Author Archives: See Below

GOP Tax Bill Takes a Big Step Forward With Committee Vote

Leave a reply

“I think we’re going to get it passed,” Mr. Trump said at the White House later in the day. “It’s going to have lots of adjustments before it ends, but the end result will be a very, very massive — the largest in the history of our country — tax cut.”

Republicans emerged from the lunch increasingly optimistic about the bill’s fate and played down the concerns that had threatened to bedevil its passage.

Three key Republican holdouts, Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, sounded positive about the bill on Tuesday after gaining assurances from Mr. Trump and Republican leadership that those worries would be addressed.

The bill passed the Senate Budget Committee on a party-line vote

The Senate Budget Committee met on Tuesday to vote on the tax reform bill.


Al Drago for The New York Times

Among those who voted the bill out of committee were Mr. Johnson and Mr. Corker, both of whom had said on Monday they would oppose the legislation without changes to address their individual concerns. Mr. Johnson wants more favorable treatment for pass-through businesses and Mr. Corker wants assurances the $1.5 trillion tax bill won’t add to the deficit.

But the meeting with Mr. Trump and discussions with Republican leaders seemed to have swayed them enough to vote to advance the plan.

Interactive Graphic

What the Tax Bill Would Look Like for 25,000 Middle-Class Families

We modeled taxes for 25,000 middle-class families. Here’s how the Senate bill would affect each of them.


A vote on Wednesday could open the bill to debate and amendments

On Wednesday, the Senate will vote on a procedural motion to begin consideration of the bill on the Senate floor. If that passes, the Senate can begin offering and debating amendments to the bill, which is a precursor to a floor vote that could happen on Friday.

But there are still hurdles ahead, including the need to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the legislation. And there doesn’t seem to be a lot of receptivity to the change that Mr. Corker wants made, which would require some taxes to increase if the overall package adds to the deficit.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

So while the Senate took a big step forward, it still has several more paces to go before declaring victory.

Mr. Trump attacked ‘Chuck and Nancy,’ and then they pulled out of a White House meeting

Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leaders, during a news conference this month.


Al Drago for The New York Times

The two top Democrats, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, refused to attend a meeting with Mr. Trump and congressional leaders that was scheduled for the afternoon after the president posted on Twitter this morning that he was meeting with “Chuck and Nancy” to discuss ways to avert a government shutdown and wrote “I don’t see a deal!”

“Given that the President doesn’t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead,” Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi said in a statement.

“Rather than going to the White House for a show meeting that won’t result in an agreement, we’ve asked Leader McConnell and Speaker Ryan to meet this afternoon. We don’t have any time to waste in addressing the issues that confront us, so we’re going to continue to negotiate with Republican leaders who may be interested in reaching a bipartisan agreement.”

Just a few months ago, Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi seemed to be forging a fruitful partnership with Mr. Trump, who refers to them as “Chuck and Nancy.” In September, the president sided with them to strike a fiscal deal that raised the debt limit and extended government funding into December.

Continue reading the main story

  • Manage Email Preferences
  • Privacy Policy
  • Opt out or contact us anytime

Now, lawmakers are facing another pressing fiscal deadline, as government funding expires Dec. 8. Republican leaders in Congress will need Democratic votes in order to keep the government open beyond that date. Mr. Trump’s tweet follows similar comments about the minority party on Monday, when he said he did not need Democrats to support the tax bill moving through Congress.

The White House spokeswoman said that the Democrats’ boycott showed ‘pettiness’

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, accused Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer of “pettiness” in declining to attend Tuesday afternoon’s meeting.

“It’s disappointing that Senator Schumer and Leader Pelosi are refusing to come to the table and discuss urgent issues,” she said in a statement. “The president’s invitation to the Democrat leaders still stands and he encourages them to put aside their pettiness, stop the political grandstanding, show up and get to work. These issues are too important.”

Republican leaders say Democrats were playing politics with their boycott

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, said in a statement that Democrats need to show up at the meeting if they care about preventing a government shutdown.

Republicans Say the $1.5 Trillion Tax Bill Pays For Itself, but Experts Disagree

There is no consensus among economists about the amount of growth that would occur under the plan, but key models predict it would not cover its cost.


“We have important work to do, and Democratic leaders have continually found new excuses not to meet with the administration to discuss these issues,” they said. “Democrats are putting government operations, particularly resources for our men and women on the battlefield, at great risk by pulling these antics. There is a meeting at the White House this afternoon, and if Democrats want to reach an agreement, they will be there.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Democrats have deep concerns about the tax bill, too

Mr. Schumer, speaking on the Senate floor, pounded on Republicans and Mr. Trump for blocking Democrats from participating in the tax overhaul, saying it would help the rich and corporations instead of the middle class.

“It’s an issue crying out for a bipartisan solution,” he said of the tax rewrite. “There are a lot of areas we agree. We have to work to find a middle ground that’s acceptable to both parties.” The bill as it stands, he said, would balloon the debt and help hedge funds and lobbyists but not average Americans.

Democrats are also worried about a provision in the Senate bill that repeals the requirement that most Americans have health insurance or pay a penalty. Dropping the so-called individual mandate would produce savings that would help pay for the tax cuts, since people would forgo health insurance and therefore the government would spend less on subsidized health coverage.

Right now, about 4.5 percent of tax filers pay a penalty rather than get health insurance. Here’s a look at who they are and where they live:

Graphic

Millions Pay the Obamacare Penalty Instead of Buying Insurance. Who Are They?

