Microsoft’s Windows Chief On the Surface, Virtual Reality and More - TIME Business

Microsoft’s Windows Chief On the Surface, Virtual Reality and More

Posted: 09 May 2017 11:53 AM PDT

Windows may dominate the worldwide desktop market, but Microsoft is working to adapt the operating system for all kinds of devices, from giant displays like the Surface Studio to mixed reality headsets like the HoloLens.
The Redmond, Wash. company is expected to unveil more details about the future of Windows this week at its annual Build conference. The event comes after Microsoft recently debuted new products including Windows 10 S and the Surface Laptop . Harman Kardon also just revealed its new Invoke smart speaker, which is powered by Microsoft’s Cortana virtual assistant.

Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s executive vice president of the Windows and devices group, sat down with TIME to discuss the future of Windows, Microsoft’s hardware efforts, virtual reality, and more. Below is a transcript of our conversation edited for length and clarity.
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TIME: Over the past several months there’s been a bigger focus on how students and creative professionals can use Windows and Surface devices. Why?
Terry Myerson: It’s become more than just a focus. If you go back in time to three years ago when Satya [Nadella] first became CEO, there was this vision of ubiquitous computing. Everything around us was going to become smart and connected, whether it was coffee pots, the lights, your phone, everything. And there was this question of: What was Windows’ role? Where are we going to go?
There was this defining moment when someone on the team sent me this TED Talk about great companies. It talked about how great companies know what they do and how they do it, but great companies also know why they do what they do.
I think prior to us thinking about our purpose this way, we might have had an event where we talked about a new version of Windows that had certain features and a new laptop that had certain specs. But you step back and you say, “why would the world want these things? What is the impact we could have, and where could we have the biggest impact?” It’s not just the event, you have to start early and start with that purpose and what you’re doing. It’s very authentic. This authentic concept about, why Windows, why Surface, where we want to go in this world where everything is going to be smart.
When the first Surface was announced in 2012, it started as a tablet that could replace your laptop, and now here we are with a Surface laptop. Can you talk about the strategy that went into that decision?
At the core of the Windows ecosystem today, laptops are the category where we have the most impact on the world. We participate in so many categories, from mixed reality to large screens to phones to laptops . . . and laptops are the biggest category. In laptops we saw an opportunity to really try and set a new bar.
At the core of it is Windows 10 S, the ability to design a device specifically for this new platform. That’s what allows us to have the 14.5 hours of battery life. That’s what allows us to have the better performance. Our partners are going to look at the customer reception to it and decide should they, should they not, it’s their business. But our goals are to grow the Windows ecosystem.
This isn’t the first time Microsoft has launched more than one version of Windows. Windows RT, the “lighter” version of Windows 8 that debuted in 2012, wasn’t heavily embraced by partners, caused confusion among customers, and was eventually phased out. Why will Windows 10 S be different, and what have you learned?
There are things that are distinctly different. RT ran on ARM underpowered processors. This is going to run on every class of hardware. There are some low-spec devices it will run on, but it will also run on the Surface Laptop, which is a beautiful premium device.
If you buy a Windows 10 S device, you can switch to Windows Pro. That’s a big difference versus, you just buy it and you get what you get. So now you have a performance system, you have a way to say “Okay, I don’t want these constraints, I want to go out into the open world.” There are a lot more apps in the Windows Store now than there was. This version of Windows is more popular than Windows 8
Those are all learnings we might not have had if we couldn’t reflect on the past. But that’s what we do, we’re always trying to learn. When you go back in time and look at what they were trying to achieve, it was in some ways similar. If I had to pick a fourth thing, it’s really focusing on, at least initially, these students in the classroom. RT was launched as more of a consumer product.
You talked before about how many new types of devices will become “smart” and capable of connecting to one another. How do you see Cortana playing a bigger role as this transition occurs?
Everything around us will be smart and connected. And you’re just going to expect a certain level of intelligence when you’re dealing with all of your things, that they’re all going to work together in all the right ways. I think with each of these assistants, there’s opportunity to be the glue that provides the orchestration across all of the devices in our lives. All these scenarios where there are all these apps and devices in our lives. We don’t really want to interact with any one of them, we want to interact to achieve a goal, a purpose. And I do think having one of these personal assistants understand how to interact with apps and devices, that’s the vision we want to achieve.
How will voice be a bigger part of the way we interact with apps on Windows and Surface in the future?
Amazon struck a chord with voice with Echo. It’s great work. We’ve supported voice in our devices for a long time. But how often do you talk to your laptop? These phones have had voice support, and sometimes people use it, but not like they do with Echo. And so I do think we’re developing all of these input technologies at a core platform capability. But getting the device form factor right, where there’s something innately human about interacting with it, is critical.
Of all the devices we have, where people are using voice the most is Xbox. People are home, they put their headsets on, and they’re talking to each other. The ‘Hey Cortana’ scenario shows up on Xbox a lot. But the Surface scenario, voice is there and we’re developing it, but I don’t think we’ve nailed the right scenario yet.
One of the most interesting announcements from last year’s Surface Studio event was the Surface Dial. As we move into augmented and virtual reality, how is Microsoft thinking about new forms of interaction?
When we started out with this mixed reality journey, we had gaze, gesture, and voice. We started out with this vision that the world would be your display. We always knew there was going to be this spectrum of virtual reality where your displays are opaque, and augmented reality where the display is translucent. And this spectrum, we called it mixed reality.
But our first big bet was with Hololens, which was augmented reality. And gaze, gesture, and voice were the three things we bet on: where you are looking, what you are pointing at, and what you are saying.
Having a display that is translucent sometimes, opaque sometimes, and you can wear it all the time, you know [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg has talked about that, we’ve talked about that. I think that’s a frontier that we all can see in the future. I picture us having this giant Jenga set in front of us. Now we actually have the technology to reach out and push that Jenga bar and have all the right physics so that it falls down correctly. But you don’t feel it. You don’t feel the friction. That’s the scenario I think about all the time.
Will mixed reality ever be mainstream? For those who aren’t using it for gaming or commercial use cases, will it ever be the new home computer?
I think it will revolutionize gaming and entertainment, I think it will revolutionize so many things that are done away from desks. I don’t think it’s going to replace the work you do at your desk, but when people are away from their desk, when their hands are free.
I remember looking out from my office a couple of weeks ago and someone was spray-painting the street to say “there’s a pipe down here.” And I remember thinking that’s so lame; they should be able to see a virtual map of where the pipe is. If we can get that presence right, I think it’s just going to revolutionize our lives, allow us to connect when we’re apart.

