Who’s Worth What at the White House: The Financial Disclosures - New York Times

Who’s Worth What at the White House: The Financial Disclosures
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By THE NEW YORK TIMES
MARCH 31, 2017
The Trump administration released the financial disclosure forms from members of the White House staff. Here is some of what they reveal.
■ The disclosures include the complicated assets of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, who retain vast business holdings.

■ Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s senior adviser, made as much as $2.3 million last year.
■ Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council and the former No. 2 executive at Goldman Sachs, has assets valued at $252 million to $611 million.

■ Mr. Bannon and Mr. Cohn, who both have past ties to Goldman Sachs, nonetheless took very different paths to their fortunes. Read more »
Gary Cohn, a former Goldman executive, is among the wealthiest White House employees.
Mr. Cohn, who until late last year was the No. 2 executive at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, has assets worth $252 million to $611 million, according to a disclosure filing released Friday. That makes Mr. Cohn, now the director of the National Economic Council and a central adviser to Mr. Trump, one of the wealthier members of the already-affluent Trump administration, which includes more than one billionaire.
In addition to the many millions of dollars in cash and stock Mr. Cohn received from Goldman Sachs that made up the lion’s share of his personal assets, he held a slew of positions in publicly traded stocks — many of which he has already said he plans to sell — and in various private entities. Those entities include a stake valued at more than $1 million in a consumer education and consulting business called Payoff, a position in a cosmetics retailer also valued at more than $1 million, investments in several self-storage concerns in Ohio valued at $100,000 or more each, and an investment in a venture capital fund run by Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley powerhouse, valued at $100,000 or more.
Bannon made between $1.3 and 2.3 million last year.
Mr. Bannon may be one of the best known figures in the Trump White House, but as the Trump administration goes, he’s probably not one of the wealthiest. But by the standards of many Americans, he appears to be doing quite well.
Mr. Bannon earned at least $1.3 million and perhaps as much as $2.3 million last year, according to the disclosure report.
He disclosed $191,000 in consulting fees he earned from Breitbart News Network, the conservative media organization; $125,333 from Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for the Trump campaign; and $61,539 in salary from the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative nonprofit organization. All three organizations are backed by the major Republican donors Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah.
Mr. Bannon’s most valuable asset was Bannon Strategic Advisors Inc., a privately held consulting firm from which income from his other investments appeared to flow into. It was valued at $5 million to $25 million.
He also listed the value of his Bannon Film Industries at $1 million to $5 million. His bank accounts were valued at as much as $2,250,000, while he listed rental real estate valued at as much as $10.5 million.
Mr. Bannon made clear in his disclosure report that he intended to sell some of his assets, including his stake in Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm that sells “psychographic” profiles that it asserts can predict the personality and hidden political leanings of every American adult.
Mr. Bannon served until last summer as vice president of Cambridge’s board.
— Eric Lipton, Steve Eder and Jonathan Weisman
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner still benefit from their real estate empires.
■ The president’s daughter and son-in-law will remain the beneficiaries of a sprawling real estate and investment business still worth as much as $740 million, despite their new government responsibilities.

■ Ms. Trump will maintain a stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
■ Mr. Kushner’s financial disclosuressaid that Ms. Trump earned from $1 million to $5 million from January 2016 to March 2017, and puts the value of her stake at $5 million to $25 million.
Gary Cohn, a former Goldman executive, is among the wealthiest White House employees.
Mr. Cohn, who until late last year was the No. 2 executive at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, has assets worth $252 million to $611 million, according to a disclosure filing released Friday. That makes Mr. Cohn, now the director of the National Economic Council and a central adviser to Mr. Trump, one of the wealthier members of the already-affluent Trump administration, which includes more than one billionaire.
In addition to the many millions of dollars in cash and stock Mr. Cohn received from Goldman Sachs that made up the lion’s share of his personal assets, he held a slew of positions in publicly traded stocks — many of which he has already said he plans to sell — and in various private entities. Those entities include a stake valued at more than $1 million in a consumer education and consulting business called Payoff, a position in a cosmetics retailer also valued at more than $1 million, investments in several self-storage concerns in Ohio valued at $100,000 or more each, and an investment in a venture capital fund run by Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley powerhouse, valued at $100,000 or more.
Kellyanne Conway made over $800,000 from her consulting firm.
Kellyanne Conway, one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers, is wealthy, but modestly so when compared with some of her superrich colleagues.
Ms. Conway, a Republican strategist and pollster, made over $800,000 last year, her filing shows. As head of her own consulting firm, Ms. Conway’s clients included an assortment of conservative causes, including the National Rifle Association and the Tea Party Patriots, as well as Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm that advised Mr. Trump’s campaign. She was also paid for a speaking engagement at Point72 Asset Management, the investment firm run by the billionaire stock picker Steven A. Cohen.
Not bad for journalism.
Julia Hahn, until she went to work in the White House, was known as the 20-something reporter who filled Breitbart.com with conservative screeds. But she is also quite rich for her age.
A PNC custodial account owned by Ms. Hahn is valued at $500,000 to $1 million. And various stock funds listed on her financial disclosure are worth as much as $1.5 million.
Her work as a journalist was also nothing to sneeze at. As a reporter, she made $117,217 last year at Breitbart. On top of that, she earned $74,082 from Laura Ingraham’s radio show.
— Jonathan Weisman
■ Omarosa Manigault, a White House aide who is a longtime associate of Mr. Trump and was once a contestant on “The Apprentice,” received a wedding dress, veil and accessories valued at $25,000 in exchange for appearing on the TLC reality show “Say Yes to the Dress.”
■ Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump’s trade czar and resident China hawk, is not a wealthy man, but his salary as an economics professor at a public university wasn’t bad. According to his disclosure form, Mr. Navarro earned $240,000 in salary and bonuses from the University of California, Irvine. He also earned $10,500 for delivering a speech in November to the Casket & Funeral Supply Association of America.
■ Sean Spicer, the press secretary, reported stakes in the Coca-Cola Company, McDonald’s and several real estate investments. But, despite his much-discussed taste for cinnamon-flavored gum, he reported no investments in chewing gum companies (although he does invest in Walmart, which sells chewing gum).
■ Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Mr. Trump and a former editor at Breitbart News, reported consulting fees of $38,200 from Breitbart. He also reported royalties of $50,000 to $100,000 for his book “Defeating jihad: The Winnable War” — and also said that he signed a contract for a second book.
■ Boris Epshteyn, who served during the presidential campaign as one of Mr. Trump’s chief attack dogs and television talking heads, stills owes over $50,000 on college loans he took out more than a decade ago, his filing indicates. Recently, Mr. Epshteyn left his White House post under circumstances that were unclear.
■ Jason Greenblatt, the Trump Organization lawyer tasked with helping to bring peace to the Middle East, earned $1,025,000 in compensation from Mr. Trump’s company last year.