The Senate Republican tax bill includes the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, the requirement that all Americans purchase qualifying health insurance or pay a penalty.


A “dynamic” economic analysis may come on Wednesday

Senate Republicans have been speeding ahead toward a vote on their tax bill even without a “dynamic” score from the Joint Committee on Taxation that would show the effects of the proposed tax cuts on the economy. That score is important, since it will show the extent to which the tax cuts will boost growth and avoid adding to the deficit.

The analysis could roil the tax debate at the 11th hour by giving pause to deficit hawks in the Senate. It would be the first attempt by the committee to project the economic effects of the Republican tax plans. The House passed its bill this month before the committee could complete a so-called dynamic score of the bill.

Outside analysts expect the score will show that the Senate bill does not create nearly enough economic growth to generate revenues to offset those lost via tax cuts. Such a showing would undermine Republicans’ claims that the bill would pay for itself.

In a letter that was sent on Monday to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the J.C.T. said there is still a chance that such an analysis could be ready this week, perhaps as soon as late Wednesday.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

“The Joint Committee staff is currently involved in analyzing the macroeconomic effects of the bill, and is trying to complete the analysis for purposes of producing the estimate of the budget effects” in time to inform debate on the Senate floor, Thomas Barthold, chief of staff of the J.C.T. wrote in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the finance committee.

Thus far, dynamic analyses of the Republican tax bills have failed to match the promises of the party’s lawmakers that the tax cuts would pay for themselves by creating a surge of economic growth and new revenues.

Mr. Barthold could make no guarantees that the analysis would be ready in time and he warned that it would not account for any last minute changes that are made to the bill.

“When we produce these estimates, we subject them to a number of quality checks before releasing them, and cannot guarantee a specific release time until we have completed that process,” he said.


Continue reading the main story

Stocks Gain With US Tax in Focus; Pound Rises: Markets Wrap

Leave a reply

Stocks in Europe gained, following U.S. equities and most Asian benchmarks higher as optimism over U.S. tax reform overshadowed concerns about North Korea’s latest missile launch. The British pound strengthened after the U.K. cleared a major Brexit hurdle.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index headed for a three-week high, with most industry sectors in the green. Banks outperformed following a rally in U.S. lenders after Federal Reserve chair nominee Jerome Powell signaled he isn’t inclined to add to financial regulations. Asian stocks were mixed earlier, with gauges in Tokyo and Australia advancing while equities in Seoul dropped. U.S. benchmarks rose on Tuesday as the Senate budget committee advanced the Republican tax bill.

Elsewhere, U.K. gilts fell, the FTSE 100 stock index dropped and sterling jumped to a two-month high after Brexit negotiators agreed to an outline divorce deal. The dollar weakened and core European bonds declined with U.S. Treasuries. The euro gained as data from Germany’s regions showed inflation accelerating. Crude oil fell for a third day as U.S. inventories expanded before OPEC meets to decide on prolonging supply cuts past the end of March. Industrial metals extended a slide.

In Asia, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his regime completed its nuclear program after firing a missile that put the entire U.S. in range. The launch shattered a two-month period of relative quiet in its first provocation since U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision this month to label the country a state sponsor of terrorism. Trump responded that “we will take care of that situation.”

Dueling officials spend chaotic day vying to lead federal consumer watchdog

Leave a reply

The battle over who will lead a prominent federal consumer watchdog agency escalated Monday, with dueling leaders each claiming control before a federal judge during a chaotic day of public appearances and maneuvering.

By the end of the day, it was still unclear who was the true acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — President Trump’s pick of White House budget director Mick Mulvaney or one of the agency’s longtime executives, Leandra English.

Mulvaney showed up at the agency’s Washington headquarters early in the morning bearing a bag of doughnuts and then firing off an email ordering the staff to disregard any orders from English. His office tweeted photos of Mulvaney taking part in office meetings and he invited in the press to announce that he had declared a temporary freeze on hiring and rulemaking.

Trump “wants me to get it [the agency] back to the point where it can protect people without trampling on capitalism,” Mulvaney said.

English, meanwhile, came to the office and sent an early morning email welcoming the staff of 1,600 back from the Thanksgiving holiday and then headed to Capitol Hill, where she met with several Democratic lawmakers. She held her first public appearance before a barrage of cameras and reporters sitting alongside Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Barely audible, English said the lawmakers had been “very helpful.”

Leandra English, a longtime executive with the CFPB, speaks with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) before a meeting on Capitol Hill Monday. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

The confusion promised to continue for at least another day after a federal judge — a recent Trump appointee — declined to rule immediately on English’s request for a temporary restraining order barring Mulvaney from taking over.

English’s attorney, Deepak Gupta, asked U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly to rule as “expeditiously as possible” in a way that could be immediately appealed. “Everyone needs to know who is director of the bureau,” Gupta said.

The standoff is quickly turning into one of the highest-profile efforts by the Trump administration to roll back the government’s oversight over the financial industry. And it is bringing to a head a long-simmering partisan fight over the CFPB, an agency established in 2011 in response to the global financial crisis.

The tug-of-war left the CFPB’s staff and contractors befuddled over how to proceed. Legal experts said any actions taken by either Mulvaney or English could later be challenged in court should they not ultimately prevail — effectively freezing the agency’s ongoing work. The CFPB, for example, is working on rules for debt collectors, which are now likely to stall, legal experts said.