Age of post truths - Guardian

Matthew d'Ancona

Friday 12 May 2017 17.00 AEST

Last modified on Friday 12 May 2017 17.46 AEST

A word on definition: “post truth” is emphatically not the same as lies, spin and falsehood. What is new is not mendacity but the public’s response to it – the growing primacy of emotional resonance over fact and evidence, the replacement of verification with social media algorithms that tell us what we want to hear. Truth is losing its value as society’s reserve currency, and legitimate scepticism is yielding place to pernicious relativism.

Here, as a primer, are 10 classic examples of post truth, past and present.

1. ‘Alternative facts’

On the morning after Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, Sean Spicer, the new White House press secretary, called a special press conference and insisted belligerently that “this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe”. The crowd in photographs of Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration looked larger, he claimed, because of new white floor coverings laid on the National Mall that had the effect of “highlighting areas where people were not standing, while in years past, the grass eliminated this As angry as Spicer and his boss might be, their position was hilariously unsustainable. It fell to Kellyanne Conway, senior aide to the president, to find some way of squaring the epistemological circle, of reconciling bogus claim with photographic evidence. On NBC’s Meet the Press the next day, Conway told Chuck Todd that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation: “Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You’re saying it’s a falsehood [...] Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.”

2. ‘£350m for the NHS’

The promise that the weekly cost of EU membership – allegedly, £350m – would be ploughed into the NHS was front and centre in the Vote Leave campaign. For a start, the figure did not take account of the rebate received by Britain: its net contribution per week to the EU was closer to £250m. Having pointed out the error, the UK Statistics Authority declared itself “disappointed to note that there continue to be suggestions that the UK contributes £350m to the EU each week, and that this full amount could be spent elsewhere”.

Four days after the referendum, Chris Grayling, the then leader of the House of Commons, downgraded the promise to “an aspiration”. Iain Duncan Smith, another prominent Brexiter, also distanced himself from the hitherto unambiguous claim: “I never said that during the course of the election [sic].” Dominic Cummings, the campaign’s director, has admitted: “Would we have won without £350m/NHS? All our research and the close result strongly suggests no.” But the speed with which the pledge was dumped indicates that it was never likely to be honoured. To borrow a distinction often made by Trump’s supporters, it was evidently a mistake to take the Leave campaign literally rather than seriously.

3. ‘Pizzagate’

Hillary Clinton … subject of ‘ludicrous’ claims. Photograph: Mary Altaffer/AP

Conspiracy theories thrive in the new age of post truth – often with dangerous consequences. In December, a phony report alleging that Hillary Clinton was at the heart of a paedophile conspiracy persuaded 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch from Salisbury, North Carolina, to “self-investigate” the ludicrous claims by firing shots from an assault rifle in a Washington DC pizza parlour. The restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, had been falsely associated with the story, itself comprehensively debunked before Welch’s attack. Death threats were received by the owner and staff, unwitting victims of the so-called Pizzagate allegations. It is worth noting that Michael Flynn, briefly Trump’s national security adviser, had tweeted that the stories connecting Clinton with “Sex crimes w/Children” were a “MUST READ”. As tempting as it is to dismiss fake news as the staple diet of the fringe, it has enthusiastic consumers at the very apex of power.

