Trump Advisers Urge Tougher Russia Policy After Expulsions
March 31, 2018 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
Comments Off
“I don’t remember such bad shape of our relations,” Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to Washington, told NBC’s “Today” show. “There is a great mistrust between the United States and Russia.”
Since his arrival last year in Washington, Mr. Antonov said he had invited American officials to his residence only to be repeatedly rebuffed. “If they are scared, I said, ‘Come on, we can meet in a restaurant and to discuss all outstanding issues,’” he said. “It was four or five months ago. And I got answer: silent.”
American officials said a shift in the administration’s approach has been building for weeks. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, whose last official day on the job is Saturday, had come to the conclusion before Mr. Trump fired him this month that a year of attempting to cooperate had not yielded much success, according to people familiar with his thinking. As a result, they said, Mr. Tillerson had begun mapping out a tougher policy toward Russia and found agreement in the White House.
Credit
Vasily Maximov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The administration began taking a more robust approach, publicly blaming Russia for a devastating attack on computers in Ukraine and elsewhere, accusing Moscow of trying to break into the United States’ power grid and imposing sanctions in retaliation for Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election in the United States.
Mr. Tillerson’s feelings were hardened further by a conversation with Boris Johnson, the British foreign secretary who described to him the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy, Sergei V. Skripal, and his daughter living in Britain. Even in the hours before his dismissal by Mr. Trump, Mr. Tillerson spoke out in stronger terms than the president in condemning the poisoning.
While Mr. Tillerson is on the way out, his designated successor, Mike Pompeo, and the incoming national security adviser, John R. Bolton, are both considered even more hawkish on Russia.
At the same time, some officials at the Pentagon have expressed caution about the escalating conflict with Russia, citing consequences in Syria, where the United States and Russia have both conducted military operations.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
The Trump administration expelled 60 Russian diplomats and intelligence officers and closed the Russian Consulate in Seattle this week as part of a wider international retaliation for the poisoning of Mr. Skripal. Russia responded Thursday by ordering out 60 Americans and closing the consulate in St. Petersburg. The scope of Russia’s retaliation grew clearer on Friday as the Kremlin summoned 23 ambassadors from other countries to evict some of their diplomats.
But Mr. Trump has remained publicly silent amid the dramatic rounds of diplomatic retaliation, leaving it to others to condemn Moscow. Frustrated by the investigation of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into whether his campaign cooperated with Russia in 2016, a scenario he dismissed as a “hoax,” Mr. Trump recently called Mr. Putin to congratulate him on his victory in a re-election widely dismissed as a sham.
Newsletter Sign Up
Continue reading the main story
Thank you for subscribing.
An error has occurred. Please try again later.
You are already subscribed to this email.
Mr. Trump made no mention of the poisoning of Mr. Skripal during the call but instead suggested that he wanted to schedule a summit meeting with the Russian president.
Both countries still have ambassadors in place, so high-level contact on potentially calamitous matters should continue, as it did at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. But the wheels of basic diplomacy, involving visas, consular services, cultural events and simply talking to people, are grinding ever more slowly and, in some cases, coming to a halt.
“The parties lose some of their eyes and ears, so the quality of the reporting goes down,” said Charles A. Kupchan, who was the Europe director of the National Security Council under President Barack Obama. “It’s not just intelligence but day-to-day political and economic reporting: What’s the buzz in the street, what do interlocutors say? And consular services do get hit.”
Credit
Olga Maltseva/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The expulsions left many diplomats wondering how the American Embassy in Moscow could operate. Much of the burden will fall on the ambassador, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., who took over an embassy already struggling to function after an order by the Kremlin last summer that it dispense with 755 employees in response to sweeping American sanctions for Russia’s election meddling.
“The embassy is struggling to do basic operations. This latest round will hurt,” said Michael A. McFaul, who served as ambassador in Moscow from 2012 to 2014. “Morale, of course, is also very low.”
Even before this week’s expulsions, the wait in Moscow to obtain a visitor’s visa to the United States was among the longest in the world. It now takes 250 days just to get an appointment with the visa section, compared with four in Beijing and 31 in New Delhi.
An American spokesman told Russian news media this week that the embassy had been placed under “significant constraints” by the Foreign Ministry and “could not accommodate all their many requests at all times, particularly for large groups.”
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Simon Schuchat, a former diplomat at the embassy in the Moscow, recalled how haphazard and unnerving it was when Russia began the process of ousting alleged spies during a round of expulsions in 2001. Inevitably, Moscow ordered out diplomats unconnected to espionage.
“They tended to go for people with better language skills,” Mr. Schuchat said, adding that they “missed many spies and included many non-spies.”
This time around, intelligence officers working under “official cover” as diplomats were especially targeted, but some American officials played down the impact, saying the United States still came out ahead in the expulsions.
“That’s to our benefit,” Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, said at a seminar on Thursday in Austin, Tex. “There are a lot more Russians in America than Americans in Russia in the intelligence agencies.”
On Friday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused the agencies overseen by Mr. Coats of exploiting the situation by approaching Russian diplomats leaving the United States to offer “assistance” in exchange for “entering into covert relations” on behalf of the American government.
“The ploy is not working,” the ministry said in a statement, “but their behavior is cynical and distasteful, as if Washington has stepped completely beyond the bounds of common decency.”
Continue reading the main story
Share and Enjoy
EXCLUSIVE: Pruitt’s EPA security broke down door to lobbyist condo
March 31, 2018 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Comments Off
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s protective detail broke down the door at the Capitol Hill condo where he was living, believing he was unconscious and unresponsive and needed rescue, in a bizarre incident last year that the EPA has for months refused to discuss, according to sources and police radio traffic obtained by ABC News.
The incident occurred in the late afternoon on March 29, 2017 at the Capitol Hill address Pruitt was renting, which was co-owned by the wife of a top energy lobbyist. A Capitol Police officer called 911 at the behest of Pruitt’s security detail, which had tried unsuccessfully to reach him by phone, and by banging on the building’s front door, according to police recordings obtained by ABC News.
“They say he’s unconscious at this time,” the 911 operator is told, according to the recordings. “I don’t know about the breathing portion.”
Credit: Washington D.C. Office of Unified Communications
Responding fire units from a Capitol Hill station house mobilized. “Engine three, Medic two respond to unconscious person,” the radio transmission said.
The protective detail then broke down the building’s glass-paneled front door and ascended two flights to Pruitt’s $50-a-night bedroom, where two sources tell ABC News he was found groggy, rising from a nap. It is unclear what led to the panic that caused the response. Pruitt declined medical attention, and a police report was never filed.
The EPA eventually agreed to reimburse the condo owner for the damage to the door, a source familiar with the arrangement told ABC News. EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox did not respond to requests for information on the incident or the reimbursement payments.
The previously unreported incident occurred while Pruitt was living at Capitol Hill condo co-owned by the wife of a top energy lobbyist. Vicki Hart and her husband, lobbyist, J. Steven Hart, both confirmed the events, but neither would say how much the damage to the door cost to repair.
The EPA has since reimbursed Pruitt’s former landlord, Vicki Hart, for the cost of the door.
ABC News first reported Thursday that Pruitt had lived in the condo in 2017, during his first six months in Washington. The condo is in a prime location – less than a block from the U.S. Capitol complex – and other apartments in the building complex have rented for as much as $5,000-a-month, according to a source familiar with a neighboring lease.
The EPA allowed Bloomberg News to review copies of canceled checks that Pruitt paid to the condo owner. The news outlet reported that the checks show varying amounts paid on sporadic dates — not a traditional monthly “rent payment” of the same amount each month, according to Bloomberg. In all, Pruitt paid $6,100 over six months to the limited liability corporation for the Capitol Hill condo co-owned by Vicki Hart, whose husband J. Steven Hart is chairman of a top D.C. lobbying firm and who is registered to lobby for several major environmental and energy concerns.
Two sources told ABC News that Pruitt’s daughter also used the apartment in 2017 during her tenure as a White House summer intern.
“The rental agreement was with Scott Pruitt,” Vicki Hart told ABC News. “If other people were using the bedroom or the living quarters, I was never told, and I never gave him permission to do that.”
The EPA did not respond to requests for comment or clarification on the living arrangement with Pruitt’s daughter. McKenna Pruitt, now a law student, could not be reached by phone or email.
Wilcox released a statement from EPA Senior Counsel for Ethics Justina Fugh Friday, saying she did not “conclude that this is a prohibited gift at all. It was a routine business transaction and permissible even if from a personal friend.” Wilcox did not say when Fugh reviewed the matter or what led her to look into it.
Bryson Morgan, who is in private practice and served as Investigative Counsel at the U.S. House of Representatives Office of Congressional Ethics, said he thought it raised red flags.
“I think it certainly creates a perception problem, especially if Mr. Hart was seeking to influence the agency,” Morgan said.
Gift rules prohibit executive branch employees from accepting items of value, Morgan said in an interview prior to the EPA’s release of the details. In addition to traditional gifts, those rules apply to favorable terms on a lease.
“It’s not just if he is paying market rent,” Morgan said. “A short-term lease is expensive. Is he given the ability to end it any day? Is this an arrangement any other person could get on the open market? My assumption would be this situation does not involve the hallmarks of a specific fair market transaction,” he said in an interview conducted before the checks were revealed.
The new disclosure comes as Democrats in Congress are demanding that Pruitt disclose to them more details about his 2017 use of the Capitol Hill home. U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, called on Pruitt to resign over his failure to disclose the rental deal tied to an energy lobbyist.
“As he has done over and over again, he showed contempt for transparency, ethical guidelines, and the public interest,” Beyer said. “Pruitt must resign. If he refuses to do so he should be fired immediately.”
Hart is the chairman of lobbying firm Williams and Jensen that lobbies on EPA policies like the Clean Air Act, according to its website. The firm also lobbied on issues related to the export of liquefied natural gas and represented Cheniere Energy Inc., which owned the only active Liquid Natural Gas export plant in the United States at the time.
Pruitt traveled to Morocco last December and the EPA said in a press release that liquid natural gas exports were a topic of discussion during that trip.
Last year, Cheniere Energy Inc. reported paying Hart’s firm $80,000.
Hart’s firm specifically lobbied on “issues related to the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG), approval of LNG exports and export facilities.” The firm also lists on its website that it lobbies on other EPA policies like the Clean Air Act.
Hart was registered with several companies to lobby on energy issues, but he told ABC News on Friday that he never contacted the EPA for clients.
“I made no lobby contacts at the EPA in 2017 or 2018,” Hart said.
The EPA did not respond to ABC News’ questions about whether Hart’s lobbying firm had any involvement in arranging meetings during Pruitt’s trip to Morocco.
Cheniere Energy spokeswoman Rachel Carmichel told ABC News the company ended its relationship with Hart’s firm in December 2017. The spokeswoman went on to say Cheniere was unaware of the relationship between Pruitt and the lobbyist and had not used Hart’s firm to have conversations with the EPA.
Another lobbying client of Hart’s, the railroad Norfolk Southern, spent $160,000 last year on lobbying Congress on “issues affecting coal usage, oil production, and transportation, including EPA regulation.”
Norfolk Southern also declined to comment when reached by ABC News.
Craig Holman, an ethics specialist at Public Citizen, a non-partisan watchdog group, wrote to the EPA Inspector General Thursday to request an investigation into the rental arrangement. If the rental arrangement was anything other than a market rate deal, he wrote, “it would at least constitute a violation of the federal statutes and executive branch rules prohibiting gifts to covered officials from prohibited sources.”
“Since Administrator Pruitt is already involved in allegations of accepting gifts of travel, the question arises whether a sense of entitlement may have led him to violate the gift rules on this rental arrangement as well,” Holman wrote.
The head of the nonprofit watchdog group the Environmental Integrity Project and former EPA Director of Civil Enforcement Eric Shaffer called on the EPA’s inspector general and Congress to look into the issue.
“Does this explain why Pruitt flew to Morocco to pitch natural gas exports, which isn’t really an EPA concern?” Schaeffer wrote in a statement.
The EPA inspector general’s office is aware of the report, according to spokesman Jeff Lagda.
The agency’s inspector general is already looking into the cost of Pruitt’s travel and whether the agency followed all proper procedures.