Republicans have been trying to gain control of the agency for years, complaining that the CFPB lacked accountability and its rulemaking made it harder for consumers to get loans. Republicans in Congress, for example, recently voted to block a regulation allowing consumers to sue their banks, arguing it would trigger a flood of frivolous lawsuits and drive up costs. On Twitter, Trump called the agency a “total disaster.”

[Wall Street wins big as Senate votes to roll back regulations allowing consumers to sue their banks]

But Democrats and consumer advocates have cheered the CFPB’s aggressive actions against big financial institutions, noting its record $100 million fine against Wells Fargo for opening millions of fake accounts consumers didn’t want. The agency, they say, was intentionally created to be independent of Congress and from political pressure from the White House. Schumer said he recalled language being added to the legislation about who could temporarily replace an absent director to further limit political interference.

“We purposely put that to avoid putting a fox in charge of the henhouse,” he told reporters.

The Trump administration spent months privately fuming that the CFPB’s longtime director, Richard Cordray, initially did not resign like other banking industry regulators following the election, and they have recently accused him of using his office to gain political advantage. A former attorney general of Ohio, Cordray has been rumored to be interested in running for governor.

“We think that a lot of the past practices under the previous director and under the previous administration were used more to advance political ambitions and not about protecting American consumers, which is what that’s supposed to be,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday.

When Cordray did resign Friday, he set off a showdown with the White House by promoting his chief of staff, English, to deputy director, and saying that she would serve as acting director until the Senate confirmed his permanent replacement. Trump struck back a few hours later by announcing that Mulvaney would take the job instead.

[CFPB official Leandra English sues to block Trump White House pick Mick Mulvaney]

Both sides spent the holiday weekend in a war of words about the fine print in dueling federal statutes. English’s supporters argue that the legislation that created the agency in 2010, the Dodd-Frank Act, gave the power to appoint an acting director to Cordray. And some questioned whether Mulvaney would have the time to properly run such a large agency while also serving as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. As head of OMB, he is tasked with negotiating budget agreements with Capitol Hill. A deal must be brokered before a deadline next week to avoid a partial government shutdown. Mulvaney said he plans to work three days a week at the agency and three days at OMB.

“President Trump put a cloud over the agency by invoking a statute [to appoint Mulvaney] that doesn’t apply here,” said Warren, who, as a bankruptcy professor at Harvard Law School, came up with the idea for the agency. “The agency has been an effective cop on the beat, and the banks don’t want an effective cop on the beat.”

Schumer said Trump has nominated people devoted to terminating the agencies they were nominated to run. Mulvaney, he said, is “only the latest in a line of Trojan horse candidates.”

Trump has installed new leadership at the top of several other regulatory agencies, many of which have already taken a more business-friendly tone. He is likely to follow that pattern with his eventual nominee to replace Cordray — a decision that Mulvaney said will happen quickly.

Mulvaney, a frequent critic of the CFPB, once called the agency a “joke . . . in a sick, sad way.” He stood by those 2015 remarks Monday but said the concerns among some consumer advocates were overblown.

“Rumors that I’m going to set the place on fire or blow it up or lock the doors are completely false,” he said. “We intend to execute the laws of the United States, including the provisions of Dodd-Frank that govern the CFPB.”

At the court hearing, Mulvaney’s attorney, Brett Shumate, a deputy assistant attorney general, was asked by the judge whether the government would agree that English would not be fired, to remove some of the urgency from the matter.

Shumate said he could not “give any representation or assurance on that score.”

For confused CFPB employees, José Andrés, the Washington celebrity chef who once had his own legal dispute with the president over operating a restaurant in Trump’s D.C. hotel, offered a respite. “Have two bosses? Please bring a proof you work there to any of our DC restaurants and the first drink is on us,” he offered on Twitt er.

Steven Mufson, Spencer S. Hsu and Thomas Heath contributed to this report.

Woman Tried to Dupe Washington Post With False Claim About Roy Moore, Paper Says

Leave a reply

Stephanie McCrummen, a Washington Post reporter, left, interviewed Jaime Phillips at a Greek restaurant in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday.


Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post

A woman with ties to a right-wing activist group falsely claimed to The Washington Post that she had conceived a child with Roy S. Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, when she was 15, the newspaper reported on Monday afternoon.

The woman, identified by the paper as Jaime T. Phillips, claimed in recent interviews with reporters that she had an abortion after having sex with Mr. Moore in 1992. But The Post said that it had discovered inconsistencies in her account and evidence that the woman concocted the sensational claim to try to dupe reporters and coax them into discussing the political impact her story could have on Mr. Moore.

A reporter with The Post confronted the woman about the holes in her story on Wednesday and then Post journalists saw her on Monday morning entering the offices of Project Veritas, a conservative group that films undercover videos. The organization, led by the activist James O’Keefe, has recently targeted journalists, trying to goad them into revealing biases or unethical schemes to discredit the news media.

“The intent by Project Veritas clearly was to publicize the conversation if we fell for the trap,” Martin Baron, the executive editor at The Post, was quoted as saying. “Because of our customary journalistic rigor, we weren’t fooled.”

James O’Keefe, of Project Veritas Action, in 2015.


Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

A reporter and a videographer with The Post questioned Mr. O’Keefe on Monday outside his group’s office in Mamaroneck, N.Y., about Ms. Phillips’s apparent connections with Project Veritas.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

“I am not doing an interview right now, so I’m not going to say a word,” Mr. O’Keefe responded.

