Robert Scheer's Blog, page 652

For the Love of Their Country or Money?

Much has been made of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into whether Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russian operatives or the Russian government to win the November 2016 election. While there is yet to emerge solid evidence that attempted Russian meddling actually impacted the election’s outcome, in recent days Mueller’s probe may have turned in a far more damning direction: how Trump’s family members may have used the president’s political power to obtain business advantages, and specifically how Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner may be deeply implicated.

Several recent reports offer strong suggestions of corruption. First, The Washington Post reported Feb. 27 that officials from four other countries—namely the United Arab Emirates, China, Mexico and Israel—apparently discussed ways to exploit Kushner’s business needs in order for their countries to obtain favorable U.S. policies. A day later The New York Times revealed that Kushner Companies last year received more than $500 million in loans from Apollo Global Management and Citigroup after Kushner met with those companies’ representatives at the White House. On March 1, Think Progress reported that Apollo “benefited from three rule changes [under Trump] relaxing pipeline safety regulations.” The next day, March 2, according to The Intercept, Kushner Companies reportedly approached the government of Qatar for loans and, after being rebuffed, President Trump backed a Saudi Arabian blockade of Qatar, bizarrely accusing the latter country of financing terrorism networks.

On the domestic front, Trump family members seem to be using government to fill their coffers by extracting loans for their businesses in exchange for favors. Even the appearance of impropriety and quid pro quo between the Trump family and the companies that lend it money ought to outright disqualify all those involved from policymaking and rule changes.

On the foreign policy front, the optics are even worse. If there is any link between Qatar’s refusal to grant Kushner Companies a loan and the Trump administration’s actions against that country, we can only conclude that American foreign policy is being wielded as a tool to punish those who might harm the Trump family’s business interests. Indeed, NBC reported four unnamed sources revealed that “Qatari government officials visiting the U.S. in late January and early February considered turning over to Mueller what they believe is evidence of efforts by their country’s Persian Gulf neighbors in coordination with Kushner to hurt their country,” but that ultimately, “The Qatari officials decided against cooperating with Mueller for now out of fear it would further strain the country’s relations with the White House.”

Upon accepting a position as the president’s adviser, Kushner ought to have completely divested himself from his extensive domestic and international business dealings, but he has chosen not to do so. Instead he retains more than $700 million worth of real estate holdings and related businesses. Within this context it should come as no surprise that Kushner’s security clearance was downgraded, given how easily he could be approached in efforts to trade American favors in exchange for loans or business deals.

Right from the start, Kushner and the Trump family’s businesses were considered problematic in terms of whether the Trumps would put their personal financial empires before the country’s interests. Just the appearance of the various situations Kushner has been caught in are deeply suspicious and can be traced back to the 2016 election, when he obtained a massive $285 million loan for his company’s property from Deutsche Bank. At that time the bank was engaged in a legal battle with the U.S. government over charges of mortgage fraud, which should have negated any dealings with the family member of a presidential candidate. Additionally, well into his tenure as the president’s adviser, Kushner’s sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer, was caught in China touting her brother’s new political role while trying to lure Chinese investors for her family company’s New Jersey housing development.

The politically inexperienced Kushner has also been put in charge of U.S. policy on a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. Yet earlier this year The New York Times revealed that just before his first diplomatic mission to Israel last year, Kushner’s company received a $30 million infusion of cash from a major Israeli insurance company, Menora Mivtachim. How could Kushner possibly present himself as an impartial broker when he has investors in one of the two entities he is seeking to reconcile? If countries like Israel and China are attempting to exploit Kushner’s position, it is because Kushner has essentially given them every indication that he would like them to do so. The scope of the Trump family’s brazen financial dealings and the strong indications that they might be using the nation’s foreign policy to enrich themselves is unprecedented.

Much of what has been revealed about Kushner’s vulnerabilities are emerging through detailed, publicly available investigative news reports. Mueller’s team need only confirm the veracity of the reports to determine if Kushner’s presence in the White House gives the appearance of a serious conflict of interest. In any other time and with any other presidency, the mere whiff of personal financial gain through government positions would have been enough to generate demands for resignations and public apologies. But as we find out every day in this new reality under Trump, there seems to be no depth to which our national standards can fall in order to maintain this president’s power.

Last November, when Mueller indicted former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, I wrote that the content of the indictments revealed a far more important aspect of the Trump presidency than possible collusion with Russia: how the people Trump has surrounded himself with are—like him—apparently interested in personal enrichment and greed more than anything else and appear willing to bend government rules toward that end.

As questions swirl about whether Mueller will now indict the president’s son-in-law, there are also reports that Trump is frustrated and “now views [Kushner] as a liability because of his legal entanglements, the investigations of the Kushner family’s real estate company and the publicity over having his security clearance downgraded.” But in what is the president’s habit of flip-flopping, he has alternatively expressed both support of and opposition to his son-in-law’s presence in the White House.

