Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and two other former federal prosecutors joined President Trump’s legal team Thursday following weeks of turbulence and struggles to find attorneys who would agree to represent the president in the ongoing federal probe into Russian election interference.

The reshuffling comes at a particularly tense juncture for Trump, who aides said is increasingly frustrated by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation and with the senior officials at the Justice Department.

The entry of Giuliani, an experienced attorney with a combative reputation, immediately raises questions about how Trump will engage with Mueller and the leadership at Justice. Some Trump advisers are concerned that the president could use his ­executive authority to close or diminish the special counsel probe, which has spawned a parallel investigation in New York targeting his personal attorney.

“I’m doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller,” Giuliani said in an interview Thursday.

Trump said in a statement that Giuliani “wants to get this matter quickly resolved.”

In recent days, the president has been regularly venting and speculating to aides about his legal status and the expected timeline for the Russia investigation to end, according to associates briefed on the discussions.

Trump also loudly and repeatedly complained to several advisers earlier this week that former FBI director James B. Comey, former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, among others, should be charged with crimes for misdeeds alleged by Republicans, the associates said.

Although White House officials said Thursday that Trump has not called Justice Department officials or taken any formal action, the persistent grousing has made some advisers anxious, according to two people close to the president. A publicity tour by Comey to promote his book critical of Trump, “A Higher Loyalty,” has attracted particular attention from the president, who has disparaged Comey publicly and privately.

Trump also complained this week about Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, saying the judge had proved too liberal in recent cases, according to administration officials who heard about the complaints. Associates said he was incensed that Gorsuch had voted against the administration on an immigration case and said it renewed his doubts that Gorsuch would be a reliable conservative. One top Trump adviser played down the comments as unhappiness with Gorsuch’s decision rather than with Gorsuch broadly.

Giuliani, 73, brings a familiarity with several of the legal fronts that Trump is navigating. He is a former associate attorney general and a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is the office overseeing an investigation of Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen.

Trump counsel Jay Sekulow said Thursday that former federal prosecutors Jane Serene Raskin and Marty Raskin, a couple who manage a Florida-based law firm, have also agreed to join the legal team.

Giuliani is certain to come under intense scrutiny for his role. His own pre-election activities two years ago have been the subject of criticism from Democrats, especially television interviews in which he suggested he had sources providing him inside information about the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s private email server when she was secretary of state.

A Justice Department Inspector General report on the department’s handling of the Clinton investigations is expected to be released in coming weeks and will probably include results of leak investigations regarding the Clinton probe.

Numerous other challenges face the attorneys who will work alongside Sekulow and counsel Ty Cobb — who have functioned as Trump’s legal nucleus for weeks following the resignation of John Dowd, a legal veteran and the team’s former leader. Dowd stepped down in March amid clashes over strategy and whether Trump should sit for a voluntary interview with Mueller. The legal team has often been beset by infighting.

“The big question is, how’s he going to play with everybody else?” said a lawyer involved with the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly. “Will he be combative Rudy, or will he play well with Mueller’s team? Will he try to walk . . . back from the brink and answer the big question, which is whether the president will sit for an interview? And will Trump listen to him?”

Giuliani declined to say whether Trump has made a final decision on whether to sit for an interview with federal investigators. Trump has been mulling it for weeks, moving away from the idea after the home, offices and hotel room of Cohen were raided this month. Trump reacted angrily, calling it “disgraceful.”

“It’s too early for me to say that,” Giuliani replied, when asked whether a Trump interview is unlikely to happen.

Giuliani also declined to discuss whether Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who has been under fire from conservatives and oversees the Russia probe, could be fired by the president in the coming weeks.

“I’m not involved in anything about those issues. My advice on Mueller has been this: He should be allowed to do his job. He’s entitled to do his job.”

Giuliani said he formalized his decision in recent days, including over dinner last week at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Giuliani and Trump spoke Thursday about the legal plan moving forward, along with Sekulow, whom he has known for years and called a friend. He added that he and Cobb also spoke, on Wednesday.

Giuliani — who will take a leave from his law firm, Greenberg Traurig, and is in the midst of a divorce from his third wife — said he would spend a “great deal of time” in Washington working with Trump but would continue to live in New York. He has been frequently been seen holding court at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, dining and drinking with friends and browsing for gourmet cigars.

Trump had considered Giuliani for attorney general and has said in recent weeks he needs a New York-based attorney. Many leading white-collar lawyers, such as former solicitor general Theodore Olson, have declined Trump’s entreaties, often citing conflicts or expressing unease about the high-profile case.

Trump is also known to be a difficult client who does not always listen to his attorneys’ advice, according to lawyers who know him. And Giuliani, once a top adviser, grew frustrated with his treatment during the transition and had receded from the inner circle.

As he has closely monitored cable-news programs chronicling his presidency and the Mueller probe, Trump has swatted away the notion that he cannot attract prominent attorneys. He has also spoken about his desire for a bolstered team and wondered aloud about the damage that Cohen’s legal proceedings could bring, according to the associates briefed on the discussions, who requested anonymity to talk about them.

Giuliani’s arrival is part of a broader shift in Trump’s inner circle toward the core allies and brusque and brutal style that defined his outsider presidential campaign and his business career. Beyond Mueller, aides said everyone and everything around Trump feels liable to become a target for his wrath as he grapples with difficult issues at home and abroad, in Syria and North Korea.

“What we’ve been seeing with the president is that he is picking A-level people that he knows are experienced but also know him well,” said Trump ally Christopher Ruddy, the president and CEO of Newsmax Media, a conservative outlet. “One of the problems in the first year was that people didn’t work out because they didn’t know him and they didn’t have experience for the position.”

Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.

Capitol Hill has received redacted versions of former FBI Director James Comey’s memos, after President Trump approved their transmission, sources tell CBS News. Two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News’ chief White House correspondent Major Garrett the president approved the transmission after receiving recommendations from top Justice Department officials.

CBS News has obtained a redacted version of the memos. At the top of the first memo, Comey writes: “What follows are my notes I typed in the vehicle immediately upon exiting Trump Tower on 1/6/17.”

As Comey wrote in his book, he details how Mr. Trump had asked him about alleged “golden shower” tape. But Comey also details how Mr. Trump started talking about the women who “falsely accused” him of allegedly grabbing or touching them, with mentioning in particular a “stripper.”

