The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Athos_131]

VP Pence speaks at 10am today, would not want to miss him.

Of course, why would a person claiming to be a member of the LGBT community not support someone who disapproves of those lifestyles.

You are a fraud.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

VP Pence speaks at 10am today, would not want to miss him.

Mike Pence Spoke at an Anti-LGBT Group’s Summit

October is recognized as LGBT history month. October 12th marks 20 years since the death of Matthew Shepard, which prompted Congress to pass the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law on October 28th, 2009. But all of that is hard to fathom when Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the annual summit of the anti-gay Family Research Council.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the Family Research Council a hate group, giving Pence another first for this administration: He’s the first sitting vice president to speak at the anti-LGBT group’s summit. But once again he’s just a lap dog for Trump, who became the first sitting president to do so. Remember 2015, when the White House was lit with rainbow lights after marriage equality passed and Obama was the first sitting president to appear on the cover of an LGBT magazine when he sat for a portrait for Out’s annual Out100 issue and was proclaimed Ally of the Year?

“While Republicans have been delivering on a common-sense conservative agenda since 2016 — in case you didn’t notice —Democrats have fallen further to the left than ever before,” Pence told the audience, according to reports. Although he didn’t specifically address LGBT issues, Pence did take on abortion, trotting out familiar far-right tropes: “Today’s Democratic Party wants to raise your taxes. Today’s Democratic Party wants open borders and to abolish ICE. Today’s Democratic Party thinks Obamacare didn’t go far enough, and they’re now running actual socialists for higher office. Today’s Democratic Party wants abortion on demand, and they want you to pay for it.”

He wrapped up his speech by bloviating like the best Mother-may-I priest he seems to aspire to be: “Finally, let’s keep faith that he who has ever watched over this nation still governs in the affairs of men and that as we hold fast to him we will run and not grow weary, we will walk and not grow faint and that he will yet bless America abundantly more than we could ask or imagine in this one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Pence’s conservative, anti-LGBT views are well-documented. While he was head of the Indiana Policy Review in the 1990s he published articles urging employers not to hire gay employees, writing: “Homosexuals are not as a group able-bodied. They are known to carry extremely high rates of disease brought on because of the nature of their sexual practices and the promiscuity which is a hallmark of their lifestyle.” And as governor of Indiana, he signed the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” which allowed companies to discriminate against LGBT employees and customers based on firmly held religious beliefs. Plus, he’s proposed cutting funding for HIV treatment and using the money for “gay cure” conversion therapy. This is not the man America needs representing us.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

VP Pence speaks at 10am today, would not want to miss him.

Here's What Mike Pence Said on LGBT Issues Over the Years

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s running mate, attracted national attention last year when he signed a religious freedom law that members of the LGBT community said could worsen discrimination against them.

After criticism from the business community, Pence signed an amendment to the law intended to protect gays and lesbians.

But it was not his first brush with criticism from the LGBT community. A self-described “Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” the former member of Congress was a prominent conservative figure in battles over marriage equality and equal rights in the last decade.

Here are some of the statements and positions Pence had has related to LGBT issues:

He said gay couples signaled ‘societal collapse’

In 2006, as head of the Republican Study Committee, a group of the 100 most-conservative House members, Pence rose in support of a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Citing a Harvard researcher, Pence said in his speech, “societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family.” Pence also called being gay a choice and said keeping gays from marrying was not discrimination, but an enforcement of “God’s idea.”

He opposed a law that would prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in the workplace

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act would have banned discrimination against people based on sexual orientation. Pence voted against that law in 2007 and later said the law “wages war on freedom and religion in the workplace.“

More than 20 years after the bill was first introduced, the Senate approved the proposal in 2013, but the bill failed in the House.

He opposed the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Pence favored the longtime military policy of not letting soldiers openly identify as gay. In 2010, Pence told CNN he did not want to see the military become “a backdrop for social experimentation.” The policy ended in 2011.

He rejected the Obama administration directive on transgender bathrooms

In May, the federal government directed school districts to allow students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with. The directive came as criticism crescendoed around a North Carolina law that would have restricted the use of bathrooms.

Along with many other conservatives, Pence opposed Obama’s directive and said it was a state issue. “The federal government has not business getting involved in issues of this nature,” Pence said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Just confirming a self-proclaiming member of the LGBT community is on board with all that.

Thanks.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

"...While the president has the legal authority to grant a clearance,.."

'Nuff said.

Why'd everyone lie about it?

You won't have the courage to answer honestly

#Resist

[joan1984]

At this point, what difference does it make?....Get over it.

"...While the president has the legal authority to grant a clearance,.."

'Nuff said.

Why'd everyone lie about it?

You won't have the courage to answer honestly

#Resist

[Jed_]

Yes, what does it matter that some easily manipulated dufuss with a hodgepodge of conflicts of interest knows our nation’s secrets.  He’s probably already not just inadvertently revealed all sorts of things, I bet he’s being blackmailed by several entities as well.

As I write that, I’m not sure if I mean Jared or his father in-law?  Both it seems.

[Athos_131]

At this point, what difference does it make?....Get over it.

This is rich coming from someone who posted about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama after Dolt 45 took office.

I knew you wouldn't give an honest answer.  It's the way of a coward and a fraud.

#Resist

[psiberzerker]

At this point, what difference does it make?....Get over it.

Well, I have to say that you got over your compulsion to defend the indefensible cheeto in chief.  So,

'Nuff said.

I sure hope you're turning over a new leaf.  Sincerely, maybe a change of color is in order?  Most girls just cut their hair.  You can always go back to pink.

[Athos_131]

Two days in July: As Republicans convened in Cleveland, did Trump receive a heads-up about WikiLeaks?

At 1:25 p.m. on July 17, 2016, an Alitalia jet carrying Donald Trump’s longtime fixer and attorney Michael Cohen landed in New York, bringing him home after eight days celebrating his 50th birthday in Capri and Rome.

About 2 p.m. on July 20, a helicopter carrying Trump thumped down in a field in downtown Cleveland, delivering the presidential candidate in dramatic style to the Republican National Convention, already underway.

Between those two days — while Trump was in New York and the political world’s attention was trained on Cleveland — Cohen alleges that Trump received an important phone call from his decades-long confidant Roger Stone, alerting him that WikiLeaks was planning within days to release a cache of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton.

By the end of that week, right on the heels of Trump’s acceptance of the GOP nomination and as Democrats gathered in Philadelphia for their convention, WikiLeaks posted online thousands of internal Democratic Party emails that federal prosecutors allege were stolen by Russian operatives.

If true, Cohen’s account, which he provided in sworn testimony to the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, would be a dramatic revelation — indicating that Trump misled the public about his knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans and, importantly, provided false written testimony to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The existence of such a conversation could add critical new clues that could help answer a fundamental question before Mueller: Did Trump or anyone around him have knowledge of Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 campaign?

A close examination of the activities of the three men in the July 2016 time frame cited by Cohen shows there was a window of time in which the phone call could have occurred, according to public accounts and a travel itinerary Cohen provided The Washington Post in 2017.

