Trump Appears Unlikely to Hinder Comey’s Testimony About Russia Inquiry

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT/New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump does not plan to invoke executive privilege to try to prevent James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, from providing potentially damaging testimony to Congress on statements the president made about an investigation into his former national security adviser, two senior administration officials said Friday.

Mr. Trump could still move to block the testimony next week, given his history of changing his mind at the last minute about major decisions. But legal experts have said that Mr. Trump has a weak case to invoke executive privilege because he has publicly addressed his conversations with Mr. Comey, and any such move could carry serious political risks.

One of the administration officials said Friday evening that Mr. Trump wanted Mr. Comey to testify because the president had nothing to hide and wanted Mr. Comey’s statements to be publicly aired. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a decision that had not been announced.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a message seeking comment. Earlier on Friday, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, would not say what Mr. Trump planned to do.

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“The date for the hearing was just set,” Mr. Spicer said. “I haven’t spoken to counsel yet; I don’t know how they’ll respond.”

Mr. Comey, who was fired by Mr. Trump last month, has been called to testify Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into how the Russian government meddled in the presidential election and whether Mr. Trump’s associates colluded with the Russians.

On Friday evening, House Democrats sent a letter to the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, saying there was no case for the president to exert the privilege on Mr. Comey.

Invoking executive privilege can be a politically treacherous move, recalling past scandals like Watergate, in which President Richard M. Nixon asserted the power in efforts to block congressional investigations. President Barack Obama used the legal authority once, during congressional inquiries after weapons ended up in the possession of Mexican gun cartels.

Presidents have often moved to keep their records and other communications with senior officials private until they leave office, on the theory that confidentiality is crucial to their ability to receive unvarnished advice on sensitive matters. But seeking a restraining order barring testimony by Mr. Comey, who is now a private citizen, would be unprecedented.

Mr. Comey is expected to testify about several conversations he had with the president, including one in which Mr. Trump encouraged him to stop investigating his former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, according to a memo by Mr. Comey. In another conversation during a one-on-one dinner at the White House, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey to pledge his loyalty, and Mr. Comey declined to do so, according to Mr. Comey’s associates.

Mr. Comey, according to people close to him, recorded his discussions with Mr. Trump in memos he wrote shortly after each interaction.

Democrats have said that Mr. Trump’s conversations with Mr. Comey show that the president was trying to obstruct the F.B.I.’s investigation into Mr. Flynn, who is under scrutiny for calls he had with the Russian ambassador and for work he did for a firm that had ties to the Turkish government.

Legal experts have said that Mr. Trump’s tweets about Mr. Comey would damage any claim of executive privilege.

“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Mr. Trump said in one post, shortly after The New York Times reported the request for the loyalty pledge.

Pence publicly insisted the Trump campaign wasn’t in contact with Russia. That’s now a big problem.

Aaron Rupar/Think Progress

On January 15, then-Vice President-elect Mike Pence went on Fox News and was asked by Chris Wallace whether there had been communication between the Trump campaign and Russian officials before the election.

“Of course not,” Pence replied. “Chris, this is all a distraction and it’s all part of a narrative to delegitimize the election and question the legitimacy of this presidency. The American people see right through it.”

On the same day, Pence went on CBS and was again asked about whether the Trump campaign had been in touch with Russian officials.

“Of course not,” Pence replied. “I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.”

Two new reports contradict what Pence said during those interviews. On Tuesday night, CNN reported that “high-level advisers close to then-presidential nominee Donald Trump were in constant communication during the campaign with Russians known to US intelligence.” The report cites “multiple current and former intelligence, law enforcement and administration officials.”

The story was also reported by the New York Times.

“Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials,” the Times reports.

While it remains unclear why Trump’s advisers and associates were in touch with Russian intelligence before the election, the CNN and NYT reports are the strongest indication yet that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials. The U.S. intelligence community has already made public its findings that Russia used cyberattacks and other methods to meddle in the election on behalf of Trump.

Five days before Pence did the aforementioned TV interviews, news emerged of an unconfirmed intelligence dossier containing allegations that Russian officials are in possession of compromising information about Trump and his campaign. We know now that some of “conversations between foreign nationals” detailed in the dossier have been confirmed.