In his memo about the second meeting with Mr. Trump — this meeting took place at the White House — Comey writes how Mr. Trump asked about his future, saying “so what do you want to do?” Comey writes that Mr. Trump told him “about 20 people” wanted Comey’s job, but Mr. Trump said he would understand if Comey “wanted to walk away after all he had been through.”

Comey also writes that Mr. Trump asked whether “your guy McCabe” — who Mr. Trump later fired — has “a problem with me.”

Comey recounts the conversation where the president asked for loyalty, Comey offered honesty, and Mr. Trump asked for “honest loyalty.”

Mr. Trump raised concerns about former national security adviser Michael Flynn‘s judgment, telling Comey on Jan. 28, 2017, that Flynn neglected for six days to tell him of a congratulatory call from an undisclosed/redacted foreign leader, bringing it up only when Mr. Trump was toasting the British prime minister and thanking her for her call.  “The guy has serious judgment issues,” Mr. Trump is quoted as saying.

On Feb. 8, Priebus asked Comey if the FBI had a FISA warrant on Flynn, who has since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Comey said he hesitated but gave Priebus an answer on the spot before urging him to go through “the established channels” to glean such information in the future.

Comey recounts that Mr. Trump, Priebus and Kushner each brought up his handling of the Clinton email investigation.  In Feb. 8 meeting in Priebus’ office, Priebus asked Comey to explain why Clinton’s actions didn’t rise to criminal “gross negligence.”

Mr. Trump was extremely focused on finding leakers, and hoped to get Comey and the FBI engaged in the hunt. On Feb. 14, 2017, Comey writes Mr.  Trump told him “we need to go after the reporters,” referencing the case of Judith Miller.  Ten or 15 years ago “we put them in jail to find out what they know, and it worked,” Comey quotes Mr. Trump as saying.

The memos were requested by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, and House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-California.

• Trump calls “leaks” of Comey memos “cowardly”
• Rod Rosenstein knew Trump would fire Comey before memo, senators say

Comey, who was fired by Mr. Trump in May, has begun a tour to tout his new book, “A Higher Loyalty,” which describes his time as FBI director and the time period surrounding his firing. In the book, Comey describes Mr. Trump as “untethered to truth,” and Mr. Trump’s leadership style as “ego driven and about personal loyalty.”

In response, Mr. Trump has fired off a handful of tweets about Comey, calling him a “weak and untruthful slime ball.”

“It was my great honor to fire James Comey,” Mr. Trump tweeted over the weekend.

James Comey is a proven LEAKER LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is a weak and…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2018

….untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst “botch jobs” of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2018

Comey’s memos, some of which he leaked to a friend for release to the media, influenced Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s decision to appoint special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the Russia investigation into Russian election meddling and any ties to Trump associates.

CBS News’ Rebecca Kaplan contributed to this report.

Two of President Trump’s top legislative allies met with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein this week to press him for more documents about the conduct of law enforcement officials involved in the Russia probe and the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server, according to three people who were not authorized to speak publicly about the discussion.

Rosenstein’s meeting at his office Monday with Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) came days after Meadows, an influential Trump confidant, warned Rosenstein that he could soon face impeachment proceedings or an effort to hold him in contempt of Congress if he did not satisfy GOP demands for documents.

Trump and Meadows spoke at some point after the meeting, the three people said, but they declined to share details of the exchange.

The visit by Meadows and Jordan — leading members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — is the latest sign of the rising tensions between Trump’s inner circle and the Justice Department. Rosenstein, a veteran prosecutor, is confronting a torrent of criticism from Republicans and an uncertain future that puts special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe at risk.

In recent days, Trump has seethed over the FBI’s raid last week on the home, office and hotel room of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, which Rosenstein approved. He has also taken note of conservative commentators who have called for Rosenstein to be fired, according to two administration officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. And Trump encouraged Rosenstein to work with lawmakers on their document requests in a White House meeting April 12, the officials said.

“They’ve been saying I’m going to get rid of them for the last three months, four months, five months, and they’re still here,” Trump said at a news conference Wednesday when asked about Mueller and Rosenstein.

Meadows, in a brief interview Wednesday, acknowledged that he met with Rosenstein earlier in the week.

“We keep getting promises that Congress will get the documents it has requested, but there has been little action that has supported those promises,” Meadows said. He called the meeting the culmination of the “dissatisfaction I’ve expressed on a number of occasions with varying degrees of passion.”

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Meadows and other Republicans close to Trump, such as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), have long clashed with Rosenstein over documents related to the origin of the Russia investigation. Last week, in a move widely seen as an attempt to calm that rancor, the Justice Department gave Nunes access to a redacted document detailing the beginning of the probe — a day after Nunes suggested that he may try to impeach high-ranking FBI or Justice Department officials over their failure to produce what he wanted.

A Justice official said last week that the department had provided Nunes, ranking Democratic member Adam B. Schiff (Calif.) and all committee members access to the document with redactions “narrowly tailored to protect the name of a foreign country and the name of a foreign agent.”

Before that release, Trump sent a barrage of tweets accusing the Justice Department of “slow walking” document production and asked what the FBI and Justice officials “have to hide” on multiple fronts.

But the anger inside Trump’s orbit goes far beyond concerns about Mueller’s Russia probe and related documents and includes the Clinton investigation and memos from former FBI director James B. Comey about his interactions with Trump. GOP officials said Wednesday that more subpoenas related to Comey documents could be in the offing.

Earlier this year, a federal judge in Washington refused to order the public disclosure of Comey’s memos in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by media organizations. The Justice Department has said the release would interfere with Mueller’s investigation.

Many critics of Trump say congressional Republicans are, fundamentally, attempting to build a case against Rosenstein in the hopes of closing the Mueller investigation — using the battle over documents to paper over their core aim of ending a probe that has become a political and legal burden for the president. Meadows contested that suggestion in the interview Wednesday.

“We’re looking at all DOJ and FBI decision-making as it relates to the lead-up to the 2016 election,” Meadows said. “I’ve sent multiple requests to the deputy attorney general, and he knows that my motivations are all about doing the proper oversight, doing my job for my constituents.”

In a 2000 letter to Congress, Assistant Attorney General Robert Raben noted that “Congress has a clearly legitimate interest in how the department enforces statutes.” But, he said, “the department’s long-standing policy is to decline to provide congressional committees with access to open law enforcement files.”

Still, lawmakers over the past year have been given access to law enforcement records that include the classified surveillance warrant application and subsequent renewals targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. It is unclear whether the Page investigation is ongoing.