However, there appears to be little other publicly available information to corroborate the claim by the former Trump attorney, who has pleaded guilty to nine felonies, including lying to Congress. He has provided no evidence to support his account, and both Trump and Stone have denied that they ever discussed WikiLeaks with one another.

And Cohen’s testimony raises a major question: If the call happened as he described, why was it not specifically cited by Mueller in Stone’s seven-count indictment last month, which included other references to conversations Stone allegedly had with Trump associates about WikiLeaks?

Cohen has sat for seven sessions with special-counsel prosecutors, providing what they have described as valuable and credible information.

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney in Michigan, said the decision by prosecutors not to include a description of that call in the Stone indictment may be a sign that the “evidence is not sufficient” to corroborate Cohen’s claims.

Or, she said, Mueller may be holding back information about such a call while continuing to develop evidence of a WikiLeaks-related conspiracy.

According to Stone’s indictment, he spoke to senior Trump campaign officials on “multiple occasions” about the timing of WikiLeaks’ releases — and lied to Congress about those conversations.

Stone, who was also indicted for alleged obstruction and witness tampering, has denied ever speaking with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange or having advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Stone told The Post that he never discussed WikiLeaks with Trump. “Mr. Cohen’s statement is not true,” he wrote in a text earlier this week.

Likewise, WikiLeaks has repeatedly said that Assange and Stone never communicated, including again Wednesday as Cohen testified. And Trump told the New York Times last month that he and Stone never talked about WikiLeaks.

In written answers he submitted to Mueller in November in response to questions from the special counsel, Trump asserted that Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks’ upcoming release and that he had no prior knowledge of it, according to people familiar with the material he submitted.

Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani has dismissed Cohen as a disloyal liar. In a text Thursday, he wrote, “I can’t comment on the call except to say if it did take place, and I see Stone denied it, it was already public that Assange was going to do a damaging dump.”

A pivotal moment
The period of time in which Cohen said Trump received the alert from Stone about WikiLeaks came at the culmination of the hard-fought GOP primary campaign — and just as Trump was readying to take on Clinton directly in the general election.

According to prosecutors, Russians had already hacked Democratic Party email accounts and were preparing to unleash the contents publicly. They had also settled on Trump as their preferred candidate and had begun a sophisticated social media campaign to sway American voters.

On July 16 — a Saturday — Trump introduced his newly named vice-presidential running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, at a campaign event at the Hilton Midtown in Manhattan.

Stone attended the event and spoke to Trump that day, according to an interview the longtime GOP operative gave broadcaster Charlie Rose a few days later.

Stone, who had worked briefly for the campaign in 2015 but was by then only an informal adviser, did not say what he discussed with Trump, instead gushing about the candidate’s performance.

“He was really on his game,” Stone said. “This is the best speech I’ve heard him give in a long time.”

Cohen was out of the country during the Pence event. He told The Post in a 2017 interview that he, his wife and a group of friends had traveled to Italy for an early celebration of his milestone birthday, which was in August.

He provided an itinerary for the trip from his travel agent, which included his flight information, as well as an image of a July 15 text-message exchange he said was with Steve Van Zandt, the actor and musician. Cohen said he is an acquaintance of Van Zandt and ran into him at his Rome hotel, where Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were staying while performing in town.

“Congratulations on all your success,” Van Zandt wrote Cohen, according to the text message provided by Cohen. Van Zandt could not be reached for comment.

On July 17, as Republicans began flocking to Cleveland for the party’s convention, Cohen was back in New York.

Traditionally, presidential candidates do not attend the first few days of a party convention, waiting until the final night to formally accept the nomination.

But amid an ongoing fight among GOP delegates about Trump’s nomination, he surprised convention-goers with a brief appearance in Cleveland that Monday evening, emerging onstage to introduce his wife, Melania.

After her speech, he flew back to New York that night. The following evening, he appearing at the convention via video from Trump Tower.

Cohen told Congress this week that he believes the conversation he overheard between Trump and Stone took place that Monday or Tuesday.

He said Trump was alerted to the call by his secretary Rhona Graff, who called out “Roger’s on Line 1,” according to Cohen’s testimony to the House Oversight Committee.

Trump then put Stone on speakerphone, Cohen said.

Cohen alleged Stone told Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Assange and learned that a “massive dump” of emails would be published “within a couple of days.”

“Wouldn’t that be great?” Trump replied, according to Cohen’s testimony.

At that point, there were a few public indications that Assange was planning to release information that would be damaging to Clinton — and a hint that Russia was going after the Democratic Party.

But exactly what was coming — and when — was unknown.

The previous month — on June 12 — Assange had appeared on a British television network and said WikiLeaks had “emails related to Hillary Clinton” that it planned to publish.

Two days later, The Post reported that the Democratic National Committee’s servers had been hacked and the party’s forensic analysis had identified Russian military intelligence as the likely culprit.

An online persona named Guccifer 2.0 then began to offer some of the stolen material online. Guccifer 2.0 was actually a front used by Russian intelligence officers, according to a July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian nationals accused of stealing and distributing the material.

Guccifer 2.0 tried and failed to send documents to WikiLeaks in June 2016, according to court documents. On July 14, Guccifer 2.0 sent the group an email with an encrypted file explaining how to access an archive of the material, prosecutors say.

On Monday, July 18 — one of the possible dates of the call that Cohen said occurred between Stone and Trump — WikiLeaks confirmed it had retrieved the archive and told Guccifer 2.0 it would release the stolen documents “this week,” according to court documents.

Stone at the convention
Throughout that week, Stone was in Cleveland — huddling with Trump advisers, showing up at rallies, making provocative statements and appearing on television in seersucker suits with pocket squares.

He appeared that Monday at the Citizens for Trump “America First” Unity Rally in Cleveland, apologizing for his late arrival due to what he said was a meeting with Trump’s staff.

On Wednesday, he sat for a lengthy interview with Rose, who at the time hosted his own talk show and co-hosted CBS’s “This Morning.”

Asked by Rose when he had last spoken with Trump, Stone responded that it had been on Saturday, the day of the Pence rally. That timing, if true, would contradict Cohen’s claim that Stone and Trump spoke by phone Monday or Tuesday.

In the Rose interview, Stone said he described his role in the campaign as an “FOT — friend of Trump.”

“I have no title. I have no line responsibilities,” he added. “But I have access to all the right people.”

Asked specifically whether that meant he had access to Trump, Stone said, “He returns my call if I call him.” Their conversations, Stone said, were always about “politics.”

At some point, Cohen arrived in Cleveland, telling CNN late that Wednesday night that he believed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) committed “political suicide” by not fully endorsing Trump.

The next day, Trump accepted the nomination in front of a cheering crowd.

On Friday, WikiLeaks published the hacked Democratic emails, riveting the political world.

In the wake of the emails’ release, a senior Trump campaign official “was directed” to contact Stone to find out what else WikiLeaks might have about the Clinton campaign, according to Stone’s indictment.

