Executive Departments 3

[Audrey2]

But Trump hires all of the best people!

[fraurosena]

4 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

But Trump hires all of the best people!

The best at corruption and self-dealing, that is.

[fraurosena]

As frustration with Bolton mounted, Trump reached out to ex-adviser McMaster

Quote

As President Donald Trump began losing confidence in national security adviser John Bolton, whom he fired on Tuesday, he reached out to the man he had fired to give Bolton the job: retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

In phone calls to McMaster — the first of which took place last fall — Trump told his second national security adviser that he missed him, according to two people familiar with the conversations. It’s a sentiment the president has also expressed to White House aides, they said. Trump has solicited McMaster's advice on various national security challenges, even asking McMaster whom he should nominate to lead the Pentagon, they said.

Trump's contacts with McMaster perhaps presaged his decision Tuesday to unceremoniously fire Bolton. They also were a remarkable shift for the president that is emblematic of how much Bolton fell out of favor since Trump welcomed him into the White House 17 months ago. At that time, Trump was barely speaking to McMaster and regularly did derogatory impressions of him in his absence, according to current and former White House officials.

Like Bolton, McMaster’s firing was also hasty and announced publicly by the president on Twitter. Bolton later said he had resigned and was not fired. Trump's patience for Bolton ultimately wore thin; aides say Trump was close to firing Bolton earlier this year, even putting his name on a list of officials he'd like to get rid of before the end of the year, after which such moves might have a negative effect on his re-election campaign, officials said.

The president was angered by what he viewed as Bolton's positioning himself in the news media as the decision-maker on key issues like Iran and Venezuela, the officials said, and it didn't help that Trump thought those policies weren't working.

Trump's first national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, was in a Virginia courtroom Tuesday for a hearing ahead of his sentencing in December. Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to a charge of lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

In late May or early June, Bolton was told by a White House official that he should steer clear of the president, keep a low profile and let him cool off amid tensions between the two over policy, according to three people familiar with the conversation. The official suggested Bolton travel more or otherwise find matters to focus on that would keep him away from Trump.

A spokesman for Bolton denied such a conversation took place and dismissed the notion of tensions with the president or any other administration officials.

When asked about the conversation, one White House official described the talk as "good advice."

When Trump is unsatisfied with a top aide, he sometimes turns to that aide's predecessor, with whom he was at odds and had fired. For example, Trump began calling his first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, when his second one, John Kelly, started trying to get him to do things he didn't want to do.

Trump's phone calls to McMaster began in the fall of 2018, about six months after Bolton had taken the job. The most recent call that the people familiar with the conversations knew of was a few months ago.

In another conversation in late spring, when Trump was unsure about his choice of then-Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan to permanently hold the job, the president wanted to know what McMaster thought he should do. At the time, Trump was asking his advisers inside and outside the White House for alternatives to Shanahan, and he ultimately switched to nominate Mark Esper, who was confirmed by the Senate.

At least one of Trump's calls with McMaster focused on Iran, an issue over which Trump and Bolton have clashed because the president felt his national security adviser was pushing him into a military confrontation. Bolton has long been one of the Republican Party's leading voices on taking an aggressive approach on Iran, including advocating for regime change. He was instrumental in Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and has advocated positions that have at times put him at odds with Trump, who campaigned on ending, not starting, military conflicts overseas.

McMaster declined to comment.

 

[fraurosena]

The DOJ is busy doing Trump's bidding. Political prosecution at its finest. Or worst, depending on how you look at it.

 

[fraurosena]

Correction: America has been staring a Constitutional Crisis in the face since 1/20/2017. 

[fraurosena]

The timing of this is astoundingly ironic.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

OH FFS: "State Dept. intensifies email probe of Hillary Clinton’s former aides"

Spoiler

The Trump administration is investigating the email records of dozens of current and former senior State Department officials who sent messages to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email, reviving a politically toxic matter that overshadowed the 2016 election, current and former officials said.

As many as 130 officials have been contacted in recent weeks by State Department investigators — a list that includes senior officials who reported directly to Clinton as well as others in lower-level jobs whose emails were at some point relayed to her inbox, said current and former State Department officials. Those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have been retroactively classified and now constitute potential security violations, according to letters reviewed by The Washington Post.

In virtually all of the cases, potentially sensitive information, now recategorized as “classified,” was sent to Clinton’s unsecure inbox.

State Department investigators began contacting the former officials about 18 months ago, after President Trump’s election, and then seemed to drop the effort before picking it up in August, officials said.

