Tag: John R. Bolton

Russian officials have welcomed the results of the Mueller report, which found that neither Donald Trump nor any of his aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 US election, but said they doubted relations between Russia and the west would improve as a result. “The long-awaited Mueller report has proved what we in Russia knew long ago: there was no conspiracy between Trump or any member of his team and the Kremlin,” wrote Konstantin Kosachev, the chair of the Federation Council’s committee on foreign affairs. Blaming US media bias and anti-Russian sentiment, Kosachev and other senior officials said that they expected the United States to increase pressure on Russia and were bracing for new sanctions. No collusion, plenty of corruption: Trump is not in the clear | Richard Wolffe Read more “We in Russia have nothing to celebrate, the [meddling] accusations against us remain,” Kosachev wrote, saying he expected US officials to argue: “Yes, there was no collusion, but sanctions against Russia still need to be strengthened.” Russia was ready to improve relations with the US, Kosachev wrote, but the question remained: “Is Trump ready to take that risk?” He said Russia hawks, including the national security adviser, John Bolton, and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, made that unlikely. Kosachev’s remarks were echoed by other senior lawmakers. But Democrats will still scream that there was collusion.” The head of the Duma’s foreign affairs committee said: “All of these myths about the infamous Russian meddling was simply invented as a pretext to continue pressure against our country.” The Kremlin declined to comment on the report on Monday. “We haven’t seen the report itself,” said Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman. Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the situation would “get worse before it gets worse”, with focus shifting from elections meddling to other points of conflict such as Ukraine and Venezuela. “Too much has been said about the Kremlin to back down now. Instead, other issues will become more pronounced, from US election meddling to Crimea to Ukraine to Venezuela.” “Sanctions will follow in spades from US Congress,” he added.

U.S. military commanders don’t know what strategy to pursue, Administration officials told TIME. “The back and forth is painful.” Trump’s latest pronouncement, Monday on Twitter, suggested that the U.S. military mission in the war-torn country was open-ended. “We will be leaving at a proper pace while at the same time continuing to fight ISIS and doing all else that is prudent and necessary!” he wrote. “The timetable flows from the policy decisions that we need to implement.” Trump’s initial impromptu decision, hastily made during a Dec. 14 phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has become the latest example of Trump’s reliably inconsistent presidency. It was a decision made contrary to the advice of top U.S. generals and national security advisers. We won,” he said in a video posted on Twitter. In May 2017, Trump revealed classified intelligence when he again went off-script and invited Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then-Ambassador Sergey Kislyak into the Oval Office, according to a Post report. In March 2018, Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin to congratulate him on his re-election, despite being specifically warned not to do so by national security adviserd. That same month, the White House suspended the long-held practice of publishing public summaries of the President’s phone calls with world leaders. Trump may not entirely subscribe to past U.S. presidents’ tendency toward strategic predictability, but it’s his prerogative whether or not to heed the advice of advisers, said David Priess, a former CIA analyst and author of “The President’s Book of Secrets: The Untold Story of Intelligence Briefings to America’s Presidents.” “We elect a president, not a bureaucracy, to execute policy,” he said.

The United States must be aware of the growing threat and mount a response. As the trade war between Washington and Beijing escalates, China is using economic leverage to exert pressure on the U.S. political system. While the trade war rages in public, behind the scenes the U.S. government is preparing for the possibility that the Chinese government will decide to weaponize the influence network inside the United States that it has been building for years. Although Beijing has not yet employed Russian-style “active measures,” it has these capabilities at the ready. The Chinese Communist Party and its allies have also bought up several Chinese-language media outlets inside the United States as part of an effort to influence overseas Chinese. Finally, Beijing interferes through co-opting American elites and persuading them to push Chinese Communist Party messages. Under President Xi Jinping, the party has been ramping up its comprehensive foreign influence operations strategy, known as “united front” work. Still described in Maoist terms — to mobilize the party’s friends to strike at the party’s enemies — the system is overseen by the party’s United Front Work Department. “The UFWD directs ‘overseas Chinese work,’ which seeks to co-opt ethnic Chinese individuals and communities living outside China, while a number of other key affiliated organizations guided by China’s broader United Front strategy conduct influence operations targeting foreign actors and states,” says a report released last month by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. But as tensions continue to rise, Beijing’s cost-benefit analysis may change.

