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ranian state television presenter Azadeh Namdari is known as an advocate of the strict Iranian dress codes for women that many women have bravely resisted in the authoritarian country. For that reason, a photo of Namdari sitting outside without a hijab and allegedly drinking a beer has caused a firestorm of criticism from both secularists and Islamists.
Category: Media
For an Administration that has long complained about the effort of “the deep state” to undermine President Trump, the most recent leak detailed in the Washington Post will confirm an openly hostile intent by people within the intelligence community. The Post published accounts of how Russia’s ambassador to Washington Sergey Kislyak told his superiors in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related matters with then Sen. Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race. If true, the account would conflict with Sessions earlier denials.
The media is reporting that President Donald Trump’s legal team is investigating possible conflicts of interest by former FBI Director Robert Mueller. Today I ran a column in USA Today on those conflicts of not just Mueller but Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. I have great respect for Mueller but I believe it was a mistake of Rosenstein to select him given his history with Comey and his reported interview with Trump for Comey’s job. Nevertheless, as I have stated since this story broke this morning, I am very concerned with any concerted effort to investigate the investigators. Such an approach is less evidence of a strategy as a spasm. Clearly, defense counsel has a right — if not an obligation — to raise any known conflicts of interest with the Justice Department. Yet, such investigations can easily get out of hand and can trip legal wires if aides are too aggressive in investigating the investigators.
Continue reading “Report: White House Investigating Mueller”
President Donald Trump gave a bombshell interview with the New York Times on Wednesday in which he said that he would not have appointed Jeff Sessions to be attorney general had he known Sessions would recuse himself from the Russian investigation. It was a highly disturbing interview since Sessions recused on the advice of ethics experts at the Justice Department and the overwhelming view of the bar.
Fox News’ Martha MacCallum aired an interesting interview with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein this week in which the Rosenstein reaffirmed something that I have previously said: the memos leaked by James Comey were FBI documents and their release violated FBI rules and regulations. The media has largely ignored indications that some of the memos were indeed classified and that Comey broke FBI rules by leaking material to his friend (with the intent of his giving the information to the media). Rosenstein however did not address one glaring issue of his own: his own conflict of interest in continuing to oversee the Special Counsel investigation while being an obvious and important witness in that investigation.Continue reading “Rosenstein: Comey Memos Were Confidential and Improperly Leaked”
Washington was rocked last night by another scandal with allegations of collusion and a true cover up. As you can see in the above screenshot, I appeared on Fox News but my suit jacket did not. The reason, dear readers, was that my jacket was lifted from the green room at Fox News shortly before I went on with Martha McCallum. The culprit left a very small blue jacket in its place. With minutes to go live, I had to choose between looking casual in shirt sleeves and looking fat in an undersized jacket. Vanity won out over propriety. But there remained growing questions of who knew about the jacket switch and when did they know it. The culprit left the studio literally cloaked in the cover up that was once my jacket.
Continue reading “WASHINGTON ROCKED BY ALLEGED COVER UP WITHIN FOX NEWS”
Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway gave an interesting interview this weekend where she objected to criticism of her performance in the White House as “gender-based.” The suggestion that sexism drives her critics has unleashed a new round of criticism that she is “playing the gender card.” I thought it would be an interesting question to debate on the blog.
Continue reading “Conway Objects That Criticism Of Her Performance In The White House Is Sexist”
Eric Trump once dismissed objections to his father’s use of nepotism by saying that “nepotism is kind of a fact of life.” That is true. It is also a part of presidential history, but it is not a good part. I have long been a critic of nepotism in government. What is interesting is how costly the practice can be. The current controversy involving Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner are illustrative of those costs. Absent the family connection, neither Trump Jr. nor Kushner would likely have been able to avoid a separation from the White House (as was the case with Manafort and Flynn). Instead, Trump has had to double down and his defenders belittle the fact that Donald Jr. not only took the bait of this meeting but said that he would “love” to get information directly from the Russian government to help in the election. As I stated this weekend on NPR, while the collusion was not successful, there was clearly as willingness, if not an eagerness, to collude with the Russians in their seeking to influence the presidential election.