Prosecutors did not disclose why the Trump campaign believed Stone was the person who would know about WikiLeaks.

But they noted that Stone had informed senior campaign officials “by in or around June and July 2016” that WikiLeaks had documents “whose release would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign.”

Whether Stone had any access to WikiLeaks remains a mystery. After the release of the DNC documents, he reached out to two associates he believed could provide a back channel to Assange, according to Stone and court documents.

On July 25, he emailed conservative author Jerome Corsi, urging him to seek new emails he heard that WikiLeaks possessed, according to a draft court document released by Corsi. And after New York comedian and radio host Randy Credico interviewed Assange on his show in August, Stone sought his help in learning more about what material WikiLeaks held, according to Stone and Credico.

Corsi and Credico have denied serving as a back channel to WikiLeaks for Stone.

Meanwhile, Stone was publicly bragging that he was in contact with Assange, who was living in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London.

Since the election, Stone has said that his claims about Assange were empty boasts and that he never knew the details of WikiLeaks’ plans — which included releasing thousands of emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta throughout October 2016.

It is not clear why Stone would have needed a back channel to WikiLeaks if he had been in contact with Assange in July, as Cohen has claimed he heard Stone assert.

In December, Mueller’s prosecutors — without mentioning the alleged call between Trump and Stone — wrote in a memo to the court that Cohen provided information “consistent with other evidence obtained” in their investigation.

Before Cohen was sentenced to serve three years in prison, special-counsel prosecutor Jeannie Rhee told a federal judge during a hearing that he gave “credible and reliable information about core Russia-related issues under investigation.”

“Rather than inflate the value of any information that he has brought forward to us in what he had to provide, Mr. Cohen has sought to tell us the truth, and that is of utmost value to us as we seek in our office to determine what in fact occurred,” she said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

House investigators urge ‘immediate’ compliance from White House on security clearance documents

Top House investigators are demanding that the White House turn over documents related to its security clearances process by Monday, an escalation of the years-long fight between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration that could lead to subpoenas in the coming days.

The move follows an explosive report that President Trump interceded to give his son-in-law Jared Kushner a top-secret security clearance despite concerns from top intelligence officials. The president directed his then-chief of staff, John F. Kelly, to approve the application — a move Kelly, who had expressed concerns about the entire process, later detailed in a memo.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), in a letter to the White House on Friday, urged “full and immediate compliance” with outstanding requests the panel had made related to security clearances for much of the past two years.

“I am now writing a final time to request your voluntary cooperation with this investigation,” Cummings said in the letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

While Cummings did not use the word subpoena in his letter, his recent correspondence with the White House suggested he is open to one: Cummings told the White House in early February to let the committee know “whether you intend to comply voluntarily or whether the committee should consider alternative means to obtain this information.”

The White House still has not given the panel documents, arguing instead that the president traditionally has broad authority over his executive staff and clearance matters.

Cummings’ frustration with the lack of response was clear in his Friday letter.

“Since I sent my letter on January 23, I have been negotiating in good faith — and in private — to try to obtain the information the Committee needs to conduct its investigation,” Cummings wrote on Friday. “However, over the past five weeks, the White House has stalled, equivocated, and failed to produce a single document or witness to the Committee.”

Cummings’s Friday letter cited reports that Kushner, a senior White House adviser, and his wife, Ivanka Trump, pressured the president to grant Kushner a long-delayed clearance and that Trump instructed Kelly to fix the problem early last year. Trump’s push to get Kushner clearance — and the chief of staff’s concerns about it — was first reported by the New York Times, which also reported that then-White House Counsel Donald McGahn had concerns about Kushner’s clearance. The Washington Post later reported on Trump’s actions.

Both Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump have publicly denied the president was involved in securing a clearance for Kushner. The president told the New York Times in a Jan. 31 interview that he did not direct Kelly or similar officials to grant a clearance for his son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump told ABC News earlier this month that her father was not involved in the process.

In the first year of the administration, Kushner held an interim security clearance that allowed him to view both top-secret and sensitive compartmented information, which is classified intelligence related to sensitive sources. With that designation, he has been able to attend classified briefings, get access to the president’s daily intelligence report and issue requests for information to the intelligence community.

But there was widespread concern in the White House about Kushner’s lack of a permanent clearance. Indeed, Democrats on Capitol Hill are also now questioning why Kushner had such trouble attaining that status.

“These new reports raise grave questions about what derogatory information career officials obtained about Mr. Kushner to recommend denying him access to our nation's most sensitive secrets, why President Trump concealed his role in overruling that recommendation, and why General Kelly and Mr. McGahn both felt compelled to document these actions, and why your office is continuing to withhold key documents and witnesses from this committee,” Cummings wrote Friday.

The White House security clearance process has been a major focus for Oversight Committee Democrats over the past two years. Cummings even garnered bipartisan support for his bid to investigate the matter in the wake of reports that Rob Porter, a former White House aide who had been accused of beating his ex-wife, had been denied a clearance but still worked in a top position.

At the time, Republicans controlled the House, and then-Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) joined Cummings in requesting more information about the process. When the White House ignored the requests, however, Gowdy refused Cummings’s pleas to subpoena the information.

Now, with Democrats in charge of the House — and Cummings wielding expansive subpoena authority — the White House won’t be able to ignore Congress’s questions without the potential for an adverse response. Already, there has been an intense back-and-forth between the panel and the White House, as Cummings relaunches his own security clearance investigation and increases the pressure on the administration for answers.

In his Jan. 23 letter to Cipollone, the lawmaker asked for a series of documents to be handed over to the panel, including the policies governing how the White House grants security clearances and any recent changes made to the policy, particularly those to give classified information to people convicted of crimes or under investigation by law enforcement.

The panel also asked for all communications between Trump’s transition team regarding background investigations, clearance applications and the outcomes for nearly 10 top officials they wanted to hone in on. That list includes Kushner as well as national security adviser John Bolton, his predecessor Michael Flynn and his son, and Sebastian Gorka.

But the White House has pushed back on the Oversight request, arguing that authority over the security clearance application process pales in comparison to the president’s.

“Congress, as well as the federal courts, have long recognized that the president enjoys broad discretion in selecting, and communicating with, his immediate advisers,” Cipollone wrote to Cummings on Jan. 31. “In view of the president’s paramount constitutional authority in these areas, congressional action must necessarily be circumscribed.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump intervened to get Kushner a top-secret clearance. Congress should investigate.

A PRESIDENT enjoys a fair amount of discretion when it comes to designating subordinates for access to the nation’s secrets. But reports that President Trump personally intervened to get his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a top-secret clearance raise serious concerns that must be investigated by Congress.

While Mr. Trump’s insular leadership style is hardly suited for the White House, nepotism is not the primary concern in this case. The primary worry is that secrets may be shared inappropriately. Mr. Kushner’s clearance was reportedly granted despite the concerns of intelligence officials. The nature of their concern is not entirely clear, though The Post reported last year that the government had received indications that foreign governments were interested in taking advantage of Mr. Kushner’s complex family business arrangements, its financial needs and his lack of foreign policy experience.