4. ‘Holohoax’ horrors

The most vile manifestation of post truth has been the reinvigoration of Holocaust denial, especially online. Google searches on the subject are rewarded by headlines such as “Holocaust Against Jews is a Total Lie – Proof”; “Is the Holocaust a Hoax?”; “Was there really a Holocaust?”; “THE HOLOCAUST AND THE FOUR MILLION VARIANT”; “How the ‘Holocaust’ was faked”; and “Jewish Scholar Refutes The Holocaust”. There could scarcely be a more brutal reminder that algorithms, in their current form, are indifferent to veracity.

5. ‘Reality is not external’

John Hurt as Winston Smith in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Photograph: RONALD GRANT

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is the Ur-text for all those confronted by post truth, and it is heartening that the dystopian classic rose to the top of Amazon’s charts days after Conway urged Americans to embrace “alternative facts”. In his interrogation of Winston Smith, the Inner Party oligarch, O’Brien, warns that “reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else ….Whatever the Party holds to be truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.”

Winston still objects that the party has no mastery over gravity, climate, disease or death: “O’Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. ‘We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull … There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation – anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to … You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.”

6. ‘The University of Google’

Increasingly, scientific evidence is proving no match for emotionalism and the charisma of celebrity. In 2007, the model and television personality Jenny McCarthy, whose son Evan is autistic, appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show to take a stand on vaccination. Against the full might of the scientific establishment, she pitted her “mommy instinct”. Challenged to produce her own evidence, she said: “My science is named Evan, and he’s at home. That’s my science.” In the course of the controversy, doctors had often complained that the web had digitally turbo-charged false science. McCarthy turned this allegation on its head. “The University of Google is where I got my degree from,” she declared.

The guru of the anti-vaccination movement Andrew Wakefield – though discredited and stripped of his medical licence – has grasped that, in the strange alchemy of our times, academic infamy can be the basis for a celebrity of sorts: a means of relaunching his campaign and career. In April 2016, his movie, Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe – withdrawn from the Tribeca film festival – was shown in Manhattan for the first time amid much hoopla and controversy.

Drenched in often clumsy appeals to emotion, the film hinges on the story of the so-called “CDC whistleblower” – Dr William Thompson, a scientist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thompson, as the film relates, fed Brian Hooker, a biochemical engineer and father of an autistic son, with reams of data that Hooker – who had no training in epidemiology – subjected to his own personal analysis. He claimed that the CDC had known all along that there was a link between MMR and autism, especially among African American men, but had concealed this information. In fact, Hooker had committed elementary statistical errors, and his report was retracted by the journal that had published it. But Vaxxed simply repeats the allegations, presenting Hooker as the David who took on the Goliath of the health industry, and Wakefield as the oracular prophet vindicated.

7. ‘It’s a pageant’

Wag the Dog … ‘The power of politically manipulated technology to obliterate reality.’ Photograph: www.ronaldgrantarchive.com

The power of politically manipulated technology to obliterate reality was perfectly predicted in Wag the Dog, Barry Levinson’s movie satire of 1997, which describes the “pageant” of a fictional war invented to distract attention from a presidential sex scandal. The political fixer, Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro) approaches a Hollywood mogul, Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman), to “produce” the military “pageant” of an imaginary conflict with Albania:

Conrad: You watched the Gulf war – what do you see day after day? The one smart bomb falling down the chimney. The truth? I was in the building when we shot that shot – we shot in a studio, Falls Church, Virginia. One-tenth scale model of a building.

Stanley: Is that true?

Conrad: How the fuck do we know? You take my point?

Later in the story, Conrad is dismayed when the CIA conspires with the president’s electoral opponent to declare the nonexistent war at an end. But the producer is not so easily dissuaded:

Conrad: It’s over. I saw it on television.

Stanley: The war’s not over. No, the war isn’t over.

Conrad: I saw it on TV.

Stanley: No, this is what you hired me for. No, the war isn’t over until I say it’s over. This is my picture. This is not the CIA’s picture.

What the two men are arguing about is not reality, but a competition between two fictions. They are talking about post truth.

8. ‘I have a very good memory’

At a 2015 campaign rally in Birmingham, Alabama, Trump declared: “I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City … where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down.” This was a complete falsehood. But Trump simply refused to acknowledge his mendacity. “I have a very good memory, I’ll tell you,” he said when challenged on NBC. “I saw it somewhere on television many years ago. And I never forgot it.”

9. Tucker’s Law

The Thick of It, starring Peter Capaldi, centre, as Malcolm Tucker … the essence of post truth. Photograph: BBC/Mike Hogan/BBC

In the very first episode of The Thick of It in 2005, Armando Iannucci and Jesse Armstrong captured the essence of post truth. Malcolm Tucker is explaining to the besieged minister, Hugh Abbot, how to turn the tanker of a potentially damaging story:

Hugh: What, erm ... What are we going do now?

Malcolm: You’re going to completely reverse your position.

Hugh: Look, no, hang on a second. Hang on, Malcolm. It’s not actually that, erm – that’s going to be quite hard, really.

Malcolm: Yes, well, the announcement that you didn’t make today – you did.