Ms. Phillips first contacted The Post in a mysterious email on Nov. 9, the newspaper reported. It was sent just hours after the newspaper had published a story about Leigh Corfman, who said she was 14 years old when Mr. Moore, then 32, engaged in a sexual encounter with her. “Roy Moore in Alabama,’’ the email to a Post reporter read, according to the story. “I might know something but I need to keep myself safe.”

Continue reading the main story

Hawaii to resume Cold War-era nuclear siren tests amid North Korea threat

Leave a reply

(Reuters) – Hawaii this week will resume monthly statewide testing of its Cold War-era nuclear attack warning sirens for the first time in about 30 years, in preparation for a potential missile launch from North Korea, emergency management officials said on Monday.

Wailing air-raid sirens will be sounded for about 60 seconds from more than 400 locations across the central Pacific islands starting at 11:45 a.m. on Friday, in a test that will be repeated on the first business day of each month thereafter, state officials said.

Monthly tests of the nuclear attack siren are being reintroduced in Hawaii in conjunction with public service announcements urging residents of the islands to “get inside, stay inside and stay tuned” if they should hear the warning.

“Emergency preparedness is knowing what to expect and what to do for all hazards,” Hawaii Emergency Management Agency chief Vern Miyagi said in one video message posted online. He did not mention North Korea specifically.

But the nuclear attack sirens, discontinued since the 1980s when the Cold War drew to a close, are being reactivated in light of recent test launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles from North Korea deemed capable of reaching the state, agency spokeswoman Arlina Agbayani told Reuters.

A single 150-kiloton weapon detonated over Pearl Harbor on the main island of Oahu would be expected to kill 18,000 people outright and leave 50,000 to 120,000 others injured across a blast zone several miles wide, agency spokesman Richard Rapoza said, citing projections based on assessments of North Korea’s nuclear weapons technology.

While casualties on that scale would be unprecedented on U.S. soil, a fact sheet issued by the agency stressed that 90 percent of Hawaii’s 1.4 million-plus residents would survive “the direct effects of such an explosion.”

Oahu, home to a heavy concentration of the U.S. military command structure, as well as the state capital, Honolulu, and about two-thirds of the state’s population, is seen as an especially likely target for potential North Korean nuclear aggression against the United States.

In the event of an actual nuclear missile launch at Hawaii from North Korea, the U.S. Pacific Command would alert state emergency officials to sound the attack sirens, giving island residents just 12 to 15 minutes of warning before impact, according to the state’s fact sheet.

In that case, residents are advised to take cover “in a building or other substantial structure.” Although no designated nuclear shelters exist, staying indoors offers the best chance of limiting exposure to radioactive fallout.

The siren tests are being added to existing monthly tests of Hawaii’s steady-tone siren warnings for hurricanes, tsunamis and other natural disasters. Those alerts also undergo monthly tests on radio, TV and cellphone networks.

When emergency management officials initiated the new warning campaign, “there were concerns we would scare the public,” Miyagi said in a recent presentation. “What we are putting out is information based on the best science that we have on what would happen if that weapon hit Honolulu or the assumed targets.”

Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney

Michael Flynn’s lawyer meets with members of special counsel’s team, raising specter of plea deal

Leave a reply

The lawyer for President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn met Monday morning with members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team — the latest indication that both sides are discussing a possible plea deal, ABC News has learned.

Trump’s legal team confirmed late last week that Flynn’s attorney Robert Kelner alerted the team that he could no longer engage in privileged discussions about defense strategy in the case — a sign Flynn is preparing to negotiate with prosecutors over a deal that could include his testimony against the president or senior White House officials.

That process would typically include a series of off-the-record discussions in which prosecutors lay out in detail for Flynn and his lawyers the fruits of their investigation into his activities. Prosecutors would also provide Flynn an opportunity to offer what’s called a proffer, detailing what information, if any, he has that could implicate others in wrongdoing.

When reached Monday, Kelner declined to comment on the nature of his morning visit to Mueller’s offices in Washington, D.C.

Sources familiar with the discussions between Flynn’s legal team and Trump’s attorneys told ABC News that while there was never a formal, signed joint defense agreement between Flynn’s defense counsel and other targets of the Mueller probe, the lawyers had engaged in privileged discussions for months.

Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump’s legal team, told ABC News last week that the break was “not entirely unexpected.”

“No one should draw the conclusion that this means anything about Gen. Flynn cooperating against the president,” Sekulow said.

The New York Times broke the news, calling it an indication that Flynn may be cooperating with prosecutors.

PHOTO: Michael Flynn Jr. is seen behind his father, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, as they arrive at Trump Tower in New York on Nov. 17, 2016. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AFP via Getty Images
Michael Flynn Jr. is seen behind his father, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, as they arrive at Trump Tower in New York on Nov. 17, 2016.

Sources familiar with the Flynn investigation have told ABC News the retired lieutenant general has felt increased pressure since prosecutors began focusing attention on his son, Michael G. Flynn, who worked as part of the Flynn Intel Group, the consulting firm founded by the elder Flynn, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Michael G. Flynn also traveled with his father to Russia in 2015 for his now famous appearance at a Moscow dinner where he sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Democrats in Congress have told ABC News they forwarded information to the Mueller team alleging that Michael T. Flynn illegally concealed more than a dozen foreign contacts and overseas trips during the process of renewing his security clearances.