Also in the news in mid-January were communications Michael Flynn, Trump’s choice for national security adviser, had with the Russian ambassador in late December, including on the day the Obama administration imposed new sanctions on Russia for the election meddling.

Pence told Wallace that Flynn and the ambassador “did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia.”

We now know Pence spoke falsely on this topic. Flynn and the ambassador did indeed talk about sanctions, and their conversations “were interpreted by some senior U.S. officials as an inappropriate and potentially illegal signal to the Kremlin that it could expect a reprieve from sanctions that were being imposed by the Obama administration in late December to punish Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 election,” the Washington Post reportedon February 9.

Though the White House was informed by the Justice Department that Flynn talked about sanctions with the Russian ambassador late last month, the Post reported that Pence didn’t learn that Flynn misled him about his communications until February 9, “a full two weeks after other White House officials were briefed on the matter, an aide to Pence said on Tuesday.”

On Wednesday morning, Trump responded to the bombshell CNN and NYT reports not by questioning their accuracy, but by blasting the sort of leaks he said he loved during the campaign’s closing weeks.

Flynn may have misled Pence about his communications with the Russian ambassador, but the White House hasn’t yet offered an explanation for the contradiction between what Pence repeatedly said about the lack of contact between the Trump campaign and Russia and what the new reports indicate about their “constant contact.”

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UPDATE (2/15/17, 11:15 a.m.): During his press conference on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer characterized Flynn’s communications with the Russian ambassador as an “isolated incident” — a claim contradicted by reports of “constant contact” between Russian officials and the Trump campaign that broke hours later.

During the presser, a reporter asked Spicer, “is the administration undertaking any sort of effort… to make sure that everyone comes forward who had any communications with the Russians about sanctions or otherwise?”

In response, Spicer suggested such an effort is unnecessary.

“As far as we are aware, that is an isolated incident that occurred,” he said.

Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZO/New York Times

WASHINGTON — Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time that they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.

But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.

The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian side, the contacts also included members of the Russian government outside of the intelligence services, the officials said. All of the current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the continuing investigation is classified.

The officials said that one of the advisers picked up on the calls was Paul Manafort, who was Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman for several months last year and had worked as a political consultant in Russia and Ukraine. The officials declined to identify the other Trump associates on the calls.

The call logs and intercepted communications are part of a larger trove of information that the F.B.I. is sifting through as it investigates the links between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russian government, as well as the D.N.C. hack, according to federal law enforcement officials. As part of its inquiry, the F.B.I. has obtained banking and travel records and conducted interviews, the officials said.

Mr. Manafort, who has not been charged with any crimes, dismissed the accounts of the American officials in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “This is absurd,” he said. “I have no idea what this is referring to. I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers, and I have never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration or any other issues under investigation today.”

Mr. Manafort added, “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’”

Several of Mr. Trump’s associates, like Mr. Manafort, have done business in Russia, and it is not unusual for American businessmen to come in contact with foreign intelligence officials, sometimes unwittingly, in countries like Russia and Ukraine, where the spy services are deeply embedded in society. Law enforcement officials did not say to what extent the contacts may have been about business.

Officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, which Russian intelligence officials were on the calls, and how many of Mr. Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians. It is also unclear whether the conversations had anything to do with Mr. Trump himself.

A published report from American intelligence agencies that was made public in January concluded that the Russian government had intervened in the election in part to help Mr. Trump, but did not address whether any members of the Trump campaign had participated in the effort.

The intercepted calls are different from the wiretapped conversations last year between Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. During those calls, which led to Mr. Flynn’s resignation on Monday night, the two men discussed sanctions that the Obama administration imposed on Russia in December.

ut the cases are part of the routine electronic surveillance of communications of foreign officials by American intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The F.B.I. declined to comment.

Two days after the election in November, Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy Russian foreign minister, said that “there were contacts” during the campaign between Russian officials and Mr. Trump’s team.

“Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage,” Mr. Ryabkov said in an interview with the Russian Interfax news agency.

The Trump transition team denied Mr. Ryabkov’s statement. “This is not accurate,” Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said at the time.