‘Very blessed and very successful.’
At his daily briefing on Friday, the White House press secretary Sean Spicer tried to put the best spin on the vast wealth that would be on display Friday night:
I think one of the really interesting things that people are going to see today — and I think it’s something that should be celebrated — is that the president has brought a lot of people into this administration, and this White House in particular, who have been very blessed and very successful by this country, and have given up a lot to come into government by setting aside a lot of assets. And I think it speaks volumes to the desire for a lot of these people to fulfill the president’s vision and move the agenda forward that they are willing to list all of their assets, undergo this public scrutiny, but also set aside a lot.
A Friday night document dump.
The White House disclosures fit an age-old pattern in Washington of dumping mountains of documents on Fridays, when normal people have left work and are beginning to enjoy their weekend. Not many are likely to be glued to their computers and television sets to track the wealth of White House officials.

After all, as Josh Lyman, the fictional White House deputy chief of staff on “The West Wing,” put it, “No one reads the paper on Saturday.”
A long list.
Here’s the list of the disclosure forms we’ve received so far:
Stephen K. Bannon, counselor to the president
Thomas Bossert, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism and deputy national security adviser
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Who’s Worth What at the White House: The Financial Disclosures
*
*
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
MARCH 31, 2017
The Trump administration released the financial disclosure forms from members of the White House staff. Here is some of what they reveal.
■ The disclosures include the complicated assets of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, who retain vast business holdings.

■ Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s senior adviser, made as much as $2.3 million last year.
■ Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council and the former No. 2 executive at Goldman Sachs, has assets valued at $252 million to $611 million.

■ Mr. Bannon and Mr. Cohn, who both have past ties to Goldman Sachs, nonetheless took very different paths to their fortunes. Read more »
ll
Financial disclosure forms from White House employees are being released on Friday.
AL DRAGO / THE NEW YORK TIMES
Gary Cohn, a former Goldman executive, is among the wealthiest White House employees.
Mr. Cohn, who until late last year was the No. 2 executive at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, has assets worth $252 million to $611 million, according to a disclosure filing released Friday. That makes Mr. Cohn, now the director of the National Economic Council and a central adviser to Mr. Trump, one of the wealthier members of the already-affluent Trump administration, which includes more than one billionaire.
In addition to the many millions of dollars in cash and stock Mr. Cohn received from Goldman Sachs that made up the lion’s share of his personal assets, he held a slew of positions in publicly traded stocks — many of which he has already said he plans to sell — and in various private entities. Those entities include a stake valued at more than $1 million in a consumer education and consulting business called Payoff, a position in a cosmetics retailer also valued at more than $1 million, investments in several self-storage concerns in Ohio valued at $100,000 or more each, and an investment in a venture capital fund run by Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley powerhouse, valued at $100,000 or more

The White House advisers Stephen K. Bannon, center, and Stephen Miller, left.
STEPHEN CROWLEY / THE NEW YORK TIMES
Bannon made between $1.3 and 2.3 million last year.
Mr. Bannon may be one of the best known figures in the Trump White House, but as the Trump administration goes, he’s probably not one of the wealthiest. But by the standards of many Americans, he appears to be doing quite well.
Mr. Bannon earned at least $1.3 million and perhaps as much as $2.3 million last year, according to the disclosure report.
He disclosed $191,000 in consulting fees he earned from Breitbart News Network, the conservative media organization; $125,333 from Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for the Trump campaign; and $61,539 in salary from the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative nonprofit organization. All three organizations are backed by the major Republican donors Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah.
Mr. Bannon’s most valuable asset was Bannon Strategic Advisors Inc., a privately held consulting firm from which income from his other investments appeared to flow into. It was valued at $5 million to $25 million.
He also listed the value of his Bannon Film Industries at $1 million to $5 million. His bank accounts were valued at as much as $2,250,000, while he listed rental real estate valued at as much as $10.5 million.
Mr. Bannon made clear in his disclosure report that he intended to sell some of his assets, including his stake in Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm that sells “psychographic” profiles that it asserts can predict the personality and hidden political leanings of every American adult.
Mr. Bannon served until last summer as vice president of Cambridge’s board.
— Eric Lipton, Steve Eder and Jonathan Weisman
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner still benefit from their real estate empires.
■ The president’s daughter and son-in-law will remain the beneficiaries of a sprawling real estate and investment business still worth as much as $740 million, despite their new government responsibilities.

■ Ms. Trump will maintain a stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.
■ Mr. Kushner’s financial disclosures said that Ms. Trump earned from $1 million to $5 million from January 2016 to March 2017, and puts the value of her stake at $5 million to $25 million.

Read more from Jesse Drucker, Eric Lipton and Maggie Haberman »


Kellyanne Conway at the Capitol last month.
DOUG MILLS / THE NEW YORK TIMES
Kellyanne Conway made over $800,000 from her consulting firm.
Kellyanne Conway, one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers, is wealthy, but modestly so when compared with some of her superrich colleagues.
Ms. Conway, a Republican strategist and pollster, made over $800,000 last year, her filing shows. As head of her own consulting firm, Ms. Conway’s clients included an assortment of conservative causes, including the National Rifle Association and the Tea Party Patriots, as well as Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm that advised Mr. Trump’s campaign. She was also paid for a speaking engagement at Point72 Asset Management, the investment firm run by the billionaire stock picker Steven A. Co

Not bad for journalism.
Julia Hahn, until she went to work in the White House, was known as the 20-something reporter who filled Breitbart.com with conservative screeds. But she is also quite rich for her age.
A PNC custodial account owned by Ms. Hahn is valued at $500,000 to $1 million. And various stock funds listed on her financial disclosure are worth as much as $1.5 million.
Her work as a journalist was also nothing to sneeze at. As a reporter, she made $117,217 last year at Breitbart. On top of that, she earned $74,082 from Laura Ingraham’s radio show.
— Jonathan Weisman
Several other nuggets from the disclosures...