“It appears that General Flynn violated federal law by omitting this trip and these foreign contacts from his security clearance renewal application in 2016 and concealing them from security clearance investigators who interviewed him as part of the background check process,” Reps. Elijah Cummings and Eliot L. Engel, both Democrats, wrote in a letter to Flynn’s attorney.

The letter highlights information House investigators collected from executives at three private companies advised by Flynn in 2015 and 2016. The companies were pursuing a joint venture with Russia to bring nuclear power to several Middle Eastern countries and secure the resulting nuclear fuel before Flynn joined then-candidate Trump on the campaign trail.

Flynn is a decorated military officer who served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 until his retirement in 2014. He was out of the spotlight only briefly. He joined the Trump campaign as an adviser in 2016, and Trump later named Flynn as his first national security adviser. He was forced to resign, however, after just 24 days on the job, when it was revealed that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russian officials during the presidential transition.

PHOTO: Robert Mueller, special counsel on the Russian investigation, leaves the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., June 21, 2017. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images, FILE
Robert Mueller, special counsel on the Russian investigation, leaves the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., June 21, 2017.

Cummings told ABC News that Flynn’s foreign contacts — which involved high-ranking foreign officials and business executives — were so numerous they could not have been inadvertent omissions or incidental contacts.

“He has, over and over again, omitted information that he should have disclosed,” Cummings said. “It’s not an aberration, and that’s clear.

Flynn’s lawyer has declined to comment on the letter, and when ABC News tracked down Flynn this summer at a beach in Newport, Rhode Island — his hometown — he didn’t say much more.

“I’m just having a great time with the family here,” Flynn said. “I’m doing good, [but] I’m not going to make any comments.”

The alleged omissions could be a serious matter — and not just for Flynn. While Cummings said intentionally omitting foreign contacts when applying for security clearance can carry a five-year prison term, he acknowledged that penalties are rarely so severe. The leverage the alleged transgressions provide, however, could prove useful to prosecutors seeking to use the threat of prosecution to compel Flynn’s assistance in the broader investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Former FBI Director James Comey provided a window into that strategy during his three hours of testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this year.

“There is always a possibility if you have a criminal case against someone and you bring them in, squeeze them, flip them, [that] they give you information about something else,” Comey said.

The alleged omissions are just the latest to make trouble for Flynn. He failed to declare a December 2015 trip to Russia, where he sat next to Putin and for which was paid $33,000. In March 2017, Flynn submitted a late filing with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, revealing that the Flynn Intel Group was paid $530,000 for three months of work on behalf of a Dutch firm owned by a Turkish businessman with close ties to the Turkish government.

PHOTO: President Donald Trump walks in front of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, left, and after arriving at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., Feb. 6, 2017. Susan Walsh/AP Photo, FILE
President Donald Trump walks in front of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, left, and after arriving at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., Feb. 6, 2017.

Flynn’s work for Turkey remains the subject of additional scrutiny. Of interest to federal agents, according to people interviewed by the FBI, is his alleged role in a bizarre, unrealized proposal first reported by The Wall Street Journal to kidnap Turkish dissident cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is living in exile in rural Pennsylvania and is suspected of involvement in a failed coup attempt.

Gulen, who has denied involvement in the coup attempt, has lived legally in the Pocono Mountains since 1999, and the Turkish government has been financing efforts to persuade the U.S. government to return him to Turkey for years.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey confirmed for ABC News he was at a meeting in which Flynn allegedly raised the idea.

“It became clear to me that they were seriously considering a kidnapping operation for Gulen, and I told them then that it was a bad idea, it was illegal,” Woolsey said. “I won’t say that they had firmly decided to do that. But they were seriously considering it.”

Kelner, Flynn’s lawyer, took the rare step of publicly refuting those assertions, saying there was no such discussion and calling them categorically “false.” In mid-July at a press conference, the Turkish ambassador to the U.S. also denied the notion of a kidnapping plot.

“There’s no truth to that,” he said, adding that the Turkish government was following “traditional” procedures to have Gulen extradited “through the legal channels.”

ABC News’ John Santucci contributed to this report.

Britain’s black queen: Will Meghan Markle really be the first mixed-race royal?

Leave a reply

A portrait of Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, and American actress Meghan Markle, who is engaged to Prince Harry. (Print Collector/Getty Images and Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images)

When Britain’s Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle announced their engagement Monday, Twitter erupted with the news that the newest princess in the royal family would be bi-racial.

“We got us a Black princess ya’ll,” GirlTyler exulted. “Shout out to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Their wedding will be my Super Bowl.”

But Markle, whose mother is black and whose father is white, may not be the first mixed-race royal.

Some historians suspect that Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III who bore the king 15 children, was of African descent.

Historian Mario De Valdes y Cocom argues that Queen Charlotte was directly descended from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family: Alfonso III and his concubine, Ouruana, a black Moor.

In the 13th century, “Alfonso III of Portugal conquered a little town named Faro from the Moors,” said Valdes, a researcher for Frontline PBS. “He demanded [the governor’s] daughter as a paramour. He had three children with her.”

According to Valdes, one of their sons, Martin Alfonso, married into the noble de Sousa family, who also had black ancestry. Queen Charlotte had African blood from both families.

Valdes, who grew up in Belize, began researching Queen Charlotte’s African ancestry in 1967, after he moved to Boston.

“I had heard these stories from my Jamaican nanny, Etheralda “TeeTee” Cole,” Valdes recalled.

He discovered that a royal physician, Baron Christian Friedrich Stockmar, described Queen Charlotte as “small and crooked, with a true mulatto face.”

