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.

Mysterious Buyer of Trump’s Childhood Home Said to Be From China - New York Times

Mysterious Buyer of Trump’s Childhood Home Said to Be From China

By SARAH MASLIN NIR
MARCH 28, 2017
They first arrived in late January, caravans of black Escalades driving along a small street in Jamaica Estates, an upscale neighborhood in Queens, and stopping in front of a modest Tudor-style house that had just been sold at auction: the home where President Trump lived as a boy. Out stepped a stream of people in business suits, according to a neighbor, all speaking Chinese.
The visits spiked between the auction and the closing of the sale last week, according to the neighbor, who did not want to be identified because of concerns about her privacy. It was revealed last week that the home had been bought by Trump Birth House, a limited liability company that obscured the identity of the person behind it.

But while the buyer’s identity remained unknown, a person with knowledge of the deal said that the new owner, who spent over $2 million for the childhood home of the current president of the United States, is a woman from China.

“Why is there an influx of Chinese people interested in this house, of all people?” the neighbor said she recalled wondering. “What do they want?”
The house on Wareham Place has become another curiosity in the vast orbit of properties connected to Mr. Trump, even though he last lived in the five-bedroom home, built by his father, Fred C. Trump, when he was 4. The house’s intrigue lies not just in the price it fetched in an auction by Paramount Realty USA — $2.14 million, more than double the price of comparable houses in the area — but also in the mystery surrounding the buyer. She remains unknown, shrouded behind the limited liability company.
They first arrived in late January, caravans of black Escalades driving along a small street in Jamaica Estates, an upscale neighborhood in Queens, and stopping in front of a modest Tudor-style house that had just been sold at auction: the home where President Trump lived as a boy. Out stepped a stream of people in business suits, according to a neighbor, all speaking Chinese.
The visits spiked between the auction and the closing of the sale last week, according to the neighbor, who did not want to be identified because of concerns about her privacy. It was revealed last week that the home had been bought by Trump Birth House, a limited liability company that obscured the identity of the person behind it.

But while the buyer’s identity remained unknown, a person with knowledge of the deal said that the new owner, who spent over $2 million for the childhood home of the current president of the United States, is a woman from China.

“Why is there an influx of Chinese people interested in this house, of all people?” the neighbor said she recalled wondering. “What do they want?”
The house on Wareham Place has become another curiosity in the vast orbit of properties connected to Mr. Trump, even though he last lived in the five-bedroom home, built by his father, Fred C. Trump, when he was 4. The house’s intrigue lies not just in the price it fetched in an auction by Paramount Realty USA — $2.14 million, more than double the price of comparable houses in the area — but also in the mystery surrounding the buyer. She remains unknown, shrouded behind the limited liability company.


