[Special] FBI Director James Comey Fired by White House

• New York Times: F.B.I. Director James Comey Is Fired by Trump by Michael D. Shear and Matt Apuzzo

President Trump on Tuesday fired the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, abruptly terminating the law enforcement official leading a wide-ranging criminal investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s advisers colluded with the Russian government to steer the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

The stunning development in Mr. Trump’s presidency raised the specter of political interference by a sitting president into an existing investigation by the nation’s leading law enforcement agency. It immediately ignited Democratic calls for an independent prosecutor to lead the Russia inquiry.

Mr. Trump explained the firing by citing Mr. Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, even though the president was widely seen to have benefited politically from that inquiry and had once praised Mr. Comey for having “guts” in his pursuit of Mrs. Clinton during the campaign.

But in his letter to Mr. Comey, released to reporters by the White House, the president betrayed his focus on the continuing inquiry into Russia and his aides.

“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau,” Mr. Trump said in a letter to Mr. Comey dated Tuesday.

Politico: Trump Blasts Nordstrom for Dropping Ivanka’s Clothing Line

By Aidan Quigley:

“My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person -- always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning.

Trump's team also retweeted his tweet on his official @POTUS account, which reaches 15.1 million followers. By comparison, Trump’s @realDonaldTrump account reaches 24.2 million followers.

Nordstrom had announced on Feb. 2 that it would stop carrying Ivanka Trump’s label due to its performance. “We've said all along we make buying decisions based on performance," Nordstrom said in a statement to The Associated Press. "We've got thousands of brands — more than 2,000 offered on the site alone. Reviewing their merit and making edits is part of the regular rhythm of our business."

* * *

Norm Eisen, a former Obama administration ethics czar, called the move “outrageous” on Twitter and said Nordstrom should consider suing under the California Unfair Competition Law, which forbids “any unfair” business act.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) also replied to Trump’s tweet, by “cc”ing the Office of Government Ethics.

Casey’s press secretary Jacklin Rhoads said in an emailed statement that the senator “feels it is unethical and inappropriate for the President to lash out at a private company for refusing to enrich his family.”

Richard Painter, the former chief ethics lawyer in the Bush administration, weighed in, too, saying the tweet was “absolutely unacceptable.”

“This is misuse of public office for private gains,” he said. “And it is abuse of power because the official message is clear — Nordstrom is persona non grata with the Administration.”

The Full Story (February 8, 2017)

See also this tweet for screenshots.

Washington Post: ‘If Something Happens’ - Trump Points His Finger in Case of a Terrorist Attack

By Philip Rucker:

President Trump appears to be laying the groundwork to preemptively shift blame for any future terrorist attack on U.S. soil from his administration to the federal judiciary, as well as to the media.

In recent tweets, Trump personally attacked James L. Robart, a U.S. district judge in Washington state, for putting “our country in such peril” with his ruling that temporarily blocked enforcement of the administration’s ban on all refugees as well as citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States.

“If something happens blame him and the court system. People pouring in. Bad!” Trump wrote in a tweet Sunday.

Then on Monday, Trump seemed to spread that blame to include news organizations. In a speech to the U.S. Central Command, the president accused the media of failing to report on some terrorist attacks for what he implied were nefarious reasons.

“ISIS is on a campaign of genocide, committing atrocities across the world,” Trump told commanders at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, using an acronym for the Islamic State terrorist group. He added: “You’ve seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that.”

The Full Story (February 6, 2017)

Washington Post: Former Top Diplomats, Tech Giants Blast Immigration Order As Court Showdown Looms

By Matt Zapotosky, Robert Barnes and Brian Murphy:

Trump responded to the development Sunday by writing on Twitter that he had “instructed Homeland Security to check people coming into our country VERY CAREFULLY.” A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman did not immediately return messages seeking comment on how, practically, that screening would be implemented.

“Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril,” Trump wrote. “If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!”

Trump further came to the defense of his stalled order Monday. In a tweet, Trump dismissed as “fake news” various polls showing opposition to the executive order. “Sorry,” Trump wrote, “people want border security and extreme vetting.”