Meanwhile on the political front there is a deafening silence from lawmakers, especially Republicans, on the appearance of Kushner’s many conflicts of interest. If there had been even the tiniest fraction of such dealings during Barack Obama’s presidency, conservatives would have been howling louder than anyone else about impeachment or resignation. Even in the very unlikely event that it turns out Kushner’s business relations were kept scrupulously separate from his government-related work, the damage to his reputation as a U.S. government representative is done. Kushner and the entire Trump dynasty should be required to answer the question: What do they love more—their country or their money?

They cannot have it both ways.

Daniel Ellsberg’s Advice for How to Stop Current and Future Wars

Daniel Ellsberg has a message that managers of the warfare state don’t want people to hear.

“If you have information that bears on deception or illegality in pursuing wrongful policies or an aggressive war,” he said in a statement released last week, “don’t wait to put that out and think about it, consider acting in a timely way at whatever cost to yourself. … Do what Katharine Gun did.”

If you don’t know what Katharine Gun did, chalk that up to the media power of the war system.

Ellsberg’s video statement went public as this month began, just before the 15th anniversary of the revelation by a British newspaper, the Observer, of a secret NSA memo—thanks to Katharine Gun. At the UK’s intelligence agency GCHQ, about 100 people received the same email memo from the National Security Agency on the last day of January 2003, seven weeks before the invasion of Iraq got underway. Only Katharine Gun, at great personal risk, decided to leak the document.

If more people had taken such risks in early 2003, the Iraq War might have been prevented. If more people were willing to take such risks in 2018, the current military slaughter in several nations, mainly funded by U.S. taxpayers, might be curtailed if not stopped. Blockage of information about past whistleblowing deprives the public of inspiring role models.

That’s the kind of reality George Orwell was referring to when he wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”

Fifteen years ago, “I find myself reading on my computer from the Observer the most extraordinary leak, or unauthorized disclosure, of classified information that I’d ever seen,” Ellsberg recalled, “and that definitely included and surpassed my own disclosure of top-secret information, a history of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam years earlier.” The Pentagon Papers whistleblower instantly recognized that, in the Observer article, “I was looking at something that was clearly classified much higher than top secret. … It was an operational cable having to do with how to conduct communications intelligence.”

What Ellsberg read in the newspaper story “was a cable from the NSA asking GCHQ to help in the intercepting of communications, and that implied both office and home communications, of every member of the Security Council of the UN. Now, why would NSA need GCHQ to do that? Because a condition of having the UN headquarters and the Security Council in the U.S. in New York was that the U.S. intelligence agencies promised or were required not to conduct intelligence on members of the UN. Well, of course, they want that. So they rely on their allies, the buddies, in the British to commit these criminal acts for them. And with this clearly I thought someone very high in access in Britain intelligence services must dissent from what was already clear the path to an illegal war.”

But actually, the leak didn’t come from “someone very high” in GCHQ. The whistleblower turned out to be a 28-year-old linguist and analyst at the agency, Katharine Gun, who had chosen to intervene against the march to war.

As Gun has recounted, she and other GCHQ employees “received an email from a senior official at the National Security Agency. It said the agency was ‘mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council members,’ and that it wanted ‘the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises.’ ”

In other words, the U.S. and British governments wanted to eavesdrop on key UN delegations and then manipulate or even blackmail them into voting for war.

Katharine Gun took action: “I was furious when I read that email and leaked it. Soon afterward, when the Observer ran a front-page story—‘U.S. dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war’—I confessed to the leak and was arrested on suspicion of the breach of section 1 of the Official Secrets Act.”

The whistleblowing occurred in real time. “This was not history,” as Ellsberg put it. “This was a current cable, I could see immediately from the date, and it was before the war had actually started against Iraq. And the clear purpose of it was to induce the support of the Security Council members to support a new UN resolution for the invasion of Iraq.”

The eavesdropping was aimed at gaining a second—and this time unequivocal—Security Council resolution in support of an invasion. “British involvement in this would be illegal without a second resolution,” Ellsberg said. “How are they going to get that? Obviously, essentially by blackmail and intimidation, by knowing the private wants and embarrassments, possible embarrassments, of people on the Security Council, or their aides, and so forth. The idea was, in effect, to coerce their vote.”

Katharine Gun foiled that plan. While scarcely reported in the U.S. media (despite cutting-edge news releases produced by my colleagues at the Institute for Public Accuracy beginning in early March of 2003), the revelations published by the Observer caused huge media coverage across much of the globe—and sparked outrage in several countries with seats on the Security Council.

“In the rest of the world, there was great interest in the fact that American intelligence agencies were interfering with their policies of their representatives in the Security Council,” Ellsberg noted. A result was that for some governments on the Security Council at the time, the leak “made it impossible for their representatives to support the U.S. wish to legitimize this clear case of aggression against Iraq. So the U.S. had to give up its plan to get a supporting vote in the UN.” The U.S. and British governments “went ahead anyway, but without the legitimating precedent of an aggressive war that would have had, I think, many consequences later.”

