Some on Mueller’s Team Say Report Was More Damaging Than Barr Revealed
WASHINGTON — Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.
At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.
Mr. Barr has said he will move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report but needs time to scrub out confidential information. The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation. Mr. Barr only briefly cited the special counsel’s work in his letter.
The attorney general turned a report of nearly 400 pages into a four-page summary. Members of the special counsel’s team say something was lost.
However, the special counsel’s office never asked Mr. Barr to release the summaries soon after he received the report, a person familiar with the investigation said. And the Justice Department quickly determined that the summaries contain sensitive information, like classified material, secret grand-jury testimony and information related to current federal investigations that must remain confidential, according to two government officials.
Federal prosecutors are pursuing a number of criminal inquiries that grew out of the investigation of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
Mr. Barr was also wary of departing from Justice Department practice not to disclose derogatory details in closing an investigation, according to two government officials familiar with Mr. Barr’s thinking. They pointed to the decision by James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, to harshly criticize Hillary Clinton in 2016 while announcing that he was recommending no charges in the inquiry into her email practices.
The officials and others interviewed declined to flesh out why some of the special counsel’s investigators viewed their findings as potentially more damaging for the president than Mr. Barr explained, although the report is believed to examine Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the investigation. It was unclear how much discussion Mr. Mueller and his investigators had with senior Justice Department officials about how their findings would be made public. It was also unclear how widespread the vexation is among the special counsel team, which included 19 lawyers, about 40 F.B.I. agents and other personnel.
At the same time, Mr. Barr and his advisers have expressed their own frustrations about Mr. Mueller and his team. Mr. Barr and other Justice Department officials believe the special counsel’s investigators fell short of their task by declining to decide whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed the inquiry, according to the two government officials. After Mr. Mueller made no judgment on the obstruction matter, Mr. Barr stepped in to declare that he himself had cleared Mr. Trump of wrongdoing.
Representatives for the Justice Department and the special counsel declined to comment on Wednesday on views inside both Mr. Mueller’s office and the Justice Department. They pointed to departmental regulations requiring Mr. Mueller to file a confidential report to the attorney general detailing prosecution decisions and to Mr. Barr’s separate vow to send a redacted version of that report to Congress. Under the regulations, Mr. Barr can publicly release as much of the document as he deems appropriate.
The letter, by Attorney General William P. Barr, details the main findings of the special counsel’s two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
A debate over how the special counsel’s conclusions are represented has played out in public as well as in recent weeks, with Democrats in Congress accusing Mr. Barr of intervening to color the outcome of the investigation in the president’s favor.
In his letter to Congress outlining the report’s chief conclusions, Mr. Barr said that Mr. Mueller found no conspiracy between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia’s 2016 election interference. While Mr. Mueller made no decision on his other main question, whether the president illegally obstructed the inquiry, he explicitly stopped short of exonerating Mr. Trump.
Mr. Mueller’s decision to skip a prosecutorial judgment “leaves it to the attorney general to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime,” Mr. Barr wrote. He and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, decided that the evidence was insufficient to conclude that Mr. Trump had committed an obstruction offense.
Mr. Barr has come under criticism for sharing so little. But according to officials familiar with the attorney general’s thinking, he and his aides limited the details they revealed because they were worried about wading into political territory. Mr. Barr and his advisers expressed concern that if they included derogatory information about Mr. Trump while clearing him, they would face a storm of criticism like what Mr. Comey endured in the Clinton investigation.
The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has conducted an extensive investigation into Russian efforts to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential race. Here is the story of how it all started.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
Legal experts attacked Mr. Comey at the time for violating Justice Department practice to keep confidential any negative information about anyone uncovered during investigations. The practice exists to keep from unfairly sullying people’s reputations without giving them a chance to respond in court.
Mr. Rosenstein cited the handling of the Clinton case in a memo the White House used to rationalize Mr. Trump’s firing of Mr. Comey.
Though it was not clear what findings the special counsel’s investigators viewed as troubling for the president, Mr. Barr has suggested that Mr. Mueller may have found evidence of malfeasance in investigating possible obstruction of justice. “The report sets out evidence on both sides of the question,” Mr. Barr wrote in his March 24 letter.
Mr. Mueller examined Mr. Trump’s attempts to maintain control over the investigation, including his firing of Mr. Comey and his attempt to oust Mr. Mueller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to install a loyalist to oversee the inquiry.