The next few days will be telling for the future of the president’s executive order. The states of Washington and Minnesota, which are challenging the ban, asked the appeals court in the wee hours of Monday to keep the ban suspended, and Justice Department lawyers have until 6 p.m. to respond. The court will then schedule a hearing or rule whether the ban should remain on hold.

Early Monday, two former secretaries of state — John F. Kerry and Madeline Albright — joined a six-page joint statement saying Trump’s order “undermines” national security and will “endanger U.S. troops in the field.” The rare declaration, addressed to the 9th Circuit, was also backed by top former national security officials including Leon Panetta, who served as a past CIA director and defense secretary during the Obama administration.

Hours earlier, a host of technology giants — including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Uber — were part of a “friend of the court” legal brief by 97 companies opposing the Trump administration’s immigration order.

The brief claimed the order was a “significant departure” from U.S. immigration policies and “makes it more difficult and expensive for U.S. companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world’s best employees.”

The Full Story (February 5, 2017)

Washington Post: Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Entry Order Nationwide

By Matt Zapotosky, Lori Aratani and Justin Jouvenal:

A federal judge in Washington state on Friday temporarily blocked enforcement of President Trump’s controversial ban on entry to the United States, and airlines planned to begin allowing passengers from banned countries to board, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Following the ruling, government authorities immediately began communicating with airlines and taking steps that would allow travel by those previously barred from doing so, according to a U.S. official. At the same time, though, the White House said in a statement that the Justice Department would “at the earliest possible time” file for an emergency stay of the “outrageous” ruling from the judge. Minutes later, it issued a similar statement omitting the word “outrageous.”

“The president’s order is intended to protect the homeland and he has the constitutional authority and responsibility to protect the American people,” the White House said.

The president, however, was less cordial on Twitter.

“The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!” Trump posted in a Saturday morning tweet.ted in a Saturday morning tweet.

The Full Story (February 4, 2017)

Washington Post: The Trump Team Bizarrely Quibbles With Calling Its Travel Ban a ‘Ban’ — And Then Backs Down

By Aaron Blake:

“It's not a travel ban,” Spicer said, adding: "Because when we use words like 'travel ban,' that misrepresents what it is."

At least, that's what he said Tuesday. On Monday, he used the term himself. At an appearance at George Washington University, he said that “the ban deals with seven countries that the Obama administration had previously identified as needing further travel restrictions.”

He wasn't the only member of the Trump team to embrace the word:

If the ban were announced with a one week notice, the "bad" would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad "dudes" out there!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2017

Trump also called it a “ban” on Saturday, saying “We're going to have a very, very strict ban, and we're going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years.” And Kellyanne Conway used the b-word Sunday, saying, "This is a ban on travel, prospective travel from countries, trying to prevent terrorists in this country..."

So four times in three days.

The Full Story (January 31, 2017)

Think Progress: Trump’s Unconstitutional Plan to Turn Cities Into Federal Police States

By Ian Millheiser:

For those of us who lived through the early years of the Obama administration, however, when many conservatives claimed that virtually anything the former president said or did violated the Tenth Amendment, there’s a great deal of irony in Trump’s threat. Sending federal agents to address non-economic crimes of violence, in the manner that Trump suggests, actually does violate the Tenth Amendment.

Briefly speaking, the Constitution includes a laundry lists of powers that the federal government is allowed to exercise — and, in the Tenth Amendment’s words, all other powers “are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The broadest federal power is Congress’ ability to “regulate commerce . . . among the several states,” which gives the national government broad authority over economic matters.

But the federal government’s power over non-economic matters, including violent crime, is far more limited. Thus, in United States v. Morrison, the Supreme Court struck down a provision of federal law providing that someone “who commits a crime of violence motivated by gender . . . shall be liable to the party injured.” Violent crimes can be horrific, but they are generally beyond the federal government’s power to regulate and must be addressed by state law. That’s why Trump cannot simply “send in the Feds” to deal with local violent crimes.