Ellsberg said: “What was most striking then and still to me about this disclosure was that the young woman who looked at this cable coming across her computer in GCHQ acted almost immediately on what she saw was the pursuit of an illegal war by illegal means. … I’ve often been asked, is there anything about the release of the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam that you regret. And my answer is yes, very much. I regret that I didn’t put out the top-secret documents available to me in the Pentagon in 1964, years before I actually gave them to the Senate and then to the newspapers. Years of war and years of bombing. It wasn’t that I was considering that all that time. I didn’t have a precedent to instruct me on that at that point. But in any case, I could have been much more effective in averting that war if I’d acted much sooner.”

Katharine Gun “was not dealing only with historical material,” Ellsberg emphasizes, she “was acting in a timely fashion very quickly on her right judgement that what she was being asked to participate in was wrong. I salute her. She’s my hero. I think she’s a model for other whistleblowers. And for a long time I’ve said to people in her position or my old position in the government: Don’t do what I did. Don’t wait till the bombs are falling or thousands more have died.”

By making her choice, Gun risked two years of imprisonment. In Ellsberg’s words, she seemed to be facing “a sure conviction—except that the government was not willing to have the legality of that war discussed in a courtroom, and in the end dropped the charges.”

As this month began, Katharine Gun spoke at a London news conference, co-sponsored by ExposeFacts and RootsAction.org (organizations I’m part of) and hosted by the National Union of Journalists. Speaking alongside her were three other whistleblowers—Thomas Drake, Matthew Hoh and Jesselyn Radack—who have emerged as eloquent American truth tellers from the NSA, State Department and Justice Department. The presentations by the four are stunning to watch.

Their initiatives, taken at great personal risk, underscore how we can seize the time to make use of opportunities for forthright actions of conscience. This truth is far from confined to what we call whistleblowing. It’s about possibilities in a world where silence is so often consent to what’s wrong, and disruption of injustice is imperative for creating a more humane future.

South Korea Leader Sees Obstacles to Denuclearizing the North

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s president said Thursday that many “critical moments” still lie ahead to end the nuclear crisis despite North Korea’s recent outreach to Seoul and Washington.

Moon Jae-in spoke before two senior Seoul officials left for the United States to brief officials about the outcome of their recent visit to North Korea.

The Seoul officials said North Korea offered talks with the United States over normalizing ties and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Seoul said the North also agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests during such future talks.

Some experts question how sincere North Korea is about its reported offers, citing what they call its track record of using past disarmament talks to wrest aid and concessions while covertly continuing its bomb program.

According to the South Korean officials, North Korea said it has no reason to possess nuclear weapons if military threats against the country are removed and its security is guaranteed. That’s the same position North Korea has long maintained to justify its nuclear program or call for the withdrawal of 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea and a halt to annual U.S.-South Korean military drills as conditions for scrapping its nuclear program. The North sees the allies’ drills as an invasion rehearsal.

Choi Hyunsoo, spokeswoman for Seoul’s Defense Ministry, said the military will announce the schedule for the joint drills after the Pyeongchang Paralympics, which start Friday and run through March 18.

“We’ve overcome one critical moment. But there are many critical moments that we still have to go through before reaching the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a permanent peace,” Moon said in a meeting with church leaders.

Moon still described the outcome of his envoys’ North Korea trip “a big step toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” that was possible with “a strong support” by the U.S. government.

It’s unclear whether the United States will accept the North’s reported offer for talks. President Donald Trump expressed both hope and skepticism, calling the North’s move “possible progress” that also “may be false hope.”

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking Thursday during a news conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, said the United States has seen “potentially positive signals coming from North Korea” illustrated by its talks with South Korea.

“We’ve maintained very close communication with President Moon. They are keeping us well-informed of their meetings,” he said. “We’re providing them input as well.”

He said the U.S. and North Korea were still “a long ways from negotiations,” and the United States needed to remain “very clear-eyed and realistic.”

The first step is to have talks about whether to hold negotiations — “to have talks about talks,” Tillerson said.

South Korean and the U.S. plan to kick off their delayed springtime military drills next month, and how sensitively the North reacts will affect the mood of reconciliation that was revived by North Korea’s participation in last month’s Winter Olympics held in the South. The North has responded to past joint drills by the allies with fiery rhetoric and its own weapons tests.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan’s policy of pressuring North Korea does not change just because its leadership is now open to dialogue.

“We should not ease our stance, for instance relax sanctions, just because North Korea agreed to have a dialogue,” Abe told a parliamentary session on Thursday. “We should not give North Korea a reward in exchange for a dialogue.”

China, the North’s most important ally, encouraged follow-up measures while noting the progress was in part due to the suspension of both North Korean nuclear tests and U.S.-South Korean military exercises during the Olympics.