Hugh: No, no, I didn’t. And there were television cameras there while I was not doing it.

Malcolm: Fuck them.

Hugh: I’m not quite sure how … what level of reality I’m supposed to be operating on.

Malcolm: Look, this is what they run with. I tell them that you said it, they believe that you said it. They don’t really believe you said it – they know that you never said it.

Hugh: Right.

Malcolm: But it’s in their interests to say you said it – because if they don’t, they’re not going to get what you say tomorrow or the next day when I decide to tell them what it is you’re saying.

What Malcolm describes to Hugh is the pernicious contract that lies at the heart of post truth.

10. ‘Birthers’ and the backfire effect

The furore over Barack Obama’s place of birth was first whipped up by supporters of Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, and very publicly exploited by Trump as a pilot exercise for his eventual candidacy. Obama’s initial response to the claim that a person born outside the US was not qualified to run for the presidency was to post an image of his short-form birth certificate. In July 2009, the director of Hawaii’s department of health confirmed that the president’s full birth records were indeed on file. Finally, in April 2011, Obama published his long-form birth certificate on the White House website.

Case closed? Not a bit of it. Before the publication of this definitive evidence, 45% of US citizens admitted to doubts about Obama’s birthplace. After the full certificate was posted, this figure fell – but only to 33%. Then, in a startling rejection of the facts, the number began to climb again, reaching 41% in January 2012. According to Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, presenting someone who believes in a conspiracy theory with evidence that it is unfounded can often reinforce his or her belief: the so-called “backfire effect”. Like an infection resisting anti-biotics, post truth can fend off even incontestable facts.

Post Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back by Matthew d’Ancona is published by Ebury (£6.99).

Trump loses some sway with fellow Republicans - NBC News

Trump loses some sway with fellow Republicans 

In the aftermath of President Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, two things have happened when it comes to Trump's standing with his own party. One, congressional Republicans haven't abandoned Trump on Comey (yes, some have criticized the timing, but there isn't a growing GOP demand for a special counsel). Two, enough of them are beginning to buck their president on non-Comey items. That includes Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Ben Sasse (R-NE) saying they're opposed to Trump's pick to be U.S. trade representative, and three Republicans who worked to defeata GOP-backed resolution to repeal an Obama environmental regulation. 

So while Republicans aren't in open revolt when it comes to Comey directly, we've seen some signs in the last 24 hours how Trump's legislative agenda, as well as his staffing priorities, could be in peril. And as for Democrats, it's hard to imagine how the president has the juice to win over any members of the opposition. Don't forget: At this same point in time of George W. Bush's presidency, there were a handful of Democrats who supported his tax cuts, and Ted Kennedy was working with his administration on education. 

NBC's Lester Holt interviews Trump 

NBC's Lester Holt today interviews President Trump, and it will air on "Nightly News." What will President Trump say about his recent firing of FBI Director James Comey? Be sure to watch!

Some of the new details we've learned about Trump vs. Comey 

• The Washington Post: "Trump was angry that Comey would not support his baseless claim that President Barack Obama had his campaign offices wiretapped. Trump was frustrated when Comey revealed in Senate testimony the breadth of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia's effort to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election. And he fumed that Comey was giving too much attention to the Russia probe and not enough to investigating leaks to journalists."
• The New York Times: "After President Trump accused his predecessor in March of wiretapping him, James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, was flabbergasted. The president, Mr. Comey told associates, was 'outside the realm of normal, even 'crazy.'"
• A former senior intelligence official, per NBC's Ken Dilanian: "The way this was done, I think was done to send a message to the FBI agents left behind. It's not just that they removed him - it's that they did it in the most thuggish and humiliating way possible. No notice, no nothing - instant execution."
• "[Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein threatened to resign after the narrative emerging from the White House on Tuesday evening cast him as a prime mover of the decision to fire Comey and that the president acted only on his recommendation," the Washington Post also reports.
• NBC's Stephanie Ruhle: "The majority of White House staff - including some of the most senior members of the Trump team - found out the Comey news moments before or watching it on TV [Tuesday]. There was no internal meeting, no strategy session," per a senior White House official.

A timeline of developments in the Trump-Russia storyline 

Feb. 13: National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigns just after the Washington Post first reported that the Justice Department had informed the White House that Flynn could be subject to blackmail 

Feb. 14: The New York Times reports that Trump's 2016 campaign "had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials" 

March 1: Washington Post reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with Russia's envoy twice last year — which he didn't disclose in his confirmation hearing 

March 2: Sessions recuses himself from any federal inquiries involving Trump's 2016 campaign 

March 20: FBI Director Comey confirms his agency is investigation allegations that Trump's 2016 campaign might have contacts with Russian entities. Comey also says there's "no information that supports" Trump's wiretapping charges against Obama 

March 22: House Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes goes to the White House and tells reporters that he has seen evidence of potential surveillance activity on Trump campaign officials 

April 6: Nunes steps down from House Intelligence Committee's Russia probe, and the move comes as the House Ethics Committee announces that it is investigating allegations that Nunes mishandled classified information 

May 2: Trump tweets that Comey "was the best thing that ever happened" to Hillary Clinton, and adds that the Russia investigation is "phony" 

May 3: Comey tells a Senate Committee that he won't be providing updates about the FBI's Russia inquiry until the matter is concluded 

May 8: Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates testifies on Capitol Hill that she warned Flynn could be subject to blackmail for apparently lying about his contacts with the Russian government (Flynn remained in office for 18 more days) 

May 8: Trump tweets, "The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?" 