Omarosa Manigault at the White House in February.
PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS / ASSOCIATED PRESS
■ Omarosa Manigault, a White House aide who is a longtime associate of Mr. Trump and was once a contestant on “The Apprentice,” received a wedding dress, veil and accessories valued at $25,000 in exchange for appearing on the TLC reality show “Say Yes to the Dress.”
■ Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump’s trade czar and resident China hawk, is not a wealthy man, but his salary as an economics professor at a public university wasn’t bad. According to his disclosure form, Mr. Navarro earned $240,000 in salary and bonuses from the University of California, Irvine. He also earned $10,500 for delivering a speech in November to the Casket & Funeral Supply Association of America.
■ Sean Spicer, the press secretary, reported stakes in the Coca-Cola Company, McDonald’s and several real estate investments. But, despite his much-discussed taste for cinnamon-flavored gum, he reported no investments in chewing gum companies (although he does invest in Walmart, which sells chewing gum).
■ Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to Mr. Trump and a former editor at Breitbart News, reported consulting fees of $38,200 from Breitbart. He also reported royalties of $50,000 to $100,000 for his book “Defeating jihad: The Winnable War” — and also said that he signed a contract for a second book.
■ Boris Epshteyn, who served during the presidential campaign as one of Mr. Trump’s chief attack dogs and television talking heads, stills owes over $50,000 on college loans he took out more than a decade ago, his filing indicates. Recently, Mr. Epshteyn left his White House post under circumstances that were unclear.
■ Jason Greenblatt, the Trump Organization lawyer tasked with helping to bring peace to the Middle East, earned $1,025,000 in compensation from Mr. Trump’s company last year.

‘Very blessed and very successful.’
At his daily briefing on Friday, the White House press secretary Sean Spicer tried to put the best spin on the vast wealth that would be on display Friday night:
I think one of the really interesting things that people are going to see today — and I think it’s something that should be celebrated — is that the president has brought a lot of people into this administration, and this White House in particular, who have been very blessed and very successful by this country, and have given up a lot to come into government by setting aside a lot of assets. And I think it speaks volumes to the desire for a lot of these people to fulfill the president’s vision and move the agenda forward that they are willing to list all of their assets, undergo this public scrutiny, but also set aside a lot.
A Friday night document dump.
The White House disclosures fit an age-old pattern in Washington of dumping mountains of documents on Fridays, when normal people have left work and are beginning to enjoy their weekend. Not many are likely to be glued to their computers and television sets to track the wealth of White House officials.

After all, as Josh Lyman, the fictional White House deputy chief of staff on “The West Wing,” put it, “No one reads the paper on Saturday.”
A long list.
Here’s the list of the disclosure forms we’ve received so far:
Stephen K. Bannon, counselor to the president
Thomas Bossert, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism and deputy national security adviser



James W. Carroll, senior counsel
Justin Clark, deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs
Gary D. Cohn, director of the National Economic Council
Conway, Kellyanne, counselor to the president
Reed Cordish, special assistant to the president for intragovernmental and technology initiatives
Makan Delrahim, deputy White House counsel
Uttam Dhillon, special assistant to the president, Ethics Compliance Team
Carlos Diaz Rosillo, director of policy and interagency coordination, Domestic Policy Council
Jessica Ditto, deputy communications director
Ann Donaldson, chief of staff to the White House counsel
John Eisenberg, N.S.C. legal adviser, and deputy counsel to the president for national security affairs, National Security Council
Michael Ellis, associate counsel
Boris Epshteyn, assistant director of communications
Helen Ferre, director of media affairs
Scott Gast, special assistant to the president, Ethics Compliance Team
George Gigicos, director of advance and operations
Robert T. Goad, education policy adviser
Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president
Alexander Gray, deputy director for the defense industrial base, National Trade Council
Jason Greenblatt, special representative for international negotiations
Stephanie Grisham, deputy press secretary

Joseph Hagin, deputy chief of staff for operations
Julia Hahn, deputy policy strategist
Vincent Haley, adviser for policy, strategy and speechwriting, Domestic Policy Council

Hope Hicks, director of strategic communications
Kenneth Juster, deputy assistant to the president for international economic affairs and deputy director of the National Economic Council
Katsas, Gregory, deputy counsel to the president
Joseph K. Kellogg, Chief of Staff and Executive Secretary, National Security Council
Shahira E. Knight, special assistant to the president for tax and retirement policy, National Economic Council
Andrew D. Koenig, special assistant to the president and policy special assistant
Jared Kushner, senior adviser to the president for strategic planning
Gerrit Lansing, chief digital officer
Chris Liddell, director of strategic initiatives for the White House Strategic Development Group
Omarosa Manigault, director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison
Ashley Marquis, chief of staff of the National Economic Council
John McEntee, personal aide to the president
Kathleen McFarland, deputy national security adviser
Donald F. McGahn, counsel to the president
Bill McGinley, associate counsel
Stephen Miller, senior adviser to the president for policy
Peter Navarro, director, National Trade Council
Reince Priebus, chief of staff
Marc Short, director of the office of legislative affairs
Sean Spicer, press secretary
Reporting was contributed by Eric Lipton, Barry Meier, Rachael Abrams, Sarah Cohen, Jeremy Bowers, Andrew Lehren, Steve Eder, Jonathan Weisman, Lara Jakes and Ben Protess.