Senior State Department officials said that they are following standard protocol in an investigation that began during the latter days of the Obama administration and is nearing completion.

“This has nothing to do with who is in the White House,” said a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing probe. “This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about 3½ years.”

To many of those under scrutiny, including some of the Democratic Party’s top foreign policy experts, the recent flurry of activity surrounding the Clinton email case represents a new front on which the Trump administration could be accused of employing the powers of the executive branch against perceived political adversaries.

The existence of the probe follows revelations that the president used multiple levers of his office to pressure the leader of Ukraine to pursue investigations that Trump hoped would produce damaging information about Democrats, including potential presidential rival Joe Biden.

State Department officials vigorously denied there was any political motivation behind their actions, and said that the reviews of retroactively classified emails were conducted by career bureaucrats who did not know the names of the subjects being investigated.

“The process is set up in a manner to completely avoid any appearance of political bias,” said a second senior State Department official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the mechanics of an internal probe.

Clinton’s use of a private email server during her term as secretary triggered multiple investigations by the State Department, the FBI and Congress. The bureau did not accuse her of breaking the law, but she blamed the FBI’s unusual public handling of the matter as a major factor in her loss in the 2016 election.

“I’d like to think that this is just routine, but something strange is going on,” said Jeffrey Feltman, a former assistant secretary for Near East Affairs. In early 2018 Feltman received a letter informing him that a half dozen of his messages included classified information. Then a few weeks ago he was found culpable for more than 50 emails that contained classified information.

“A couple of the emails cited by State as problems were sent after my May 2012 retirement, when I was already working for the United Nations,” he said.

A former senior U.S. official familiar with the email investigation described it as a way for Republicans “to keep the Clinton email issue alive.” The former official said the probe was “a way to tarnish a whole bunch of Democratic foreign policy people” and discourage if not prevent them from returning to government service.

The probe is being carried out by investigators from the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), have been pressing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to complete the review of classified information sent to Clinton’s private emails and report back to Congress.

State Department officials said they were bound by law to adjudicate any violations.

Former Obama administration officials, however, described the probe as a remarkably aggressive crackdown by an administration with its own troubled record of handling classified material. Trump has improperly disclosed classified information to foreign officials and used phones that national security officials warned were vulnerable to foreign surveillance, according to current and former officials.

At the same time, Trump overrode the concerns of his former White House chief of staff and U.S. intelligence officials to give his son-in-law and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner access to highly classified materials, officials said.

The list of State officials being questioned includes prominent ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state responsible for U.S. policy in the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia. But it also includes dozens of current and former career bureaucrats who served as conduits for outside officials trying to get important messages to Clinton.

In most cases the bureaucrats and political appointees didn’t send the emails directly to Clinton, but passed them to William Burns, who served as deputy secretary of state, or Jake Sullivan, the former director of policy planning at the State Department. Burns and Sullivan then forwarded the messages to Clinton’s private email.

Burns and Sullivan declined to comment. Other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the matter and concern for retaliation.

Those targeted began receiving letters in August, saying, “You have been identified as possibly bearing some culpability” in supposedly newly uncovered “security incidents,” according to a copy of one letter obtained by The Washington Post.

In many cases, the incidents appear to center on the sending of information attributed to foreign officials, including summaries of phone conversations with foreign diplomats — a routine occurrence among State Department employees.

There is no indication in any of the materials reviewed by The Post that the emails under scrutiny contained sensitive information about classified U.S. initiatives or programs. In one case, a former official was asked to explain dozens of messages dating back to 2009 that contained messages that foreign officials wanted relayed rapidly to Washington at a time when U.S. Foreign Service officers were equipped with BlackBerrys and other devices that were not capable of sending classified transmissions. The messages came in through “regular email” and then were forwarded through official — though unclassified — State Department channels.

In other instances officials were relaying email summaries of time-sensitive conversations with foreign leaders conducted over unclassified cellphones.

Those communications are now being “upclassified” or “reclassified,” according to several officials involved in the investigation, meaning that they have been retroactively assessed to contain material so sensitive that they should have been sent only on State Department classified systems.

Many of those who have been targeted by the probe and found “not culpable,” described it as an effort to harass diplomats for the routine conduct of their job.

“It is such an obscene abuse of power and time involving so many people for so many years,” one former U.S. official said of the inquiry. “This has just sucked up people’s lives for years and years.”

Several of those who have been questioned said that the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security investigators made it clear that they were pursuing the matter reluctantly, and under external pressure.

One official said the investigators were apologetic: “They realize how absurd it is.”