More than two years of criminal indictments and steady revelations about Trump campaign contacts with Russians reveal the scope of the special counsel investigation.
The fallout from Mr. Barr’s letter outlining the Russia investigation’s main findings overshadowed his intent to make public as much of the entire report as possible, a goal he has stressed since his confirmation hearing in January. He reiterated to lawmakers on Friday that he wanted both Congress and the public to read the report and said that the department would by mid-April furnish a version with sensitive material blacked out. He offered to testify on Capitol Hill soon after turning over the report.
Mr. Barr, who took office in February, has shown flashes of frustration over how the unveiling of the investigation’s findings has unfolded. In his follow-up letter to lawmakers on Friday, he chafed at how the news media and some lawmakers had characterized his March 24 letter.
Mr. Barr and Mr. Mueller have been friends for 30 years, and Mr. Barr said during his confirmation hearing in January that he trusted Mr. Mueller to conduct an impartial investigation. He said he told Mr. Trump that Mr. Mueller was a “straight shooter who should be dealt with as such.” Mr. Mueller served as the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division when Mr. Barr was attorney general under George Bush, and their families are friends.
Mr. Barr’s promises of transparency have done little to appease Democrats who control the House. The House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to let its chairman use a subpoena to try to compel Mr. Barr to hand over a full copy of the Mueller report and its underlying evidence to Congress. The chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has not said when he will use the subpoena, but made clear on Wednesday that he did not trust Mr. Barr’s characterization of what Mr. Mueller’s team found.
“The Constitution charges Congress with holding the president accountable for alleged official misconduct,” Mr. Nadler said. “That job requires us to evaluate the evidence for ourselves — not the attorney general’s summary, not a substantially redacted synopsis, but the full report and the underlying evidence.”
Republicans, who have embraced Mr. Barr’s letter clearing Mr. Trump, have accused the Democrats of trying to prolong the cloud over his presidency and urged them to move on.
Mr. Trump has fully embraced Mr. Barr’s version of events. For days, he has pronounced the outcome of the investigation a “complete and total exoneration” and called for the Justice Department and his allies on Capitol Hill to investigate and hold accountable those responsible for opening the inquiry.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/us/p ... eport.htmlCould the Mueller report be more 'damaging' to Trump than Barr's summary indicates?
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6022410799001/Trump hits back at NYTimes claim that Barr misled on Mueller report
Trump on Thursday blasted The New York Times, claiming the outlet had “no legitimate sources” for its latest report that claimed Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report was more damaging to the president that Attorney General William Barr revealed in his summary.
“The New York Times had no legitimate sources, which would be totally illegal, concerning the Mueller Report. In fact, they probably had no sources at all! They are a Fake News paper who have already been forced to apologize for their incorrect and very bad reporting on me!” Trump tweeted Thursday.
The president’s tweet comes after The New York Times published a story on Wednesday, claiming that prosecutors on Mueller’s team said that Barr’s summary of the report was insufficient and that the results of the investigation were more troubling for the president than the attorney general stated to the public last month.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump- ... ler-reportМинюст США: публиковать доклад Мюллера целиком нельзя из-за конфиденциальных данных
Доклад об итогах расследования попыток вмешательства России в президентские выборы 2016 года в США, подготовленный спецпрокурором Робертом Мюллером, содержит конфиденциальную информацию о сформированном им жюри присяжных. По этой причине материалы расследования не могут быть опубликованы полностью, заявила пресс-секретарь американского министерства юстиции Керри Кьюпек.
По ее словам, на каждой странице доклада Мюллера проставлена пометка о том, что он "может содержать сведения, защищенные законом" о конфиденциальной информации, связанной с жюри присяжных. "По этой причине он не может быть опубликован [целиком]", - отметила пресс-секретарь. Ее слова приводит ТАСС.
"Учитывая необычайный общественный интерес к этому вопросу, [министр юстиции США и] генеральный прокурор [Уильям Барр] решил без промедления опубликовать основные заключения доклада и свои выводы - не пытаясь обобщить доклад - при том понимании, что сам доклад будет опубликован после [завершения] процесса редактирования", - подчеркнула Кьюпек. Барр ранее заявлял, напомнила она, что отчет не может быть представлен "по частям".
"Минюст продолжает работать со спецпрокурором над целесообразной редакцией текста доклада с тем, чтобы представить его Конгрессу и общественности", - заключила пресс-секретарь.