Mr. Kushner held a temporary top-secret clearance early in the Trump presidency. In February 2018, then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly cracked down on officials with this interim status, including Mr. Kushner, who got a lower level of clearance, for “secret” information. In May 2018, Mr. Kushner went up a notch again to a top-secret clearance, no longer interim, although not the highest-level access to sensitive, compartmented information.

How that happened is the subject of new reports in the New York Times and The Post that Mr. Trump personally intervened and ordered Mr. Kelly to grant Mr. Kushner the elevated status, even though the White House Counsel’s Office and Mr. Kelly had serious reservations, apparently based on information from professionals in the intelligence community. Both wrote contemporaneous memos recording their concerns. Since then, Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, have said the president did not intervene. The latest reports would mean they both were dishonest.

Should Mr. Kushner continue to serve as a White House official, and as an emissary from the president, with access to classified materials if the underlying concerns about his clearance remain unresolved? That is a legitimate question for Congress. It should investigate and ask for the documents, including the memos about Mr. Trump’s role. While the president extended a helping hand to his son-in-law, last August he peevishly revoked a security clearance from former CIA director John Brennan, a longtime public servant with deep experience in the intelligence field. Mr. Trump yet again sends a terrible signal to the tens of thousands of government officials who have received security clearances and work every day to protect the integrity of the nation’s secrets. It bears repeating: Government is a public trust, not a family playground.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Otto Warmbier’s family spars with Trump over his defense of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in their son’s death

President Trump sparred publicly Friday with the parents of Otto Warmbier after they rebuked him for holding North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un blameless in their son’s death following 17 months in captivity, as growing tensions between them burst into an open feud.

Hours after Fred and Cindy Warmbier issued an emotional statement that directly accused Kim and his “evil regime” of killing their son in 2017, Trump asserted in a pair of tweets that his views had been “misinterpreted” when he defended Kim at a news conference a day earlier in Hanoi.

Trump had said, in response to a question from a Washington Post reporter, that Kim felt “very badly” about Warmbier’s death and that he took the authoritarian leader “at his word” that he was unaware of the college student’s abusive treatment.

“Of course I hold North Korea responsible for Otto’s mistreatment and death,” Trump wrote on Twitter, without mentioning Kim. The president blamed the Obama administration for not doing more to secure Warmbier’s release and emphasized that Warmbier “will not have died in vain” as he continues to negotiate with Pyongyang.

“Otto and his family have become a tremendous symbol of strong passion and strength, which will last for many years into the future,” Trump wrote. “I love Otto and think of him often.”

Trump’s effort at political damage control came hours after the Warmbiers said they felt compelled to speak out after maintaining a relatively low profile out of respect for the president’s sensitive negotiations with Kim, including summits in Singapore last June and in Hanoi this week.

The president had sought to forge a bond with the family as part of an international pressure campaign on the Kim regime in 2017 and early 2018 that helped lead to the summits, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. Trump called the family several times during that period, and Vice President Pence also maintained contact with the Warmbiers. The parents were among the guests of first lady Melania Trump at the 2018 State of the Union address, during which Trump cited Otto’s death to highlight the cruelty of the Kim regime.

But the Warmbiers have been growing increasingly exacerbated with Trump’s embrace of Kim since their first meeting in Singapore, according to a person with close ties to the family. Trump boasted at a campaign rally last fall that he and Kim “fell in love” after exchanging personal letters. And this week, Trump referred to Kim as “my friend” in a tweet and praised him as a “real leader” in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

In December, the Warmbier family won a $500 million federal court judgment against North Korea for the torture and extrajudicial killing of their son.

“Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto,” the Warmbiers said in their statement Friday. “Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuse or lavish praise can change that.”

The sharp public break between the family and Trump now leaves the White House struggling to deal with growing political backlash over the president’s lack of attention on North Korea’s human rights abuses at a time when nuclear disarmament negotiations have broken down. The collapse of the talks during the Hanoi summit, which ended early as the two sides failed to reach a deal, has cast doubt on Trump’s gamble that his personal rapport with Kim would be enough to bridge large gaps between the two sides.

Democrats and some Republicans have criticized Trump over his remarks about Kim and called on the president to take a tougher stand against the North Korean dictator. Trump has also sided with other authoritarian leaders who have denied responsibility for crimes, casting doubt on intelligence findings that Saudi Arabia’s ruling regime was responsible for the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and saying he was satisfied with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s denials that he was involved in election interference efforts during the U.S. presidential campaign in 2016.

“President @realDonaldTrump is once again simply deciding to take a cruel and brutal dictator at his word,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter Friday. “He owes Otto Warmbier’s parents an apology. Now.”

White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway attempted to tamp down criticism during a Friday interview on Fox News, insisting that “Trump agrees with the Warmbier family and holds North Korea responsible.” But she continued to draw a distinction between the North Korean regime and Kim.

“The president is talking about Chairman Kim did not know what happened to Otto at the time of when it happened,” she said. Conway added that Trump continues to take Kim “at his word” in the matter. “That is right,” she said.

Foreign policy experts said it was unfathomable that Kim would be kept unaware of the treatment of a high-profile American hostage such as Warmbier, whose case has drawn international attention.

Warmbier, then a 21-year-old student at the University of Virginia, was detained in Pyongyang in January 2016 after taking part in an organized tour of North Korea. He was accused of taking a propaganda poster from a wall.

In their legal filing, the Warmbiers stated that North Korean officials forced Otto to make a false statement in which he confessed to invented accusations that he was operating as a spy connected to the CIA. He was released more than 17 months later in a deep coma, blind, deaf, with a wound on his foot and damage to his teeth, the lawsuit states.

When his parents met him at the Cincinnati airport, Warmbier “had a shaved head, a feeding tube coming out of his nose, was jerking violently and howling, and was completely unresponsive to any of their efforts to comfort him.” North Korean officials disavowed responsibility, asserting Warmbier had contracted botulism.

In 2017, Trump railed repeatedly against the Kim regime for its treatment of Warmbier, using the case to help make an emotional appeal to the public as part of the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign on North Korea that focused on ramping up economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation.

“We were all witness to the regime’s deadly abuse when an innocent American college student, Otto Warmbier, was returned to America only to die a few days later,” Trump said in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2017. He raised the case again during remarks to the South Korean National Assembly that November and in the January 2018 address with the Warmbiers present.

Pence invited Fred Warmbier to join the White House delegation at the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February 2018, where Pence met with North Korean defectors. And Trump called the family shortly ahead of his first nuclear disarmament summit with Kim in Singapore last June to emphasize that Otto was in his thoughts.

But the president abruptly shifted his tone on Kim after that first summit, making virtually no mention of Warmbier’s case or broader North Korean human rights abuses since then.

At the news conference in Hanoi, Trump said Kim denied knowledge of Warmbier’s treatment “and I will take him at his word.”