Those targeted do not appear to be in jeopardy of criminal prosecution — the FBI investigation of the Clinton email case has been closed since before the 2016 election. But many fear the results of the probe will damage their reputations and complicate their ability to maintain security clearances.

Several said they have received follow-on letters saying that investigators “determined that the [security] incident is valid,” but that they did not “bear any individual culpability” — an ambiguous designation that could pose complications in future background checks and confirmation hearings.

“It gives them a way to hassle pretty much anyone,” a former senior U.S. official said.

In many instances, the officials said that it had been so long since they had been questioned that they assumed the email case had been resolved, even though Trump routinely rails about the Clinton email issue.

Trump raised the issue as recently as Wednesday, calling it “one of the great crimes committed” by his 2016 opponent.

Trump faces impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives in the wake of a whistleblower report by a CIA officer exposing Trump’s efforts on a July 25 call to pressure the leader of Ukraine to pursue investigations that Trump hoped would generate embarrassing material about Biden.

Trump’s request for that “favor” came as his administration was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from Kiev and dangling a potential White House visit for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The FBI began examining Clinton’s use of a private email server in July 2015, based on a referral from the intelligence community inspector general. Their investigation sought to determine whether anyone — especially the former secretary of state — had broken federal law in discussing classified information on unclassified systems.

Investigators reviewed 30,000 emails that Clinton turned back over to the State Department after leaving others, and took other steps, including tracking down computers and other devices Clinton had used, to find thousands more. Their investigation included examinations of the archived government accounts of people who had been in government at the same time as Clinton and who might have naturally exchanged messages with her.

Although Clinton was considered the biggest player in the investigation, she was never formally labeled a subject or target, and investigators also considered the conduct of her top aides and colleagues.

About a year later, in July 2016, then-FBI Director James B. Comey announced he was recommending the case be closed with no charges. He said Clinton’s and her aides’ handling of classified information was “extremely careless,” but not such that it warranted criminal charges. He suggested those who did wrong could face job-related consequences, and took a broad swipe at the State Department, saying its employees’ use of unclassified email systems was “generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government,” according to his prepared remarks.

A few months later, the bureau resumed the inquiry after discovering more of Clinton’s correspondence with a top aide on a device investigators were examining in a separate investigation of the aide’s husband. But they found nothing to change their conclusion and closed the case again just before the 2016 election.

 

[CTRLZero]

I suppose they are wrapping up the email investigation to free up time to look for that pesky birth certificate...

?

[fraurosena]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

OH FFS: "State Dept. intensifies email probe of Hillary Clinton’s former aides"

  Reveal hidden contents

The Trump administration is investigating the email records of dozens of current and former senior State Department officials who sent messages to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email, reviving a politically toxic matter that overshadowed the 2016 election, current and former officials said.

As many as 130 officials have been contacted in recent weeks by State Department investigators — a list that includes senior officials who reported directly to Clinton as well as others in lower-level jobs whose emails were at some point relayed to her inbox, said current and former State Department officials. Those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have been retroactively classified and now constitute potential security violations, according to letters reviewed by The Washington Post.

In virtually all of the cases, potentially sensitive information, now recategorized as “classified,” was sent to Clinton’s unsecure inbox.

State Department investigators began contacting the former officials about 18 months ago, after President Trump’s election, and then seemed to drop the effort before picking it up in August, officials said.

Senior State Department officials said that they are following standard protocol in an investigation that began during the latter days of the Obama administration and is nearing completion.

“This has nothing to do with who is in the White House,” said a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing probe. “This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about 3½ years.”

To many of those under scrutiny, including some of the Democratic Party’s top foreign policy experts, the recent flurry of activity surrounding the Clinton email case represents a new front on which the Trump administration could be accused of employing the powers of the executive branch against perceived political adversaries.

The existence of the probe follows revelations that the president used multiple levers of his office to pressure the leader of Ukraine to pursue investigations that Trump hoped would produce damaging information about Democrats, including potential presidential rival Joe Biden.

State Department officials vigorously denied there was any political motivation behind their actions, and said that the reviews of retroactively classified emails were conducted by career bureaucrats who did not know the names of the subjects being investigated.

“The process is set up in a manner to completely avoid any appearance of political bias,” said a second senior State Department official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the mechanics of an internal probe.

Clinton’s use of a private email server during her term as secretary triggered multiple investigations by the State Department, the FBI and Congress. The bureau did not accuse her of breaking the law, but she blamed the FBI’s unusual public handling of the matter as a major factor in her loss in the 2016 election.