“This proves that China’s proposal of suspension for suspension was the right prescription for the problem and created basic conditions for the improvement of inter-Korean relations,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing. He said North Korea’s security concerns should be addressed in return for denuclearization.

Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are to meet at a border village in late April, when the South Korea-U.S. drills would likely be still under way. If realized, the Moon-Kim meeting would be the rivals’ third-ever summit since their 1945 division.

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Associated Press writers Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Josh Lederman in Addis Ababa contributed to this report.

Amazon CEO’s Wealth Soars to New Heights While Trump’s Sinks

SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has become the first $100 billion mogul to top Forbes’ annual rankings of the world’s richest people. But President Donald Trump’s fortune sank during his first year in office despite a surging stock market.

The Bezos milestone, revealed in Tuesday’s release of Forbes’ closely watched list, underscores the growing clout of both Bezos and the company that he founded in 1994 as an online bookstore. Forbes’ breakdown provided further evidence that serving as president isn’t the most lucrative job, even when most of the rich are getting richer.

All told, the world now holds more than 2,200 billionaires with a combined fortune of $9.1 trillion, up 18 percent from ago, according to Forbes’ calculations.

Although Trump is part of that elite group, he saw his fortune sink by about $400 million to $3.1 billion during his first year in office. The decline left him as the world’s 766th richest person, more than 200 places lower than his 544th spot on last year’s Forbes list.

Bezos seized the top ranking for the first time and has the added the distinction of becoming the first person to break the $100 billion barrier since Forbes began compiling its list in 1987. As of Feb. 9, Bezos’ wealth stood at $112 billion as of Feb. 9, up from about $73 billion last year, according to Forbes.

Most of Bezos’ fortune is tied up in Amazon stock, which soared 59 percent during the period tracked by Forbes.

Bezos has used a sliver of his wealth to buy The Washington Post — a target in Trump’s fusillades against the media — and to finance Blue Origin, a maker of rockets that aim to sell flights into space.

Meanwhile, Amazon has expanded beyond its bookselling origin to become a retailer of almost everything imaginable. It now even sells groceries in brick-and-mortar stores after its $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods Markets last year.

Amazon also has built a network of data centers that hosts the online services of other companies, and produces award-winning shows that compete against traditional TV networks. More recently, it branched into health care in a partnership involving Berkshire Hathaway and its CEO, Warren Buffett, whose $84 billion fortune ranks third on the Forbes list.

Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder and an occasional bridge partner of Buffett’s, ranks second on the Forbes list with wealth of $90 billion.

Both Gates, 62, and Buffett, 87, have committed to giving away most of their wealth while Bezos, 54, hasn’t said much about his philanthropic plans.

Second Major Storm in Days Pummels Northeast

NEW YORK—The second major storm in less than a week moved up the East Coast early Thursday, dumping heavy snow and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from Pennsylvania to New England.

Some places saw more than 2 feet of snow by late Wednesday. Montville, New Jersey, got more than 26 inches from the nor’easter. North Adams, Massachusetts, registered 24 inches and Sloatsburg, New York, got 26 inches.

Major cities along the Interstate 95 corridor saw much less. Philadelphia International Airport recorded about 6 inches, while New York City’s Central Park saw less than 3 inches.

The storm made traveling treacherous. Thousands of flights across the region were canceled.

It was not much better on the ground. Members of the Northeastern University women’s basketball team pushed their bus back on course after it was stuck in the snow outside a practice facility in Philadelphia. The Huskies were in the city to compete in the 2018 CAA Women’s Basketball Tournament. The team posted a video of the feat on its Twitter account.

Amtrak suspended service between New York City and Boston until at least 10 a.m. Thursday. New York City’s Metro-North commuter railroad suspended service on lines connecting the city to its northern suburbs and Connecticut because of downed trees. It was not immediately known when service would be restored.

“It’s kind of awful,” said New York University student Alessa Raiford, who put two layers of clothing on a pug named Jengo before taking him for a walk in slushy, sloppy Manhattan, where rain gave way to wet snow in the afternoon. “I’d rather that it be full-on snowing than rain and slush. It just makes it difficult.”

The storm was not predicted to be as severe as the nor’easter that toppled trees, inundated coastal communities and caused more than 2 million power outages from Virginia to Maine last Friday.

It still proved to be a headache for the tens of thousands of customers still in the dark from the earlier storm — and for the crews trying to restore power to them.

In New Jersey, the state’s major utilities reported more than 300,000 customers without power by late Wednesday, with some left over from last week. Utilities across the Northeast also reported tens of thousands of homes and businesses without electricity.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning through Thursday for most of New England as the storm continued to make its way through.

In Worcester, Massachusetts, public works crews late Wednesday had a hard time keeping up with the snow.