Mike Flynn could finally end Donald Trump's lucky streak - Independent

Mike Flynn could finally end Donald Trump's lucky streak
Unless his offer to provide evidence for immunity is all just some sort of pathetic Hail Mary to get his job back, Donald Trump should be pretty damn worried about this guy
* Nash Riggins
* @nashriggins
* Saturday 1 April 2017 14:15 BST
Donald Trump is lot like a cockroach – and not just because he’s generally chalk full of horse excrement. You can step on the guy all you want, but he always seems to scuttle away completely unscathed. And he’s survived more nuclear fallouts in the past 70 days than any other so-called politician would ever hope to see in ten lifetimes.
Cabinet resignations, court defeats, legislative setbacks, thousands of lawsuits, allegations of rape, mass protests and the lowest approval rating for a generation are just a “no, never mind” to him. Up until recently, it seemed like Trump’s ego, shameless ambitions and grip on power simply could not be killed.
But Michael Flynn might just be the industrial-grade pesticide the world has been desperately praying for.
Even if you’re unfamiliar with the name, you’ll have caught bits and pieces of his backstory. Flynn was a three-star army general turned ardent Trump warhawk. The two sparked quite a bromance over the course of 2016, and so it was hardly surprising when Trump named Flynn America’s top national security advisor after The Donald was sworn into office.
Within 24 hours of that appointment, Trump fed his friend to the crocodiles and kicked him out of the White House after it leaked Flynn had some alleged dodgy dealings with the Kremlin. Apparently Flynn met with a Russian ambassador to chat about the possibility of removing US sanctions after Trump came to power, and then lied to everybody about it.
Bad call. Critics scoffed at the early face plant, but everybody seemed to move on just fine.
But fast forward two months, and Russia has become Washington’s favourite buzzword. A few days ago, FBI Director James Comey announced that he was finally going to take action, and that he was formally investigating the Trump administration to see if the President’s team may have actually been working alongside Russia to cheat Hillary Clinton out of last year’s election.
And guess which disgraced former general with a huge chip on his shoulder immediately stepped out of the shadows offering to dish the dirt?
That’s right. Michael Flynn and his new, aggressively anti-Trump lawyer have volunteered to tell members of congress and the FBI everything there is to say about America’s greasy new president and his supposed links with Moscow – but only under the sole condition that Flynn is guaranteed total immunity from being prosecuted for what it is he has to say.
Senate insiders have already dismissed Flynn’s immunity offer as “wildly preliminary”, but members of the House Intelligence Committee sound quite keen. And unless this is all just some sort of pathetic Hail Mary to get his job back, Donald Trump should be pretty damn worried about this guy.
After all, as Michael Flynn himself so gingerly pointed out while campaigning for Trump in last year’s election: “When you are given immunity, that means you’ve probably committed a crime.”
We could speculate forever-and-a-day about what sort of crime that may have been, and where the big man with the little hands ultimately fits into all this. But the fact that wild speculation is even on the table speaks volumes as to just how far we as a society have fallen.
Donald Trump has completely and utterly desecrated the integrity of his office. He bathed the American people in snake oil in a desperate bid to reach what he perceived to be the top, and he stepped on a whole lot of friends along the way.
Well, Mr President, karma sure is a bitch – because it looks like Michael Flynn might have been the wrong friend to step on.

Defense Sec. James Mattis: North Korea ‘Has Got to Be Stopped’ - MSNBC News

Defense Sec. James Mattis: North Korea ‘Has Got to Be Stopped’

by ALEXANDER SMITH and GABE JOSELOW

LONDON — After years of North Korea thumbing its nose at the international community, on Friday Defense Secretary James Mattis appeared to signal enough was enough.

"Right now, [North Korea] appears to be going in a very reckless manner … and that has got to be stopped," Mattis said at a press conference in London.

He didn't give any details about how the administration of President Donald Trump plans to deal with the reclusive nation, which, under Kim Jong Un, has drastically increased its missile and nuclear-testing program.

But Mattis' remarks continue a recent trend of Trump officials taking a harder line on North Korea.

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the "diplomatic … efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of de-nuclearization have failed."

He also said that military action was "on the table."

Many experts say that Trump's options are limited, however.

Kim has pledged to develop a weapons capable of striking the U.S. and its allies. Three of the country's nuclear tests were completed under his rule and he conducted more missile tests over the past four years than in the rest of the country's history.

Image: Defense Secretary James Mattis

Defense Secretary James Mattis made the comments during a joint press conference with British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon (not pictured) on Friday. Jack Taylor / Getty Images

Trump could try to levy more sanctions on the country, although these have not stopped previous tests and Tillerson appeared to dismiss this approach earlier this month.

But a full-scale invasion would be unlikely — not to mention extremely difficult — according to U.S. Army strategist Maj. ML Cavanaugh.

Cavanaugh wrote an article in the Modern War Institute at West Point, which is a research center of the United States Military Academy, warning of North Korea's tough, "Afghanistan-like geography" and an army that could act like "a much better-trained, much better-armed version of the Taliban."

An American invasion would also carry the risk of a retaliatory missile strike against America's allies, South Korea and Japan. The South Korean capital of Seoul, with its population of 10 million, is just 50 miles from its border with the North.

Russian Violation of Missile Treaty Draws U.S. Congress Scrutiny - Bloomberg

by Katia Dmitrieva

31 March 2017 at 8:11:34 AM AEDT

U.S. should add artillery in Europe surrounding Russia: Scher

Pentagon this month said missile deployment threatens NATO

Russia’s deployment of a ground-launched cruise missile in apparent violation of an international treaty drew scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers proposing a tougher stance in support of NATO allies.

Republican Representative Ted Poe of Texas said the U.S. is “living in fantasy land” if it believes that Moscow will comply with the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF, which bans both countries from owning, producing, or testing a ground-launched cruise missile capable of a distance of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (3,420 miles.)

General Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a hearing this month that the missile deployment, to a location he wouldn’t identify, presents a risk to many U.S. facilities in Europe as well as to allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. One battalion of the prohibited missiles is based near the southern city of Volgograd, the New York Times reported last month, citing U.S. officials it didn’t identify.

“There is a chance that we can convince Russia that it is better off coming back into compliance with the treaty, but up to this point, making that case to them through diplomacy has been ineffective, and I doubt that will change," Robert Scher, a former assistant secretary of Defense in the Obama administration, said in a prepared statement to members of two House subcommittees Thursday.

Scher said President Donald Trump’s administration should consider developing a ground-launched cruise missile similar to the one Russia deployed and asking Eastern European allies to add more artillery that can reach key targets in Russia.

In response to Russia’s arms deployment, Poe and Republican Representative Mike Rogers have introduced H.R. 1182, which would allow the U.S. to develop its own intermediate range missiles.

The hearing comes as investigations into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and potential contacts between Russian officials and associates of Trump’s campaign, continue to dog the White House. The Senate Intelligence Committee held its first public hearing Thursday on Russian activities during the election.