He added: “I really don’t think the top leadership knew about it. I don’t believe he would have allowed that to happen. It just wasn’t to his advantage to allow that to happen.”

In his interview with Hannity from Hanoi, Trump called Kim “a character” and a “real personality,” praising him as “sharp as you can be.”

“He’s a real leader, and he’s pretty mercurial,” Trump said. “. . .He likes me. I like him. Some people say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t like him.’ I said, ‘Why shouldn’t I like him?’ We get along great.”

The Kim regime has been accused of keeping more than 100,000 citizens in hard labor camps, maintaining strict controls over political dissent and free speech and overseeing an impoverished nation while enriching its own family and a powerful elite.

In a landmark 2014 report, a U.N. commission found that the North Korean regime committed “unspeakable atrocities” against its own people on a vast scale. A separate assessment in 2017 from the International Bar Association War Crimes Committee concluded that Kim should be prosecuted for 10 separate crimes against humanity. One official, who had survived the concentration camps in Auschwitz, said North Korea’s gulags were worse than those of Nazi Germany.

During a Senate oversight hearing in January, CIA Director Gina Haspel told lawmakers there is no evidence that the Kim regime has improved its human rights record since Trump took office.

In a statement Friday, Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, denounced Trump for “letting North Korea off the hook for the death of this young man. In a totalitarian state like North Korea, Kim Jong Un would know every aspect of the trial and imprisonment of a high-value hostage like Otto Warmbier.”

#Resist

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More than 1,000 TSA employees still owed back pay from shutdown

Washington (CNN)More than a month after the longest government shutdown in US history ended, a significant number of Transportation Security Administration employees still have not received all of the back-pay they are owed.

The delay has been caused in part due to an unusual move during the shutdown to pay a partial paycheck to workers in order to help keep them on the job. TSA Administrator David Pekoske told employees at the time the decision was to "alleviate some of the financial hardship many of you are facing." Hundreds of TSA workers called out from work during the shutdown and officials from the national TSA employee union said many of the callouts were due to financial hardship.

According to a source with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak to the media, more than 1,000 TSA employees are still waiting to be paid in full. The exact number is unclear as employees continue to come forward with complaints that they are still owed money from the shutdown.

During the partial government shutdown, which lasted from December 22 until January 25, CNN was first to report hundreds of TSA screeners were not showing up to work as it became more difficult to make ends meet for many employees without their usual paycheck. The staffing shortages caused long lines at some airports during the 35-day shutdown and even forced some of those airports to shutdown security checkpoints.
When the shutdown ended, President Donald Trump said issuing back pay to federal employees would be the priority, and the Office of Management of Budget instructed agencies to prioritize repaying its employees.

In a statement, TSA put the number of employees who have not been paid in full at about 1,000.

"Of TSA's 60,000 employees, approximately 1,000 throughout the country require some sort of pay correction," the agency's statement read. The agency says it continues to process those corrections, which mostly affect one pay period.

The median TSA salary is less than $41,000, according to 2017 data and published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A TSA official who is "frustrated with the situation" said the delay in pay is a self-inflicted wound. The official, who spoke anonymously because they are not authorized to speak to the media, blames it on Pekoske's actions during the shutdown.

"The problems are with pay period 26," the official said, referring to the final two-week pay period of 2018 that was partially paid as an incentive to try to keep workers who were calling out on the job. TSA said at the time that one week of back pay was paid out.

"It appears as though their effort to partially pay people screwed things up and they are still getting their act together," the source said.

Following the publication of this story, Michael Bilello, the assistant administrator for public affairs at TSA, said agency leaders "made the best decision given the circumstances."

"To help support our employee's during the 35 days of the lapse in funding, TSA processed partial payments to its frontline employees. Coincidentally, the payment was processed on the very same day the partial shutdown ended. Of the 60,000 employees, unfortunately, 2% have experienced pay discrepancies," Bilello said in an email to CNN. "This partial payment was complicated by a payroll process that goes from TSA to the National Finance Center (NFC). TSA leadership assumed this risk and made the best decision given the circumstances and information at the time. TSA has contacted employees with known issues to ensure they are resolved."

Discussed on call with TSA field offices

The current problem with back pay was the subject of a phone call that TSA headquarters held with field offices across the country on Wednesday, according to a partial transcript obtained by CNN.

On the call, Karen Shelton Waters, who oversees human resources issues at TSA headquarters, explained that the agency's help desk and the administrator himself have been overloaded with questions, concerns and complaints about the situation, according to the transcript.

Waters is quoted in the transcript explaining the agency's understanding of why approximately 1,000 TSA workers have yet to receive full pay, pointing to the timing of the agency's decision to pay workers during the shutdown.

"Pay period 26 was the partial pay that we did and then the remainder of that pay period should have been a correction that came through the system once the funding was restored," she said.

"Our timing ... could not have been poorer in terms of when we executed partial pay. We actually got approval to do that almost simultaneously with the time funding was restored," she added.

The result is an administrative mess. Now, the agency is working to make corrections in its system to reflect that employees have already received a partial payment so that the balance owed to them is accurate.

"If I give you a partial payment, I can't pay you more than you work," the first source explained. "They need to go back and match what was worked and that all has to be done manually to make sure the difference owed to employees is accurate."

The TSA official added, "The administrator used FY18 money to partially pay TSA employees. This cheated the purpose of the shutdown. They were scrambling to keep people on the job because you had a number of sick outs taking place, but in fact, they created more problems for employees. And they're dealing with it one month after the shutdown is over."

The National Finance Center, which handles human resources issues for TSA, did not respond to a request for comment.

On the call, Waters gave out an email address where employees can flag problems to the agency, but it is unclear when TSA will successfully pay all of its employees in full.

#Resist

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The cast of characters from Trump world who could be called before Congress next

Michael Cohen named names. And now those people are likely to find themselves called before the House Oversight Committee, too.

“If there were names that were mentioned, or records that were mentioned during the hearing, we want to take a look at all of that,” said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), chairman of the Oversight Committee, which heard from President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer on Wednesday. “We’ll go through, we’ll figure out who we want to talk to, and we’ll bring them in.”

He told The Post’s Rachael Bade to just “follow the transcript.”

All right then, we will.

First up from Trump World is Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer. It was he and Donald Trump Jr., who signed checks to reimburse Cohen for hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, who alleges an affair with Trump, to keep her quiet just before the 2016 election.

Weisselberg was granted immunity in the case against Cohen, but for the Oversight Committee’s interests, he also knows everything about Trump’s business practices and financial dealings. Cohen said his name 26 times throughout the hearing as someone who would have more information on various claims made about Trump. Weisselberg can probably expect a subpoena any day now.

Next up: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) asked Cohen whether the couple, as well as Don Jr., were involved in the Moscow Tower project when the first batch of WikiLeaks’ hacked Democratic National Committee emails were released.

“The company was involved in the deal, which meant that the family was involved in the deal,” Cohen said.