The Justice Department’s handling of the Clinton email investigation also remains a Republican target. On Wednesday, several House Republicans sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding criminal referrals for a number of prominent figures, including the former secretary of state and Comey.

The GOP chairman of the House Judiciary Committee last month subpoenaed the Justice Department for records collected by its inspector general in his probe of how the FBI handled its investigation of Clinton’s private email server. The subpoena from Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) also covered documents related to an FBI internal report that recommended the firing of the bureau’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe. Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe last month, citing in part the inspector general’s findings in a separate report that McCabe “lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”

McCabe has alleged that the move was an attempt to slander him and undermine Mueller’s probe.

Meadows and Jordan have made their pursuit of documents related to these various probes a rallying cry and legislative cause, often showcasing their loyalty to Trump in the process.

Speaking Monday on CNN, Jordan said he has never heard Trump lie. “He’s always been square with me,” he said. “That’s for darn sure.”

At the Capitol last week, Meadows told reporters that he was ready to draft articles of impeachment for Rosenstein or push to hold the Justice official in contempt of Congress — and said congressional Republicans were willing to mount an aggressive campaign on Trump’s behalf.

“Contempt of Congress is really at the doorstep of Rod Rosenstein more than anybody else,” Meadows said.

He called contempt “the first step,” to be followed by “other tools” if the Justice Department did not produce the documents requested.

“It is certainly on the path to impeachment,” Meadows added.

Congressional Republican leaders, meanwhile, have shown limited interest in taking legislative steps to protect Mueller’s investigation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday that Trump will not fire Mueller and that he would not hold a vote on a bipartisan measure proposed last week to protect him. The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), has pledged to hold a vote on the bill this month.

“We’ll not be having this on the floor of the Senate,” McConnell told Fox News.

Sari Horwitz, Matt Zapotosky and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.

The pilot’s voice was calm yet focused as her plane descended, telling air traffic control she had “149 souls” on board and was carrying 21,000 pounds — or about five hours’ worth — of fuel.

“Southwest 1380, we’re single engine,” said Capt. Tammie Jo Shults, a former fighter pilot with the U.S. Navy. “We have part of the aircraft missing, so we’re going to need to slow down a bit.” She asked for medical personnel to meet her aircraft on the runway. “We’ve got injured passengers.”

“Injured passengers, okay, and is your airplane physically on fire?” asked the air traffic controller, according to audio of the interaction.

“No, it’s not on fire, but part of it’s missing,” Shults said, pausing for a moment. “They said there’s a hole, and, uh, someone went out.”

The engine on Shults’s plane had, in fact, exploded Tuesday, spraying shrapnel into the aircraft, causing a window to be blown out and leaving one woman dead and seven other people injured.

[One person is dead after engine fails on Southwest flight, forcing emergency landing]

The National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday that investigators will examine whether metal fatigue caused an engine fan of the Boeing 737-700 to snap midflight. The protective engine housing broke off, and pieces were later recovered in fields in Berks County, Pa., 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia International Airport.

The wing on the side of the plane where the explosion occurred suffered damage that left it “banged up pretty good,” NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said. The cabin window blew out with such force that none of the materials were recovered inside the plane, baffling investigators, he said.

“We didn’t see any shards of glass [that blew in] — I say glass, but it’s acrylic,” Sumwalt said. “We found no evidence at all of any broken acrylic inside.”

In the midst of the chaos, Shults deftly guided the plane onto the runway, touching down at 190 mph, saving the lives of 148 people aboard and averting a far worse catastrophe.

“She has nerves of steel,” passenger Alfred Tumlinson said Wednesday.

When the engine exploded, Tumlinson, 55, was sitting with his wife on the plane’s left side, in the second aisle from the back. The couple from George West, Tex., sent texts to their children, telling them the plane was going down and that they loved them.

“Did we think we were gonna make it?” Tumlinson asked, turning to his wife. “No.”

“I got another day of my life because of that lady and the co-pilot,” he said. “What do you want to know about [Shults] other than she’s an angel?”

Tumlinson described how soon after the explosion, a soothing voice came over the plane’s intercom.

“She was talking to us very calmly,” Tumlinson said. “ ‘We’re descending, we’re not going down, we’re descending, just stay calm, brace yourselves,’ ” he recalled Shults saying.

“ ‘Everybody keep your masks on.’ ”

Finally, passengers were told to brace themselves, he said.

“ ‘Everybody, you gotta lean forward — hands up on the seat in the front, you gotta know that you’re coming down, and you’re coming down hard,’ ” Tumlinson said, becoming emotional while recounting the experience. “But she didn’t slam it down. She brought the bird down very carefully.”

The plane stabilized on the runway and, then, a moment of relief.

“She was so cool when she brought that down into the Philadelphia airport,” Tumlinson said. “Everybody just was applauding. I’m just telling you they were just applauding. It was amazing that we made it to the ground.”

The passengers were instructed to remain calm while medics came on board. Soon after, Shults came into the cabin to check on passengers.

“She came back and talked to every individual in there personally and shook every hand,” Tumlinson recalled, taking note of one other detail. “She had a bomber jacket on.”

Tumlinson’s wife, Diana McBride Self, called Shults “a true American hero.”

Others on social media agreed and compared Shults with Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who guided his US Airways plane to safety in New York’s Hudson River in 2009.

Shults declined to comment. Her mother-in-law, Virginia Shults, said that as soon as she heard the pilot’s voice on the radio transmission online, she said, “That is Tammie Jo.”

“It was just as if she and I were sitting here talking,” Virginia Shults said. “She’s a very calming person.”

Jennifer Riordan, an Albuquerque mother of two children and a vice president at Wells Fargo, was the passenger who died. Witnesses said two men and several flight attendants came to Riordan’s aid after she was pulled toward the blown-out window.

Riordan was seated in Row 14, the same row as the missing window, Sumwalt said.

Sumwalt said that investigators are aware of reports from passengers that Riordan was nearly sucked out of the plane, but that “we have not corroborated that ourselves.”

“We need to corroborate that,” Sumwalt said. “There’s 144 passengers on the airplane, many of whom were seated behind her. I think that we will have some good information based on that, based on the airplane and also based on the medical examiner’s report. I think we’ll be able to have a good idea of what actually happened.”

Riordan died of blunt impact trauma to her head, neck and torso, Philadelphia Department of Public Health spokesman James Garrow said Wednesday night.