Donald Trump is prepared to impose sanctions on European companies that do business in Iran following his withdrawal of the US from the international nuclear deal, his administration reiterated on Sunday. Pompeo: US firms could invest in North Korea and Kim may get ‘security assurances’ Read more Trump’s most senior foreign policy aides signalled that the US would continue pressuring allies to follow Washington in backing out of the pact, which gave Tehran relief from sanctions in exchange for halting its nuclear programme. John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, predicted that “the Europeans will see that it’s in their interests to come along with us” rather than continue with the 2015 deal, under which major European corporations have signed billions of dollars of contracts in Iran. It depends on the conduct of other governments.” US sanctions on Iran reimposed following Trump’s withdrawal not only block American firms from doing business in the country, but also bar foreign firms that do business there from accessing the entire US banking and financial system. He declined to rule out sanctions against European firms. Richard Grenell, the new US ambassador to Berlin, warned this week in a tweet: “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.” Some European leaders have called for measures to nullify the US sanctions. On Sunday, Bolton asked on ABC’s This Week: “Why would any business, why would the shareholders of any business, want to do business with the world’s central banker of international terrorism?” Ivanka Trump in Jerusalem for embassy opening as Gaza braces for bloodshed Read more The US has said it will allow “wind-down periods” of 90 to 180 days, depending on the industry involved, for companies to scrap existing contracts in Iran. Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said Trump’s decision was a “violation of morals” but said his country would remain in the deal. On Sunday, Prime Minister Theresa May told Rouhani in a phone call Britain and its European partners will remain committed to the deal as long as Tehran continues to meet its obligations. The British, German, French and Iranian foreign ministers are due to meet in Brussels on Tuesday.

With the Syria strikes over, President Trump is furiously tweeting about James Comey's new book. NPR's Michel Martin and the Washington Post's Robert Costa consider the state of the Trump presidency. But many more of his tweets were dedicated to aggressive personal attacks on former FBI Director James Comey and Comey's new book, which will be available to the public starting this week. ROBERT COSTA: Great to be with you. MARTIN: Well, the big news this weekend was the U.S.-led strikes on Syria. MARTIN: So let's talk about the other aspect of this story, which is the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said today that new sanctions are going to be announced tomorrow against Russia because of Russia's support for the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. And how do we understand this administration's evolving Russia policy? MARTIN: So let's talk about the story that a lot of us have been following today, which is the president's tweets about former FBI Director James Comey and his book. But the real big picture that's worrying this administration, based on my reporting, is the midterm elections, and you look at the news last week of Speaker Paul Ryan announcing his decision not to seek re-election. MARTIN: That was Washington Post national political reporter Robert Costa.

WASHINGTON — Shortly after Ambassador John R. Bolton was sent to represent the United States at the United Nations, an institution he had long scorned as an anti-American citadel of corruption, he hosted President George W. Bush for a visit. Mr. Bolton, who takes over Monday as President Trump’s third national security adviser with Syria as his most immediate challenge, and talks with North Korea and the future of the Iranian nuclear deal not far behind, loves nothing more than a good target. North Korea. “I don’t know how that will work out. To those who say I’m going to start a war, that’s what I think.” Some of Mr. Bolton’s harshest critics are those who once worked with him. “This will be the scariest thing that’s happened to us in 50 years,” said Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr. Powell when he was secretary of state. He loves the combat.” Mr. Hadley, Ms. Rice and other Bush veterans privately cautioned against Mr. Bolton being named deputy secretary of state when Mr. Trump took office. When the elder George Bush was elected, Mr. Baker named Mr. Bolton assistant secretary of state for international organizations. “I don’t do war,” he recalled Mr. Bolton replying. “It was very consistent with John’s view that we don’t need international staffs, we don’t need new institutions, we just need countries to work together,” said Robert Joseph, an ally on the National Security Council staff.