“If Mr. Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, and son, Donald Jr., are involved in the — in the Russian Trump Tower deal, is it possible the whole family is conflicted or compromised with a foreign adversary in the months before the election?” Wasserman Schultz asked.

“Yes,” Cohen said.

When the questioning turned back to the hush money payments, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked Cohen who else the committee should interview to understand the deals made to “catch and kill” negative stories about Trump.

“Yes. I believe David Pecker, Dylan Howard, Barry Levine of AMI as well, Allen Weisselberg, Alan Garten of the Trump Organization as well,” Cohen told her.

Pecker is the chairman and CEO of American Media Inc. and a close friend of Trump’s who allegedly covered up stories that Trump didn’t want to get out. Howard is vice president and chief content officer at American Media, and Levine was executive editor of the National Enquirer in 2016.

Garten is the Trump Organization’s chief counsel.

Cohen also told the committee that lawmakers should speak with Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime executive assistant who served as a sort of gatekeeper for Trump. To reach Trump, people went through Graff.

Stacey Plaskett, a Democratic congresswoman from the U.S. Virgin Islands, asked, “Would she be able to corroborate many of the statements that you’ve made here?”

“Yes she would. Her office is directly next to his, and she’s involved in a lot that went on,” Cohen said.

Then Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) pulled a few more names from Cohen with her pointed line of questioning that some say obtained more substantial information than the entire rest of the hearing.

“To your knowledge, did the president ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Cohen.

“Who else knows that the president did this?” Ocasio-Cortez followed up.

“Allen Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman and Matthew Calamari,” he said.

Wait, who? It was seven hours into the hearing at this point, and these were two new names.

Lieberman has been the company’s executive vice president of management and development for more than a decade. And Calamari, well, let’s just say if he gets hauled before the congressional committee, it would make for quite the entertaining spectacle. Trump hired him as his bodyguard after seeing him at a U.S. Open tennis tournament handling some hecklers interrupting a match in 1981, and he has been loyal to Trump since. Over the past 38 years, Calamari has risen through the ranks to be chief operating officer of the Trump Organization.

The Post’s Allyson Chiu did a deeper dive into Calamari and his allegiance to Trump, and it’s worth a read. But if you don’t have time right now, here’s a little preview of Calamari:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=FArlQJ5_qi0

#Resist

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Inside the years-long relationship between Trump and Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's top money man who may soon testify before Congress

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Fifteen Questions for Allen Weisselberg, the C.F.O. of the Trump Organization

On Thursday, the Daily Beast reported that Allen Weisselberg, the C.F.O. of the Trump Organization, will soon be called to testify before the House Intelligence Committee. It now seems likely—at long, long last—that Weisselberg will be a central focus of the many sprawling investigations of Donald Trump and his businesses by the Democratic-controlled House. Weisselberg has been Trump’s primary accountant since Trump entered his father’s business, in 1973. Journalists who cover Trump’s finances have heard, from source after source, some variation of “I don’t know, but Allen does” about questions regarding Trump’s unorthodox accounting practices. Weisselberg is obsessively private, but he did give a deposition in a Trump Foundation lawsuit that revealed his willingness to engage in practices that appear far outside financial norms.

It seems likely that Weisselberg knows more than any other person—including Trump himself—about the specifics of how Trump made his money and who supported him financially. It is impossible to imagine a thorough investigation of Trump’s potential conflicts of interest without a full accounting from Weisselberg.

To that end, here are the questions that I believe investigators and oversight-committee members might find worth asking.

—Can you please walk us through a detailed explanation of the Trump Organization’s finances, with verifiable numbers for the total income generated and total costs incurred? Please include each of its five-hundred-plus lines of business. Let’s start with the past ten years.

Can you please walk us through President Trump’s current assets and his current liabilities, and help us come to an accurate estimate of his current net worth and annual cash flow?

—In the audio tape of Michael Cohen and Donald Trump discussing the payment of hush money to Karen McDougal, Cohen told Trump, “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up.” This seems to refer to the setting up of an anonymous shell company for the purposes of secretly sending a payment without any link to Trump. What advice did you give Cohen about setting this up?

—Was setting up anonymous shell companies a regular practice of yours or of the Trump Organization? Have you set up other anonymous shell companies for Trump? If so, what are their names? What were their purposes? What money came into or flowed out of them? Did Donald Trump direct you to form these anonymous L.L.C.s? Was he aware of their formation and secretive purpose?

—Michael Cohen gave the House Committee on Oversight and Reform summary financial records from 2011 to 2013. They show the Trump Organization’s liquid cash and securities position growing dramatically over these years, even though the company was, simultaneously, spending several hundred million dollars in cash on golf properties. It appears that the Trump Organization acquired at least four hundred million dollars in cash at a time when it made no major sales and experienced no major change in its income-generating businesses. Where did that money come from?

—Did the Trump Organization receive any money from L.L.C.s and other corporate entities that have not been previously disclosed to the I.R.S. and other tax authorities?

—Did the Trump Organization or Donald Trump personally receive significant amounts of money (a million dollars or more) not previously disclosed from any business or person? If so, were any of these people from the former Soviet Union?

—Did the Trump Organization or Trump himself act as an intermediary for wealthy oligarchs from the former Soviet Union or elsewhere to place money, acquired through corruption and other illegal means, into the U.S. and U.K. banking systems undetected?

—Is Donald Trump the true and only beneficial owner of all of the properties and other assets he claims to be under his sole ownership? Does he have side letters or other complex corporate structures in which some other entity or person is a true beneficial owner or person in substantial control?

—In Donald Trump’s public disclosures to the Federal Election Commission for 2015 and 2016, and his disclosures to the Office of Government Ethics for 2017, he conflates “income” with gross revenue. Income is revenue minus costs. If we subtract costs, how much actual income do the Trump Organization and Donald Trump himself generate? Please provide numbers for the company over all and for each of the lines of business.

—Over the past decade, President Trump has primarily invested his own cash in golf courses. Golf courses are often a money-losing proposition. Why this shift to golf? Why pay for it solely out of his own money? Why invest so much in a handful of properties? Did other people give money to pay for these courses? If so, who, and how much, and through which entities?

President Trump has claimed that he would not be involved in the Trump Organization’s operations while in office. Has he been involved in the organization’s operations since he became President? How often have you spoken with him since he took office? What matters have you discussed?

—For the past seventeen years, your son Barry has been the property manager of the Trump Wollman Rink. Did you help him obtain his job at the rink?

—Your other son, Jack, is a senior executive at Ladder Capital, one of the few U.S.-based investment firms that has lent money to Trump in the last decade. Did you work with your son on these loans? Were any assurances made that the money would be secured by third parties? If so, who are those third parties?

—Of the matters we have discussed today, how aware were Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump?

#Resist

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Trump whipped up public emotion over Otto Warmbier’s death. Now it’s boomeranging back on him.

President Trump’s decision to make Otto Warmbier the public face of his pressure campaign on North Korea aimed to convince the American public that, beyond the existential but abstract threat of its nuclear weapons, Kim Jong Un’s brutal regime posed a more tangible danger to the United States.

By highlighting Warmbier, a 22-year-old University of Virginia student who died days after his release from 17 months in captivity, Trump married his “fire and fury” war rhetoric with an emotional appeal over the grief of a single family.

Yet after the collapse of nuclear negotiations with North Korea in Hanoi last week, Trump is facing an unforeseen backlash as the public’s emotion has boomeranged back on him. At a news conference, Trump said he raised Warmbier’s death with Kim but took the dictator “at his word” that he did not know of the mistreatment and felt “very badly” about it.

The Warmbier family’s rebuke of Trump on Friday in a sharply worded statement opened a damaging fissure at a time when the administration is scrambling to salvage bilateral talks and put the president’s primary foreign policy initiative back on track. Having once relied on the Warmbiers to bestow moral authority on his risky North Korea strategy, Trump has lost a crucial partnership at the worst time, as the general public relates to the renewed pain of a family that feels betrayed by the president.

Victor Cha, who served as a high-ranking Asia policy official in the George W. Bush administration, said Bush also demonized North Korea on human rights and, like Trump, met with defectors.

“But the difference is he was consistent; he stuck with it no matter what,” Cha said of Bush’s tough rhetoric. “The big difference is that once Trump sated his short-term needs, and after he met with Kim, he never talked about it again. It just goes to show there was no principle behind it. It was tactical and short-term.”

To Trump’s supporters, his attention on the Warmbier case is evidence of a president who has eschewed broader human rights goals abroad to focus on his efforts on freeing individual Americans — from China, Egypt and North Korea. In May, Trump met three other Americans released from North Korea on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in the dark of night for a dramatic welcome shown live on cable television.

But his critics see a president whose transactional nature has limits in the more complicated world of geopolitics — and on an interpersonal level with a grieving family.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier, Otto’s parents, initially were thrilled by Trump’s attention. Otto was detained in December 2015, accused by North Korean authorities of stealing a propaganda poster during an organized tour of the country. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a trial the family called a farce in which he was forced to confess to bogus charges.

Warmbier’s parents had grown frustrated with the Obama administration for not securing their son’s release, although former officials said in interviews Saturday that they faced a virtual news blackout for more than six months as Pyongyang cut off communications.

The family “wanted a more assertive public posture. Our view was that was not the best way to get him out. There was no real consensus,” said a former Obama administration official who worked on Warmbier’s case and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations. “It was something that was widely debated — how public should we be, how in-your-face? There are informed views on both sides.”

This former official said the tensions between Washington and Pyongyang made negotiating almost impossible, even for Sweden, the United States’ protecting power, which attempted to intervene because the United States does not have formal diplomatic relations with North Korea.

Trump has boasted repeatedly of freeing Warmbier, including in a tweet Friday when he wrote: “Remember, I got Otto out along with three others. The previous Administration did nothing, and he was taken on their watch.”

But experts said Kim probably released Warmbier because his condition had deteriorated and the North Korean leader did not want the American to die in custody. The circumstances around what caused Warmbier’s injuries — the family said he was tortured, while the Kim regime said he suffered from botulism — remain shrouded in mystery.

Trump quickly forged a bond with the family, as he has with the “angel families” of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants. The president appeared with the angel families at campaign events in 2016, brought them to the Oval Office and featured them in his State of the Union addresses.

The president called the Warmbiers several times, as did Vice President Pence, whose personal lawyer also represents the family. Trump cited Warmbier’s death in speeches to the U.N. General Assembly, the South Korean National Assembly and his 2018 State of the Union.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier were seated in the House chamber as guests of first lady Melania Trump as the president told their son’s story. They wept as Trump pledged to “honor Otto’s memory with American resolve.” It was one of the most emotionally resonant moments of the speech.

Jim O’Brien, who served as special envoy for hostage affairs in the Obama administration, said he often advocated for more prominently raising public awareness of American citizens who were detained by terrorist groups. But in an interview, O’Brien called Trump’s use of the Warmbiers “exploitative” because the president did not follow through in forcefully pressing Kim to take responsibility and make concessions.

“The shameful element about what Trump did was not ask for records about Otto so the family would know what happened and ask for guarantees that future Americans who are detained get consular access right away,” O’Brien said. “The short attention span of Trump, who uses this kid and his family and then has no idea about any follow-through, is why this seems so callous.”

Since Trump’s first summit with Kim in Singapore in June, the president has not spoken of human rights. Last week, he referred to Kim as “my friend” and called him a “real leader.”

Trump’s gamble that establishing a personal rapport with Kim would lead to a breakthrough at the negotiating table was incompatible with his prior strategy of developing a bond with the Warmbiers. In December, the family won a $500 million legal judgment in federal court against North Korea for Otto’s torture and killing.

Trump has tried to fend off criticism by saying on Twitter “I love Otto” and mentioned him again in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday.

“It was not wrong to make Otto a central part of your strategy,” O’Brien said. “But the amount of publicity was careless and unnecessarily grandiose. And the failure to follow through, especially as he sat alone with Kim, is what makes it seem callous and myopic.”

#Resist

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Republican Sen. Rand Paul says he will vote for measure blocking Trump’s emergency declaration, paving way for passage

Sen. Rand Paul is throwing his support behind a resolution that would block President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build his long-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall, defying a warning from the president and putting the measure on track to passage.

Paul (R-Ky.) said in a speech Saturday at the Southern Kentucky Lincoln Day Dinner that he “can’t vote to give extra-Constitutional powers to the president,” the Bowling Green Daily News reported.

“I can’t vote to give the president the power to spend money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress,” Paul said, according to the newspaper. “We may want more money for border security, but Congress didn’t authorize it. If we take away those checks and balances, it’s a dangerous thing.”

Paul joins fellow Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) in opposing Trump’s move, a reflection of some resistance within the GOP to what lawmakers see as executive overreach and a test of the constitutional separation of powers.

The disapproval resolution has already passed the Democratic-controlled House and requires a simple majority to pass the GOP-led Senate. Fifty-three senators caucus with Republicans and 47 caucus with Democrats, meaning that four Republican defections would be enough to ensure passage.

While the resolution is likely to clear the Senate, an embarrassing rebuke to Trump, lawmakers in both chambers lack the votes to override a threatened presidential veto.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) spent weeks warning against a national emergency only to declare his support for the move last month. McConnell faces reelection next year and there is concern within the GOP about being forced to choose between Trump and their self-described opposition to executive overreach.

Republicans worry that in supporting Trump, they will be giving approval to a White House power grab that circumvents Congress’s constitutional power over spending. But if they oppose it, they face the wrath of not only the president but his political base — and possibly a primary challenge.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who has been critical of Trump’s emergency declaration, delivered a floor speech on Thursday in which he outlined what he described as an alternative way for the president to get the money he wants to build his wall. But Alexander has declined to say how he would vote on the resolution.

Numerous other GOP senators have also expressed reservations about Trump’s move, among them are Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), leading to widespread expectations that the resolution will easily pass the Senate.