“The listed cause of death seems consistent with what we’ve heard in media reports,” he said, though he could not confirm the nature of her death. “The cause that we’re listing and have written on the death certificate sounds consistent with what has been reported,” he said, but he could not say whether the injuries were caused by “the fuselage or the air or the window or debris.”

Virginia Shults said that, “knowing Tammie Jo, I know her heart is broken for the death of that passenger.”

She was not surprised that her daughter-in-law was the pilot credited with the skillful landing. Friends and family members described Tammie Jo Shults as a pioneer in the aviation field, a woman who broke barriers to pursue her goals.

She was among the first female fighter pilots for the U.S. Navy, according to her alma mater, MidAmerica Nazarene University, from which she graduated in 1983. 

A Navy spokeswoman said Shults was “among the first cohort of women pilots to transition to tactical aircraft.” After commissioning in the Navy in 1985 and finishing flight training in Pensacola, Fla., her duties took her to Point Mugu, Calif., where she was an instructor pilot on planes including the F/A-18 Hornet.

She was a decorated pilot who rose to the rank of lieutenant commander and twice received the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, along with a National Defense Service Medal and an expert pistol Marksmanship Medal, according to a biography provided by the Navy Office of Information.

Shults’s persistence in becoming a pilot goes back to her upbringing on a New Mexico ranch, near Holloman Air Force Base, Shults says in the book “Military Fly Moms,” by Linda Maloney.

“Some people grow up around aviation. I grew up under it,” she said. Watching the daily air show, she knew she “just had to fly.”

She recalled attending a lecture on aviation during her senior year of high school, in 1979. A retired colonel started the class by asking Shults, the only girl in attendance, “if I was lost.”

“I mustered up the courage to assure him I was not and that I was interested in flying,” she wrote. “He allowed me to stay, but assured me there were no professional women pilots.”

When she met a woman in college who had received her Air Force wings, Shults wrote, “I set to work trying to break into the club.”

But Shults wrote that the Air Force “wasn’t interested” in talking to her. The Navy let her apply for aviation officer candidate school, “but there did not seem to be a demand for women pilots.”

“Finally,” she wrote, a year after taking the Navy aviation exam, she found a recruiter who would process her application. After aviation officer candidate school in Pensacola, she was assigned to a training squadron at Naval Air Station Chase Field in Beeville, Tex., as an instructor pilot teaching student aviators how to fly the Navy T-2 trainer. She later left to fly the A-7 Corsair in Lemoore, Calif.

By then, she had met her “knight in shining airplane,” a fellow pilot who would become her husband, Dean Shults. (He also flies for Southwest Airlines.)

Because of the combat exclusion law, Tammie Jo Shults was prohibited from flying in a combat squadron. While her husband was able to join a squadron, her choices were limited, involving providing electronic warfare training to Navy ships and aircraft.

She later became one of the first women to fly what was then the Navy’s newest fighter, the F/A-18 Hornet but, again, in a support role. “Women were new to the Hornet community, and already there were signs of growing pains.”

She served 10 years in the Navy, reaching the rank of Navy lieutenant commander. She left the Navy in 1993 and lives in the San Antonio area with her husband. She has two children: a teenage son and a daughter in her early 20s.

Gary Shults, her brother-in-law, described her as a “formidable woman, as sharp as a tack.”

“My brother says she’s the best pilot he knows,” Gary Shults told the Associated Press. “She’s a very caring, giving person who takes care of lots of people.”

Her mother-in-law described her as a devout Christian, with a faith she thinks may have contributed to her calmness amid the midair emergency and landing.

“I know God was with her, and I know she was talking to God,” Virginia Shults said.

Whatever was going through her mind as she completed her landing, Tammie Jo Shults even made time to tell the control tower: “Thank you. . . . Thanks, guys, for the help.”

Still, Mr. Trump conspicuously declined to make their release a precondition of his meeting with Mr. Kim. He also did not demand any new concessions from North Korea beforehand, underscoring how determined he is to make history by convening with the leader of a country he threatened with war a few months ago.

In preparing for the planned event, Mr. Trump’s decision to dispatch his C.I.A. director reflected the president’s trust in and comfort with Mr. Pompeo, as well as how diplomats were sidelined in brokering what could be a landmark encounter.

“Meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed,” Mr. Trump said in an early morning Twitter post before he went golfing with Mr. Abe. “Details of Summit are being worked out now. Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!”

Mr. Pompeo is still awaiting confirmation to his new post, and faces a challenging vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where several Democrats have come out against him. The White House and Republicans seized on Mr. Pompeo’s trip as another reason for the Senate to confirm him, while Democrats said he had misled them by failing to disclose his mission, even in private conversations.

But the visit underlines the confidence that Mr. Trump has developed in Mr. Pompeo, a former Tea Party congressman who has emerged as one of the president’s closest advisers — a stark contrast to Rex W. Tillerson, whom Mr. Trump fired as secretary of state days after he accepted Mr. Kim’s invitation to meet.

It also underlines Mr. Trump’s unorthodox approach to one of the riskiest diplomatic gambits of his presidency. However trusted by the president, Mr. Pompeo is hardly a traditional emissary. He is not yet the nation’s chief diplomat but a lame duck as the nation’s spymaster.

Mr. Pompeo met with Mr. Kim on Easter Sunday, a senior official said, bringing along several aides from the C.I.A. — but nobody from the State Department or the White House.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Some former administration officials expressed surprise that he returned from Pyongyang with no visible concessions, like the release of the three Americans detained in North Korea. Mr. Pompeo raised the issue, another official said, adding that the White House would continue to push for their release.

In 2014, James R. Clapper, then the director of national intelligence, traveled secretly to North Korea to negotiate the release of two Americans, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller. Three Korean-Americans — Kim Dong-chul, Kim Sang-duk and Kim Hak-song — are currently being held on charges of espionage and committing hostile acts toward the North Korean state.

The administration also has not agreed on a date for the meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim, which officials said pointed to problems in settling on a site for the encounter. On Tuesday, Mr. Trump told reporters that the White House was looking at five potential locations.

The White House has begun narrowing the list of options, a senior official said, eliminating sites like Pyongyang and the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, which could pose an optics problem for Mr. Trump. Meeting somewhere in the United States remains a possibility, though that could raise similar issues for Mr. Kim.

Photo

The administration is studying several third countries — Singapore and Vietnam, in Asia; Sweden and Switzerland, in Europe — though all are far from North Korea, posing a challenge to Mr. Kim’s fleet of rickety aircraft. Mongolia, which is closer to the North, is a long shot, the official said.