Hero Judge Shreds Bank of America for Putting Couple Through ‘Kafkaesque’ Foreclosure Nightmare - Wall Street Journal

Hero Judge Shreds Bank of America for Putting Couple Through ‘Kafkaesque’ Foreclosure Nightmare Posted: 30 Mar 2017 09:29 AM PDT “Franz Kafka lives. This automatic stay violation case reveals that he works at Bank of America.” So begins the epic 107-page ruling by a judge in California, who found that Bank of America’s “brazen” and “heartless” behavior, as well as “institutional obstinance and dishonesty” during an improper foreclosure, merited fines of $46 million. In his ruling, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Christopher Klein described the homeowners’ ordeal as a “kafkaesque nightmare,” summing up their surreal sense of confusion and despair. He also compared their trials to the Greek myth of Sisyphus—the guy condemned to rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity—and even referenced one of the biggest scandals in U.S. politics. “There comes a point at which this case is reminiscent of Watergate: the denial and coverup becomes worse than the crime,” Klein wrote. (The Consumerist has a link to the entire ruling.) The crazy case stems back to 2009, when the homeowners, Erik and Renee Sundquist, sought a loan modification for their house in Sacramento. Bank of America, which had taken over the bank that originally gave the couple a mortgage, instructed them to stop their monthly payments “Their sole reason for defaulting, which they did with considerable reluctance (their credit score had been above 800), was acquiesce in Bank of America’s demand that they default as a precondition for loan modification,” the court ruling explains. The bank then “led the Sundquists on a not-very-merry chase by inviting and entertaining mortgage modification applications it had no intention of granting,” the judge writes. A “game of cat-and-mouse” commenced. “With one paw, Bank of America batted the debtors between about 20 loan modification requests or supplements that routinely were either ‘lost’ or declared insufficient, or incomplete.” The Sundquists filed for bankruptcy in 2010, which should have halted foreclosure proceedings, but Bank of America slapped them with an eviction notice anyway. They fled to a $4,000-a-month rental, only to find out later—without being formally notified by the bank—that the home was still theirs after all. While the Sundquists were gone, the house had been looted, major appliances were stolen, and they came home to face a $20,000 fine from the homeowners association because the landscaping had been ignored. Meanwhile, Renee Sundquist suffered post-traumatic stress disorder that she says caused her to lose a job, and her husband tried to commit suicide. The couple also said their children were repeatedly terrified when bank agents showed up at the house unexpectedly and banged on sliding glass doors while the kids practiced piano. Many of these personal details come from the extensive journal kept by Renee Sundquist throughout the ordeal. The journal wound up being invaluable to their case, and is quoted throughout the court ruling. A sample excerpt, concerning her mother’s role as a co-signer of their loan: My mother sent a letter to the bank advising them she was an investor and wanted to make sure she did not lose her investment. She advised that she had the funds to pay for the foreclosure. I called to confirm that the bank had received the letter from my mother and they said they were converting their system and all documents were lost. And another journal entry: Called the bank talked to a representative who said the modifications were not real. When I told her my mother could pay it off the representative advised against because the modification doesn’t mean anything and it is just a way to create funds for the bank before foreclosure. Judge Klein ruled that the Sundquists would receive $1.075 million in damages. Among other things, Bank of America was deemed guilty of “foreclosing on the Sundquist residence, prosecuting an unlawful detainer action, forcing them to move, secretly rescinding the foreclosure, failing to protect the residence from looting, refusing to pay for Sundquist property lost, and subjecting the Sundquists to a mortgage modification charade,” the ruling states. The judge also found that punitive damages of $45 million, to be paid by Bank of America mostly to consumer advocacy groups and law schools, were necessary to serve as a “deterrent function” to all lenders considering such practices. “To award punitive damages measured by a conventional multiplier of three to six times of the Sundquist compensatory damages would be laughed off in Bank of America’s boardroom as a mere ‘cost of doing business’ payable out of the petty cash account,” Klein wrote. “The remedy needs to fit the wrong. The award should be sufficient to serve those interests, which may be an ‘eye-popping’ sum in the view of bystanders not possessed of great wealth.” A Bank of America spokesman described some of Klein’s rulings as “unprecedented and unsupported,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