The Full Story (January 25, 2017)

Reuters: Trump Expected to Order Temporary Ban on Refugees

By Julia Edwards Ainsley:

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign executive orders starting on Wednesday that include a temporary ban on most refugees and a suspension of visas for citizens of Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries, say congressional aides and immigration experts briefed on the matter.

Trump, who tweeted that a "big day" was planned on national security on Wednesday, is expected to ban for several months the entry of refugees into the United States, except for religious minorities escaping persecution, until more aggressive vetting is in place.

Another order will block visas being issued to anyone from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, said the aides and experts, who asked not to be identified.

In his tweet late on Tuesday, Trump said: "Big day planned on NATIONAL SECURITY tomorrow. Among many other things, we will build the wall!"

The Full Story (January 25, 2017)

Talking Points Memo: Donald Trump Is Still Tweeting Angrily About Reports On Dossier

By Caitlin MacNeal:

Donald Trump on Friday morning continued to lash out against the media and the intelligence community over reports about a dossier containing information about alleged ties between the President-elect and Russia.

Trump appeared to reference reports that the dossier originated as an opposition research file for a super PAC supporting Jeb Bush, though the super PAC's attorney denies that the file originated with the group.

The President-elect also continued to blame the leaks about the dossier on the intelligence community even though Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Wednesday that the leaks did not originate with the intelligence community.

The Full Story (January 13, 2017)

Guardian: John McCain Passes Dossier Alleging Secret Trump-Russia Contacts to FBI

By Julian Borger:

Senator John McCain passed documents to the FBI director, James Comey, last month alleging secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow and that Russian intelligence had personally compromising material on the president-elect himself.

The material, which has been seen by the Guardian, is a series of reports on Trump’s relationship with Moscow. They were drawn up by a former western counter-intelligence official, now working as a private consultant. BuzzFeed on Tuesday published the documents, which it said were “unverified and potentially unverifiable”.

The Guardian has not been able to confirm the veracity of the documents’ contents, and the Trump team has consistently denied any hidden contacts with the Russian government.

A spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday denied Russia has collected compromising information on Trump and dismissed news reports as a “complete fabrication and utter nonsense”. Dmitry Peskov insisted that the Kremlin “does not engage in collecting compromising material”.

Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but late on Tuesday, Trump tweeted: “FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” He made no direct reference to the allegations.

An official in the US administration who spoke to the Guardian described the source who wrote the intelligence report as consistently reliable, meticulous and well-informed, with a reputation for having extensive Russian contacts.

Some of the reports – which are dated from 20 June to 20 October last year – also proved to be prescient, predicting events that happened after they were sent.

The Full Story (January 11, 2017)

Washington Post: What Trump is Really Saying in His Tweets, "I’m Weak"

By Eugene Robinson:

I don’t have to defend Streep or Kovaleski — both can take care of themselves. But Trump’s knee-jerk reaction is worthy of comment because it is so typical. The man who is about to become president is enveloped by a shell of self-regard that at first seems armor-like but turns out to be delicate and brittle.

He couldn’t endure Alec Baldwin’s impression of him on “Saturday Night Live,” calling it “not funny” and saying that it “just can’t get any worse.” He reacted to an unflattering piece in Vanity Fair by saying that the magazine is “way down, big trouble, dead!” and that its editor has “no talent.” He taunted his replacement on “The Celebrity Apprentice,” former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, for having low Nielsen numbers “by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT” — and noted that Schwarzenegger was not a supporter of his campaign.

Conversely, he shows nothing but high regard for anyone who says anything nice about him. Thus he calls Russian President Vladimir Putin “very smart” and quotes him approvingly, despite the fact that intelligence officials say Russia actively meddled in our electoral process.

I don’t believe Trump’s tweets are part of some sophisticated strategy to draw attention from other events and topics. To me, this looks like simple action and reaction. When someone criticizes him publicly in a way that threatens his stature, he seems compelled to hit back. He can’t seem to ignore any slight.

That’s a sign of weakness, not strength — as Putin and other world leaders surely have figured out.