“I’d like to think that this is just routine, but something strange is going on,” said Jeffrey Feltman, a former assistant secretary for Near East Affairs. In early 2018 Feltman received a letter informing him that a half dozen of his messages included classified information. Then a few weeks ago he was found culpable for more than 50 emails that contained classified information.

“A couple of the emails cited by State as problems were sent after my May 2012 retirement, when I was already working for the United Nations,” he said.

A former senior U.S. official familiar with the email investigation described it as a way for Republicans “to keep the Clinton email issue alive.” The former official said the probe was “a way to tarnish a whole bunch of Democratic foreign policy people” and discourage if not prevent them from returning to government service.

The probe is being carried out by investigators from the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), have been pressing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to complete the review of classified information sent to Clinton’s private emails and report back to Congress.

State Department officials said they were bound by law to adjudicate any violations.

Former Obama administration officials, however, described the probe as a remarkably aggressive crackdown by an administration with its own troubled record of handling classified material. Trump has improperly disclosed classified information to foreign officials and used phones that national security officials warned were vulnerable to foreign surveillance, according to current and former officials.

At the same time, Trump overrode the concerns of his former White House chief of staff and U.S. intelligence officials to give his son-in-law and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner access to highly classified materials, officials said.

The list of State officials being questioned includes prominent ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state responsible for U.S. policy in the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia. But it also includes dozens of current and former career bureaucrats who served as conduits for outside officials trying to get important messages to Clinton.

In most cases the bureaucrats and political appointees didn’t send the emails directly to Clinton, but passed them to William Burns, who served as deputy secretary of state, or Jake Sullivan, the former director of policy planning at the State Department. Burns and Sullivan then forwarded the messages to Clinton’s private email.

Burns and Sullivan declined to comment. Other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the matter and concern for retaliation.

Those targeted began receiving letters in August, saying, “You have been identified as possibly bearing some culpability” in supposedly newly uncovered “security incidents,” according to a copy of one letter obtained by The Washington Post.

In many cases, the incidents appear to center on the sending of information attributed to foreign officials, including summaries of phone conversations with foreign diplomats — a routine occurrence among State Department employees.

There is no indication in any of the materials reviewed by The Post that the emails under scrutiny contained sensitive information about classified U.S. initiatives or programs. In one case, a former official was asked to explain dozens of messages dating back to 2009 that contained messages that foreign officials wanted relayed rapidly to Washington at a time when U.S. Foreign Service officers were equipped with BlackBerrys and other devices that were not capable of sending classified transmissions. The messages came in through “regular email” and then were forwarded through official — though unclassified — State Department channels.

In other instances officials were relaying email summaries of time-sensitive conversations with foreign leaders conducted over unclassified cellphones.

Those communications are now being “upclassified” or “reclassified,” according to several officials involved in the investigation, meaning that they have been retroactively assessed to contain material so sensitive that they should have been sent only on State Department classified systems.

Many of those who have been targeted by the probe and found “not culpable,” described it as an effort to harass diplomats for the routine conduct of their job.

“It is such an obscene abuse of power and time involving so many people for so many years,” one former U.S. official said of the inquiry. “This has just sucked up people’s lives for years and years.”

Several of those who have been questioned said that the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security investigators made it clear that they were pursuing the matter reluctantly, and under external pressure.

One official said the investigators were apologetic: “They realize how absurd it is.”

Those targeted do not appear to be in jeopardy of criminal prosecution — the FBI investigation of the Clinton email case has been closed since before the 2016 election. But many fear the results of the probe will damage their reputations and complicate their ability to maintain security clearances.

Several said they have received follow-on letters saying that investigators “determined that the [security] incident is valid,” but that they did not “bear any individual culpability” — an ambiguous designation that could pose complications in future background checks and confirmation hearings.

“It gives them a way to hassle pretty much anyone,” a former senior U.S. official said.

In many instances, the officials said that it had been so long since they had been questioned that they assumed the email case had been resolved, even though Trump routinely rails about the Clinton email issue.

Trump raised the issue as recently as Wednesday, calling it “one of the great crimes committed” by his 2016 opponent.

Trump faces impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives in the wake of a whistleblower report by a CIA officer exposing Trump’s efforts on a July 25 call to pressure the leader of Ukraine to pursue investigations that Trump hoped would generate embarrassing material about Biden.

Trump’s request for that “favor” came as his administration was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from Kiev and dangling a potential White House visit for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The FBI began examining Clinton’s use of a private email server in July 2015, based on a referral from the intelligence community inspector general. Their investigation sought to determine whether anyone — especially the former secretary of state — had broken federal law in discussing classified information on unclassified systems.