Sir Walter Scott  wrote that she was “ill-colored” and called her family “a bunch of ill-colored orangutans.”

One prime minister once wrote of Queen Charlotte: “Her nose is too wide and her lips too thick.”

In several British colonies, Queen Charlotte was often honored by blacks who were convinced from her portraits and likeness on coins that she had African ancestry.

Valdes became fascinated by official portraits of Queen Charlotte in which her features, he said, were visibly “negroid.”

“I started a systematic geneological search,” said Valdes, which is how he traced her ancestry back to the mixed-race branch of the Portuguese royal family.

Charlotte, who was born May 19, 1744, was the youngest daughter of Duke Carl Ludwig Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Princess Elisabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen. She was a 17-year-old German princess when she traveled to England to wed King George III, who later went to war with his American colonies and lost rather badly. His mother most likely chose Charlotte to be his bride.

“Back in London, the king’s enthusiasm mounted daily,” wrote Janice Hadlow in the book, “A Royal Experiment: The Private Life of King George III.” “He had acquired a portrait of Charlotte and was said to be mighty fond of it, but won’t let any mortal look at it.”

[Cheers, Prince Harry! But the last time a British royal married an American, it didn’t go well]

King George III ordered that gowns be made and waiting for his new bride when she arrived in London.

He met Charlotte for the first time on their wedding day, Sept. 8, 1761.

“Introduced to the king, Charlotte ‘threw herself at his feet, he raised her up, embraced her and led her through the garden up the steps into the palace,’ ” Hadlow wrote. “Some later reminiscences asserted that at the moment of their meeting, the king had been shocked by Charlotte’s appearance.”

In a portrait painted by Sir Allan Ramsay, Queen Charlotte’s hair is piled high in curly ringlets. Her neck is long and her skin appears to be café-au-lait.

Ramsay, Valdes said, was an abolitionist married to the niece of Lord Mansfield, the judge who ruled in 1772 that slavery should be abolished in the British Empire. And Ramsay was uncle by marriage to Dido Elizabeth Lindsay, the black grand-niece of Lord Mans field. Dido’s life story was recently recounted in the movie, “Belle.”

In 1999, the London Sunday Times published an article with the headline: “REVEALED: THE QUEEN’S BLACK ANCESTORS.”

“The connection had been rumored but never proved,” the Times wrote. “The royal family has hidden credentials that make its members appropriate leaders of Britain’s multicultural society. It has black and mixed-raced royal ancestors who have never been publicly acknowledged. An American genealogist has established that Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, was directly descended from the illegitimate son of an African mistress in the Portuguese royal house.”

After the Times story, The Boston Globe hailed Valdes’ research as ground breaking. Charlotte, who died in 1818, passed on her mixed-race heritage to her granddaughter, Queen Victoria, and to Britain’s present day monarch, Queen Elizabeth.

Some scholars in England dismissed the evidence as weak —  and beside the point.

 

“It really is so remote,” David Williamson, co-editor of Debrett’s Peerage, the guide to Britain’s barons, dukes and duchesses, marquises, and other titled people, told the Globe. “In any case, all European royal families somewhere are linked to the kings of Castile. There is a lot of Moorish blood in the Portuguese royal family and it has diffused over the rest of Europe. The question is, who cares?”

A Buckingham Palace spokesman did not deny Queen Charlotte’s African ancestry of Queen Charlotte. Spokesman David Buck told the Globe: “This has been rumored for years and years. It is a matter of history, and frankly, we’ve got far more important things to talk about.”

Valdes said that in the current racial climate, the genealogy is very important to history.

“In reaction to the horrors of what happened in Charlottesville, which is named after this queen, her ancestry is very relevant.”

Read more Retropolis:

Cheers, Prince Harry! But the last time a British royal married an American, it didn’t go well.

Diana’s final hours: Dodi’s yacht, a Ritz suite, a diamond ring and relentless photographers

The gang rape was horrific. The NAACP sent Rosa Parks to investigate.

Jane Wyman as the anti-Ivana Trump: Why Ronald Reagan’s ex-wife refused to dish about him

JFK’s last birthday: Gifts, champagne and wandering hands on the presidential yacht

 

 

Senators Scramble to Advance Tax Bill That Increasingly Rewards Wealthy

Leave a reply

At the heart of the debate is whether to more favorably treat small businesses and other so-called pass-through entities — businesses whose profits are distributed to their owners and taxed at rates for individuals. Seventy percent of pass-through income flows to the top 1 percent of American earners, according to research by Owen Zidar, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Graphic

Which Republican Senators Might Oppose the Tax Bill, and Why

Senate leaders would need to win over several Republican senators to pass a tax overhaul.


Two Republican senators, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Steve Daines of Montana, have said that they will vote against the plan if it does not do more to help the owners of those businesses, possibly by increasing the individual income tax deduction for such owners from the 17.4 percent rate currently in the Senate bill.

Republicans, who control the Senate 52 to 48, can afford to lose only two of their members if they hope to pass the bill on party lines in the upper chamber.

Mr. Johnson could stall the bill by himself on Tuesday, when it is scheduled for a vote in the Senate Budget Committee. Mr. Johnson sits on that committee, where Republicans have a single-vote majority. On Monday, he said he would vote “no” unless his concerns were addressed.

“I need a fix beforehand,” Mr. Johnson said.

Earlier in the day, Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and the majority whip, said, “There’s no deal, but there’s been some discussions on how to address Senator Johnson and Senator Daines’s concerns.” He continued, “We’re trying to be responsive.”