A thin trail of documents associated with the sale led first to a second-story office on Main Street in Flushing, Queens, of Michael X. Tang, a lawyer who represents Trump Birth House. In the cramped and bustling office, which, according to its website, specializes in facilitating Chinese purchases of American real estate, a woman at a desk welcomed visitors.
“Oh, about the Trump house,” she said. She continued: Mr. Tang declined to comment.
Documents show that Mr. Tang was also the lawyer for a seemingly unrelated transaction on a palatial home in Old Westbury, N.Y., which sold for more than $3.6 million in 2014 to a person named Jiying Wei. The redbrick mansion, tucked at the end of a cul-de-sac and abutted by a private tennis court, is a far cry from the modest butter-colored childhood home of Mr. Trump. But, according to a person with knowledge of the sale, the mansion’s owner is a relative of the woman from China who bought the Trump family home.
Standing in the collonaded entryway of her home a few doors down in Old Westbury, a neighbor, who declined to give her name for privacy reasons, deepened the mystery: The only person who lives in the mansion, she said, is the family’s son, a local college student; the rest of the family lives in China.
The trail dead-ended at the cul-de-sac: The house was empty and the owner could not be reached.
“I did have some expectation that the purchaser would be a huge Trump supporter from within America,” Misha Haghani, principal of Paramount Realty USA, said of the Jamaica Estates home. He declined to reveal the identity of the buyer. “But it is entirely possible that the purchaser is a huge Trump supporter from outside of America,” he said.
Cathy Han, a real estate agent in New York who specializes in marketing high-end properties to Chinese buyers — including apartments in Trump-owned buildings — said she was not surprised that the home had been purchased by a Chinese buyer.
“When I saw it was Trump’s birth house property for sale, I knew immediately it would get a lot of attention from Chinese buyers,” Ms. Han said. “I know he is a controversial figure in the States, but among Chinese people, Trump is a very popular kind of character in China.”
She said the image that Mr. Trump liked to promote of himself as a successful businessman resonated in China.
“The whole thing about Trump is he has no experience in politics, but now he is the president of the U.S.A.,” she said. “The story is like a movie: It’s kind of inspiring, in a way, that a person can rise up to that position. And I think most Chinese people kind of respect that journey.”
The home had been owned by Isaac Kestenberg, purchased with his wife, Claudia, in 2008 for $782,500. On Election Day last year, as Mr. Trump’s ascendancy seemed possible, Michael Davis, a real estate investor, made an offer on the house, he said, ultimately purchasing it for about $1.4 million. Neither Mr. Kestenberg nor Mr. Davis knows who bought it this time, they said.

The sale to Trump Birth House closed on March 23. “I hope that the broader economy has as much lift from the president’s policies as the president’s childhood home got,” Mr. Davis said.

On Tuesday, rain pelted the crocuses popping up outside the home on Wareham Place. The house appeared to have been emptied. Around 1 p.m. a worker arrived in a National Grid van.
The new owner couldn’t be found, he said, so he had come to turn off the power.
Eli Rosenberg and Nate Schweber contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

The Stock Market Barely Recovered After Losses From the GOP’s Health Care Failure - TIME Business