Below is my column in USA Today on the subject:
Today, Chris Wallace (who continues to make a strong case that he is the best interviewer in news today) crossed swords with President Donald Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow on who is paying his fees to represent the President. Sekulow said that he does not know since he bills the law firm of Marc E. Kasowitz. The question was legitimate and the answer does not resolve concerns. It is common to confirm the source of fees to confirm that there is no conflict of interest or other concerns raised by such fee payment. However, there is another report that confirms one source of fees . . . for Donald Trump Jr.
I have been discussing the dubious claims of criminal liability over the meeting of Donald Trump Jr. with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower. As I have mentioned, there is a legitimate reason to investigate this latest undisclosed meeting, though the overheated rhetoric on possible (if not imminent) criminal charges is bizarre. This morning on CNN, Sen. Richard Blumenthal raised possible charges of espionage and treason. Putting aside the facially weak foundation for such charges, I must again note that the underlying narrative around this meeting remains rather speculative and unbelievable. I have worked on the legal side of national security investigations for decades in both espionage and terrorism cases. As I said when this meeting first surfaced, none of this makes sense as an actual Russian intelligence operation as opposed to a rather transparent “bait-and-switch.” If this is a Russian spy mystery, it hardly makes for a sequel of Le Carre’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.”
Below is my column in the Hill Newspaper on the curious coverage surrounding James Comey and his leaking of his memos on meetings with President Donald Trump. With the confirmation hearings of Comey’s replacement, Chris Wray, today, the status of the memos may come up in the Senate.
Here is the column:
Continue reading “Printing The Legend: The Growing Gap Between Comey’s Image and Actions”
Yesterday, I posted a column in the Hill detailing how the media and various legal experts have worked mightily to avoid the fact that former FBI Director James Comey (1) leaked his memos to the media, (2) the memos were presumptively government material, and (3) the memos were likely classified and/or privileged under long-standing FBI rules. As I said in the column and in earlier columns, none of this takes away from the underlying allegations or the importance of the investigation into possible obstruction of justice. However, the response to the recent Senate Homeland Security majority report and the Hill Newspaper story was precisely what the column discussed: a concerted effort to deny any wrongdoing by Comey (who has assumed the position of an immaculate hero in this political narrative). One such denial of any wrongdoing came from Comey’s friend Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman. Professor Richman invoked a familiar defense: the memos he was given had no classification markings – the very same defense made by Hillary Clinton and rejected by then FBI Director James Comey.
The New York Times is reporting that “Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy.” That would be a significant development in supporting allegations of “collusion.” I am still skeptical of the alleged crime of collusion and even more skeptical of the alleged crime related to this meeting. I am also confused by the NYT story which says that the email from publicist Rob Goldstone acknowledged that the information was coming from the Kremlin but the article quotes Goldstone in saying that he had no knowledge of any such connection to the Russian government.
Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush, has declared that the meeting of Donald Trump Jr., with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have compromising information on Hillary Clinton during the campaign, “borders on treason.” Others have said that the disclosure could be the long sought after “smoking gun” on collusion and evidence of criminal conduct. I am afraid that I have to continue my record as something of a “buzz kill” on these stories. There is not a clear criminal act in such a meeting based on the information that we have. Moreover, it is not necessarily unprecedented.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin shared an anti-media moment in Hamburg when they faced journalists and Putin asked “These are the ones hurting you?” Trump responded “These are the ones. You’re right about that.” While I have been very critical of what I see as distortive and biased coverage of the Trump Administration, I have also been critical of Trump’s attacks on the media. This is an example where journalists have a legitimate right to recoil at the scene. Trump was commiserating with a man who has decimated the free press in Russia where dozens of journalists have been killed. With Trump calling for reductions in the protections afforded to media and attacking the media, there is a heightened and understandable sensitivity to these type of scenes.