Adding to the uncertainty, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee also said on Monday that he could be a “no” vote in the Budget Committee if his concerns about the bill’s effect on the deficit were not adequately addressed.

Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, who leads the Senate Finance Committee, said that there was a strong desire to get a bill passed by Friday and that additional changes would most likely be made on the Senate floor. Despite speculation that the House will face pressure to quickly vote upon whatever passes in the Senate, Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said he “fully expects” that there would be a conference to bridge differences between the House and Senate plans.

Republican Tax Plan: How to Make Sense of the Push in Congress

It’s virtually impossible to fully understand, let alone keep up with, the flood of proposals, amendments and analyses that continue to pour out. Here are some of the big-picture ideas to keep in mind as this political sausage is being made.


The pass-through fight is the first skirmish in what lawmakers and lobbyists expect will be a frenzied week, which Republican leaders hope will produce the first major legislative victory of the Trump-era for their party.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The week is expected to be punctuated by behind-the-scenes arm twisting and deal making as party leaders work to allay senators’ worries without exceeding their self-imposed $1.5 trillion budget for tax cuts. At least a half-dozen senators have raised concerns about the bill, including its potential to add to the federal deficit and a provision that would eliminate the Affordable Care Act requirement that most Americans have health insurance or pay a penalty.

Many of those senators are in discussions with party leaders over how to tweak the bill to address their concerns. James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, said on Monday that he was in talks over a proposal meant to ensure the tax plan did not balloon the deficit. Mr. Lankford said the Senate was discussing inserting a provision that would lead to tax increases — as yet unspecified — after a period of years if federal revenues fell short of lawmakers’ projections.

Continue reading the main story

  • Manage Email Preferences
  • Privacy Policy
  • Opt out or contact us anytime

“To me,” Mr. Lankford said, “the big issue is how are we dealing with debt and deficit, do we have realistic numbers, and is there a backstop in the process just in case we don’t?”

Mr. Corker and Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, who has also expressed concerns about the bill’s costs, said on Monday that they were similarly interested in some type of trigger or backstop.

Some other senators’ concerns appear less likely to be addressed. Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida, for example, appear to be making little progress in persuading party leaders to expand access to the child tax credit for low-income families, by allowing the credit to be refundable against payroll tax liability. Such a move would allow working parents who do not currently face income tax liability to still benefit from the expanded credit envisioned in the bill.

Several Senate Republicans loom as potential roadblocks to the tax bill, including Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee, center, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, right, and Jeff Flake of Arizona.


Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press

On Monday, several Republicans from the Senate Finance Committee, including Mr. Hatch, emerged from a lunch with President Trump at the White House saying that they were confident they would have the necessary votes to pass the package this week and would be able to resolve differences with the House version so that the bill could be signed into law in short order.

“We’re generally able to get together and solve these problems,” Mr. Hatch said of the House and Senate.

White House officials privately said that they hoped the two chambers could resolve their differences privately and informally to avoid a potentially lengthy and divisive formal conference that typically is needed to complete major legislation.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Asked whether the legislation could be completed by Christmas, Mr. Hatch said, “I hope so.”

He added that Democrats should “get off their duffs” and support the plan. Mr. Trump, for his part, said later in the day that he was not interested in getting Democratic support.

At an event in the Oval Office honoring Navajo code talkers from World War II, Mr. Trump boasted that the package would be “a tremendous tax cut, the biggest in the history of our country” and predicted that there would be “great receptivity” to it.

“If we win, we’ll get some Democratic senators joining us,” he said. “But I’m not so interested in that. We’re really interested just in getting it passed.”

Mr. Trump is expected to go to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to have lunch with Republican senators before meeting with the top congressional leaders from both parties in the afternoon.


Continue reading the main story

Susan Sarandon thinks Hillary Clinton would have been ‘very dangerous’ as president

Leave a reply

Actress Susan Sarandon arrives at the Time 100 gala celebrating the magazine’s naming of the 100 most influential people in the world for the past year in New York April 29, 2014.

 (Reuters)

Actress Susan Sarandon is having a tough time since the 2016 election as the star is now being attacked by the left for refusing to support Hillary Clinton.

Despite campaigning for Hillary in 2001, she was a supporter of Bernie Sanders in 2016. When he failed to take the Democratic nomination, the actress did not shift her star-powered support to Hillary, which got the attention of the moderates and the left in a very negative way.

“I got from Hillary people ‘I hope your crotch is grabbed,’ ‘I hope you’re raped.’ Misogynistic attacks. Recently, I said ‘I stand with Dreamers and that started another wave,” she told The Guardian in a recent interview. “From the left! ‘How dare you! You who are responsible for this!’”

Since the election, Sarandon’s career has been marred by all things politics. She couldn’t even appear on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” without the host asking her to defend her political position. However, she stands by her decision to, as a New Yorker, vote for third party candidate Jill Stein over Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. However, it’s the assertion that fans got that she believed Hillary would be more dangerous than Trump in office that’s been hard to shake. The assertion stems from an interview she did with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on “All In With Chris Hayes” she gave prior to the Democratic National Convention. When asked if she ever made that claim outright in her latest interview, she had this to say: .

“No exactly, but I don’t mind that quote. I did think she was very, very dangerous. We would still be fracking, we would be at war [if she was president]. It wouldn’t be much smoother. Look what happened under Obama that we didn’t notice.”