Барр 24 марта направил руководству профильных комитетов Сената и Палаты представителей Конгресса США основные заключения расследования Мюллера о российском вмешательстве в президентские выборы. Спецпрокурор признал, что найти доказательства сговора между избирательным штабом американского президента Дональда Трампа и властями России не удалось. Однако сам факт вмешательства Москвы в политические предвыборные процессы в США подтвердился.
Глава Минюста выразил намерение направить отредактированный текст доклада законодателям к середине апреля из-за необходимости скрыть некоторые данные о частных лицах, которые упоминаются в расследовании Мюллера, но в отношении которых не было выдвинуто обвинений.
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https://www.newsru.com/world/04apr2019/ ... uller.htmlДемократы хотят ознакомиться с налоговой отчетностью Дональда Трампа
Глава бюджетного комитета Палаты представителей Ричард Нил обратился с письмом в Налоговую службу США, в котором попросил предоставить его комитету налоговую отчетность Дональда Трампа за последние шесть лет. Это первая подобная просьба со стороны комитета в отношении действующего президента за последние 45 лет. Причем комитет хочет увидеть как личную отчетность Дональда Трампа, так и его компаний, сообщает агентство Reuters.
В числе этих компаний: Donald J Trump Revocable Trust, DJT Holdings, DJT Holdings Managing Member, DTTM Operations, DTTM Operations Managing Member Corp., LFB Acquisition Member Corp., LFB Acquisition и Trump National Golf Club. Как полагают демократы в Палате представителей, налоговая отчетность президента может раскрыть многочисленные факты конфликта интересов и возможных нарушений закона. В своем обращении к Налоговой службе господин Нил подчеркнул: «Чтобы сохранить доверие к нашей демократии, американский народ должен быть уверен, что их правительство работает должным образом в соответствии с законами». Поэтому, по его словам, «очень важно, чтобы наше правительство и избираемые должностные лица были подотчетны».
До сих пор Дональд Трамп отказывался предоставить свои налоговые декларации комитету, объясняя это тем, что они «на проверке» у Налоговой службы. Когда ему вчера сообщили о требованиях демократов, президент спросил: «Больше они ничего не хотят? Вообще, обычно просят отчетность за десять лет, поэтому, думаю, что они уже сдаются».
Республиканцы в Конгрессе со своей сторон тоже выступают против публикации отчетности, поскольку такой шаг, по их мнению, создает опасный прецедент, когда конфиденциальные налоговые документы американского гражданина могут быть использованы в качестве политического оружия.
https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3932766Trump has Washington reeling with policy whiplash over his domestic agenda
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump has left his advisers and GOP lawmakers reeling from policy whiplash in recent days, cycling through new ideas on health care and immigration that underscore his continuing struggle to pursue a coherent domestic agenda in a divided Washington.
Trump surprised Republicans last week with a new pledge to replace the Affordable Care Act, only to backtrack Tuesday after being confronted with the realities of another all-consuming fight over President Barack Obama's signature health care law on Capitol Hill.
Trump has also sent aides and a large part of the federal bureaucracy scrambling to respond to his expansive vow to close the entire U.S.-Mexico border this week unless "ALL illegal immigration" is halted by Mexico. Alarmed lawmakers and business leaders warned that any such move would be catastrophic for the U.S. economy, and administration officials signaled Tuesday that they were seeking more limited options to address a surge in migration at the border.
Even efforts on which the White House has worked closely with congressional GOP leaders have seen setbacks, such as a massive disaster funding bill that stalled Monday amid partisan sniping over aid to Puerto Rico. Trump has inflamed the fight by repeatedly denigrating the island's leadership and implying that Puerto Rico - a U.S. territory - is separate from the country he leads.
The battles illustrate the difficulties Trump and Republicans have had in adjusting to Democratic control of the House after two years of uncontested GOP power in Congress and the White House. But many Republicans say they have adapted to the pandemonium - learning to privately sway Trump by warning him o the consequences of his policy declarations, many of which are launched in late night or early morning tweets.
GOP lawmakers, for instance, think they have successfully headed off any major health care effort, which they fear would open them up to damaging Democratic attacks. Even so, a legal challenge targeting the Obama-era health law, and backed by the Trump administration, virtually ensures that the issue will remain at the forefront of the president's reelection campaign.
"Obviously this is a president who tends sometimes to move on his own and then obviously has some of those conversations later," Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., said Tuesday of Trump's recent push on health care and the border. "That's the dynamic that everybody up here deals with."
Trump had several such conversations about replacing the health law, commonly known as Obamacare, amid days of upbeat proclamations that the GOP would become the "Party of HealthCare." By late Monday night - and in subsequent comments in the Oval Office on Tuesday - Trump bowed to the political pressure by announcing that he would rather vote on health care after the 2020 elections.
"If we get back the House, and on the assumption we keep the Senate and we keep the presidency - which I hope are two good assumptions - we're going to have phenomenal health care," Trump said as he sat next to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in the Oval Office.
He said Republicans will unveil their Obamacare replacement plan "at the appropriate time" and blamed Democrats for turning health care into a political issue.
Despite the punt, officials at the White House continued meetings to discuss a potential health care plan, led by Domestic Policy Council chief Joe Grogan, and circulated principles earlier Tuesday, according to a senior aide.
But congressional Republicans made it clear that they would direct their attention elsewhere. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., whom Trump tapped last week as one of his point men on health care in the Senate, instead rolled out legislation Tuesday to reduce the cost of prescription drugs.
When asked about Trump's idea to hold a vote on a health care plan after the election, Scott responded: "I think you'd have to ask the president. I know what I'm going to focus on. I'm going to focus on drug prices."
One genesis of Trump's public retreat was private nudging from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who along with most Senate Republicans was displeased by the unexpected health care push.
In at least two phone calls in recent days, McConnell pressed Trump to listen to those around him - his advisers, senators and political strategists - who were urging the president to reverse course on health care, according to an official familiar with the conversation. McConnell questioned why Republicans would want an intraparty fight over health care at a time when Democrats are divided on their own proposals, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private calls.
During a conversation Monday, the majority leader made the case that while the GOP-led Senate could pass a health care bill endorsed by Trump, the president would not be able to support the product that would emerge from the House once Democrats got their hands on it, the official said.
McConnell told reporters Tuesday that he had a "good conversation" with Trump and that he and the president were now on the same page.
"I made it clear to him we were not going to be doing that in the Senate," McConnell said of health care, stressing the challenges of writing legislation that could pass muster with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. "We don't have a misunderstanding about that."
Even as Trump tries to steer the party's policy agenda, GOP lawmakers have attempted to emphasize goals that broadly unify Republicans and either split Democrats or put them on the defensive.
This year, McConnell has held votes on the Green New Deal environmental plan - a vote Democrats derided as a political stunt - and a wide-ranging Middle East policy bill that divided Senate Democrats. This week, Senate Republicans plan to alter Senate rules so dozens of Trump nominees in the administration and throughout the judiciary who have been stalled for months can be confirmed quicker.
"Given that the president's proposals range from the imprudent to the impractical, at best, congressional Republicans seem largely to be ignoring them in favor of their own priorities: nominations in the Senate, and highlighting Democratic radicalism and disunity in the House," said Michael Steel, who worked under former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Many in the GOP sympathize with Trump and his frustrations - and with his tendency to act on his own on immigration or to push Republicans on something they don't want to do, like health care.
"Listen, before the 2018 election, certainly in Wisconsin, I was saying, 'Don't elect Democrats to the House; if the Democrats take over the House, all we're going to be talking about is investigation, talk of impeachment; it won't be about legislation, it won't be about solving these problems,' " said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. "I hate to say I was right."
Some Republican senators have grown accustomed to not taking Trump's threats seriously.
One such threat was Trump's vow to seal the border this week, which he reiterated in the Oval Office on Tuesday despite having been warned of the potential economic consequences by his top advisers. Senior White House officials are now examining how to exempt commercial trade from whatever border crackdown Trump might decide to pursue in coming days.
Even as he insisted that Mexico must do more to stem the numbers of migrants arriving on the southern U.S. border, Trump softened the threat slightly, saying Tuesday that he would close "large sections of the border, maybe not all of it."
"It's the only way we're getting a response, and I'm ready to do it," Trump said. "And I will say this: Many people want me to do it."
On Capitol Hill, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, brushed off Trump's remarks: "Until he closes the border, I don't believe it."
Trump's comments so alarmed some Republicans that they began dialing the White House to wave the president off his latest threat. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he had a call in to the White House and was hoping to speak with Trump later Tuesday to detail his concerns about the potential "unintended consequences" of shutting down the border.
