Epstein Secrets

virtual policy, it has also been more open to the media than any White House in recent memory. In the beginning, I sought a level of formal access to this White House, something of a fly-on- the-wall status. The president himself encouraged this idea. But, given the many fiefdoms in the Trump White House that came

heeding Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s prescription that “this president will sign whatever is put in front of him,” while also taking advantage of the White House’s lack of political and legislative experience and outsourcing as much policy as possible to Capitol Hill. In the early weeks of the administration, P

om he had never met before, for positions whose importance Trump did not particularly understand. Ailes, a veteran of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 41 White Houses, was growing worried by the president-elect’s lack of immediate focus on a White House structure that could serve and protect him. He tried to impres

cific ideas about how to turn his themes and vitriol into policy, nor a team that could reasonably unite behind him. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019969 In most White Houses, policy and action flow down, with staff trying to implement what the president wants—or, at the very least, what the chief of staff says the preside

ns against the Russians, an assurance Pence publicly repeated. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019955 Yates now told the White House that Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak had actually been captured as part of an “incidental collection” of authorized wiretaps. That is, a wiretap had presumably been authorized on the Rus

ared the next day under three other bylines—indicating that DeYoung’s interview was hardly the point of the story—contained new leaked details of the Kislyak phone call, which the Post now said had indeed dealt with the issue of sanctions. The article also contained Flynn’s denial—‘he twice said ‘no’ ”—as

thirty, Ryan called the president to say he was short fifteen to twenty votes and needed to pull the vote. Bannon, backed by Mulvaney, who had become the White House’s Hill operative, continued to urge an immediate vote. A defeat here would be a major defeat for the Republican leadership. That suited Bannon just fin

ore and more seemed to be. Meanwhile, virtually everybody believed that a large measure of the fault lay in Reince Priebus, who had failed to create a White House that could protect the president from himself—or from Bannon or from his own children. At the same time, believing that the fundamental problem lay i

ze and delight in both the insult and his personal impunity, the president met with Russian bigwigs in the Oval Office, including Russia’s Ambassador Kislyak, the very focus of much of the Trump-Russia investigation. To the Russians he said: “I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job.

fe, this was less than innocent: they would, with a sense of deepening threat, suspect Bannon of leaking the information about Kushner’s meeting with Kislyak. OOK Ok Few jobs in the Trump administration seemed so right, fitting, and even destined to their holder as Jeff Sessions’s appointment as the nati

ator saying the president had urged them to open up a separate probe into Fusion GPS — the firm tied to a controversial research dossier on Trump." Whitehouse tweeted, "Who is this Republican Senator 'nudged' by the White House? Is this why full Judiciary hearings have veered in this direction instead of R

pplication for a US security clearance." The Washington Examiner (12/8, Bedard, 301K) reports the "bottom line" is that Sessions' "two contacts with Kislyak in 2016 did not have to be revealed to the FBI on his SF-86 security clearance application, part of his confirmation process." The Hill (12/10, Man

senior director for counterterrorism, along with current officials." Reuters (1/22) reports that in addition to the assessment, Psaki "said that...the White House would build out capability within its National Security Council to counter domestic violent extremism, including a policy review on how the federal

oss, 375K) reports, "The investigation focused on leaks to Post columnist David Ignatius, who reported on Jan. 12, 2017, that Flynn had spoken with Kislyak, possibly about U.S. sanctions against Russia." The column "set in motion a series of events that led the FBI to interview Flynn at the White House

thereby "creat[ing] the perception of the military involved in domestic politics" (?-221 Trump and group of officials and advisors on the way from White House complex to St. John's Church Immigration Trump's proposed immigration policies were a topic of bitter and contentious debate during the campaign.

Donald Trump - Wikipedia were imposed that same day; Flynn later resigned in the midst of controversy over whether he misled Pence.15631 Trump told Kislyak and Sergei Lavrov in May 2017 he was unconcerned about Russian interference in U.S. elections.[5641 Trump and his allies promoted a conspiracy theo