The Republican senator Lindsey Graham said on Sunday he was glad John Bolton will be Donald Trump’s national security adviser going into talks with North Korea, because of his “very healthy skepticism”. 'Dialogue of the deaf'? Iran deal talks persist as Trump looks poised to kill it Read more Bolton is a Bush-era United Nations ambassador and noted hawk who has advocated military strikes as the best way to stop North Korea developing a nuclear weapon that can reach the US mainland. In February, he wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he set out “the legal case for striking North Korea first”. News of Bolton’s appointment was greeted by widespread alarm. A US-North Korean summit is slated for May. Hopes have been raised that Kim Jong-un may discuss measures to reduce the threat of war, possibly in exchange for security guarantees and an easing of sanctions that have severely affected the already struggling North Korean economy. Earlier, on a visit to Beijing, the Democratic Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren said success from talks with Pyongyang would involve getting a commitment to discuss verifiable steps to reduce its nuclear threat. Trump last month fired secretary of state Rex Tillerson – whom he had previously derided for saying talks with North Korea might be possible. Like Bolton, Pompeo is a hawk regarding North Korea.

Cambridge Analytica executives aggressively sought the backing of rich GOP donors, who they believed would help the company “effectively corner the market” in the United States, internal records show. ?” Nix asked his researchers, who followed through, according to emails provided to The Washington Post by former Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie. “They met with me I believe, but it was nothing that we found interesting, and the pitch was not compelling.” Internal documents and interviews with former Cambridge Analytica employees illustrate how intently the company — a spinoff of a British firm — worked to win over U.S. political clients for the 2014 midterms. At the time, the company had access to Facebook data that had been obtained by a researcher for academic purposes and improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, Facebook executives said last week. Mercer has been the largest donor to Bolton’s super PAC, giving $5 million since the 2014 cycle, according to FEC records. Part of the work that Cambridge Analytica performed for Bolton’s super PAC was psychographic voter targeting, which the company claimed could profile voters on the basis of certain characteristics. [Cambridge Analytica harnessed Facebook data in work for super PAC led by John Bolton, according to former employees] “They used the psychographic stuff, and the Facebook data was a part of that,” said a former Cambridge Analytica employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal strategy. The New York Times first reported that Cambridge Analytica harnessed its Facebook data in services it provided to the Bolton super PAC. In the 2014 cycle, GOP congressional campaigns and conservative-leaning groups paid at least $729,000 to the firm for a range of services, including research, data analytics and microtargeting. Follow @myhlee Craig Timberg is a national technology reporter for The Washington Post.

Today in 5 Lines After threatening to veto a $1.3 trillion spending bill Friday morning, President Trump signed the measure, averting a government shutdown and funding the government through September. Trump campaign officials reportedly encouraged young adviser George Papadopoulos to accept an interview with a Russian news agency before the 2016 election. The Trump administration announced sanctions against an Iranian hacker network for its involvement in “one of the largest state-sponsored hacking campaigns” ever prosecuted by the United States. Former Georgia Governor and U.S. Senator Zell Miller died at age 86. More than 500,000 protesters are expected to be in Washington, D.C. on Saturday for the March for Our Lives, an anti-gun-violence rally. The demonstration is one of 800 sister events planned around the world. Today on The Atlantic Who Is John Bolton? : President Trump’s new national-security adviser once advocated for war with North Korea. (Jodi Kantor, The New York Times) Visualized Where Are Tomorrow’s Protests?

WASHINGTON — President Trump named John R. Bolton, a hard-line former American ambassador to the United Nations, as his third national security adviser on Thursday, continuing a shake-up that creates one of the most hawkish national security teams of any White House in recent history. The move, which was sudden but not unexpected, signals a more confrontational approach in American foreign policy at a time when Mr. Trump faces mounting challenges, including from Iran and North Korea. The president replaced Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson last week with the C.I.A. In an interview on Thursday on Fox News, soon after his appointment was announced in a presidential tweet, he declined to say whether Mr. Trump should go through with a planned meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Mr. Trump, the White House officials said, also wanted to fill out his national security team before his meeting with Mr. Kim, which is scheduled to occur by the end of May. Mr. Bolton, who will take office April 9, has met regularly with Mr. Trump to discuss foreign policy. He described the job of national security adviser as making sure that the bureaucracy did not impede the decisions of the president. R. McMaster has served his country with distinction for more than 30 years,” the statement said. Their tensions seeped into public view in February, when General McMaster said at a security conference in Munich that the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was beyond dispute. General McMaster had been among the most hard-line administration officials in his approach to North Korea, publicly raising the specter of a “preventive war” against the North.