The Stock Market Barely Recovered After Losses From the GOP’s Health Care Failure Posted: 27 Mar 2017 02:24 PM PDT (NEW YORK) — Worries that Washington may not be able to help businesses as much as once thought knocked stock indexes down hard early Monday, but they clawed back most of their losses and ended the day mixed. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 2.39 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,341.59 for its seventh drop in the last eight days. The Dow Jones industrial average sank 45.74, or 0.2 percent, to 20,550.98, while the Nasdaq composite index rose 11.64, or 0.2 percent, to 5,840.37. When trading opened for the day, it looked as if losses would be much worse. The S&P 500 sank from the start and was down as much as 0.9 percent. The weakness followed last week’s failure by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, something they’ve been pledging to do for years, which raised doubts that Washington can push through promises to help businesses. Investors have been anticipating that President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress will cut taxes, loosen regulations for companies and institute other corporate-friendly policies. Indexes recovered most of their losses in the afternoon, largely thanks to gains in hospital and other health care stocks. Tax cuts, deregulation and other business-friendly moves could still happen, but even if they don’t, the stock market has several pillars of support, said John Manley, chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management. “Trump lucked out when he got elected president, because it was just as earnings were coming out of a two-year slumber,” he said. “I think it’s been as much, if not more, about earnings as it’s been him” behind the 9.4 percent rise for the S&P 500 since Election Day. An improving economy is translating into bigger profits for businesses, which are set to report their first-quarter results in the coming weeks. The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, is moving very slowly in raising interest rates and is loath to apply the brakes to the economy too quickly. “Investors have to acknowledge that a 5 percent correction can happen at any time, and the fact that we haven’t had a 1 percent down day for so long is extraordinary,” Manley said. “But the things that are usually responsible for a major market decline just don’t seem to be in place.” The S&P 500 has lost 1 percent in a day just once since mid-October. Interest rates fell Monday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped to 2.37 percent from 2.41 percent late Friday. Just a couple weeks ago, it was above 2.60 percent. Bank stocks have tracked the movements of Treasury yields recently, because higher interest rates would allow them to charge more for loans and reap bigger profits. Investors also expected financial companies to be some of the biggest beneficiaries of easier regulations with a Republican-led White House. Financial stocks in the S&P 500 dropped 0.5 percent, one of the larger losses among the 11 sectors that make up the index. Morgan Stanley fell 88 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $41.58, and Capital One Financial lost $1.67, or 2 percent, to $82.13. Hospital stocks were among the strongest performers. The Republican health care plan would have resulted in 24 million additional uninsured people in a decade, according to a tally by the Congressional Budget Office. And hospitals take care of patients, whether they’re insured or not. HCA Holdings jumped $4.45, or 5.2 percent, to $90.49 for the biggest gain in the S&P 500. Universal Health Services rose $4.08, or 3.3 percent, to $125.97. Also demonstrating the swing from nervousness in the morning to a more measured mood in the afternoon was the VIX index, which tracks how much traders are paying to protect against upcoming drops in the S&P 500. Early Monday, the VIX jumped nearly 17 percent and was close to its highest level since mid-November. It calmed through the day and was down by the afternoon. The price of gold rose $7.20 to settle at $1,255.70 an ounce. Silver rose 36 cents to $18.11 per ounce. Copper was close to flat at $2.63 per pound. Benchmark U.S. crude fell 24 cents to settle at $47.73 per barrel. Brent crude, used to price international oils, fell 5 cents to $50.57 a barrel. Natural gas fell 2 cents to $3.05 per 1,000 cubic feet, wholesale gasoline rose a penny to $1.62 per gallon and heating oil was close to flat at $1.50 per gallon. The dollar fell to 110.57 Japanese yen from 110.80 late Friday. The euro rose to $1.0868 from $1.0808, and the British pound rose to $1.2566 from $1.2500. Stocks were weak around the world. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index dropped 1.4 percent, South Korea’s Kospi index lost 0.6 percent and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong fell 0.7 percent. In Europe, the German DAX lost 0.6 percent, the French CAC 40 fell 0.1 percent and the FTSE 100 in London dropped 0.6 percent.

Sean Spicer Tells A Grown Woman To Stop Shaking Her Head - Huffington Post

Sean Spicer Tells A Grown Woman To Stop Shaking Her Head
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 29/03/2017 5:23 AM AEDT | Updated 11 hours ago
* 
Paige Lavender

Senior Politics Editor, The Huffington Post



White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Tuesday demanded a journalist stop shaking her head while he answered a question during the daily press briefing.
April Ryan, the Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, asked Spicer how the administration would work to revamp its image amid investigations of potential ties to Russia, mentioning a report that Trump officials tried to stop former acting Attorney General Sally Yates from testifying on links between Trump’s campaign staff and Russian officials.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Tuesday demanded a journalist stop shaking her head while he answered a question during the daily press briefing.
April Ryan, the Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, asked Spicer how the administration would work to revamp its image amid investigations of potential ties to Russia, mentioning a report that Trump officials tried to stop former acting Attorney General Sally Yates from testifying on links between Trump’s campaign staff and Russian officials.
Spicer accused Ryan of having an agenda, arguing “if the president puts Russian salad dressing on his salad tonight, somehow that’s a Russian connection.”
“It seems like you’re hell-bent on trying to make sure that whatever image you want to tell about this White House stays,” Spicer argued later.
Ryan interrupted to further question Spicer, and as their exchange continued, the press secretary ordered Ryan to stop shaking her head while they talked.
Ryan tweeted after the briefing ended:
She also appeared on MSNBC to discuss the moment, saying “you cannot ignore as a reporter” the issues she questioned Spicer about.
“Sean is being the White House press secretary, talking about and trying to make this administration look better than what it does right now, and unfortunately I was road kill today,” Ryan said.