Without a site, however, the White House has been unable to announce a date, though officials are sticking to Mr. Trump’s recent declaration that the meeting will be in late May or early June.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump added to the mystery surrounding the visit by appearing to confirm that he had been in direct contact with Mr. Kim himself. He later clarified that while the talks were at “the highest levels,” he would “leave it a little bit short of that.”

Newsletter Sign Up

Continue reading the main story

Thank you for subscribing.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

View all New York Times newsletters.

• See Sample
• Manage Email Preferences
• Not you?
• Privacy Policy
• Opt out or contact us anytime

Mr. Pompeo’s involvement with North Korea predated Mr. Trump’s decision to meet Mr. Kim, several officials said. He has been dealing with North Korean representatives through a channel that runs between the C.I.A. and its North Korean counterpart, the Reconnaissance General Bureau.

He also has been in close touch with the director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, Suh Hoon, who American officials said brokered Mr. Kim’s invitation to Mr. Trump.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

While a meeting between the leaders would be one of the boldest diplomatic gambles in recent years, it was orchestrated largely by the intelligence services of the three countries.

Officials said Mr. Suh laid the groundwork for Mr. Kim’s invitation in negotiations and a subsequent meeting in Pyongyang with Kim Yong-chol, a powerful general who leads inter-Korean relations and used to run North Korea’s intelligence service.

Mr. Suh was one of two South Korean envoys who visited the White House to brief Mr. Trump on their meeting with Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang — which led to the president’s impromptu decision to accept Mr. Kim’s invitation.

For Mr. Pompeo, who now has an office at the State Department, the choice to use the intelligence channel was mostly a convenience — allowing him to be involved in the planning as he awaited his move to the department.

Still, some officials expressed concern that the C.I.A. had taken the lead in orchestrating a leader-to-leader meeting — work that would normally fall to the State Department. The intelligence officials on the North Korean side, they said, are shadowy figures, not least Kim Yong-chol himself, who is accused of masterminding a torpedo attack that sank a South Korean Navy ship in 2010, killing 46 sailors.

The State Department’s role in North Korea dwindled after Mr. Trump publicly split with Mr. Tillerson over his efforts to open a diplomatic channel to the North, initially to obtain the release of the three Americans but also to set the stage for a broader negotiation.

In October, while Mr. Tillerson was in Beijing, Mr. Trump tweeted, “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man…”

The State Department recently lost its chief North Korea negotiator, Joseph Yun, who retired from the Foreign Service, in part because of his frustration with his agency’s diminished role.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The timing of Mr. Tillerson’s departure, officials said, was not coincidental. Mr. Trump wanted to have Mr. Pompeo in place to oversee an opening to North Korea. But Mr. Pompeo has expressed extremely hawkish views about North Korea, suggesting over the summer that the United States should push for regime change.

“It would be a great thing to denuclearize the peninsula, to get those weapons off of that, but the thing that is most dangerous about it is the character who holds the control over them today,” Mr. Pompeo said at the Aspen Security Forum. “So from the administration’s perspective, the most important thing we can do is separate those two.”

Last week, Mr. Pompeo insisted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he had never advocated such change.

“Just to be clear, my role as a diplomat is to make sure that we never get to a place where we have to confront the difficult situation in Korea that this country has been headed for now for a couple of decades,” he added.

Continue reading the main story

CLOSE

One person is dead after a Southwest flight with a blown engine made an emergency landing.
USA TODAY

Shrapnel from a blown jet engine crashed through a window of a Southwest Airlines flight and caused such a perilous drop in air pressure that a passenger suffered fatal injuries after nearly being sucked outside.

Passengers recall a harrowing scene where desperate crew members and others tried to plug the broken window, while also trying to save the mortally wounded woman, identified as a bank executive and mother of two.

The battered jet eventually made an emergency landing in Philadelphia and all other passengers made it off without serious injuries.

Dallas-bound Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 out of New York had 144 passengers and a crew of five onboard, Southwest said in a statement. The plane was met on the tarmac by a phalanx of emergency vehicles that quickly sprayed the area with safety foam and aided the injured.

Jennifer Riordan, a mother of two from Albuquerque, N.M., was identified late Tuesday as the sole victim of the incident, according to the Associated Press. 

Riordan, a vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo bank and graduate of the University of New Mexico, was the first passenger death on a U.S. airline since 2009— and the first ever in Southwest Airlines’ history. 

Passengers on board described chaos as the decompression led to her being partially sucked out of the plane. They rushed to try and pull her back inside but her injuries were too grave. 

Seven others were injured in the incident. Tracking data from FlightAware.com showed Flight 1380 was heading west over Pennsylvania at about 32,200 feet and traveling 500 mph when it abruptly turned toward Philadelphia.

Amanda Bourman, of New York, was asleep on the plane when she heard a sudden noise and the oxygen masks dropped.

“Everybody was crying and upset,” she told the AP. “You had a few passengers that were very strong, and they kept yelling to people, you know, ‘It’s OK! We’re going to do this!’”

Another passenger, Marty Martinez, posted a brief Facebook Live video showing him donning his oxygen mask. “Something is wrong with our plane!,” he wrote. “It appears we are going down! Emergency landing!! Southwest flight from NYC to Dallas!!”

NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said the plane engine would be closely examined to determine what caused the tragedy.

Southwest said the Boeing 737-700 left  New York’s LaGuardia Airport shortly after 10:30 a.m. ET, bound for Dallas Love Field. The airport said the plane had landed “safely” and that passengers were being brought into the terminal. 

Thiel said a small fire was found in one engine and fuel was leaking. At least one window and the fuselage were also damaged, officials said. AP also reported that the twin-engine 737 apparently blew an engine at 30,000 feet and got hit by shrapnel that smashed a window.

Bourman said it was traumatic and some passengers were in tears while others shouted encouragement. Her husband, Timothy, told philly.com the plane quickly dropped and some passengers started yelling in panic. 

Bourman said passengers were told to brace for impact, but the pilot was able to land.

“We’re just all really thankful to be alive right now,” he said. “Thankful to God, thankful to that pilot.”

Gary Kelly, Southwest’s chief executive officer, commended the flight crew for safely landing the plane but said the company and the NTSB were in the early stages of investigating exactly what led to the incident.

“This is a sad day and on behalf of the entire Southwest family, I want to extend my deepest sympathies for the family and loved ones of our deceased customer,” Kelly  said. “Truly, this is a tragic loss.” 

In addition to being the first fatality aboard a U.S. passenger airline since 2009, Kelly said it was Southwest’s first fatality ever.

“Let me assure you the safety of our customers and crew is our uncompromising priority,” he said. 

Southwest flies Boeing 737 aircraft exclusively, with a fleet of about 700 planes.

“It is a very, very reliable engine,” Kelly said. “The airplane in my opinion is proven. It’s very reliable. It has the greatest success of any aircraft type over a long, long period of time. It doesn’t create any doubt in my mind, at least at this point.”

The plane Tuesday was a 737-700, but the entire fleet has the type of GE engine that failed, Kelly said.

“We are in close contact with the manufacturers,” said Kelly, who said the company is cooperating with investigators from FAA, DOT and NTSB. “At this point, it’s very premature to say what changes we might need to make, if any.”

Kelly has tried to contact the victim’s family, but hadn’t reached them by 6:30 p.m. Eastern.

“I reached out to the family and at this point have not made contact,” Kelly said.

The plane was delivered to Southwest in July 2000 and has made about 40,000 flights. The engine last had a major overhaul about 10,000 flights ago, and the plane’s most recent inspection was Sunday, although Kelly couldn’t say what was inspected.

“There is no information that there were any issues with the airplane or the engines,” Kelly said.

Flights continued to arrive and depart, but the incident led to delays of other flights, the airport said in its statement. The FAA had issued “ground stop” for planes on the ground at other airports waiting to depart Philadelphia. The ground stop was lifted shortly before 2 p.m. 

Contributing: Christal Hayes and Bart Jansen of USA TODAY. 

CIA Director Mike Pompeo made a top-secret visit to North Korea over Easter weekend as an envoy for President Donald Trump to meet with that country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, according to two people with direct knowledge of the trip.

The extraordinary meeting between one of Trump’s most trusted emmisaries and the authoritarian head of a rogue state was part of an effort to lay the groundwork for direct talks between Trump and Kim about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, according to the two people, who requested anonymity because of the highly classified nature of the talks.

The clandestine mission, which has not previously been reported, came soon after Pompeo was nominated to be secretary of state.

“I’m optimistic that the United States government can set the conditions for that appropriately so that the president and the North Korean leader can have that conversation will set us down the course of achieving a diplomatic outcome that America so desperately – America and the world so desperately need,” Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week during his confirmation hearing.

As the wife of the 41st president and the mother of the 43rd, George W. Bush, Mrs. Bush was only the second woman in American history to have a son of hers follow his father to the White House. (Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams and mother of John Quincy Adams, was the first.)

Slide Show

Another son, Jeb, the governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007, was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

During that campaign, he was repeatedly derided in personal terms by the eventual nominee and now president, Donald J. Trump, prompting Mrs. Bush, who was never shy about expressing her views, to lash back, suggesting in television interviews that Mr. Trump was a misogynist and a hatemonger.

Photo

“He’s said terrible things about women, terrible things about the military,” Mrs. Bush told CNN. “I don’t understand why people are for him.”

Dedicated to her family and largely indifferent to glamour, Mrs. Bush played down her role in her husband’s political success. But she was a shrewd and valuable ally, becoming a sought-after speaker in at least four national campaigns: in 1980, when Mr. Bush was chosen to be Ronald Reagan’s running mate; in 1984, when the two ran for re-election; in 1988, when Mr. Bush campaigned for president; and in 1992, when he sought re-election.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

She stepped into another presidential campaign in 2000, that of her son George, then the governor of Texas. She appeared at fund-raisers and met voters in New Hampshire and other states on his behalf as he rolled to the Republican presidential nomination.

She was clearly a political asset. A 1999 poll found that 63 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of her and that only 3 percent had an unfavorable one.

Outspoken and Combative

While first lady, from January 1989 to January 1993, Mrs. Bush generally refused to talk publicly about contentious issues, particularly when her opinion was said to differ from her husband’s.

“I’m not against it or for it,” she said of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1989. “I’m not talking about it. I want equal rights for women, men, everybody.”

There were rumors that she favored abortion rights, but she made it clear that she supported her husband and would not say whether she was comfortable with his anti-abortion stand.

She was vocal, however, in championing causes of her choosing. Literacy was one, and so was civil rights; she had been an early supporter of the movement.

And she could be combative in news interviews, sometimes yanking off her glasses and tartly chastising reporters when she thought they were being overly aggressive.

Photo

Her candor occasionally got her into trouble. In 2005, while visiting victims of Hurricane Katrina at the Houston Astrodome, where they were being temporarily housed, she remarked that many of them “were underprivileged anyway” and that their Astrodome stay — though the living conditions there were dire — was “working very well for them.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The comments, coming at a time when her son’s administration was being roundly criticized over its response to the storm, were widely heard as insensitive and condescending.

Two years earlier, shortly before President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, she said in a television interview that she had not been watching coverage of the prelude to war. “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it’s going to happen?” she asked. “Why would I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”

She was similarly outspoken in 2013 when she was asked, on the “Today” show, if she thought her son Jeb should run for president in 2016. “I really don’t,” she replied, adding, “There are other people out there that are very qualified, and we’ve had enough Bushes.”

She later changed her mind. In an email to potential supporters in March 2015, she acknowledged, “When the idea of Jeb running for president first came up, I was hesitant.” But she said she was starting a “Run Jeb Run Fund” because “Jeb is our best chance of taking back the White House in 2016.”

She went on to campaign for him in New Hampshire, but he finished fourth in the Republican primary there in February and suspended his campaign a few days later.

Mrs. Bush enjoyed a favorable public image throughout her years as first lady. In one respect she benefited from comparisons with her predecessor, Nancy Reagan, whom many perceived, rightly or wrongly, as remote, icy and overly style-conscious.

By contrast, Mrs. Bush was regarded as unpretentious, a woman who could wear fake pearls, enjoy takeout tacos, walk the dog in her bathrobe and make fun of herself. Perhaps adding to her appeal, she conformed to the popular view of an old-fashioned grandmother, with her white hair and matronly figure; though she was almost a year younger than her husband, many thought she looked much older.

“What not everyone always understood is that Barbara revealed as much as she wanted to but seldom more,” Donnie Radcliffe wrote in a 1989 biography, “Simply Barbara Bush: A Portrait of America’s Candid First Lady.” “She came into the White House with a dexterity at manipulating her image, and she wasn’t above playing off her own outspoken style against Nancy Reagan’s reluctance and often inability to express herself.”

Photo

“A less popular political wife,” Ms. Radcliffe added, “might have seemed calculating.”

Part of Mrs. Bush’s popularity stemmed from her penchant for self-deprecation. Soon after moving into the White House, she said, “My mail tells me a lot of fat, white-haired, wrinkled ladies are tickled pink.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

She would do anything asked of her to help the Bush administration, she said, but she drew a line: “I won’t dye my hair, change my wardrobe or lose weight.” Even so, as first lady she was known to wear designer clothes and have her hair styled.

For all her joking about herself, she also confessed that she had felt like crying after Jane Pauley told her on the “Today” show, “Mrs. Bush, people say George is a man of the ’80s and you’re a woman of the ’40s.”

An Invisible Influence

Mrs. Bush often insisted that she stayed out of her husband’s concerns. But few who knew her believed that she would ever hesitate to tell Mr. Bush her views.

Newsletter Sign Up

Continue reading the main story

Thank you for subscribing.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

View all New York Times newsletters.

• See Sample
• Manage Email Preferences
• Not you?
• Privacy Policy
• Opt out or contact us anytime

“You have to have influence,” she said in 1992. “When you’ve been married 47 years, if you don’t have any influence, then I really think you’re in deep trouble.”

The substance of that influence remained largely invisible to the public eye, however, making her one of the few first ladies of her era to escape serious criticism. When Mrs. Reagan raised more than $1 million in tax-deductible contributions in 1981 to redecorate the White House living quarters, there was a public outcry. When the Bushes’ friends raised almost $200,000 to spruce up the vice-presidential house the same year, there was hardly a stir.

“I got away with murder,” Mrs. Bush said shortly before her husband’s inauguration.

One glaring exception came in 1984. Speaking of Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York, the Democratic nominee for vice president, Mrs. Bush characterized her as something that “rhymes with rich.” She later apologized, but even then she parried with her critics, saying she did not mean any offense by calling Ms. Ferraro “a witch.”

She was born Barbara Pierce on June 8, 1925, at a maternity hospital in New York City run by the Salvation Army principally for unwed mothers. The family obstetrician practiced there one month a year, and that month happened to be June. She was the third child of the former Pauline Robinson and Marvin Pierce. Her father was in the publishing business and eventually became president of the McCall publishing company. Her mother, the daughter of an Ohio Supreme Court justice, was active in civic affairs in Rye, N.Y., the New York City suburb where the family lived.

One of Mrs. Bush’s ancestors was Franklin Pierce, the 14th president of the United States.

Barbara was brought up in considerable affluence. She attended the public Milton School and the private Rye Country Day School and, along with her contemporaries, suffered through dancing classes, which she never forgot. “I was 5 feet 8 inches at the age of 12, and it certainly bothered the boys,” she recalled.

Photo

Her final two years of high school were spent at Ashley Hall, a boarding school in Charleston, S.C. A classmate once described it as a place where “being bad meant taking off your hat and gloves when you got out of sight of the school.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

Long Romance Begins

She met George Bush in 1941 at a Christmas dance at the Round Hill Country Club in Greenwich, Conn. George had grown up in Greenwich, a son of Prescott S. Bush, a Wall Street executive and a future United States senator from Connecticut, and the former Dorothy Walker. At the time, he was a senior at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. They began corresponding.

After graduating in 1942, Mr. Bush enlisted in the Navy and trained as a pilot. The next year, he was assigned to a torpedo squadron in the Pacific and piloted a Grumman Avenger. On one combat mission, in 1944, he was shot down and rescued by a submarine. Barbara did not hear from him for a month.

After enrolling at Smith College but before entering the freshman class, she shocked her mother by spending the summer working in a nuts-and-bolts factory.

She and Mr. Bush, on leave from the Navy, married in Rye on Jan. 6, 1945; the bride, not yet 20, had dropped out of Smith at the beginning of her sophomore year. “The truth is, I just wasn’t interested,” she said in interviews. “I was just interested in George.”

They honeymooned in Sea Island, Ga., and spent nine months at military bases in Michigan, Maine and Virginia before Mr. Bush was discharged and entered Yale. In New Haven, where the couple moved, their first son, George, was born in 1946.

After Mr. Bush’s graduation, in 1948, the family left for Texas, where Mr. Bush, with the help of a family friend, had taken a job as an equipment clerk in the oil industry. For a time, in Odessa, Tex., the family lived in one half of a house; the other half was used as a brothel. Within a year they were sent to California. A daughter, Pauline (known as Robin), was born there in 1949 but died of leukemia before her fourth birthday.

The California sojourn was brief; the Bushes soon returned to Texas — first to Midland, where they bought a house in a neighborhood known as Easter Egg Row because the houses were all painted in pastel colors, and later to Houston. By the time the Bushes reached the White House, they had moved 26 times.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

In Texas, four more children were born: Jeb (John Ellis) in 1953, Neil Mallon in 1955, Marvin Pierce in 1956 and Dorothy Walker in 1959. Only George and Jeb went into politics; Neil and Marvin became businessmen, and Dorothy Bush Koch became a philanthropist.

Photo

Mrs. Bush’s children survive her, as do her husband; her brother, Scott Pierce; 17 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

Every summer, while Mr. Bush was engaged in oil deals and raising investment money, Mrs. Bush and the children drove to the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Me.

On her first trip there, Mrs. Bush discovered that the hotel where she had made reservations along the way would not accommodate two black family employees who were accompanying her and the children. The employees said they would find another place. But Mrs. Bush refused to split up the group and found other accommodations. On becoming first lady, she insisted that her press secretary be black — a first for that position.

The family moved to Washington in 1966, when Mr. Bush, after an unsuccessful run for the Senate in 1964, was elected to the House of Representatives from Texas’ Seventh Congressional District, which includes parts of Houston. He served two terms and mounted a failed second campaign for the Senate.

Later, as compensation for giving up his safe seat in the House to make the Senate run, he was named ambassador to the United Nations by President Richard M. Nixon. He assumed the post in 1971, and the Bushes moved into the ambassadorial suite of the Waldorf Towers in New York.

Lifelong Volunteer

The family returned to Washington in 1973 when Mr. Bush was appointed chairman of the Republican National Committee, a position he occupied during the Watergate crisis. In 1974, President Gerald R. Ford sent him to the People’s Republic of China to lead the United States Liaison Office in Beijing.

“Watergate was a terrible experience,” Mrs. Bush told Ms. Radcliffe in 1984. “So to go off to China and learn a whole new culture was beautiful.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

She particularly liked having her husband to herself; their children had not accompanied them. The two cycled around Beijing, studied Chinese and learned tai chi.

In “Barbara Bush: A Memoir,” published in 1994, Mrs. Bush acknowledged that she suffered from depression in 1976 after she and her husband had returned from his two-year China posting and he was named director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a post he held for 11 months.

She had discussed her depression at a news conference in 1989, saying she believed that the women’s movement had contributed to her illness. “I believe it made me feel inadequate,” she said. “I’m not quite sure how. You were made to feel demeaned a little bit.”

Mrs. Bush published another memoir, “Reflections: Life After the White House,” in 2004.

A lifelong volunteer for charitable causes, Mrs. Bush raised money for the United Negro College Fund while in New Haven, started a thrift shop in Midland and volunteered in nursing homes and hospitals in Houston, Washington and New York. Her son Neil’s dyslexia led to her interest in fighting illiteracy.

In her eight years as the wife of the vice president, she attended more than 500 events related to literacy, and after she became first lady she started the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. The profits from her book “C. Fred’s Story: A Dog’s Life” (1984), a wry look at Washington life as seen by her dog, and from a follow-up based on another family dog, “Millie’s Book: As Dictated to Barbara Bush” (1990), went to literacy causes.

Mrs. Bush hoped her contributions to those causes would form a large part of her legacy.

“I want to be known as a wife, a mother, a grandmother,” she wrote in 1988. “That’s what I am. And I’d like to be known as someone who really cared about people and worked very, very hard to make America more literate.”

Continue reading the main story

Auditors wrote that the E.P.A.’s “failure to comply with a governmentwide statutory requirement that an agency notify the appropriations committees before it spends more than $5,000 for the office of a presidential appointee” was a violation of the law and should be reported to Congress and the president.

In an eight-page letter to lawmakers, Thomas H. Armstrong, the G.A.O.’s general counsel, said the agency did not send advance notice to Congress when it paid $43,238.68 from its Environmental Programs and Management budget to pay for the installation of the soundproof booth.

The G.A.O. reports its findings to Congress but has little enforcement power of its own.

Senator Tom Udall, the New Mexico Democrat who requested the investigation along with three other members of Congress, said Mr. Pruitt was “blatantly breaking laws and ethics rules that protect taxpayers from government waste, fraud and abuse in order to help himself to perks and special favors.”

Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming and chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over the E.P.A., also criticized the agency, while not identifying Mr. Pruitt by name.

“It is critical that E.P.A. and all federal agencies comply with notification requirements to Congress before spending taxpayer dollars,” Senator Barrasso said in a statement. “E.P.A. must give a full public accounting of this expenditure and explain why the agency thinks it was complying with the law.”

Liz Bowman, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said in a statement, “E.P.A. is addressing G.A.O.’s concern, with regard to Congressional notification about this expense, and will be sending Congress the necessary information this week.”

The G.A.O. report noted that federal laws would not have blocked E.P.A. from purchasing the phone booth, and Ms. Bowman said that the accountability office had recognized the need for employees to have access to secure telephone lines to handle sensitive information.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

The other report Monday, from the E.P.A.’s own inspector general, an independent office within agency, did not draw any conclusions as to whether Mr. Pruitt or his chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, violated laws in using the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 to hire officials and award raises.

Rather, it provided more than 80 pages of “requests for personnel action” showing that Mr. Jackson, often with the signed authorization of Mr. Pruitt, handled most of the paperwork associated with the employees.

Newsletter Sign Up

Continue reading the main story

Thank you for subscribing.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

View all New York Times newsletters.

• See Sample
• Manage Email Preferences
• Not you?
• Privacy Policy
• Opt out or contact us anytime

Arthur A. Elkins Jr., the E.P.A. Inspector General, indicated that more may be coming from his office regarding agency hiring practices, and said the report Monday was merely to alert officials to “certain factual information while our audit continues.”

A spokesman for the E.P.A., Jahan Wilcox, said in a statement that Mr. Pruitt did not determine his appointee’s salaries or raises. That, he said, is done by the E.P.A. chief of staff, White House liaison, and career human resource officials.

“Salaries are based on work history, and any increases are due to either new and additional responsibilities or promotions,” Mr. Wilcox said. “Salary determinations are made to avoid disparities among positions of equivalent or similar responsibilities, to the extent possible.”

He said that the agency would continue to provide information to the inspector general for any further inquiries.

The use of the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 to hire political appointees and grant raises to two Oklahoma aides has, in particular, drawn the ire of Democrats. According to documents provided under the Freedom of Information Act to American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group, Mr. Pruitt used the law to bring on board at least 20 political appointees, known as “administratively determined” hires.

Among those hires were Sarah Greenwalt, who served as general counsel for Mr. Pruitt when he served as attorney general of Oklahoma, and Millan Hupp, who was a financial and political consultant for Mr. Pruitt’s political action committees in Oklahoma.

The E.P.A. has acknowledged that it asked for Ms. Greenwalt’s salary to be raised from $107,435 to $164,200, and for Ms. Hupp’s to be raised from $86,460 to $114,590, under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

In an interview on April 4 with Fox News, Mr. Pruitt denied responsibility for the raises. “I found out this yesterday and I corrected the action, and we are in the process of finding out how it took place and correcting it,” he said.

The next day, Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, issued a statement taking responsibility for the raises and saying that Mr. Pruitt “had zero knowledge of the amount of the raises, nor the process by which they transpired.”

Mr. Pruitt is not the first E.P.A. administrator to hire under the drinking water law. Agencies are allowed to fill up to 30 administratively determined positions and that authority has been used by both President Barack Obama and the elder President George Bush. Critics, however, said it was unusual to use the authority to hire deputy assistant administrators as Mr. Pruitt has.

Also on Monday, the inspector general for the Department of Interior reviewed costs associated with charter flights that Secretary Ryan Zinke took and found no violation of laws.

But investigators concluded that a $12,377 charter flight the secretary took in June to his home state of Montana from Las Vegas, where he was speaking to a hockey team, might have been avoided if agency employees had worked with the hockey team to better accommodate the secretary’s schedule.

Nonetheless, Mr. Zinke “generally followed relevant law, policy, rules and regulations” when he chartered the flight, auditors said.

Continue reading the main story