sessions failed to disclose his two encounters with the Russian ambassador under oath during his confirmation hearing.
“I’m not aware of any of
those activities,” Sessions said in January, when Sen. Al Franken
(D-Minn.) asked him whether anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign
had met with Russian officials.
“I have been called a
surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, and I did not have
communications with the Russians,” he added.
Sessions has maintained that
his conversations with the ambassador were part of his duties as a
member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, not as a Trump surrogate.
Homeland Security Still Doesn’t Think Donald Trump’s Immigration Order Will Work
“I look at this, and you know what I think? I think the Muslim ban is dead,” Rachel Maddow said of an internal DHS report.
A second internal Department of Homeland Security report questions the validity of President Donald Trump’s thwarted efforts to bar citizens of predominately-Muslim countries from entering the United States.
According to an exclusive report from
The Rachel Maddow Show Thursday, DHS’s Office of Intelligence and
Analysis authored an assessment, dated March 1, that found most
foreign-born extremists based in America are radicalized after they
enter the U.S., not before. The assessment ― which tracked 88 violent,
foreign-born extremists ― contradicts Trump’s plans to use “extreme vetting” to prevent potential terrorists from entering the country.
“We assess that
most foreign-born, U.S-based violent extremists likely radicalized
several years after their entry to the United States, limiting the
ability of screening and vetting officials to prevent their entry
because of national security concerns,” reads the report, which DHS
verified as authentic to Maddow’s team.
The Huffington Post has reached out to the White House
for comment, but DHS spokesman David Lapan confirmed the report’s
authenticity. The assessment is used to inform law enforcement and
vetting officials “on trends of foreign-born individuals engaged in
terrorism activity in the Homeland,” he told HuffPost.
Lapan noted that
the information is from open source materials and does not include
classified data. “It does not include information from historical or
current investigative case data or current intelligence or threat stream
data from classified data sets,” he added.
The unreleased draft report is the second to be leaked over the past week. At the end of February, The Associated Press obtained another that stated citizenship is “likely an unreliable indicator of terrorist threat to the United States.” That report,
compiled by the same DHS office, was prepared shortly after the 9th
Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Trump’s controversial executive order.
Together, both
assessments directly contradict Trump administration plans to bar
potential terrorists from entering the U.S. through a temporary ban on
those from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia,
Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The ban is currently stalled in the courts, but
the White House has pledged to release a new executive order to replace it, though the date of such a plan has been pushed back several times.
The ban threatens the rights of millions of people. Many were detained at airports around the country in the week following its signing, including those with green cards.
Maddow offered a terse summary of the second DHS report at the end of her segment on Thursday.
“I look at this, and you know what I think? I think the Muslim ban is dead,” she said.
Mike Pence Used Personal Email As Governor And Was Hacked
Some emails contained information deemed too sensitive to release to the public.
The White House Thursday night found itself in a controversy involving Vice President Mike Pence’s use of a personal email account while governor, just hours after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any investigations that may involve the Trump campaign and Russia.
The Indianapolis Star reported that
Pence used a personal email account for official Indiana business while
governor ― and that the account was hacked by a low-level scammer last
summer. Pence was a harsh critic of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign for using a private email account during her time as secretary of state.
Pence used a personal AOL account to correspond with top advisers in Indiana, at times discussing sensitive topics that
included the state’s response to terror attacks and the arrests of
several men on federal terror-related charges, according to emails
released to the Star in response to a public records request.
The current Indiana governor’s office released more than 30 pages of Pence’s AOL emails, but withheld an unspecified number of additional emails because they contained information the state deemed too sensitive, the Star reported.
The White House acknowledged
Pence used a private email account and a state email account during his
time as governor. “As then-Governor Pence concluded his time in office,
he directed outside counsel to review all of his communications to
ensure that state-related emails are being transferred and properly
archived by the state, in accordance with the law, which outside counsel
has done and is continuing to do,” the White House said in a statement
Thursday night.
It’s not illegal in Indiana
for public officials to use personal email accounts for official
business, the Star reported, but those emails must be retained as public
records.
Pence’s personal AOL account
was hacked over the summer by a scammer who emailed Pence’s contact
list, claiming that Pence and his wife were stranded in the Philippines
and needed money, the Star reported.
The revelation that Pence
used a personal email account for official business follows his
outspoken criticism of Clinton for using a private email account for
government business.
“You know, mishandling classified information is a crime,” Pence said of Clinton’s private email server during a campaign rally in November, according to Politico.
Earlier, Pence told NBC’s “Meet the Press”
that Clinton “either knew or should have known that she was placing
classified information in a way that exposed it to being hacked and
being made available in the public domain even to enemies of this
country.”
Pence for more than 18 months has been fighting a lawsuit seeking to force him to release Indiana emails the suit contends should be public record.
Nick Merrill, Clinton’s former press secretary, pointed out the hypocrisy in a Tweet.
“I look forward to the righteous indignation, wild claims, and multiple investigations into this,” Merrill wrote Thursday night.
Washington had barely simmered down from Sessions’ dramatic afternoon announcement when the Pence email story erupted. Sessions told senators in January he had no contacts with Russian officials during the campaign. But the Washington Post reported Wednesday he spoke twice with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.
Washington had barely simmered down from Sessions’ dramatic afternoon announcement when the Pence email story erupted. Sessions told senators in January he had no contacts with Russian officials during the campaign. But the Washington Post reported Wednesday he spoke twice with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.
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