The Senate is poised to vote on the measure later this month.

Asked about Paul’s decision, his spokesman, Sergio Gor, said it “speaks for itself” and declined to elaborate further.

Trump has said he would veto the legislation, and the vote margin in the House last week — 245 to 182 — was well short of the two-thirds majority that would be required to override his veto.

Nonetheless, the resolution represents a blow to Trump’s Feb. 15 move to declare an emergency after Congress balked at giving him the money he demanded for his border wall. Trump’s declaration allows him to access $3.6 billion in funds allocated for military construction projects. That money would be tapped after the administration exhausts funding from other sources, including $1.375 billion provided by Congress; $2.5 billion from a Pentagon account for countering drug activities that the administration can access without an emergency declaration; and $601 million from a forfeiture fund in the Treasury Department.

During an interview last week with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Trump urged Republicans not to back the disapproval resolution and said those who do so will “put themselves at great jeopardy.”

“I think that really it’s a very dangerous thing for people to be voting against border security,” Trump said.

Trump also raised the issue on Saturday during a wide-ranging speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference that stretched on for more than two hours. He dismissed Republican criticism that his declaration could set a precedent for future Democratic presidents, arguing that the solution was simply for him to be reelected in 2020.

“They’re gonna do that anyway, folks,” Trump said. “The best way to stop that is for us to win the election.”

Trump repeatedly said during the 2016 campaign that Mexico would pay for construction of the wall. Instead, he has asked American taxpayers to finance it.

Knowing Rand Paul it's actually because a wall isn't enough and he wants all airports and seaports closed to anyone not white and affluent.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

After Cohen's testimony, how much longer can Ivanka Trump play dumb?

After Michael Cohen's incendiary congressional hearing, is it finally time to start asking hard questions about Ivanka Trump's role in the sprawling corruption in Donald Trump's empire?

So far, the "first daughter" has mainly been the subject of negative press for her clueless princess persona, and the way she holds herself out as a model businesswoman and a mother while her father wreaks havoc on the lives of working women and families. But during his day-long testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, Cohen -- who worked closely with Donald Trump for 10 years as his personal attorney and professional fixer -- implicated Ivanka in the sprawling story of her father's seedy and hidden Russian dealings, which may also be tied to the criminal conspiracy to steal emails from Democratic officials and influence the 2016 election.

Midway through the hearing, Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., asked Cohen, "Who were the family members that you briefed on the Trump Tower Moscow project?" referring to Trump's efforts to get a favorable real estate deal from Russia's oligarch class at the same time that Russian intelligence was orchestrating a criminal conspiracy to manipulate the presidential election.

"Don Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump," Cohen replied, adding that he had spoken with both of them "approximately 10 times" about it.

Even though Ivanka is clearly her father's favorite child and has been heavily involved in both his real estate and branding business as well as his White House administration, she's gotten relatively little attention for the role she may have played in the Trump Organization or campaign's dealings in Russia.

Her brother, Donald Trump Jr., and even her husband, Jared Kushner, have received more press coverage for their apparent roles in a possible conspiracy. In part that's because both attended the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian operatives promising "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, and because U.S. intelligence caught Kushner trying to set up a "back channel" to communicate with the Kremlin during the presidential transition period, shortly after Trump was elected.

But Ivanka is clearly in the mix on this. As Hannah Segilson detailed at The Intercept in March 2018, Ivanka was involved in the plan to fire then-FBI director James Comey, in a clear effort to derail federal investigations into Trump's Russian ties. She was also instrumental in convincing her father to hire Paul Manafort to run his campaign in mid-2016, even though Manafort was heavily tied to sleazy Russian oligarchs and their allies in the Ukraine and was mysteriously offering to work for Trump for free.

Ivanka plays dumb about Russia a lot to the media, telling ABC News that she knew "almost nothing" about the negotiations to open a massive Trump Tower in Russia that continued, as we now know, long into the general election campaign. But as Dan Friedman of Mother Jones has detailed, the evidence suggests otherwise. It was Ivanka who emailed Cohen in 2015 with a lead she thought could produce a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to secure the deal. She also reportedly suggested an architect for the Moscow tower. The building plans included a spa named after Ivanka and a notation that "all interior design elements of the spa or fitness facilities" were to be approved by her.

More broadly, Cohen's testimony on Wednesday was a reminder that the Trump Organization wasn't the sprawling corporation that Republicans would have people imagine, but a sparsely staffed and closely held family company. Unlike at a large corporation with a complicated hierarchy and many moving parts, the leadership of the Trump Organization — consisting of Donald Trump himself and his three eldest children — were intimately involved in the company's dealings.  Under those circumstances, it's preposterous to imagine Ivanka wasn't involved in the Moscow talks, which were clearly geared towards one of the biggest projects -- if not the very biggest -- the Trump company had ever developed.

But so far, Ivanka has not received even close to the level of scrutiny her husband or brother has received. Even after Cohen's testimony, the headlines have been more focused on Donald Trump Jr. than his sister:





Part of the difference is that Don Jr. has testified under oath about this project, and could now potentially be investigated for perjury. But sexism almost certainly plays a role, as well.

Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, bumbling idiots though they are, are men who wear expensive suits. They better fit the stereotype as the kind of person who might be involved in a conspiracy involving electoral meddling crimes and seedy real estate deals. Ivanka, however, presents herself a the "first daughter" — no one calls any of her brothers a "first son" — hiding behind the stereotype that women are involved in domestic matters and not criminal intrigue. Even Ivanka's "businesswoman" persona is tilted towards the domestic, with an  emphasis on her fashion lines and not on her role in her father's real estate empire.

Ivanka benefits from what sociologists call "benevolent sexism," defined as "a form of paternalistic prejudice" that holds that "women are purer and nicer than men, but also mentally weaker and less capable." Benevolent sexism is about being generous and rewarding to women who adhere to traditional gender roles and who present as being non-threatening, unintelligent and submissive.

Benevolent sexism often turns into hostile sexism, or misogyny, when women reject traditional gender roles. That's why, for instance, conservatives hate Hillary Clinton while adoring Ivanka Trump. The latter plays up to their ideas of what a "good" woman should be — a dutiful daughter, in this case — but the former, by running for office and embracing overtly feminist politics, is despised.

Even the "liberal media's" tendency to portray Ivanka as a little dim -- as a pampered princess who doesn't know how dumb she sounds at times -- ultimately helps her. It allows her to skirt responsibility for any role she played in the Trump Organization's shadier dealings and to smile prettily at the cameras while her brother is called to testify — and therefore risk committing perjury — before Congress.

Cohen's testimony on Wednesday corroborated a disputed BuzzFeed story indicating that Ivanka had been deeply involved in the Trump Tower Moscow dealings. This also follows reporting suggesting that special counsel Robert Mueller is taking a close look at Ivanka's role in all this. To paraphrase the despicable Roger Stone, it seems as if the first daughter's time in the barrel may be coming soon.