Investigators reviewed 30,000 emails that Clinton turned back over to the State Department after leaving others, and took other steps, including tracking down computers and other devices Clinton had used, to find thousands more. Their investigation included examinations of the archived government accounts of people who had been in government at the same time as Clinton and who might have naturally exchanged messages with her.

Although Clinton was considered the biggest player in the investigation, she was never formally labeled a subject or target, and investigators also considered the conduct of her top aides and colleagues.

About a year later, in July 2016, then-FBI Director James B. Comey announced he was recommending the case be closed with no charges. He said Clinton’s and her aides’ handling of classified information was “extremely careless,” but not such that it warranted criminal charges. He suggested those who did wrong could face job-related consequences, and took a broad swipe at the State Department, saying its employees’ use of unclassified email systems was “generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government,” according to his prepared remarks.

A few months later, the bureau resumed the inquiry after discovering more of Clinton’s correspondence with a top aide on a device investigators were examining in a separate investigation of the aide’s husband. But they found nothing to change their conclusion and closed the case again just before the 2016 election.

 

Pompeo: “Quick! We need to deflect from our complicity with Trump’s treason! What have we got? Oh, I know! Hillary’s emails! Yes, I know we’ve investigated them to death already... but this time we’ll focus on her aides. How about that? We haven’t done that yet, have we?”

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[WiseGirl]

There is so much I don't know where to put half of it.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

The ironic thing is, many of these small farmers voted for Trump. On one hand, they are getting what they asked for. On the other hand, I feel absolutely sick about people losing farms that have been in their family for generations when there are still people who really want to work the farm. (I know that in some farming families the next generation really doesn't want to farm which of course is there right. But, having lived in two farming areas, I know how much the land means to the families.)

[GreyhoundFan]

"IRS whistleblower said to report Treasury political appointee might have tried to interfere in audit of Trump or Pence"

Spoiler

An Internal Revenue Service official has filed a whistleblower complaint reporting that he was told at least one Treasury Department political appointee attempted to improperly interfere with the annual audit of the president or vice president’s tax returns, according to multiple people familiar with the document.

Trump administration officials dismissed the whistleblower’s complaint as flimsy because it is based on conversations with other government officials. But congressional Democrats were alarmed by the complaint, now circulating on Capitol Hill, and flagged it to a federal judge. They are also discussing whether to make it public.

The complaint has come amid the escalating legal battle between the Treasury Department and House Democrats over the release of President Trump’s tax returns. Part of that inquiry from Democrats is over how the IRS conducts its annual audit of the president and vice president’s tax returns. That process is supposed to be walled off from political appointees and interference.

The existence of a whistleblower complaint was revealed in a court filing several months ago, but little about it has become public. It has not been revealed previously that the complaint pertained to allegations of interference in the audit process by at least one Treasury Department official. It has also not been previously revealed that the whistleblower is a career IRS official.

The whistleblower’s account focuses on the integrity of the government’s system for auditing the president and vice president’s tax returns.

President Trump has broken decades of precedent by refusing to publicly release his tax returns. Democrats filed a lawsuit earlier this year demanding the disclosure of those filings, invoking a federal law designed to give Congress access to any tax return.

The details of the IRS complaint follow news of a separate, explosive whistleblower complaint filed in August by a member of the intelligence community. That complaint revealed Trump’s request of Ukranian leaders to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a political rival. It has spurred an impeachment probe on Capitol Hill.

The IRS complaint has received less attention but has divided government officials.

Two administration officials have described the complaint as hearsay and suggested it was politically motivated, but they spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Democrats who have reviewed it regard it as a deeply significant allegation that, if true, suggests that political appointees may have tried to interfere with the government audit process, which was set up to be insulated from political pressures.

Key parts of the complaint remain under wraps in part because of strict privacy laws that prevent the disclosure of any details related to the filing of tax returns.

People who described the complaint spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who received the whistleblower’s complaint in July, said in court filings this summer that the complaint contains credible evidence of “potential ‘inappropriate efforts to influence’ the audit program.” Neal has also said the complaint raises “serious and urgent concerns.”

The whistleblower, a career official at the IRS, confirmed in an interview with The Washington Post this week that he had filed a formal complaint and sent it to the tax committee chairs in both houses of Congress, including Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), and to the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration on July 29.

The whistleblower would not comment on the substance of the complaint itself but focused on the importance of protecting those who come forward to disclose problems in government.