The Full Story (January 9, 2017)

Reuters: Trump Hits Back at Meryl Streep, Calls Actress 'Overrated'

By Reuters:

Streep had turned an acceptance speech at Sunday's Golden Globe awards into a blistering attack on Trump. "This instinct to humiliate when it's modeled by someone in the public platform by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life," she said.

Streep and much of Hollywood supported Trump's rival, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, in the November election.

Trump, a Republican, wrote on Twitter: "Meryl Streep, one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes.

"She is a Hillary flunky who lost big."

The tweet was Trump's second public response to the Streep speech. Early on Monday, he said in a telephone interview with the New York Times: "People keep saying I intended to mock the reporter's disability, as if Meryl Streep and others could read my mind, and I did no such thing."

Streep was referring to a 2015 incident at a South Carolina rally where Trump flailed his arms and slurred in his speech in apparent ridicule of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a physical disability.

The Full Story (January 9, 2017)

Washington Post: As Trump and North Korea’s Kim Spar, China Poses as the Responsible Actor

By Simon Denyar:

South Korea, not wanting perhaps to contemplate that possibility of rockets raining down on the Korean Peninsula, took a different view. Its Foreign Ministry said Trump in his tweet had issued a “clear warning” to North Korea that showed his awareness of the urgency of the threat — and that he will not waver from a policy of imposing sanctions.

“Because of our active outreach, President-elect Trump and U.S. officials are clearly aware of the gravity and urgency of the North Korean nuclear threat,” ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck told a briefing. “They are maintaining an unwavering stance on the need for sanctions on North Korea and for close cooperation between South Korea and the U.S.”

This also raises the issue of how much interpretation should be required for the tweets of what will soon be the most powerful man in the world.

Euan Graham, director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, said the world was “on the slippery slope of trying to interpret one man’s not particularly coherent tweets.” But he added that the exchange has increased the chances that North Korea could be “the first crisis out of the box” in the Trump presidency, at least in Asia.

The Full Story (January 3, 2017)

[Special] New York Times: Rocky First Weekend for Trump Troubles Even His Top Aides

By Peter Baker, Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman:

To the extent that there was a plan to take advantage of the first days of his administration, when a president is usually at his maximum leverage, Mr. Trump threw it aside with a decision to lash out about crowd sizes at his swearing in and to rewrite the history of his dealings with intelligence agencies.

The lack of discipline troubled even senior members of Mr. Trump’s circle, some of whom had urged him not to indulge his simmering resentment at what he saw as unfair news coverage. Instead, Mr. Trump chose to listen to other aides who shared his outrage and desire to punch back. By the end of the weekend, he and his team were scrambling to get back on script.

* * *

Mr. Trump grew increasingly angry on Inauguration Day after reading a series of Twitter messages pointing out that the size of his inaugural crowd did not rival that of Mr. Obama’s in 2009. But he spent his Friday night in a whirlwind of celebration and affirmation. When he awoke on Saturday morning, after his first night in the Executive Mansion, the glow was gone, several people close to him said, and the new president was filled anew with a sense of injury.

The Full Story (January 22, 2017)

[Special] The Guardian: Trump Press Conference: 'Sick People' Leaked 'Fake News' Russia Dossier (Live Coverage)

Various employees of The Guardian had live coverage of Trump's first press conference in months, where he railed against everyone and failed to take any personal responsibility, as usual. He said the reports about his piss fetish was a fabrication, and he also said he would not put his interests into a blind trust, thus ensuring massive ethics concerns for however long the country has to deal with this man.

This entire structure is engineered around avoiding "unreasonable losses" as opposed to meeting ethical requirements.

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) January 11, 2017

[Special] Donald Trump, Watersports Champ

CNN: Intel Chiefs Presented Trump with Claims of Russian Efforts to Compromise Him by Evan Perez, Jim Sciutto, Jake Tapper and Carl Bernstein (January 10, 2017) -

Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.

The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.

One reason the nation's intelligence chiefs took the extraordinary step of including the synopsis in the briefing documents was to make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him are circulating among intelligence agencies, senior members of Congress and other government officials in Washington, multiple sources tell CNN.