“It’s heavy. Well, it was so warm earlier that it just melted when it hit the ground and now it’s heavy,” said Jesse Nadeau. “It’s the heaviest part of the storm right now for the next couple of hours. Heavy and wet.”

In North White Plains, New York, 10 people were taken to hospitals with symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning after running a generator inside a home, police said. All were expected to survive.

In Manchester Township, New Jersey, police said a teacher was struck by lightning while holding an umbrella on bus duty outside a school. The woman felt a tingling sensation but didn’t lose consciousness. She was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.

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Porter reported from Newark, New Jersey. Associated Press writers Michael Catalini in Morrisville, Pennsylvania; Michael Sisak and Rod Hicks in Philadelphia; Wayne Parry in Atlantic City, New Jersey; Bruce Shipkowski in Toms River, New Jersey, and Rodrique Ngowi in Worcester, Massachusetts, contributed.

Gun Legislation Passes Florida House, Goes to Governor

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—The Florida House passed a school safety bill Wednesday that includes new restrictions on rifle sales and a program to arm some teachers, sending the measure to the governor for his signature.

The vote of 67-50 reflected a mix of Republicans and Democrats in support and opposition. The measure, a response to the shootings at a Parkland high school that left 17 dead, is supported by the victims’ families.

Andrew Pollack, who lost his 18-year-old daughter Meadow in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and Ryan Petty, who lost his 14-year-old daughter Alaina, said there was enough good in the bill that it should pass.

Democratic Rep. Kristin Jacobs said she did not like the idea of arming teachers, but she voted yes. Republican Rep. Jay Fant said raising the minimum age to buy a rifle from 18 to 21 was unconstitutional, and he voted no.

“There is a cultural divide in this room, in this state and across the country. And there’s a bill before us that is not perfect,” said Democratic Rep. Kristin Jacobs, whose district includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The bill would raise the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21 and create a waiting period on sales of the weapons. It would also create a so-called guardian program that would let school employees and many teachers carry handguns if they go through law enforcement training and if the school district decides to participate in the program.

Other provisions would create new mental health programs for schools; establish an anonymous tip line where students and others could report threats to schools, ban bump stocks and improve communication between schools, law enforcement and state agencies.

Fant, who is running for attorney general, said the gun restrictions violate the Constitution.

“I just can’t imagine that Nikolas Cruz can commit such a heinous crime and then as a result we tell, potentially, a 20-year-old single mother living alone that she cannot purchase a firearm to defend herself,” Fant said.

The Florida Senate narrowly passed the bill Monday. Gov. Rick Scott declined to say Wednesday whether he would sign the legislation.

Scott has repeatedly said he doesn’t support arming teachers and pushed lawmakers to adopt his proposal, which called for at least one law enforcement officer in every school and one for every thousand students who attend a school.

“I’m going to take the time and I’m going to read the bill and I’m going to talk to families,” Scott told reporters.

Shooting suspect Cruz was formally charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder Wednesday, which could mean a death sentence if he is convicted.

The indictment returned by a grand jury in Fort Lauderdale also charges the 19-year-old with 17 counts of attempted murder for the Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in which 17 people died and more than a dozen others were wounded.

Cruz’s public defender has said he will plead guilty if prosecutors take the death penalty off the table, which would mean a life prison sentence. Prosecutors have 45 days to decide whether they want to seek the death penalty.

James and Kimberly Snead, the couple who gave Cruz a home after his mother died late last year, testified before the grand jury. James Snead and the couple’s attorney, Jim Lewis, wore silver “17” pins to honor the victims of the shooting.

The couple is “trying to do the right thing” and is mourning along with the rest of the Parkland community, Lewis said.

“We’ll let justice take its course at this point,” Lewis said. “They still don’t know what happened, why this happened. They don’t have any answers. They feel very badly for everybody.”

Cruz told investigators he took an AR-15 rifle to his former school on Feb. 14 and started shooting into classrooms.

Jail records released by the Broward Sheriff’s Office show Cruz was being held in solitary confinement. Officers described Cruz as avoiding eye contact with deputies but also being cooperative and engaged with his visitors.

The report said Cruz “often sits with a blank stare,” asked for a Bible to read and appeared to be “smiling and giggling” during one visit with his attorneys. Investigators and psychiatrists also have visited Cruz in his single-person cell in the jail’s infirmary, where officers note his activities every 15 minutes.

His brother visited him twice, along with Roxanne Deschamps, who took in both teens after their mother died in November. Cruz lived with Deschamps only briefly before moving in with the Sneads.

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Farrington reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Replogle reported from Parkland, Florida. Associated Press writers Gary Fineout in Tallahassee, Florida, and Freida Frisaro, David Fischer and Jennifer Kay in Miami contributed to this report.