Trump has closely guarded any details of his tax returns, refusing to release them during his presidential campaign and throughout his presidency. He has given a variety of reasons for refusing to release the returns, often saying they are under audit and therefore should remain private. Vice President Pence also has not made public any of his recent tax returns.

Neal has not revealed whether the whistleblower complaint is about Trump or Pence, but he said in an August court filing that the allegations “cast doubt” on the Trump administration’s contention that there is no reason for concern that IRS employees could face interference when auditing a president’s tax returns.

It is very unusual for political appointees at Treasury to ask IRS career staff about the status of an individual’s audit, according to legal experts and former IRS officials.

“Nobody at the Treasury Department should be calling to find out the status of anybody’s audit,” said John Koskinen, who served as IRS commissioner under both Trump and President Barack Obama. “For a Treasury official to call a career person — even just for information — seems to me highly inappropriate, even if it’s just checking in on how it’s going.” 

The Post has been unable to verify the allegation in the whistleblower’s complaint of improper communication between Treasury and IRS on the tax audit program. 

A spokesman for the Treasury Department did not comment on details of the complaint. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin previously told Neal he forwarded the complaint to the inspector general’s office.

A spokesman for Neal refused to share any details about the substance of the complaint, citing taxpayer protection rules. Michael Zona, a spokesman for Grassley, also declined to comment, saying the senator does not discuss such confidential complaints.

James Jackson, a deputy inspector general at the Treasury Department, said in September when asked about the whistleblower complaint at a congressional hearing: “We can’t confirm or deny that we may or may not be doing anything. I can tell you, though, that anytime we get any kind of allegation in this world, in this realm, we investigate it aggressively.” 

Jackson added: “We are not aware of any misconduct.”

In his interview with The Post, the whistleblower dismissed the contention of critics that the complaint was uncorroborated.

“That’s what investigations are for,” he said. 

He also denied his action was politically motivated.

“Anyone who knows me knows I would not hesitate to do the same, as would most career IRS public servants, regardless of any political preference,” he said. “I take very seriously the duty of career civil servants to act with integrity and perform our duties impartially, even at the risk that someone will make a charge of bias.”

The whistleblower also castigated public officials who he said were making federal employees fearful of reporting wrongdoing. Trump has in recent days said he wants to know the identity of the whistleblower in the Ukraine case.

“I steadfastly refuse to discuss the substance or details of the complaint, but I have some legitimate concerns about reckless statements being made about whistleblowers,” he said. He said such statements “attack the messenger when the focus should be on the facts that were presented. I am concerned also by the relative silence of people who should be repudiating these dangerous attacks in the strongest terms.” 

Neal told Bloomberg he is consulting with legal counsel about whether to release the whistleblower complaint. 

The chairman has “been almost entirely silent about the whole matter” related to the whistleblower in private meetings of the Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee, according to one lawmaker who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Legal experts and former government officials expressed alarm at the prospect of interference from political appointees with audits conducted by career IRS staff.

The tax returns of the president and vice president must be kept “at all times” in an orange folder and locked in a secure drawer or cabinet when the appointed IRS examiner is not with the documents, according to the IRS’s manual.

“It’s very important that enforcement matters, including audits, be handled independently by the IRS,” said Mark W. Everson, who served as IRS commissioner under President George W. Bush.

The mandatory audit program refers only to the audit of the president and vice president, said Mark E. Matthews, who was a deputy IRS commissioner under Bush and is now a partner at the firm Caplin & Drysdale. Those audits are viewed only by a small number of senior career IRS staff, Matthews said.

The president’s tax returns have already produced divisions between political appointees in the Treasury Department and officials at the IRS. In May, The Post obtained a 10-page memo written by an attorney in the IRS Office of Legal Counsel finding the administration had to turn over a president’s returns if requested by Congress, unless the president invokes executive privilege. The Treasury Department has denied Congress’s request for the returns, but the White House has not invoked executive privilege.

In April, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin also revealed department attorneys consulted with the White House general counsel’s office about the potential release of Trump’s tax returns before they were formally requested by House Democrats. 

Mnuchin, who said he was not involved in those conversations, said the communication between Treasury and White House attorneys was “informational” and that Treasury officials did not ask the White House for permission about whether to release the returns.

The whistleblower said that Treasury investigators, and presumably the inspector general, were aware of his complaint. “I brought my concerns to my supervisors, who advised me to report the matter to the appropriate people with investigatory authority,” he told The Post. 

David Barnes, a spokesman for the Treasury inspector general, declined to comment.