These senior intelligence officials also included the synopsis to demonstrate that Russia had compiled information potentially harmful to both political parties, but only released information damaging to Hillary Clinton and Democrats. This synopsis was not an official part of the report from the intelligence community case about Russian hacks, but some officials said it augmented the evidence that Moscow intended to harm Clinton's candidacy and help Trump's, several officials with knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

[Special] Twitter: Fourth Tallest

Seth Rogen:

The Full Story (October 8, 2015)

Atlantic: Donald Trump's Bitter Barrage Against Republicans

By David A. Graham:

According to the well-sourced Washington Post reporter Robert Costa, Trump is holed up at Trump Tower, watching cable news. One can imagine him getting ever more agitated at the flood of condemnations from Republicans. It has become an article of faith that Trump tends to tweet the most aggressive statements, from his Android phone, while tweets from other platforms represent staffers tweeting for him. As some reporters noticed, however, one of the two Ryan tweets came from an Android and the other from an iPhone. Are Trump’s aides ready to battle the GOP, too?

The Twitter outburst drew new expressions of shock from even the most hardbitten political observers. Needless to say, a situation where a presidential nominee views his own party as a “shackle” and is praising his opponent does not bode well. (As an aside, that “shackle” word choice is peculiar. In 2012, Joe Biden was pilloried for telling a mostly black audience, “They're gonna put y'all back in chains.”)

At no time within recent memory has a candidate chosen to go to war with his own party, just four weeks ahead of Election Day. With Senator Bob Dole trailing badly ahead of the 1996 election against President Bill Clinton, the Republican Party effectively abandoned Dole to his fate, focusing on Congress, but Dole, a good soldier for the party, largely took the swipe stoically. Trump, with no longstanding links to the party and none of Dole’s stoicism, clearly has no intention of doing the same.

The Full Story (October 11, 2016)

[Special] Fortune: Donald Trump's Social Media Ties to White Supremists

By Ben Kharakh and Dan Primack:

Trump is “giving us the old wink-wink,” wrote Andrew Anglin, editor of a white supremacist website called The Daily Stormer, after Trump retweeted two other “white genocide” theorists within a single minute. “Whereas the odd White genocide tweet could be a random occurrence, it isn’t statistically possible that two of them back to back could be a random occurrence. It could only be deliberate…Today in America the air is cold and it tastes like victory.” It is possible that Trump ― who, according to the campaign, does almost all of his own tweeting ― is unfamiliar with the term “white genocide” and doesn’t do even basic vetting of those whose tweets he amplifies to his seven million followers. But the reality is that there are dozens of tweets mentioning @realDonaldTrump each minute, and he has an uncanny ability to surface ones that come from accounts that proudly proclaim their white supremacist leanings. * * * The Little Bird software analyzed Twitter content to generate a ranked list of just under 2,000 #WhiteGenocide “influencers” as of February 8. The more impactful, the higher up on the list (which, understandably, ebbs and flows a bit over time). Since the start of his campaign, Donald Trump has retweeted at least 75 users who follow at least three of the top 50 #WhiteGenocide influencers. Moreover, a majority of these retweeted accounts are themselves followed by more than 100 #WhiteGenocide influencers. But the relationship isn’t limited to retweets. For example, Trump national campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson (who is black), follows the most influential #WhiteGenocide account, @Genophilia, which is best known for helping to launch a Star Wars boycott after it became known that the new film’s lead character was black.

The Full Story (March 22, 2016)

[Special] Los Angeles Times: Trump Backers Tweet #repealthe19th After Polls Show He'd Win Only If Men Voted

By Seema Mehta:

As polls show that Donald Trump would overwhelmingly win if only men were allowed to vote, the GOP nominee's supporters have spawned a new Twitter hashtag: #repealthe19th.

That’s a reference to the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

The Twitter commentary began after Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight published an article Tuesday looking at men’s and women’s voting patterns.

He found that if the election only counted the male vote, Trump would swamp Clinton, 350 electoral votes to 188. A candidate must win 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

The Full Story (October 12, 2016)