RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
House Democrats demand documents on Trump-Putin talks
The Washington Post reported in January that Trump personally intervened to hide details of a meeting with the Russian president.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., speaks to reporters at the Capitol on Jan. 17, 2019.Alex Wong / Getty Images
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March 4, 2019, 3:12 PM ET
By Allan Smith
The Democratic chairmen of three key House committees on Monday requested a trove of documents from the White House and State Department on President Donald Trump’s meetings and phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The chairmen — Reps. Adam Schiff of California, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, and Eliot Engel of New York — are also asking that the translators present for the meetings and calls be made available for interviews with their committees. The three lawmakers respectively chair the House Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs panels.
Their letter follows another to the White House last month in which they sought answers to several questions about the records of Trump’s communications with Putin. The White House did not respond by the given due date of last Friday.
The chairmen wrote to acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that they are now expanding their investigation and asking for more documents and interviews to assist in their examination of the meetings and calls. The Democrats wrote that they want to know how the communications have affected U.S. foreign policy and whether the president or his administration have tried to conceal records of talks between the two leaders, in violation of federal law.
“According to media reports, President Trump, on multiple occasions, appears to have taken steps to conceal the details of his communications with President Putin from other administration officials, Congress, and the American people,” the chairmen wrote. “The President reportedly seized notes pertaining to at least one meeting held with President Putin and directed at least one American interpreter not to discuss the substance of communications with President Putin with other federal officials.”
“These allegations, if true, raise profound national security, counterintelligence, and foreign policy concerns, especially in light of Russia’s ongoing active measures campaign to improperly influence American elections,” they added.
In January, The Washington Post reported that Trump personally intervened to hide details of meetings with the Russian president, such a sit-down between the two leaders in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017. The Post reported that Trump went to “extraordinary lengths” to keep conversations with Putin under wraps, with current and former U.S. officials telling the publication that in Hamburg, Trump went as far as confiscating notes from his interpreter and barring the interpreter from discussing details of the meeting with other administration officials.
In another high-profile instance, Trump didn’t allow Cabinet officials or any aides into the room during a two-hour conversation with Putin during their summit in Helsinki, Finland, last summer. Only a translator were present, and several officials have since said they were never able to get a reliable readout of the meeting, the Post reported.
Trump told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in January that he was not “keeping anything under wraps” and he “couldn’t care less” about transcripts of the interview being made public.
“Anybody could have listened to that meeting,” he said of the Helsinki meeting. “That meeting is up for grabs.”
Democrats voiced a much different view of the matter.
“When he takes the interpreter’s notes and wants to destroy them so no one can see what was said in written transcript, you know it raises serious questions about the relationship between this president and Putin,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told ABC’s “This Week” in January.
The chairmen’s request comes hours after House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., made a request for documents from more than 80 people or entities connected to the president as part of that committee’s Trump investigation.
“I cooperate all the time with everybody,” Trump said Monday in response to Nadler’s request, adding, “You know, beautiful thing, no collusion. It’s a total hoax.”
Allan Smith is a political reporter for NBC News
© 2019 NBC UNIVERSAL
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Donald Trump’s emergency order hits wall with GOP senators. What’s next?
DEBORAH BARFIELD BERRY AND MICHAEL COLLINS | USA TODAY | 1 hour ago
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski says she will vote to terminate President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration on border security. (Feb. 26)
AP
WASHINGTON – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear to President Donald Trump that he has a choice: Move ahead with his declaration of a national emergency at the southern border and face a potential rebuke from his own party – or shift gears.
McConnell acknowledged Monday the Senate is likely to pass a resolution to block Trump’s emergency declaration.
“I think what is clear in the Senate is there will be enough votes to pass the resolution of disapproval, which will then be vetoed by the president,” McConnell told reporters in Kentucky. “And then, in all likelihood, the veto will be upheld in the House.”
Trump has threatened to veto the resolution if it reaches his desk. Even so, congressional approval of the measure would mark a turning point in his presidency. Not only would it be the first time Trump has issued a veto, it would put him at odds with members of his own party over how to deliver one of the key promises of his 2016 presidential campaign.
Republicans say that while they support Trump’s objective – building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border – several have serious reservations about declaring a national emergency to free up billions of dollars for the structure. Some lawmakers also have raised concerns that Trump is taking money from key military programs to fund the barrier.
Trump declared a national emergency along the border on Feb. 15 to free up billions of dollars for a border wall. The decision came after Congress refused to give him the $5.7 billion he had demanded for the barrier.
Trump said he wants the wall to stop drugs and gangs from coming into the U.S., even though an analysis of data indicates the vast majority of narcotics enters through country ports of entry, not the wide swaths of border in between where additional barriers could be erected, experts say.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is the latest GOP senator to voice objections to an emergency declaration. Paul said during a speech in Kentucky on Saturday that approving the emergency declaration would be tantamount to giving “extra-Constitutional powers to the president” – something he said he’s unwilling to do.
“I can’t vote to give the president the power to spend money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress,” Paul said, as reported by the Bowling Green Daily News. “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.”
Some House Republicans made the same argument last week, when 13 of them joined all Democrats in voting to block Trump’s declaration, sending the measure to the Senate. McConnell has said the Senate will take up the measure by March 15.
Meanwhile, some GOP senators are looking to give Trump a way out.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who has called an emergency declaration “inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution,” offered an alternative last week.
Instead of declaring a national emergency, Alexander suggested Trump could secure money for his border wall by tapping into funds that Congress already approved has various programs. Not only would that give Trump access to the money he wants, it could potentially avoid months and years of litigation, Alexander said.
As the Senate vote approaches, several GOP senators said they’re still deciding how they will vote. Others support Trump, saying he’s doing what he needs to do to protect the nation’s borders.
“The president’s not exercising any power that Congress didn’t give him," said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “Had Congress done its job instead of playing politics, he wouldn’t have to do it.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have complained Trump is trying to do an “end run around the Constitution."
“This is a president who is grasping for power, and he has to be reined in," said New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall, who serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Growing list of Republicans voice concerns
Paul’s weekend announcement that he opposes the emergency declaration makes him the fourth Senate Republican who has said they will vote to stop it. His decision gives opponents the 51 votes they need to block Trump’s declaration.
The other three Republicans who have said they will vote to stop the declaration are Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
“As a U.S. senator, I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress,” Tillis wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post, laying out his concerns. “As a conservative, I cannot endorse a precedent that I know future left-wing presidents will exploit to advance radical policies that will erode economic and individual freedoms.”
Tillis was elected in 2014 and is up for re-election in 2020. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has rated the seat “likely Republican.”
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis at his office located in Senate Dirksen Building.
JACK GRUBER, USA TODAY
Collins, who is also up for re-election next year, said she’s concerned about Trump using the declaration to repurpose billions of dollars that Congress has already appropriated.
It “strikes me as undermining the appropriations process, the will of Congress and of being of dubious constitutionality,‘’ she said.
Collins, who is serving her fourth term, is a moderate Republican who sometimes breaks with her party on key issues, including health care. She criticized a federal judge’s ruling last December to overturn the Affordable Care Act, saying it was “too sweeping.”
She was also among the three Republicans, including the late Arizona Sen. John McCain and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted last summer against the Republican’s “skinny repeal bill,” killing the GOP health care measure.
All eyes were also on Collins last fall when the Senate voted on the controversial confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who had come under fire for accusations of sexual assault committed decades ago.
Collins, who had been on the fence for months, voted for Kavanaugh, saying that voting against him without witnesses or proof could start a “dangerous” precedent.
And as recently as last week Collins was the lone Republican to oppose the nomination of Andrew Wheeler, who was narrowly confirmed as Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Collins said she opposed the nomination because, as acting administrator, Wheeler supported policies that “are not in the best interest of our environment and public health, particularly given the threat of climate change to our nation."
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, announces support for Brett Kavanaugh on Senate floor, Oct. 5, 2018, Washington, D.C.
SENATE TV VIA AP
Murkowski said she will support the resolution to block Trump’s emergency declaration.
Murkowski, who has been in the Senate since 2002, is up for re-election in 2022. She shocked the political world in 2010 when she waged a successful write-in campaign after losing her party’s primary. Murkowski, the daughter of former Alaska governor and senator Frank Murkowski, has little allegiance to the national party that some say abandoned her during her re-election bid.
Murkowski was the only Republican to vote against Kavanaugh’s appointment. She voted as “present” as a collegial gesture for her Republican colleague Sen. Steve Daines, who supported Kavanaugh but was attending his daughter’s wedding.
Murkowski has worked across the aisle on issues important to her state, including with former Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana on energy policies.
Murkowski, along with Collins, also voted against the confirmation of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s choice to head the Department of Education.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Ala., speaks Dec. 11, 2018, after an order withdrawing federal protections for countless waterways and wetland was signed at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
CLIFF OWEN, AP
Arizona’s Sen. Martha McSally, a newcomer to the chamber, also has voiced concerns about the emergency declaration.
McSally, appointed last December to fill McCain’s seat, said recently she was “seeking assurances that the money will not come from Arizona military construction projects” for her vote supporting the president.
McSally is expected to be in a competitive races in the 2020 special election. The Cook Political Report rates the seat “leans Republican.” Earlier this month, Mark Kelly, a retired U.S. Navy pilot and the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, announced his plans to run for the seat.
How did it fare in the House?
Despite concerns raised by some GOP lawmakers, only 13 broke ranks with the party and voted in favor of the Democratic backed resolution when it passed the House last week.
Several of them, including Reps. Will Hurd of Texas, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Fred Upton of Michigan, are expected to run in competitive races in 2020.
Most Republicans voted along party lines and against the resolution, citing the need for more border security.
Contributing: Eliza Collins, Maureen Groppe
Originally Published 2 hours ago
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