"I understand the president's frustration; I share it," said Cornyn, a former party leader. "But I think there are more targeted ways to address it than just a blunt instrument like that."
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Tru ... 736811.phpСША введут пошлины на автомобили из Мексики, если ее власти не остановят поток наркотиков и мигрантов
Соединенные Штаты намерены ввести пошлины на автотранспорт мексиканского производства, если власти этой страны не остановят наркотрафик через границу и в течение года не предпримут меры по предотвращению нелегальной миграции, передает CNBC. Об этом заявил в четверг президент США Дональд Трамп во время брифинга для прессы в Белом доме.
"Если Мексика не станет помогать [с борьбой с наркотрафиком], то мы введем пошлины на их машины, - заявил он. - Я это сделаю, это не игра".
Американский президент готов пойти еще дальше, вводя запретительные пошлины и на другие товары. "Если и это не остановит наркотрафик, то мы закроем границу", - подчеркнул Трамп. Он добавил, что на принятие эффективных мер у властей Мексики "есть год".
"Мексика не делает то, что может сделать очень легко", - считает президент США. Глава Белого дома подчеркнул, что для него очень важен заключенный торговый договор между США, Мексикой и Канадой (USMCA), но "эта проблема гораздо важней".
При всей внешней жесткости угрозы Трампа демонстрируют смягчение его позиции. Еще неделю назад президент выражал намерение закрыть границу в течение нескольких дней, если мексиканские власти полностью и немедленно не перекроют поток нелегальных мигрантов. Об этом Трамп написал в своем микроблоге Twitter.
По словам сотрудника лоббистской Торговой палаты США Нила Брэдли, угроза закрыть границу, хотя и продиктована стремлением легализовать отношения в области торговли и туризма, фактически создает атмосферу неопределенности в экономике. Тем самым инициатива Трампа подрывает стремление его администрации обеспечить быстрый экономический рост и увеличение ВВП.
Трамп 15 февраля подписал декларацию о введении режима ЧП на южной границе страны. Как рассказал на телефонном брифинге журналистам исполняющий обязанности руководителя аппарата Белого дома Мик Малвэни, это позволит Трампу получить в целом около 8 млрд долларов. Средства пойдут на возведение и ремонт ограждений на участке границы с Мексикой протяженностью 376,5 км. В администрации полагают, что это поможет властям пресекать нелегальную миграцию и контрабанду наркотиков.
Ранее Трамп и республиканцы добивались включения в госбюджет свыше 5,7 млрд долларов на сооружение барьера на границе с Мексикой. Из-за споров на этот счет 22 декабря 2018 года произошла приостановка работы федерального правительства, длившаяся рекордные 35 дней.
Строительство стены на границе с Мексикой было одним из главных предвыборных обещаний Дональда Трампа в 2016 году.
Под пошлины попадут американские автомобили, собранные в Мексике
На какие же автомобили мексиканского производства будут распространяться пошлины, если США введут их, чтобы остановить наркотрафик через границу Мексики и пресечь поток нелегальной миграции...
В подавляющим большинстве это американские автомобили, сборка которых идет в Мексике.
Среди моделей, собираемых, к примеру, на заводе в Рамос Ариспе, - кроссовер Cadillac SRX. На производстве компании GM в Силао собирают Chevrolet Silverado Crew Cab. Dodge Journey делают на заводе Tolouca Car Assembly Plant. С того же конвейера сходит и итальянский Fiat 500.
На автопроизводстве Saltillo Assembley Plant, в городе Коауила, Chrysler делает одни из самых продаваемых в США пикапов - Ram 1500, 2500 и 3500.
Ford Fiesta собирается на старейшем заводе в Куаутитлане, который начала работу еще в 1964 году.
Ford Fusion (Mondeo) сходит с конвейера завода в Эрмасильо. Там же делают Lincoln MKZ.
Кроме того, в Мексике собирают Honda Fit и Honda HR-V (завод в Селая, штат Гуанахуато), Mazda 3 и Mazda 2 (завод Mexico Vehicle Operation в Саламанке, штат Гуанахуато), Nissan Sentra, Nissan Versa Note, Nissan Versa Sedan (завод в Агуаскальентес), Nissan NV 200 (завод в Куэрнавака), Toyota Tacoma, VW Golf и другие всемирно известные модели ведущих автопроизводителей.
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https://www.newsru.com/world/04apr2019/trumpmex.html
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