Mexico, Canada, Others May Be Exempted From U.S. Tariffs

WASHINGTON—The White House said Wednesday that Mexico, Canada and other countries may be spared from President Donald Trump’s planned steel and aluminum tariffs under national security “carve-outs,” a move that could soften the blow amid threats of retaliation by trading partners and dire economic warnings from lawmakers and business groups.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the exemptions would be made on a “case by case” and “country by country” basis, a reversal from the policy articulated by the White House just days ago that there would be no exemptions from Trump’s plan.

The announcement came as congressional Republicans and business groups braced for the impact of expected tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum, appearing resigned to additional protectionist trade actions as Trump signaled upcoming economic battles with China.

The looming departure of White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who has opposed the promised tariffs, set off anxiety among business leaders and investors worried about a potential trade war.

“We urge you to reconsider the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences to the U.S. economy and its workers,” 107 House Republicans wrote in a letter to Trump.

The White House said Trump was expected to make a final announcement as early as Thursday and officials were working to include language in the tariffs that would give Trump the flexibility to approve exemptions for certain countries.

“He’s already indicated a degree of flexibility, I think a very sensible, very balanced degree of flexibility,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC. “We’re not trying to blow up the world.”

Trump signaled other trade actions could be in the works. In a tweet, he said the “U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft.” A White House official said Trump was referencing an ongoing investigation of China in which the U.S. trade representative is studying whether Chinese intellectual property rules are “unreasonable or discriminatory” to American business.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said an announcement on the findings of the report — and possible retaliatory actions — was expected within the next three weeks.

Business leaders, meanwhile, continued to sound the alarm about the potential economic fallout from tariffs, with the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce raising the specter of a global trade war. That scenario, Tom Donohue said, would endanger the economic momentum from the GOP tax cuts and Trump’s rollback of regulations.

“We urge the administration to take this risk seriously,” Donohue said.

The president has said the tariffs are needed to reinforce lagging American steel and aluminum industries and protect national security. He has tried to use the tariffs as leverage in ongoing talks to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement, suggesting Canada and Mexico might be exempted from tariffs if they offer more favorable terms under NAFTA.

Lawmakers opposed to the tariffs, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have suggested more narrowly focused approaches to target Chinese imports. But members of Congress have few tools at their disposal to counter the president, who has vowed to fulfill his campaign pledge.

“I don’t think the president is going to be easily deterred,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who has suggested hearings on the tariffs.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said Trump had listened to him and others who disagree with the direction of the trade policies. “I thank him for that and he’s been a good listener. The difficulty is so far I haven’t persuaded him,” Alexander said.

Republicans in Congress have lobbied administration officials to reconsider the plan and focus the trade actions on China, warning that allies such as Canada and members of the European Union would retaliate.

The EU said it was prepared to respond to any tariffs with countermeasures against U.S. products such as Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Levi’s jeans and bourbon. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem said the EU was circulating among member states a list of U.S. goods to target with tariffs so it could respond quickly.

The president plans to rally Republicans in western Pennsylvania on Saturday in support of Rick Saccone, who faces Democrat Conor Lamb in a March 13 special House election. Trump has told associates the tariffs could be helpful to the GOP cause in the election in the heart of steel country.

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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Matthew Daly and Alan Fram in Washington and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.

Putin Praises Trump, Criticizes U.S. Political System

MOSCOW—Russian President Vladimir Putin lavished praise on President Donald Trump, but added that he was sorely disappointed with the U.S. political system, saying that it has been “eating itself up.”

Speaking in a series of interviews with Russian state television which were included in a documentary released Wednesday, Putin described Trump as a great communicator.

“I have no disappointment at all,” Putin said when asked about the U.S. president. “Moreover, on a personal level he made a very good impression on me.”

The two leaders met on the sidelines of international summits last year. Putin praised Trump as a “balanced” man, who easily gets into the gist of various issues and listens to his interlocutor.

“It’s possible to negotiate with him, to search for compromises,” Putin added.

He also noted that he spent some time talking to Melania Trump when he sat next to her during an official dinner at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in July. The Russian leader said he told her and the wife of the Italian premier “about Siberia and Kamchatka, about fishing … about bears on Kamchatka and tigers in the Far East.”

“I made some exaggerations,” the action-loving Russian leader said with a grin. “When you talk about fishing, you can’t help exaggerating.”

Asked jokingly by the interviewer if he was trying to recruit the women, the KGB veteran responded by saying: “No, I stopped dealing with that a long time ago.”

He added with a smile: “But I liked doing that, it was my job for many years.”

Venting his frustration with the U.S. political system, Putin said “it has demonstrated its inefficiency and has been eating itself up.”

“It’s quite difficult to interact with such a system, because it’s unpredictable,” Putin said.

Russia-U.S. ties long have been strained by the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and other issues, and Moscow’s hopes for better ties with the U.S. under Trump haven’t materialized. Tensions have escalated further amid the ongoing congressional and FBI investigations into allegations of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Speaking about the Russia-West rift, Putin said it has been rooted in Western efforts to contain and weaken Russia.

“We are a great power, and no one likes competition,” he said.