May 9: Trump announces that he fired FBI Director Comey 

Mysterious US X-36B returns after 2 years in space - NDTV

Mysterious US Drone Back On Earth After 2 Years In Space

Some think it might be a space-based bomber, others suspect it is a potential "killer satellite" or a super spy plane.

Agence France-Presse | Updated: May 10, 2017 00:29 IST

Story Highlights

• US military drone X-37 B looks like a small version of NASA space shuttle
• Some suspect it could be a 'killer satellite' or super spy plane
• The craft touched down on Sunday ending a 718-day voyage around the Earth 

Washington, United States: After a nearly two-year sojourn in space, the US military drone X-37 B is back on Earth, fueling wild ideas about its mystery mission.

Looking like a small version of an old NASA space shuttle, the craft touched down Sunday in Florida, ending a 718-day voyage around the Earth, the US Air Force announced.

Just under 30 feet (9.1 meters) long and with a nearly 15-foot wingspan, the X-37 B was blasted into low Earth orbit atop a rocket.

Since its first flight in 2010, it has sparked all kinds of speculation about its real purpose.

Some think it might be a space-based bomber that could strike objectives on Earth at a moment's notice.

Others suspect it is a potential "killer satellite," capable of destroying or damaging enemy satellites. 

Or perhaps it is a super spy plane, orbiting Earth to keep watch on enemy territory as needed. 

Fears that the world is on the brink of an arms race in space is behind some of those theories.

Weapon of war?

Satellites are crucial to the functioning of national economies as well as military operations, and the United States, China and Russia are all thinking about ways to defend them against attack.

No doubt they are also looking at ways to attack their adversaries' satellites.

In 2015, the mysterious behavior of a Russian satellite fueled speculation that Moscow was developing attack satellites capable of maneuvering in space to zero in on other satellites.

But many experts doubt that the X-37 B is the prototype for a true weapon of war or espionage.

"The X-37 is the size of a pick-up truck -- it would be difficult to have an effective weapon on board," says Victoria Samson, an expert with the Secure World Foundation, an advocate of sustainable development in space.

Moreover, the X-37 B would not be very maneuverable once in space, because its only source of power are solar panels.

"Generally speaking, to maneuver up in orbit requires a tremendous amount of fuel. So I can't imagine that they would be doing a lot of maneuvering," Samson said.

Mark Gubrud, a physicist and expert on military space technologies at the University of North Carolina, says the idea that it is a maneuverable spy satellite doesn't make much sense either.

"It has very little maneuver capability in orbit, and it can't reach high altitudes, only low Earth orbit," he said in an email.

"If you want to make a stealthy, maneuvering satellite, you will not weigh it down with wings and landing gear and make it so visible from Earth that even amateurs are able to track it."

The X-37 B's fourth flight was spotted six days after its launch in 2015 by a network of amateur satellite trackers, according to the website Spaceflight101.com.

It disappeared for several months in 2015 following a change in orbit, and again in February 2017 after another maneuver, but was later found again, the website said.

A test bed

In reality, experts today think the X-37 is more likely a test bed rather than a potential weapon, just as the Air Force said it was in one of its few public statements about the system.

They think it is being used to test sensors and equipment in space that can then be brought to the ground to see how they have performed.

Rocketdyne, a US company, announced that on the latest flight, it tested an ionic thruster used by satellites to move in space.

"If the US military wanted to quell concerns, they could," simply by putting out more information about the X-37 B, said Samson.

"Maybe it's in their interest to keep people guessing."

NDTV

How President Trump's Decision to Fire James Comey Could Backfire - TIME

How President Trump's Decision to Fire James Comey Could Backfire

10th May - by Alex Altman and Zeke J Miller

How President Trump's Decision to Fire James Comey Could Backfire

President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey rocked Washington on Tuesday, raising questions about the future of the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia and potentially setting off a chain of events that could envelop his administration.

Comey, whose investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server helped lift Trump into the White House, was leading the federal counterintelligence investigation into whether advisers to the President had sought to collude with Russian officials in their efforts to swing the 2016 election. The ouster of the nation’s top cop prompted comparisons to Watergate, as Democrats pilloried Trump for sidelining the official overseeing a probe that could threaten his presidency.

But the shock move is fraught with political peril as well. Calling the firing a cover-up, a slew of Democrats called for the appointment of a special prosecutor, who would have broad authority to investigate the Trump campaign and administration. At minimum, such a probe would indefinitely extend questions about Trump’s ties to Russia, and it could result in criminal charges.