How Lyft Is Capitalizing on Uber’s Scandals - TIME Business

How Lyft Is Capitalizing on Uber’s Scandals Posted: 28 Mar 2017 03:00 AM PDT For the companies that believe that touting their values can be a path to profits, these are heady days. Customers have not only come to expect that companies stand for something, in addition to selling whatever they’re selling, but many Americans are more attuned to expressing beliefs through how they spend. And one company posed to reap benefits from that zeitgeist is ride app company Lyft. “We’re woke. Our community is woke, and the U.S. population is woke,” Lyft President John Zimmer tells TIME, sitting in his five-year-old company’s San Francisco headquarters. “There’s an awakening … Our vote matters, our choice matters, the seat we take matters.” Many of the millions who have used ride apps live in urban markets where residents were left feeling like their votes didn’t matter in the last election and have turned to their wallets to feel a sense of agency. So when Lyft’s massive rival Uber started becoming the subject of a relentless stream of bad headlines in late January, some users started questioning Uber’s values as a company — and looking around for an alternative. “We’re not the nice guys,” Zimmer says. “We’re a better boyfriend.” Lyft did its best to demonstrate that behavior during the final weekend in January. President Trump had just issued his first controversial immigration order, which temporarily banned refugees and limited travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, and taxi drivers were striking in protest at New York City’s JFK airport on a Saturday, along with crowds of angry locals. That evening, Uber sent out a tweet noting that the company was still offering rides to the airport and there would no surge pricing, hikes that typically take effect in times of low supply and high demand. Though Uber later explained that the move was meant to let riders know they still had a way to catch their flights and to show respect for the taxi drivers — by making sure the company was not profiting off the strike, much like the company limits surge prices during disasters — Internet critics were fast to interpret the move as heartless strike-breaking behavior. A #DeleteUber hashtag started trending Saturday night into Sunday morning, as people shared screen shots of flushing the app off their phones on social media. By some counts, more than 200,000 users left Uber as January gave way to February, an exodus that Lyft employees started noticing in the form of an influx — one boosted by the fact that Zimmer and Lyft CEO Logan Green decided to make a $1 million donation to the American Civil Liberties Union that same weekend. Some of the company’s employees cautioned against the donation, suggesting that taking a political stance might alienate some users. “There was risk,” says Zimmer, whose wife is in the U.S. on a green card from Spain, “and that was part of the reason we wanted to take action. It should be more okay to stick your neck out.” The executives scheduled an email on Saturday night that would announce the donation on Sunday morning, as Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said that he would maintain a position on Trump’s business advisory council despite the “unjust” order. “In our minds, there’s been a contrast in the values, there’s been a contrast in the type of business we’re building,” says Zimmer. “And so we weren’t shocked that there was a contrast. There’s been that contrast.” As media stories about the rival companies swirled that weekend, Lyft saw a 40% increase in installations of the app, the company says, and more than a 60% increase in activations of the app (meaning people put in their credit card details so they can actually hail a ride), compared to what might normally be a low single-digit increase week over week. The pop happened in New York first, says VP of operations Woody Hartman, before spreading to nearby cities like Boston and Philadelphia, and then to the West Coast, “where the ACLU investment, or donation, really resonated.” Hartman says they questioned whether they’d see defectors in more conservative markets like the areas surrounding Atlanta and Dallas, but downloads ticked up there too. Employees scrambled to alert drivers through emails and texts — both active ones and those that had lapsed— that there would be increased demand, knowing the company had one shot to deliver sufficient supply to new users if they were to keep them around. The operations team offered bonuses to get drivers on the road, and Hartman says that in major markets, Lyft was generally able to hit three-minute-or-less wait times as Sunday evening rides gave way to Monday morning commutes. That weekend marked a turning point for the company, employees say, one the company has been able to stick to in part because Uber has had so many tough PR days since then. Some Lyft employees sat in disbelief as a female engineer who left Uber wrote a viral memo alleging sexism and mismanagement at the company; as Uber weathered allegations that it had deceived local government regulators through so-called “greyballing”; as CEO Travis Kalanick was caught lashing out at an Uber driver on a dash cam and made promises that he would “grow up”; and as Uber’s president left after less than a year on the job and early investors wrote an open letter criticizing “toxic patterns” in the company’s culture. Under pressure from riders and company employees alike, Kalanick resigned from Trump’s advisory group. On a March 21 conference call, Uber board member Arianna Huffington and other company representatives said the company “must change,” as reporters repeatedly asked whether the board was considering asking Kalanick to step down. They acknowledged that relationships with many drivers are “frayed” and that the company was working to engage those workers in a “more human” way. An investigation into company practices by former Attorney General Eric Holder’s law firm is ongoing, they said, expected to be concluded in April, when those findings will be made public and shared with the press. The ride-app market, including Lyft, has been blasted for plenty as a whole. Both Lyft and Uber have been criticized for their employment practices, including how they deal with worker status. Drivers for both companies have been accused of racially discriminating. Both have been challenged for not releasing reports on company diversity — though both say those are forthcoming. But Lyft has had a reputation as a more welcoming, friendly company than “other rideshare programs,” as one survey commissioned by the company put it, since the ride-app war began. From early days, Uber and Lyft positioned themselves as different services, even though they provide essentially the same function for customers. Lyft, founded in 2012, was all fist bumps and fluffy pink mustaches, advertising ride-sharing as a way to build community and encouraging drivers to invite riders to sit in the front seat. Uber, launched in 2009, was all black-cars and cool factor, advertising the promise that everyone deserves their own private driver, the type of employee with whom one has little obligation to chitchat. Lyft’s feel-good vibes certainly didn’t stop Uber from growing into the most valuable startup in the world, worth more than $60 billion, 10 times the valuation that Lyft reportedly is chasing. And Zimmer says it took time for Lyft to realize that a reputation for warmth wouldn’t mean much until the company’s wait times and prices were as just as good as “the other guys.” He says they are competitive on both those factors in U.S. markets now and believes cultural “contrasts are becoming more and more important.” Lyft has tried to play up those contrasts in the recent past, as in ads released late last year that featured a thinly-veiled “Ride Corp” and painted Lyft as the bright-side alternative to callous guys hatching evil plans in a board room. But Zimmer says the company is done with such attacks. “Let’s be Lyft and let’s focus on our customer,” Zimmer says. “That’s what we can control and that’s what ultimately is going to enable us to win. Honestly. That’s how we are.” On Sunday, Lyft announced a new feature called “Round Up & Donate” with a splashy ad in the New York Times. In the app, the ad explains, users will have the option to round up their fare to the nearest dollar and donate that money to a specified charity. The ad does not mention Uber by name but says “treating people better” is part of how Lyft does business. There can be big drawbacks to overtly going after No. 1 in a marketplace when a company is No. 2. “It’s often a thin line in a consumer’s mind between attacking the competitor,” says Rohit Bhargava, who teaches marketing at Georgetown University and runs a firm called the Non-Obvious Company, “and attacking them as a consumer for buying from that competitor.” That’s the kind of strategy better suited to a “very distant” No. 2 or a No. 3 trying to establish itself, he says. Lyft is still a pretty distant No. 2. After the #DeleteUber hashtag started trending, about 5% of Uber’s market share shifted to Lyft (“It may have been a little more than that,” Zimmer says), according to TXN Solutions, which tracks debit and credit card spending. Still, that meant Lyft was capturing about 20% of the ride app market to Uber’s nearly 80%. On the conference call, amid the mea culpas, the Uber representatives said the company has still experienced faster growth in the first quarter of 2017 than it did the previous year. Though Lyft now covers areas where more than 70% of the U.S. population lives, Uber reached that point about two years ago. But both have room to grow: though two-thirds of U.S. adults had heard about ride apps by the beginning of last year, according to Pew, only 15% had actually used them. Georgetown’s Bhargava believes that Uber has benefitted from what he calls passive loyalty, the kind that exists out of convenience and can quickly evaporate when a consumer is given a reason and opportunity to go elsewhere. “And the cost to switch in the case of Uber versus Lyft is pretty low,” he says. “You press a different button and you get your ride.” Zimmer tells TIME that Lyft now has 40% of the market share in multiple U.S. markets and that however ambitious it may seem, the company is serious about plans to be the top ride-app in the U.S. eventually. When asked how he would characterize the historically fraught relationship between the two companies these days, with headquarters about 15 minutes apart, the talkative Zimmer goes quiet. He pauses for a full twenty seconds. “We’re out to win,” he says. “And they’re our competition.”

What Cold War Intrigue Can Tell Us About the Trump-Russia Inquiry - New York Times

What Cold War Intrigue Can Tell Us About the Trump-Russia Inquiry
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By JAMES RISEN
MARCH 29, 2017
WASHINGTON — It began with evidence of a breach of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and has now evolved into a sprawling counterintelligence investigation to determine whether there was any coordination between members of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign staff and the Russian government, perhaps even influencing the 2016 election.
When James B. Comey, the F.B.I.director, went before Congress on March 20 and confirmed the existence of the Trump-Russia investigation, it echoed of the Cold War investigations in which the bureau and the C.I.A. searched for agents hidden in the government who had spied for Moscow.

A look back at those Cold War cases may reveal lessons for today’s investigators. Above all, those past cases show it could take years before the new investigation uncovers any answers.