He said he was particularly dismayed by what he described as the U.S. role in the ouster of Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president in February 2014 amid massive protests.

Putin charged that the U.S. had asked Russia to help persuade then-President Viktor Yanukovych not to use force against protesters and then “rudely and blatantly” cheated Russia, sponsoring what he called a “coup.”

Russia responded by annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

“Few expected us to act so quickly and so resolutely, not to say daringly,” Putin said.

He described the Western sanctions over Crimea and the insurgency in eastern Ukraine as part of “illegitimate and unfair” efforts to contain Russia, adding that “we will win in the long run.”

“Those who serve us with poison will eventually swallow it and poison themselves,” he said.

Putin wasn’t speaking in the context of a former Russian spy who was left in critical condition, along with his daughter, after coming into contact with a mysterious substance in Britain. Some have suggested it was a poisoning in which Russia may have had a hand, even though British authorities haven’t revealed what the substance was and are still investigating. Moscow has denied any involvement.

Responding to a question about Russia’s growing global leverage, Putin responded: “If we play strongly with weak cards, it means the others are just poor players, they aren’t as strong as it seemed, they must be lacking something.”

Putin, who presented a sweeping array of new Russian nuclear weapons last week, voiced hope that nuclear weapons will never be used — but warned that Russia will retaliate in kind if it comes under a nuclear attack.

“The decision to use nuclear weapons can only be made if our early warning system not only detects a missile launch but clearly forecasts its flight path and the time when warheads reach the Russian territory,” he said. “If someone makes a decision to destroy Russia, then we have a legitimate right to respond.”

He added starkly: “Yes, it will mean a global catastrophe for mankind, for the entire world. But as a citizen of Russia and the head of Russian state I would ask: What is such a world for, if there were no Russia?”

Florida Shooting Suspect Charged With 17 Counts of Murder

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—Florida school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz was formally charged Wednesday with 17 counts of first-degree murder, which could mean a death sentence if he is convicted.

The indictment returned by a grand jury in Fort Lauderdale also charges the 19-year-old with 17 counts of attempted murder for the Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in which 17 people died and more than a dozen others were wounded.

Cruz’s public defender has said he will plead guilty if prosecutors take the death penalty off the table, which would mean a life prison sentence. The Broward County state attorney has not announced a decision on the death penalty.

James and Kimberly Snead, the couple who gave Cruz a home after his mother died late last year, testified before the grand jury Wednesday. Both James Snead and the couple’s attorney, Jim Lewis, wore silver “17” pins to honor the victims of the shooting.

The couple is “trying to do the right thing” and is mourning along with the rest of the Parkland community, Lewis said.

“We’ll let justice take its course at this point,” Lewis said. “They still don’t know what happened, why this happened. They don’t have any answers. They feel very badly for everybody.”

Cruz told investigators he took an AR-15 rifle to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Valentine’s Day and started shooting into classrooms.

Jail records released by the Broward Sheriff’s Office show Cruz was being held in solitary confinement. Officers described Cruz as being cooperative but avoiding eye contact.

The report said Cruz “often sits with a blank stare,” appeared to laugh and exhibited “awkward” behavior during and after a visit with an attorney and had one “family visit.” Officers said Cruz also requested a Bible to read in his single-person cell in the infirmary.

In Tallahassee, the Florida House was expected to vote on gun legislation stemming from the school shooting.

The legislation would put some restrictions on rifle sales, provide new mental health programs for schools and improve communication between school districts, law enforcement and state agencies. Democrats’ efforts failed Tuesday to strip the bill of language that would create a program to arm some teachers and school employees who complete law enforcement training.

Two parents who lost children in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings told reporters that all the families of Parkland victims want the legislation to succeed.

Andrew Pollack, who lost his 18-year-old daughter Meadow, and Ryan Petty, who lost his 14-year-old daughter Alaina, said there was enough good in the bill that it should pass.

After visiting the Parkland school Wednesday, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said she wants to hear suggestions to improve school safety from students who survived the shooting.

DeVos told reporters that arming some teachers should be considered an option but not a requirement. As a model, she cited a program in Florida’s Polk County where teachers or other employees at two private universities have trained with the sheriff’s office so they can carry concealed weapons on campus.

The Sun Sentinel reported a second student injured in the shooting has filed a letter of intent to sue the Broward Sheriff’s Office, the school system and others. Doctors said one bullet tore through 15-year-old Kyle Laman’s ankle and foot, according to a statement from The Berman Law Group, which is representing the teenager.

“Kyle is still dealing with memories of the terror he felt when his classroom was locked and he was stuck in the hallway during the shooting,” the statement said. “The teacher couldn’t get the door open fast enough. Everyone was running scared. Kyle looked at the gunman staring right back at him, and instinctively jumped for cover.”

Separately, 15-year-old Anthony Borges and his parents have notified county officials of their plan to sue. Anthony was shot five times in his legs and torso and remains hospitalized, his attorney Alex Arreaza said.