“This is Nixonian,” said Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, one of several Democrats who likened the move to the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, in which President Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor appointed to the Watergate investigation, prompting top Justice Department officials to resign in protest. Said Senator Richard Blumenthal on CNN: “We face a looming constitutional crisis.”

Trump’s decision ostensibly came at the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who laid out the case for sacking Comey in a memo that detailed his mishandling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. But those complaints about Comey’s conduct, echoed by Republicans and Democrats alike, concern events that took place before the 2016 election. And they did not dissuade Trump from retaining Comey, whom he has praised on multiple occasions, when he took office in January.

Trump’s own statement Tuesday appeared to support his opponents’ suggestions that the decision was driven by the Russia investigation. “You are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately,” Trump wrote to Comey in a letter released by the White House. “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau.”

“This is Nixonian,” said Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, one of several Democrats who likened the move to the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, in which President Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor appointed to the Watergate investigation, prompting top Justice Department officials to resign in protest. Said Senator Richard Blumenthal on CNN: “We face a looming constitutional crisis.”

Trump’s decision ostensibly came at the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who laid out the case for sacking Comey in a memo that detailed his mishandling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. But those complaints about Comey’s conduct, echoed by Republicans and Democrats alike, concern events that took place before the 2016 election. And they did not dissuade Trump from retaining Comey, whom he has praised on multiple occasions, when he took office in January.

Trump’s own statement Tuesday appeared to support his opponents’ suggestions that the decision was driven by the Russia investigation. “You are hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately,” Trump wrote to Comey in a letter released by the White House. “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau.”

Further clouding matters, Trump’s former longtime security guard and current Director of Oval Office Operations Keith Schiller hand-delivered that termination letter to the Bureau Tuesday, according to an administration official. At the time, Comey was in Los Angeles, where he was visiting the local FBI field office and speak at a recruitment event late Tuesday. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the letter was also emailed to the FBI. Officials said Comey learned the news from television. Senior members of Congress were only informed of the news minutes before the White House announced it, Spicer confirmed.

Sessions had previously recused himself from the election probe over his failure to disclose to Congress meetings with Russian officials in 2016. As a result, the Russia investigation will now be led by Rosenstein, a widely respected career prosecutor who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In a memo accompanying Trump’s letter, Rosenstein laid out the case for Comey’s firing.

“I cannot defend the Director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken,” Rosenstein said. “Almost everybody agrees that the Director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.” The FBI, Rosenstein added, “is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them.”

Rosenstein’s indictment stemmed primarily from Comey’s decision to circumvent then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the Department of Justice to announce his recommendation that no charges be brought against Clinton, as well as to criticize her handling of classified information. “It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement,” Rosenstein wrote. He criticized Comey’s October 28 letter, which announced the reopening of the Clinton investigation. According to Spicer, Rosenstein’s memo was presented to Trump today.

“No one from the White House” directed Rosenstein to lay out the case for Comey’s firing, Spicer told reporters late Tuesday. He directed questions about Sessions’ role to the Department of Justice, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Spicer also did not address why Trump decided to can Comey now, when the underlying facts have remained unchanged for months. “It is his recommendation in concurrence with the Attorney General that the president based his decision on,” Spicer said.

The White House is opposed to Democratic calls to appoint a special prosecutors. “There is clearly at this point no evidence of a reason to do that,” Spicer said. “Right now, on multiple occasions, they said the president isn’t under investigation.”

Rosenstein, who was confirmed by the Senate only two weeks ago in a 94-6 vote, now has a pivotal decision before him. With the Russia probes in both the House and the Senate sputtering, the deputy attorney general faces pressure to appoint an independent special prosecutor. During his Senate confirmation hearings, Rosenstein signaled that he was willing to do so if he deemed it appropriate.

An independent counsel with free rein to poke around the nooks and crannies of a presidency can have devastating consequences. It was the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the Whitewater land deal that ultimately led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment for an unrelated extramarital affair.

Even senior Republicans expressed dismay at the firing, though they stopped short of calling for a special counsel. “I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey’s termination,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, whose committee is probing Russia’s actions in 2016. “I have found Director Comey to be a public servant of the highest order, and his dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the Committee.”

Senator John McCain added that he was “disappointed by Trump’s decision. “I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election,” McCain said. “The president’s decision to remove the FBI Director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee.”

The White House appeared to be caught flat footed by the outcry. “Comey had lost the confidence across the board,” said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders. “When you have that happen, you can’t serve in that capacity.”

The irony of Comey’s firing is that the figure who helped propel Trump to victory — infuriating Democrats in the process — could now set in motion a chain of events that Democrats hope could lead to the unraveling of his presidency. Administration officials distributed Democrats’ prior cries for Comey’s dismissal as evidence the fallout was a mere political frenzy. Trump’s decision “should be welcomed by Democrats,” Spicer said.