The whistleblower complaint was first disclosed by Neal as part of his lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking six years of the president’s tax returns, which the administration refused to turn over despite a 1924 law explicitly giving Congress the authority to obtain them.

Neal told a federal court this summer that House Democrats had received an unsolicited message from a federal employee “setting forth credible allegations of ‘evidence of possible misconduct’ — specifically, potential ‘inappropriate efforts to influence’ the mandatory audit program.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"10 times Trump Cabinet officials said something that soon fell apart"

Spoiler

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted Wednesday that he was on that fateful call between President Trump and Ukraine’s president — about a week and a half after playing dumb about the call’s contents in an interview. As The Post’s Philip Bump writes, it’s a great example of a politician saying things that are strictly true while completely misleading the people he’s supposed to serve.

And as far as obfuscations go, it’s got plenty of company in Trump’s Cabinet.

From basically Day One, Trump Cabinet and Cabient-level officials have made claims or offered explanations that — similar to Pompeo’s — would soon fall apart in spectacular fashion. Oftentimes, they were doing so to toe the Trump line; other times, they were merely covering their own backsides.

Below is a recap of the times they’ve been found out.

1. Pompeo on Ukraine

The claim: After ABC News’s Martha Raddatz asked Pompeo about reports that Trump pressured Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden, Pompeo responded, “So, you just gave me a report about a [intelligence community] whistleblower complaint, none of which I’ve seen.” He added: “I think I saw a statement from the Ukrainian foreign minister yesterday, said there was no pressure applied in the course of the conversation."

The truth: Pompeo has now admitted he was on the call, meaning the ignorance he feigned about the whistleblower complaint was disingenuous at best. He was also asked specifically about the call — not just the complaint. He clearly didn’t need to rely on what Ukraine said about the call.

2. Ross testimony denying his leading role in census citizenship question

The claim: In March 2018 testimony, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that the “Department of Justice, as you know, initiated the request for inclusion of the citizenship question.”

The truth: The Washington Post reported months later that Ross’s efforts to add the citizenship question dated to early 2017 — basically as soon as he joined Trump’s Cabinet and months before the Justice Department made a formal request.

The Commerce Department explained that these were normal behind-the-scenes discussions before a formal request was made, but Ross sure made it sound like this wasn’t his idea — even as he was clearly pushing for it hard. He wrote in one May 2017 email: “I am mystified why nothing have been done in response to my months old request that we include the citizenship question. Why not?”

3. Barr denying knowledge of the Mueller team’s concerns

The claim: In separate testimonies, Attorney General William P. Barr claimed ignorance about how special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team viewed his misleading summary of the Mueller report. In a House hearing April 9, Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) referenced reports that “members of the special counsel’s team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your March 24th letter.” Asked whether he knew what they were referencing, Barr said: “No, I don’t. I think — I think — I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.”

The truth: Mueller had sent Barr a letter two weeks earlier — on March 27 — stating that Barr’s summary “did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.”

Barr was asked about “members” of Mueller’s team and not Mueller specifically, so it might have been technically true. But to pretend he was unaware of the crux of these criticisms was, again, disingenuous at best.

4. Sessions denying contact with Russians

The claim: During his confirmation hearing for attorney general, Jeff Sessions denied he had been in contact with Russians in 2016. “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that [2016] campaign, and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians,” he said. He narrowed the claim later to say, “I never met with any Russian officials to discuss the issues of the campaign.”

The truth: Neither turned out to be accurate. Sessions spoke with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice in 2016. And intercepts later showed the two did discuss campaign-related matters.

5. Pence denying that Trump fired Comey over Russia

The claim: After Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey in May 2017, Vice President Pence joined White House spokespeople in denying that it had to do with the Russia investigation. “That’s not what — let me be clear with you — that was not what this is about,” he said May 10, repeating, “That’s not what this is about.”

The truth: One day later, Trump went on NBC News and declared, “When I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.’ ”

6. Pence denying Michael Flynn discussed sanctions with Kislyak

The claim: After it was reported that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn had spoken with Kislyak during the transition period — possibly in violation of U.S. law against non-government officials conducting diplomacy — Pence stated they hadn’t discussed the Obama administration’s new sanctions. “They did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia.” He repeated that the talks “had nothing whatsoever to do with those sanctions.”

The truth: They did, as The Post soon reported. Flynn explained (rather dubiously) that he didn’t consider the things they were talking about to be “sanctions” per se. Flynn was forced out after Pence and others accused him of lying to them about it.