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Farrington reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Replogle reported from Parkland, Florida. Associated Press writers Freida Frisaro and Jennifer Kay in Miami contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s complete coverage of the Florida school shooting here: https://apnews.com/tag/Floridaschools...

U.S. Should Accept Putin’s Offer to Negotiate on Nukes

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his state of the nation address. Much of his speech focused on economic issues and proposals to improve the Russian economy and well-being of the Russian people. Putin did, however, devote a portion of his speech to what he called “the most important defense issue.” He was referring to Russia’s next generation of strategic nuclear weapons designed to overcome U.S. missile defense systems and, thereby from his perspective, assure the effectiveness of Russia’s nuclear deterrent force and restore the global strategic balance.

Putin began his remarks on nuclear arms by harking back to the U.S. unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, a treaty he described as “the cornerstone of the international security system,” due to the limits it placed on missile defense deployments. He recalled Russian efforts, before the U.S. withdrawal and subsequent to it, to dissuade the U.S. from abrogating the treaty, efforts that were all rejected out of hand. He stated, “All our proposals, absolutely all of them, were rejected.”

It is not well understood in the U.S. that there is a strategic relationship between offensive and defensive missiles. Although it is doubtful that missile defenses would ever work as planned, the leaders of a country whose offensive missiles are subject to being destroyed by missile defenses must assume that they would work. In his speech, Putin explained this relationship of defensive and offensive missiles by pointing out that “uncontrolled growth of the number of anti-ballistic missiles” by the U.S. “will result in the complete devaluation of Russia’s nuclear potential.” This situation, Putin argued, requires Russia to build new offensive nuclear arms capable of penetrating the U.S. missile defenses in order to maintain “strategic stability” and not allow the U.S. to develop a perceived first-strike capability.

The U.S. has been dismissive of this Russian concern, arguing that its defenses are only meant to stop attacks from small powers such as North Korea or Iran (although Iran has no nuclear arms). However, it is a clear and often repeated concern of Russia, just as it would be to the U.S. if Russia were placing missile defense installations near the U.S. border and around the world. Putin stated, “Let me recall that the United States is creating a global missile defense system primarily for countering strategic arms that follow ballistic trajectories. These weapons form the backbone of our nuclear deterrence forces, just as other members of the nuclear club.”

Putin mentioned new Russian strategic nuclear weapons that would be fast, powerful and able to evade ballistic missile defenses. One of these new missiles, known as Sarmat, he described as “untroubled by even the most advanced missile defense systems.” He also discussed development of new types of nuclear-powered strategic arms that do not use ballistic trajectories. These he depicted as “invincible against all existing and prospective missile defense and counter-air defense systems.”

Russia’s new strategic weapons systems do not change the balance of power between the U.S. and Russia, though the U.S. may point to them in justifying its own plans to modernize every aspect of its nuclear arsenal at a cost of $1.7 trillion. Russia’s new offensive nuclear weapons will only bring the ongoing nuclear arms race to a position of strategic stability.

The fuel for a new nuclear arms race was already on the fire, and a Russian strategic response was predictable, when the U.S. withdrew from the ABM Treaty and began developing and emplacing missile defense systems globally. The U.S. withdrawal and abrogation of the ABM Treaty may prove to be the greatest strategic blunder of the nuclear age.

New York Times writers Neil MacFarquhar and David Sanger, reporting on the speech, observed that Putin had “threatened the West with a new generation of nuclear weapons. …” But in my reading of the speech, it seemed not to be a threat but rather an announcement that Russia has found a way to assure strategic stability by developing a nuclear force that can’t be destroyed in a U.S. first strike, with the U.S. able to use missile defenses to knock out a Russian retaliatory attack with any of its missiles that survive the initial attack.

Putin offered a critique of the recent U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, saying it lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear arms, including “in response to conventional arms attacks and even to a cyberthreat.” This is a valid critique.

Putin goes on to state: “Any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies … will be considered a nuclear attack on this country. Retaliation will be immediate, with all the attendant consequences.” So long as nuclear weapons exist, this kind of posturing, while unfortunate, is to be expected by the logic of nuclear deterrence and is similar to statements U.S. leaders have made.

Putin became conciliatory near the end of his address, stating, “There is no need to create more threats to the world. Instead, let us sit down at the negotiating table and devise together a new and relevant system of international security and sustainable development for human civilization. We have been saying this all along. All these proposals are still valid. Russia is ready for this.”

The U.S. should take him up on this offer. As the two most powerful nuclear powers on the planet, with enough nuclear weapons to end civilization as we know it and possibly the human species, the two countries need to be engaged in productive and good-faith negotiations to end the nuclear weapons threat to each other and to all humanity.

Putin has opened the door for the two countries to negotiate to resolve their differences.

Now it is up to the U.S. to respond.