As recently as May 3, Spicer assured reporters that Trump remained confident in Comey’s leadership. Now a President who believes the Russia probe is designed to undermine his legitimacy — on Monday he tweeted that it was a “total hoax”— has made the gamble to transfer control of the investigation to an official who has been on the job for just two weeks.

“We think he is beyond reproach and that his credentials are impeccable,” White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said of Rosenstein. “This is a decision he made to put the memo together that was presented to the attorney general, the attorney general presented it to the President, and the President took the decisive action that leaders do when they are faced with new facts and information.”

The White House may have hoped the move would put the Russia story to bed. “There is no there there,” said Sanders on Tuesday night. “It’s time to move on.”

Instead, they may have ensured that won’t happen.

TIME

Why the Comey firing could be Trump’s Watergate moment - Credo

Why the Comey firing could be Trump’s Watergate moment

May 10 by Yochi Dreazen and Zack Beauchamp

It’s genuinely rare to be able to say you’re living in a historic moment, one already being compared with some justification to Watergate. But that’s where we find ourselves in the aftermath of President Trump’s stunning dismissal of FBI Director James Comey.

There’s a huge amount to unpack here, but here’s what is perhaps the single most important fact: The president of the United States, whose campaign is under FBI investigation over its potential ties to Russia, just fired the head of the FBI — the person in charge of that very investigation.

Mounting evidence that multiple members of the Trump campaign were in direct contact with Russian intelligence in the runup to the election — and in several cases subsequently lied about it — has been at the center of a simmering scandal that Trump has been unable to shake. His sudden decision to oust Comey ensures that scandal will bedevil the rest of the Trump presidency — and, potentially, bring it to a premature close.

Let’s pause and note that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteinsaid that Comey was ousted over his grievous mishandling of the FBI’s Hillary Clinton email probe, a gaffe that may have cost Clinton the presidency and that has been the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department’s own internal watchdog. Comey drew new criticism earlier Tuesday when the FBI was forced to walk back his false assertions that Clinton aide Huma Abedin had improperly forwarded thousands of emails to her husband, Anthony Weiner.

The FBI chief may have deserved to lose his job over how badly he bungled the Clinton probe — which included breaking with historical precedent and disclosing, just 11 days before the election, that he was reopening the probe into her email servers — but imagine if he had been fired by a President Hillary Clinton. Republicans across Capitol Hill would be making immediate calls for her impeachment.

Initial comments from powerful Republicans like Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Corker suggest that the GOP is in a wait-and-see mode and hasn’t yet decided to break with Trump. Still, the Comey firing is already leading to calls for a special prosecutor capable of issuing subpoenas without needing the approval of Republican-led committees in the House and Senate.

THE DECISION TO FIRE COMEY ENSURES THAT SCANDAL WILL CONSUME THE REST OF THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY — AND, POTENTIALLY, BRING IT TO A PREMATURE CLOSE

We’ve known for months that there is something damaging in the Trump team’s dealings with Moscow. The FBI and the House and Senate intelligence committees are focusing in on three people who worked for, or unofficially advised, the Trump campaign: former campaign chair Paul Manafort, former foreign policy adviser Carter Page, and Republican political operative Roger Stone.

But that’s the tip of the iceberg. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was fired for lying about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and has sought an immunity deal as evidence mounts that he accepted money from the Russian and Turkish governments without properly disclosing it. Senior White House aide — and Trump son-in-law — Jared Kushner held undisclosed meetings with Kislyak during the transition and only made them public months later.

Perhaps most alarmingly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied to the Senate, under oath, during his confirmation hearings. He told lawmakers he’d had no interactions with the Russian government; it turned out that he’d held conversations with Kislyak. Sessions promised to recuse himself from the FBI investigation into Trump. Sessions is also the man who just recommended that Trump fire the head of the FBI, a recommendation Trump accepted.

The Comey firing is sure to spark waves of new hearings on Capitol Hill, each of which will give Democrats and some Republicans the chance to ask the questions on the minds of many Americans: Was the Comey firing part of a White House cover-up? And if so, what is the administration trying to hide?

How do we get here ?

Here's what we know for sure.

In July 2016, the FBI launched an investigation into the various ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. The bureau soon acquired a warrant to spy on Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy adviser with longstanding financial ties to the Kremlin. After Trump’s election, the investigation took on considerably more urgency — with Comey personally approving more scrutiny, according to the Guardian.

In December, Sen. John McCain personally handed Comey a dossier from a former British spy, Christopher Steele, alleging that the Russians had compromising material on Trump and that the Trump campaign actively coordinated with Russian hackers targeting Clinton. By early January, the FBI had confirmed that Steele’s sources were credible and its contents could not be dismissed, forcing them to brief both President Obama and President-elect Trump on its contents.

The FBI’s investigations took on new urgency after Trump took office, and the Trump administration kept stepping on rakes when it came to Russia. That’s when the Flynn-Kislyak scandal broke and when Sessions lied under oath about his own contacts with the ambassador during the campaign, which forced him to recuse himself from supervising the Russia investigation in early March.

