Tag: Vladimir Putin

New York Times reporter joins to discuss what we can learn from the massive leak of Trump's private schedules from the White House. » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc MSNBC delivers breaking news and in-depth analysis of the headlines, as well…

Joe Cirincione, nuclear weapons policy expert, talks with Joy Reid about Donald Trump's announced intention to withdraw the United States from the INF treaty, and why Donald Trump doesn't seem to understand how to exert pressure through a treaty as…

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr declined to critique Trump's tweets, but he stood by the covert services. Trump's rejection of intelligence agency assessments that Russia interfered in the 2016 election rocked his ties with his administration's top spies during his first year in office. Often his goal seemed to be to grease his one-man flattery offensive toward President Vladimir Putin, which continues to this day. Now Trump is inventing his own version of the facts to justify his withdrawal from an Obama-era nuclear deal because the deal was "defective at its core." It's unprecedented for a president to be so frequently and publicly at war with the intelligence community. But it was also another example of how the President prioritizes his own political goals when they conflict with the judgments of the intelligence community. Trump's most notorious dissing of US intelligence came during his summit with Putin in Helsinki last year, in a shocking public display of an American President siding with one of his nation's enemies over his own administration. It's ironic that a Republican President should adopt positions so at odds with his party's self-image as the adult in the room on national security. McConnell was positioning himself as the voice of the traditionally hawkish Republican consensus on foreign policy. Though it could be argued that on the idea of bringing troops home from long foreign wars, the President is more in tune with grass-roots opinion than his critics -- a view backed up by early exchanges in the Democratic White House race.

Report: President Trump had previously canceled a formal meeting with the Russian president. #SpecialReport #FoxNews FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as political and business news. The number one…

Democrats are demanding answers from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin about his ties to a major shareholder in a Russian firm who benefited from the Trump administration's decision to lift sanctions on firms with ties to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. CNN's…

A new report in The New York Times shows how Trump Administration sanctions on a Russia oligarch might have actually helped him. Chris Jansing is joined by the reporter who broke the story, Ken Vogel, to break down how Oleg…

Mr. Trump acknowledged discussing the Moscow project with Mr. Cohen in written responses that the president gave Mr. Mueller’s investigators days before they revealed that Mr. Cohen had pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. “There was no question that he was asked by the special counsel a question that said, ‘Did you talk to him before he testified?’” Mr. Giuliani said. “There were questions like, ‘Did you talk about the Moscow project with Michael Cohen?’ to which we answered yes.” Later in the day, Mr. Giuliani said he was merely allowing for the possibility that the president and Mr. Cohen could have discussed the Moscow project through the election but that no notes or call logs indicated specific conversations about Russia. He does remember, after that, fleeting conversations.” He added that he was trying to keep Mr. Trump from legal exposure if prosecutors uncover evidence of a conversation that the president has said he does not recall. Then, when Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about the Tower negotiations, the special counsel’s office revealed they extended at least until the middle of 2016. Michael T. Flynn, who would become President Trump’s first national security adviser, discussed sanctions with Mr. Kislyak numerous times in December 2016 as President Obama punished Russia for its campaign of election interference. For the Moscow project, Mr. Trump appears to have relied on Mr. Cohen to be the lead negotiator, and interviews, emails and court documents show that Mr. Cohen made a vigorous effort to try to get the blessing of the Kremlin for the project and even tried to arrange a trip to Moscow for Mr. Trump. Mr. Sater appears to have seen Mr. Shmykov as a conduit to get Russian government approval for the Trump project. Instead, he said, a Russian bank could provide the documents as part of “a business meeting not political.” The Moscow trip for Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen never materialized, but court documents released in November as part of Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea showed that Mr. Cohen pursued the Moscow project well into 2016. Mr. Cohen told prosecutors for the special counsel that, during a January 2016 conversation, the Kremlin official “asked detailed questions and took notes, stating that she would follow up with others in Russia.” Mr. Cohen told prosecutors that the discussions lasted at least until June 14, 2016, when he met with Mr. Sater in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York and told him he would not be traveling to Russia “at that time,” according to court documents.

Boca Raton’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch said on a national broadcast Friday morning that if reports are true that President Donald Trump told his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to lie about Russia then that would constitute a violation of Trump’s oath of office. Deutch, who chairs the U.S. House Ethics Committee, stopped short of saying he would consider that an impeachable offense despite several direct questions to that point on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show Friday morning. “If this is true this is more evidence that the president has violated his oath of office,” Deutch said of the report that Trump told Cohen to lie. Deutch would not give a “yes” or “no” answer. “If this report is true, if the President of the United States violated the law, if he told Cohen to commit perjury, then that’s going to go into the whole discussion we have about whether the President should continue in office,” Deutch responded. Asked again, Deutch added, “You’ve got to realize that alone is not all that we’ve got. This is damning. And it’s terrible. That’s before you even get to the Mueller report and Russia and all the huge news that’s broken on Russia,” Deutch said. Deutch spent about a half hour on the show.

“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate,” said the spokesman, Peter Carr. Both the White House and lawyers for Mr. Trump vigorously denied the BuzzFeed report even before the special counsel’s office weighed in. BuzzFeed News maintained that its report was accurate, its editor, Ben Smith, said after Mr. Mueller’s office disputed the account. One person familiar with Mr. Cohen’s testimony to the special counsel’s prosecutors said that Mr. Cohen did not state that the president had pressured him to lie to Congress. In a December court filing, prosecutors working for Mr. Mueller described how Mr. Cohen had repeatedly lied to Congress both about the length of negotiations over the Trump Tower Moscow deal and about Mr. Trump’s involvement in the project. They also said Mr. Cohen discussed the progress of the Moscow project with Mr. Trump more frequently than he had told the committee and had briefed members of Mr. Trump’s family about the negotiations. When he appeared in court to plead guilty to lying to Congress, Mr. Cohen said he had concealed his interactions with Russian officials and the fact that he asked Mr. Trump to travel to Russia to promote the deal because he wanted to support Mr. Trump’s “political messaging.” That day, Mr. Trump defended his role in the Trump Tower Moscow discussions, brushing aside concerns that he was advancing his business interests at the time he was hoping to become president. Mr. Cohen initially repeated his false statements about the Moscow tower to prosecutors working for Mr. Mueller after he pleaded guilty in August to campaign finance violations and financial crimes. Mr. Cohen said he initially lied because he did not want to contradict his congressional testimony, prosecutors said. Subsequently, he took care “not to overstate his knowledge or the role of others in the conduct under investigation” and provided “useful information” about his contacts with “persons connected to the White House” in 2017 and 2018, the special counsel’s filing said.

Rachel Maddow reports on Mitch McConnell rallying enough Republicans to prevent Senate Democrats from blocking the Trump administration from easing some Russia sanctions related to oligarch Oleg Deripaska. » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc About: MSNBC is the premier destination for…