While Sarandon has not publicly given her support directly to Donald Trump, she seems to be very confident in her belief that a Clinton presidency would not have people on the left as better off as they think they would be.

Congress Returns to Intense Pressure to End Secrecy Over Sex Harassment

Leave a reply

The House is expected this week to adopt a bipartisan resolution mandating that all members and their staffs participate in anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training; the Senate has already adopted such a resolution. The more difficult task will be passing legislation that overhauls the way sexual harassment claims are handled.

In the House, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Representative Jackie Speier, Democrat of California, and Representative Barbara Comstock, Republican of Virginia, is pushing for legislation that would require claims to be handled in public. In the Senate, Senator Kirstin Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, has put forth similar legislation.

“It was a system set up in 1995 to protect the harasser,” Ms. Speier said on the ABC program “This Week,” adding, “We say zero tolerance, but I don’t believe that we put our money where our mouths are.”

One major question, however, is whether the Speier-Comstock legislation should apply retroactively, meaning that those who have paid past settlements would now be identified. The legislation would cover any settlement reached since the beginning of this year.

While Mr. Portman said he would support retroactive releases, others, including Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, were more cautious, saying that unmasking lawmakers could reveal the identity of victims who want to remain private.

“All of these nondisclosure agreements have to go,” Ms. Pelosi said on “Meet the Press.” But, she said, “if the victim wants to be private, she can be.”

Debra Katz, a lawyer who represents victims of sexual harassment, echoed those concerns.

“For a number of my clients, that’s the last thing in the world they would want and could have life-altering consequences,” Ms. Katz said in an interview on Sunday. “They settled their cases to be able to move on with their lives while protecting their privacy.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

In the case of Mr. Conyers, the lawyer Lisa Bloom, who announced on Sunday that she was representing the woman who filed the complaint against him, said a confidentiality agreement was preventing the woman from telling her side of the story. Ms. Bloom urged Mr. Conyers to release her client from the agreement so she could speak publicly.

News of Mr. Conyers’s settlement was reported last week by BuzzFeed News, which published documents showing that he had settled a complaint in 2015 by a former employee who had said she was fired because she rejected his sexual advances. The news site said it had received documents about the case from Mike Cernovich, a right-wing online commentator.

BuzzFeed has since reported that a second woman has also accused Mr. Conyers, 88, of sexual harassment.

Continue reading the main story

  • Manage Email Preferences
  • Privacy Policy
  • Opt out or contact us anytime

“I deny these allegations, many of which were raised by documents reportedly paid for by a partisan alt-right blogger,” Mr. Conyers said in a statement on Sunday. “I very much look forward to vindicating myself and my family before the House Committee on Ethics.”

Mr. Conyers said that he would “like very much to remain as ranking member,” but had “come to believe that my presence as ranking member on the committee would not serve these efforts while the Ethics Committee investigation is pending.”

His lawyer, Arnold E. Reed, said in a phone interview on Sunday that Mr. Conyers had taken several days to decide to step aside from his committee post because he did not want to make an “off the cuff” move. Mr. Conyers spoke with several family members and deliberated during the Thanksgiving holiday before determining that the allegations had become too much of a distraction, the lawyer said.

“He wanted time to think about this and reach a conclusion that he was comfortable with. And it was the right thing to do in his mind,” Mr. Reed said. “He is maintaining that he did not do anything wrong. He is maintaining his innocence. This is a temporary stepping aside his position as ranking member so this can be a completely transparent and unfettered investigation.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Reed had said in an interview that Mr. Conyers believed that some of those suggesting that he step down, including fellow Democrats, had been scheming for years to push him out of his Judiciary post.

A senior House Democratic aide said the decision had come after days of effort by Ms. Pelosi, who was working with Mr. Conyers to find a way for him to step aside gracefully. Ms. Pelosi hinted at as much on “Meet the Press,” where she said, before Mr. Conyers’s announcement, that she expected him to “do the right thing.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The interview showed the delicate position that Ms. Pelosi is in. She declined to say that Mr. Conyers should step down, calling him an “icon in our country” who had done “a great deal to protect women.” Ms. Pelosi later came under some criticism on social media for those remarks.

On Sunday night, 12 women who once worked for Mr. Conyers released a statement in support of him. “Our experiences with Mr. Conyers were quite different than the image of him being portrayed in the media,” the women said, adding that he was “respectful” and “treated us as professionals.”

Former Franken aides have also been coordinating an effort to line up women in support of him. On Sunday, they released a statement signed by 65 women that expressed disappointment over the allegations but called him a “steadfast supporter of women’s rights.”

Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who holds the recently created position of vice ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, praised Mr. Conyers for making a “wise decision,” adding, “The House is ready to clean house with respect to sexual harassment, and everybody agrees that we need to have a zero-tolerance policy.”

As Democrats wrestled with the allegations against Mr. Conyers and Mr. Franken, congressional Republicans on Sunday bemoaned President Trump’s support for Roy S. Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama who is accused of making unwanted advances on teenagers.

Many Republicans on Capitol Hill have called for Mr. Moore to step aside, but he has refused to do so. In a pair of tweets on Sunday, Mr. Trump warned that electing Mr. Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, “would be a disaster!” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, issued his own warning, saying that a victory by Mr. Moore would hurt Republicans just as much as a loss.

“If Moore wins, there will immediately be an ethics investigation, and he will be working under a cloud. He is a distraction,” Mr. Thune, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I would like to see the president come out and do what we’ve done, saying Moore should step aside.”


Continue reading the main story