It starts with an unexplained incident.
Spy hunts usually begin with an unexplained incident. In the Trump-Russia case, there was the hacking of the D.N.C.’s computers. In 1985, there was an arrest on the streets of Moscow.
In June 1985, Burton Gerber, the chief of the Soviet-East European division of the Central Intelligence Agency, was about to sit down to dinner at his home in Washington when he received devastating news. Paul Stombaugh, a C.I.A. case officer, had just been arrested by the K.G.B. in Moscow. Mr. Stombaugh had been caught while he was on a clandestine mission to meet the C.I.A.’s most important Russian spy, Adolf Tolkachev, a scientist at a secret military design facility who had been providing the Americans with top-secret information about Soviet weapons systems. Mr. Gerber knew that Mr. Stombaugh’s arrest meant that Mr. Tolkachev, an agent the C.I.A. had code-named GTVANQUISH, had certainly been arrested as well.
The arrest and subsequent execution of Mr. Tolkachev was the most damaging of a series of mysterious spy losses suffered by the C.I.A. in 1985. In fact, there was so much espionage activity between the C.I.A. and the K.G.B. that burst into public view in 1985 that it became known as the Year of the Spy.
But why?
Debate swirled inside the cloistered world of American counterintelligence. Could all the spy losses be blamed on C.I.A. incompetence? Or had they resulted from something more sinister, like a Russian mole inside the agency?
That 1985 debate has in some ways been mirrored in the public debate about the hacking of the D.N.C. during the 2016 presidential campaign. Did some hacker simply take advantage of the committee’s cyber-incompetence, or was an American political party the specific and premeditated target of Russian intelligence?
It took years for counterintelligence officials at the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. to put the pieces together and finally solve the puzzle of 1985. Eventually, they realized that they had been confused because there were so many investigative threads to try to follow at once. For example, in August 1985 — just two months after Mr. Stombaugh’s arrest — a K.G.B. officer, Vitaly Yurchenko, defected to the United States, and identified a C.I.A. officer, Edward Lee Howard, as a Russian spy. Mr. Howard escaped to Russia, and Mr. Yurchenko then redefected to Moscow.
American officials were left to wonder whether Mr. Howard had been responsible for the spy losses — and if Mr. Yurchenko’s defection had been genuine or whether he had been ordered by the K.G.B. to defect in order to point them toward Mr. Howard and confuse the Americans.
Ultimately, the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. discovered that it had been difficult to determine what was causing all of the losses because the Russians had more than one mole hidden in the United States government. Both Aldrich Ames, a C.I.A. case officer, and Robert Hanssen, an F.B.I. agent, began spying for the Soviets in 1985. Both gave Moscow the names of Soviets working for the United States, but Mr. Ames and Mr. Hanssen didn’t give the Russians the same exact information.
It was only after Mr. Ames was arrested in 1994 that counterintelligence officials realized there had to be another mole, because Mr. Ames had not known certain things that had been compromised, including the existence of an espionage investigation of a State Department official, Felix Bloch. After Mr. Ames was arrested, the United States secretly began a new mole hunt, which ultimately led to the arrest of Mr. Hanssen in 2001.
Thus, the counterintelligence investigations into the 1985 losses lasted 16 years.
Like their Cold War predecessors, American counterintelligence investigators today face the daunting task of trying to unravel myriad business and personal connectionsbetween the Russian government and other Russian entities and people associated with the Trump campaign. It is certain to take officials time to determine which connections are the most significant to their investigation.
Counterintelligence investigations are conducted jointly by the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., with support from other agencies like the National Security Agency. Today, the new Trump-Russia investigation is being conducted by a joint interagency task force, as were the spy hunts of the Cold War.

But interagency counterintelligence operations are often bogged down by competition over jurisdiction, which can lead to frustrating bureaucratic delays and sometimes missed opportunities.

Turf wars badly slowed the investigation of Mr. Hanssen and allowed him to continue to spy until long after the Cold War.
For years, the F.B.I. was convinced that the mole they were hunting was another C.I.A. officer like Mr. Ames, and refused to believe it was possible that an F.B.I. agent was a traitor.
Their fixation on the C.I.A. led investigators to focus on Brian J. Kelley, a longtime C.I.A. counterintelligence officer. The F.B.I.’s obsession with Mr. Kelley was reinforced because of a series of incredible similarities between his life and Mr. Hanssen’s.
Mr. Kelley, like Mr. Hanssen, had known about the investigation of Mr. Bloch. Mr. Kelley lived on a street in Vienna, Va., where Mr. Hanssen had once lived while he was a Russian spy, and Mr. Kelley jogged in Nottoway Park in Vienna, the same park where Mr. Hanssen arranged a series of dead-drops with the K.G.B. An F.B.I. team covertly broke into Mr. Kelley’s house and found a map of Nottoway Park with X’s marked on it, which the F.B.I. was convinced was Mr. Kelley’s spy map.
When they later confronted Mr. Kelley with the map, he asked them, “Where did you get my jogging map?” It turned out that he liked to time his runs from point to point in the park.
Defectors play a key role.
Almost every major spy case is finally solved thanks to defectors from the other side. The lengthy counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Ames was aided by a Russian spy, code-named AVENGER, who provided critical information that pointed toward Mr. Ames. The Hanssen case was also finally solved with the help of a Russian spy who brought out K.G.B. files that helped identify Mr. Hanssen.
The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. do not like to admit that they rely so heavily on defectors to solve their cases. But it is possible that the Trump-Russia case may not be cracked until the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. persuades a Russian intelligence officer to change sidesand provide incriminating information.
But in such a highly politicized case that has the potential to change history, a Russian defector will be met with enormous skepticism, even inside the counterintelligence world. Probably the closest Cold War parallel is the bitter case of Yuri Nosenko.
Mr. Nosenko was a K.G.B. officer who defected to the C.I.A. in 1964 and brought with him the answer to one of the biggest mysteries of modern times: Was the Soviet Union responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? At the time, the C.I.A. was not certain, since Lee Harvey Oswald had defected to Russia and then returned to the United States before killing Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Nosenko told the C.I.A. that the K.G.B. was not behind the Kennedy assassination. In fact, he said that the K.G.B. had been so alarmed after the Kennedy assassination that it searched its own files and could not find any evidence that Mr. Oswald had ever worked for the K.G.B.
But C.I.A. officials, led by the counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, were convinced that Mr. Nosenko was a double agent sent by Moscow to muddy the waters. An earlier K.G.B. defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn, had convinced Mr. Angleton that every K.G.B. defector after him would be a double agent. As a result, Mr. Nosenko was held incommunicado for three years in a secret prison at “the Farm,” the C.I.A.’s training center at Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Va. After the C.I.A. finally realized Mr. Nosenko was telling the truth, he was released in 1967, given $80,000 by the C.I.A. and resettled under a new name.