The National Security Agency, which monitors the communications of foreign intelligence services, initially captured the communications between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russians as part of routine foreign surveillance. After that, the F.B.I. asked the N.S.A. to collect as much information as possible about the Russian operatives on the phone calls, and to search through troves of previous intercepted communications that had not been analyzed.

The F.B.I. has closely examined at least four other people close to Mr. Trump, although it is unclear if their calls were intercepted. They are Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign; Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative; and Mr. Flynn.

All of the men have strongly denied they had any improper contacts with Russian officials.

As part of the inquiry, the F.B.I. is also trying to assess the credibility of information contained in a dossier that was given to the bureau last year by a former British intelligence operative. The dossier contained a raft of salacious allegations about connections between Mr. Trump, his associates and the Russian government. It also included unsubstantiated claims that the Russians had embarrassing videos that could be used to blackmail Mr. Trump.

The F.B.I. has spent several months investigating the leads in the dossier, but has yet to confirm any of its most explosive allegations.

Senior F.B.I. officials believe that the former British intelligence officer who compiled the dossier, Christopher Steele, has a credible track record, and he briefed F.B.I. investigators last year about how he obtained the information. One American law enforcement official said that F.B.I. agents had made contact with some of Mr. Steele’s sources.

The F.B.I.’s investigation into Mr. Manafort began last spring as an outgrowth of a criminal investigation into his work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine and for the country’s former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. The investigation has focused on why he was in such close contact with Russian and Ukrainian intelligence officials.

The bureau did not have enough evidence to obtain a warrant for a wiretap of Mr. Manafort’s communications, but it had the N.S.A. closely scrutinize the communications of Ukrainian officials he had met.

The F.B.I. investigation is proceeding at the same time that separate investigations into Russian interference in the election are gaining momentum on Capitol Hill. Those investigations, by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, are examining not only the Russian hacking but also any contacts that Mr. Trump’s team had with Russian officials during the campaign.

On Tuesday, top Republican lawmakers said that Mr. Flynn should be one focus of the investigation, and that he should be called to testify before Congress. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said that the news surrounding Mr. Flynn in recent days underscored “how many questions still remain unanswered to the American people more than three months after Election Day, including who was aware of what, and when.”

Mr. Warner said that Mr. Flynn’s resignation would not stop the committee “from continuing to investigate General Flynn, or any other campaign official who may have had inappropriate and improper contacts with Russian officials prior to the election.”

MSNBC host Van Susteren smacks down Priebus for downplaying Russian hacks: ‘This is extremely serious’

TOM BOGGIONI/Think Progress

Former Fox News host Greta Van Susteren launched her new show on MSNBC Monday night, lecturing GOP head Reince Priebus for trying to diminish the severity of Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

While Priebus, who will serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s chief of staff, said the new administration would look into the hacks, he attempted to blame the Democratic National Committee instead of the perpetrators.

“As you may know, what the Trump administration is going to do is order a report and a recommendations back within 90 days of the people we have at DNI and then the CIA and Homeland Security and others to look at what we need to do to be better at protecting ourselves from cyberattack,” Priebus said. “But also what recommendation we have an a response to some of the things that have been occurring.”

“What’s getting lost is some of the things I’ve have talk about over the last few days,” he continued. “Yeah, this was a hack and, yes, by foreign entities. But it’s also scaled in magnitude because the DNC had no defenses in place in order to prevent the hack. This is a type of hack, Greta, where someone send you a e-mail that says ‘I’m stranded in Mali, i need $20,000. send it to you me.’ And you have people at the DNC hit the link. The the FBI calls the DNC multiple times over months and the DNC doesn’t respond. I don’t think we would be talking about this if they had some basic defense in place or returned a phone call.”

Van Susteren then pulled Priebus up short, by bring up Russian President Vladimir Putin actions, a topic Trump advocates usually avoid.

“Alright, I used the word mischief and I don’t want the viewers to this is isn’t serious,” the MSNBC host told Priebus. “And even if the DNC could have had better protection, I still see this as extremely serious and I think it’s very bad conduct of Putin towards the  United States showing bad intent even if the DNC could have done better job protecting themselves.”

Watch the video below via MSNBC: