Bipartisan group of senators moving to protect Mueller’s job
April 11, 2018 by admin
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WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of four senators is moving to protect special counsel Robert Mueller’s job as President Trump publicly muses about firing him.
Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware and Cory Booker of New Jersey plan to introduce legislation Wednesday that would give any special counsel a 10-day window in which he or she could seek expedited judicial review of a firing, according to two people familiar with the legislation who spoke with The Assloicated Press. They were not authorized to discuss the bill ahead of its release and requested anonymity.
The legislation, which combines two bipartisan bills introduced last summer, signals escalating concerns in Congress as Mr. Trump has fumed about a Monday FBI raid of the office of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Mr. Trump has privately pondered firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and publicly criticized Mueller and his Russia probe.
In addition to investigating potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, Mueller is examining whether the president’s actions constitute obstruction of justice. As the investigation has worn on, Mr. Trump has repeatedly called it a “witch hunt.” On Monday, after the Cohen raid, he said it was “an attack on our country.” The raid was overseen by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan and was based in part on a referral from Mueller, said Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen Ryan.
After introducing similar bills in August, when Mr. Trump first began criticizing the Mueller probe, both Tillis and Graham had been quiet for months on whether the legislation was still needed as Democrats continued to push for a bill. Both Republicans said they didn’t think Mr. Trump would really move to fire Mueller. But the senators moved to push out a new, combined bill in the hours after Mr. Trump’s tirade.
Under the legislation, the expedited review would determine whether the special counsel was fired for good cause. The bill would also ensure that any staff, documents and other investigation materials were preserved as the matter was pending.
It’s unclear if it could ever become law. Such legislation is unlikely to move through the House, and many Republicans in the Senate still expressed confidence Tuesday that Mr. Trump would not fire the special counsel.
“I don’t think he’s going to be removed,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “I think he’ll be allowed to finish his job.”
Still, senators have publicly and privately let the White House know that firing Mueller would be a mistake, said the No. 2 Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.
“There would be serious repercussions,” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. “I’ve shared with the president what a massive mistake it would be for him to do this. I’ve done that in person.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday on Fox Business News: “It would be suicide for the president to want to talk about firing Mueller. The less the president said on this whole thing, the better off he would be, the stronger his presidency would be.”
Democratic leaders have pushed for Republicans to move legislation to protect Mueller.
“Stand up and say what the president is doing is wrong,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “Make it clear that firing Mueller or interfering in his investigation crosses a red line.”
Mr. Trump cannot directly fire Mueller. Any dismissal, for cause, would have to be carried out by Rosenstein, who appointed the counsel in May 2017 and has repeatedly expressed support for him.
But White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in her Tuesday briefing that the president ” certainly believes” he has the authority to fire Mueller directly.
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Trump Weighs More Robust Military Strike Against Syria
April 11, 2018 by admin
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Mr. Trump canceled a trip to Peru and Colombia that was scheduled to start Friday to oversee the response to the Syria attack, but as of early evening, had made no comment about Syria on Twitter or in his public appearances on Tuesday. Instead, he left it to a guest, the visiting emir of Qatar, to express determination to stop atrocities in Syria.
“We see the suffering of the Syrian people,” Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. “And me and the president, we see eye to eye that this matter has to stop immediately. We cannot tolerate with a war criminal, we cannot tolerate with someone who killed more than half a million of his own people.”
Mr. Trump spent part of the day huddled with John F. Kelly, his chief of staff, John R. Bolton, his new national security adviser, and other officials. But his spokeswoman declined to discuss the deliberations.
“As we’ve said, all options are on the table,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, “but I’m not going to get ahead of anything the president may or may not do in response to what’s taken place in Syria.”
Heavily backed by Russian air support and Iranian ground forces, Syria is in a different league than adversaries in other places where the United States is at war. Unlike the Islamic State in various parts of the Middle East, the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Shabab in Somalia, the Syrian government has extensive air defense and missile systems capable of shooting down foreign planes.
Sending bombers and fighter jets, with American or French pilots, to strike Syrian airfields or other facilities is considered risky because it could deepen the conflict if a pilot was shot down. That is why the Pentagon is looking at the same sort of retaliation used last year when two Navy destroyers unleashed a fusillade of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Al Shayrat airfield that was believed to have been used to launch chemical attacks.
But less than 24 hours after that strike, Syrian warplanes were again taking off from the damaged airfield, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group. Beyond Al Shayrat base, Syria still had numerous others from which it could launch flights. While Mr. Trump’s advisers argued last year that the strike affected Mr. Assad’s calculations, in the end its limited nature ultimately did not thwart the Syrian government’s ability to launch chemical attacks.
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“There’s a tension between the desire to do something bigger than last time and the president’s clear desire not to stay engaged in sustained operations,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama. “Conceivably, they could design a larger one-off strike or a series of smaller strikes.”
“But at the end of the day, it’s sustained pressure on Assad that’s going to change his calculation about whether to use chemical weapons,” Ms. Flournoy said.
David F. Gordon, policy planning director at the State Department under President George W. Bush, said Mr. Trump was almost certainly looking to punish Mr. Assad more severely while limiting American engagement.
“What they’re probably searching for is: What can we destroy that weakens this guy?” Mr. Gordon said. “He has to do more than he did last time, and I think he does want to disrupt their capabilities. But I think it’s basically still the one shot — it may be in two waves or something, but I don’t think there’s an ongoing response to this.”
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Already, there were indications that Mr. Assad was moving key aircraft to a Russian base near Latakia, a port city on the Mediterranean Sea, and taking pains to secure important weapons systems.
The Pentagon does not have an aircraft carrier in the area at the moment, which focuses attention on the U.S.S. Donald Cook or the U.S.S. Porter, two Navy destroyers already in the Mediterranean. The Donald Cook departed Larnaca, Cyprus, on Monday after completing a scheduled port visit, Navy officials said.
The Donald Cook is one of four Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers that generally serve Europe and are part of a NATO rotation, officials said. The United States can use the Donald Cook or the Porter to launch multiple Tomahawk cruise missiles at sites in Syria similar to last year’s operation.
Since last year’s strikes, the United States Central Command has been updating lists of possible military and government targets in Syria, including aircraft hangars, ammunition depots and command headquarters. Defense officials said one possibility was to render certain Syrian airfields incapable of being used in the future to launch chemical attacks.
Last year’s strike destroyed a number of aircraft and their hangars, the Pentagon said at the time, but did not hinder the base’s ability to launch aircraft for long. The American missiles used in the attack, BGM-109 Tomahawks, have a range of around 1,000 miles and carry a warhead that weighs half a ton.
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The Donald Cook and the Porter are likely loaded with roughly two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles each. The U.S.S. New York, an amphibious landing ship and part of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, is also nearby. The New York can launch transport helicopters and landing craft loaded with Marines, but sending in ground forces is highly unlikely, officials said.
In coming days, the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is scheduled to head to the region. While part of a regularly scheduled deployment, the Truman will deploy to the Mediterranean with a complement of strike and reconnaissance aircraft and surface warships sailing alongside.
Whether allied forces would participate remained unclear. President Emmanuel Macron of France said Tuesday that the allies were still discussing a plan and would announce a decision “in the coming days.”
“We do not wish for any escalation in the region,” said Mr. Macron, who was hosting Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. “But we simply wish that international law, and in particular international humanitarian law, be respected.”
Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, said that those behind the reported chemical attack in Syria must be “held accountable,” although he did not say whether Saudi Arabia would join any response. “We are discussing with our allies the steps to respond,” Mr. Jubeir told reporters in Paris.
Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, who spoke by telephone with Mr. Trump on Tuesday, also stressed the responsibility of Mr. Assad’s government for the attack “if confirmed.” In a statement summarizing the leaders’ call, the British government said, “They agreed that the international community needed to respond to uphold the worldwide prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.”
In Washington, most lawmakers remained either supportive of military action or noncommittal, but some liberal Democrats objected. Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus issued a statement calling on the administration to “redouble its efforts to engage our allies and enforce international prohibitions on chemical weapons diplomatically” rather than use force again.
Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said Mr. Trump needed permission from Congress before action.
“He’s a president, not a king, and Congress needs to quit giving him a blank check to wage war against anyone, anywhere,” Mr. Kaine said. “If he strikes Syria without our approval, what will stop him from bombing North Korea or Iran?”
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