It ends with damage assessments, political posturing and untold secrets.
Even after an arrest is made, counterintelligence officials can spend several more years trying to determine exactly how much damage was inflicted. Often that damage assessment takes on a political tinge, because officials want to either inflate the damage or play it down, depending on what an official or an agency or a department stands to win or lose. That will almost certainly be true with the Trump-Russia investigation.

Frequently, the damage assessment reports remain classified, and the American public is never told how the story really ends.


NYT

Trump administration sought to block Sally Yates from testifying to Congress on Russia - Washinton Post

Trump administration sought to block Sally Yates from testifying to Congress on Russia

By Devlin Barrett and Adam Entous March 28 at 7:28 PM 

The Trump administration sought to block former acting attorney general Sally Yates from testifying in the House investigation of possible links between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s campaign, according to letters provided to The Washington Post. The effort to keep Yates from testifying has further angered Democrats, who have accused Republicans of trying to damage the inquiry. 

According to the letters, the Justice Department notified Yates earlier this month that the administration considers her possible testimony — including on the ouster of former national security adviser Michael Flynn for his contacts with the Russian ambassador — to be off-limits in a congressional hearing because the topics are covered by attorney-client privilege or the presidential communication privilege.

[Read the letters on Sally Yates testifying before Congress]

The issue of Yates’s testimony adds to the political controversy surrounding the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian meddling in last year’s election and any possible coordination between Trump associates and Moscow.

David O’Neil, an attorney for Yates, met at the Justice Department to discuss the issue with government officials on Thursday. At the meeting, O’Neil presented a letter in which he said the Justice Department had “advised” him that Yates’s official communications on issues of interest to the House panel are “client confidences” that cannot be disclosed without written consent. O’Neil challenged that interpretation as “overbroad” in the letter.

O’Neil, the Justice Department responded with another objection: that Yates’s communications with the White House are probably covered by “presidential communications privilege,” and referred him to the White House.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

O’Neil then wrote to White House Counsel Donald McGahn, saying that he believed any privilege had been waived as a result of past White House statements and that Yates planned to testify unless he heard back from McGahn.

But that same day, the hearing, which also would have included former CIA director John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., was canceled by the House Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and any White House decision on Yates’s testimony became moot.

In his Tuesday briefing, press secretary Sean Spicer said that the White House did not weigh in on whether Yates could testify. “To suggest in any way, shape or form that we stood in the way of that is 100 percent false,” he said.

Nunes has said he canceled the hearing to first hear from FBI Director James B. Comey in a classified setting. That session was also canceled.

Democrats charge that Nunes has aligned himself too closely with the White House to conduct an independent probe.

Then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates at the Justice Department on May 15, 2015. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

“You see the unraveling of this committee happening overnight for no good reason,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a committee member. “We have a responsibility to do this investigation.”

O’Neil’s meeting at the Justice Department and the exchange of letters came to light as the House GOP leadership continued to stand by Nunes. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) rejected demands that Nunes recuse himself. Nunes said Tuesday that he had no plans to step aside.

Yates was the deputy attorney general in the final years of the Obama administration and served as the acting attorney general in the first days of the Trump administration.

Trump fired Yates in January after she ordered Justice Department lawyers not to defend his first immigration order temporarily banning entry to the United States for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees from around the world.

As acting attorney general, Yates played a key part in the investigation surrounding Flynn, who was ousted after revelations that he had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Yates and Brennan had made clear to government officials by Thursday that their testimony to the committee would probably contradict some statements that White House officials had made, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

O’Neil and Ken Wainstein, a lawyer for Brennan, declined to comment.

During his press briefing Tuesday, Spicer said of Yates: “I hope she testifies. I look forward to it.’’

Spicer said the White House did not seek to have the House hearing canceled.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the panel was aware that Yates “sought permission to testify from the White House. Whether the White House’s desire to avoid a public claim of executive privilege to keep her from providing the full truth on what happened contributed to the decision to cancel today’s hearing, we do not know. But we would urge that the open hearing be rescheduled without delay and that Ms. Yates be permitted to testify freely and openly.’’

[Chairman and partisan: The dual roles of Devin Nunes raise questions about House investigation]

In January, Yates warned McGahn that statements White House officials, including Vice President Pence, had made about Flynn’s contact with the ambassador were incorrect and could therefore expose the national security adviser to future blackmail by the Russians.

In his March 23 letter — addressed to acting assistant attorney general Samuel Ramer — O’Neil noted that Yates was willing to testify and that she would avoid discussing classified information and details that could compromise investigations. The correspondence was later shared with the House Intelligence Committee.

O’Neil went on to memorialize the government’s position:

“The Department of Justice has advised that it believes there are further constraints on the testimony Ms. Yates may provide at the [House Intelligence Committee] hearing. Generally, we understand that the department takes the position that all information Ms. Yates received or actions she took in her capacity as Deputy Attorney General and acting Attorney General are client confidences that she may not disclose absent written consent of the department,’’ he wrote.

O’Neil continued: “We believe that the department’s position in this regard is overbroad, incorrect, and inconsistent with the department’s historical approach to the congressional testimony of current and former officials.

“In particular, we believe that Ms. Yates should not be obligated to refuse to provide nonclassified facts about the department’s notification to the White House of concerns about the conduct of a senior official. Requiring Ms. Yates to refuse to provide such information is particularly untenable given that multiple senior administration officials have publicly described the same events.’’

The following day, Scott Schools, a senior Justice Department lawyer, replied to O’Neil, writing that Yates’s conversations with the White House “are likely covered by the presidential communications privilege and possibly the deliberative process privilege. The president owns those privileges. Therefore, to the extent Ms. Yates needs consent to disclose the details of those communications to [the intelligence panel], she needs to consult with the White House. She need not obtain separate consent from the department.’’

That letter, in essence, marked Justice Department officials backing away from their earlier strictures, saying that although they thought executive privilege probably applied to Yates’s discussions, that was a conversation she would have to have with lawyers at the White House.

In response, O’Neil sent a letter Friday to McGahn, the White House counsel, saying that any claim of privilege “has been waived as a result of the multiple public comments of current senior White House officials describing the January 2017 communications. Nevertheless, I am advising the White House of Ms. Yates’ intention to provide information.’’

He closed the letter by saying that if he did not hear back from the White House by 10 a.m. Monday, he would assume that it “does not exert executive privilege over these matters with respect to the hearings or other settings.’’

The cancellation of the hearing made O’Neil’s deadline moot, although Spicer said the lack of a response to the lawyer’s letter showed the administration had no problem with Yates testifying.

Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.