Both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had, at this point, started their own investigations into Russian involvement in the 2016 election. On March 20, Comey was called to testify before the House Intelligence Committee — chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes — about the status of the FBI’s investigation. That’s when he dropped his biggest bombshell yet.

“[The FBI is] investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts,” Comey said.

After this announcement, it became impossible — regardless of what Trump said in Tuesday’s letter — to separate the FBI’s investigation into Russia from an investigation into the president. Clearly, Director Comey had given consent and support for an investigation into the Trump campaign’s links to Russia. You simply can’t look into whether close Trump associates had improper contact with Russia without looking into the question of whether the president approved their actions. It would also come back to the core issue from Watergate: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

Two days after Comey’s testimony, it became clear that the FBI’s investigation was extremely serious. CNN reported that “the FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign.” This information came from “human intelligence, travel, business and phone records, and accounts of in-person meetings.”

The information, CNN’s reporters cautioned, “was not conclusive.” But the point is that it was already pointing in a direction that could implicate Trump officials. If that happened — if the FBI actually uncovered hard proof that the Trump campaign had coordinated with the Russians — it would end up being the kind of scandal that topples a presidency.

By early April, the FBI investigation into Russia had gotten so massive that the bureau had to form a special unit for it in Washington. Meanwhile, the House investigation had stalled out due to Nunes’s weird insistence on backing up Trump’s wild claims about Obama spying on Trump Tower (which would eventually force Nunes to recuse himself). The Senate investigation, only given limited funding and staff, was proceeding slowly — to the point where senators were publicly complaining about the pace.

The point of all of this is simple: The FBI was conducting by far the most serious investigation into Trump and Russia in the country, one that simply couldn’t be matched by Congress or by journalists. The bureau had the money, the trained investigators, and the access to powerful surveillance tools. Perhaps most importantly, it also had a director who seemed to be entirely behind the investigation.

And then Trump and Sessions fired him.

Democrats are comparing this to Watergate. They have good reason to.

In the immediate aftermath of the Comey firing, leading Democrats were quick to compare the move to the biggest political scandal in American history: Watergate. And they were quick to issue calls to create the position that ultimately led to the downfall of Richard Nixon: a special prosecutor with broad investigative powers and the freedom to follow evidence without needing congressional approval.

Take this, from New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand: “No more excuses. We need an independent special prosecutor to investigate the Trump Administration’s ties to Russia.”

Or this, from Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz: “The arguments against establishing a Special Prosecutor were weak in the first place. They have now evaporated.”

But to get a real sense of where the public narrative over the firing is already headed, there is no better example than this comment from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Markey. The Comey firing, he said, was "disturbingly reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate scandal & the natl turmoil that it caused."

Watergate has a singular resonance in American political life, so much so that nearly every scandal eventually has a “-gate” added to its name. But even Watergate didn’t immediately explode into the historic scandal that eventually led to Nixon’s resignation. The turning point, arguably, came in the specific moment that Markey is referencing: the so-called Saturday Night Massacre. That’s when Nixon attempted to kneecap a dangerous investigation into his wrongdoing.

In October 1973, during the heat of the Watergate crisis, special prosecutor Archibald Cox issued a subpoena ordering Nixon to turn over copies of taped conversations recorded in the Oval Office. Nixon refused.

On October 20, the embattled president ordered Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused, and resigned in protest. Nixon then gave the same order to Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus, who also refused and also resigned. Cox wasn’t fired until then-Solicitor General Robert Bork — later a failed nominee to the Supreme Court — agreed to do what the other two officials would not.

Richard Painter, formerly the chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House, noted on Twitter that “Nixon had to go through three AGs to fire the man investigating Watergate. POTUS should not be allowed to fire the man investigating him.”

There was a second, lesser-known part of what came to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre that is relevant here. After getting Cox fired, Nixon, per a Washington Post article from the time, “also abolished the office of the special prosecutor and turned over to the Justice Department the entire responsibility for further investigation and prosecution of suspects and defendants in Watergate and related cases.”

And that’s the rub here. It isn’t simply that Trump fired the man charged with leading the explosive investigation into whether his campaign colluded with Russia as Moscow was looking for ways to ensure Hillary Clinton’s defeat. It’s that Trump is putting that investigation back in the hands of a Justice Department led by Jeff Sessions, whose own ties to Russia — and his own lies about them — make him singularly unfit to have any role in determining the future course of the Trump-Russia investigation or who will be leading it.

It’s worth remembering how the entire story ends. Nixon’s attempt to bottle up the Watergate investigation by firing Cox bought him some more time, but it ultimately failed. In August 1974, with Congress moving to formally impeach and remove him from office, the president resigned.

These are obviously different times, and Republicans on Capitol Hill have shown a depressing willingness to carry water for Trump and try to deflect calls for special prosecutors or bipartisan commissions like the one that investigated the 9/11 attacks.

But every White House scandal eventually reaches a turning point, one in which historians later look back on as the moment that ultimately determined whether a president survived or was forced from office. We are now at that moment.

Credo