7. McMaster denying report about Trump disclosing classified information to Russians

The claim: After The Post reported that Trump had disclosed highly classified information to Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office, Flynn’s replacement as national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, was dispatched to deny it. “The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false,” McMaster said. He added that “at no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed.”

The truth: The White House has never disputed the specifics, and the Mueller report noted that former White House press secretary Sean Spicer told Mueller’s team that “he would have been told to ‘clean it up’ if the reporting on the meeting with the Russian foreign minister was inaccurate, but he was never told to correct the reporting.”

McMaster’s denial was broad, so it could have been technically accurate if any part of the story was wrong, but it was certainly intended to cast doubt on the central claim.

8. Nielsen claimed there was no family separation policy

The claim: “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period,” then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tweeted June 17, 2018.

The truth: An inspector general’s report made clear that the separations were a direct result of a decision by the Trump administration. “The Zero Tolerance Policy, however, fundamentally changed DHS’ approach to immigration enforcement. In early May 2018, DHS determined that the policy would cover alien adults arriving illegally in the United States with minor children. Because minor children cannot be held in criminal custody with an adult, alien adults who entered the United States illegally would have to be separated from any accompanying minor children when the adults were referred for criminal prosecution.”

It might have been technically true that the policy didn’t say, “We will separate families,” but it was inherent in the decision. And now-acting DHS secretary Kevin McAleenan has made clear that officials knew that was the case.

9. Kelly’s baseless story about Frederica S. Wilson

The claim: Then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly claimed in October 2017 that Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) boasted about winning money from the Obama administration for a building at a 2015 dedication for the building. Kelly said Wilson had “talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money, the $20 million,” Kelly said. He accused her of being the latest in a “long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise.”

The truth: Video later surfaced of the dedication showing the congresswoman saying no such thing. Kelly later declined to apologize and suggested that Wilson had made the comments in a separate, private discussion, but he declined to elaborate.

10. Pruitt denying pushing for raises for top staffers

The claim: When asked about large, controversial raises given to two top Environmental Protection Agency staffers, then-Administrator Scott Pruitt suggested that he hadn’t been involved. “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 that going forward,” he told Fox News’s Ed Henry.

The truth: Sources later told The Post that Pruitt had endorsed the idea of the raises a month earlier, even though he hadn’t carried them out himself.

Too bad these weren't the only times people in this crooked administration lied.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Energy Secretary Rick Perry eyeing exit in November"

Spoiler

Energy Secretary Rick Perry is expected to announce his resignation from the administration by the end of November, according to three people familiar with his plans.

Perry, who had been Texas' longest-serving governor before joining President Donald Trump's Cabinet in 2017, has largely avoided the controversies that felled others in the administration. But his travels to Ukraine lately have embroiled him in the impeachment inquiry engulfing Trump and his inner circle, even though two of the people called the scandal unrelated to Perry's departure, which they said he has been planning for several months.

Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette is expected to replace Perry, according to three people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss the departure before an official announcement was made.

Perry's plans after leaving the Energy Department were not immediately known, but the 69-year-old has ruled out another try for the White House after running unsuccessfully in the 2012 and 2016 Republican primaries. “I’m done. Quote me on that,” he said when asked about another presidential campaign last year, adding that he’d “totally failed” at retiring earlier as Texas governor.

But it's an open question how much of his retirement will be spent answering questions about the Ukraine affair, which centers on questions about whether Trump withheld U.S. military aid to pressure the government in Kiev to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Perry has drawn scrutiny because he led the U.S. delegation to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's inauguration in May, a visit that came as the administration was trying to determine whether the new leader would be amenable to Trump's demands, according to a whistleblower's report that the White House released last week. Perry was a last-minute replacement for Vice President Mike Pence, who is facing mounting questions about his own role in the scandal.

No evidence has emerged that Perry was directly involved with Trump’s attempt to drum up an investigation focused on his political opponent, but Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J) earlier this week sent a letter to Perry requesting information about his activities and interactions there.

The White House did not comment on Perry's future, and a DOE spokesperson declined to say whether he would resign next month.

“While the Beltway media has breathlessly reported on rumors of Secretary Perry's departure for months, he is still the Secretary of Energy and a proud member of President Trump’s Cabinet. One day the media will be right. Today is not that day,” DOE spokesperson Shaylyn Hynes said.

Brouillette has been filling in for Perry at Cabinet meetings for the past few months, one source added. Many of Perry’s former DOE staff members — including chief of staff Brian McCormack and special assistant Luke Wallwork — have all left DOE in recent weeks, a source said.

Perry, a frequent traveler to Eastern Europe as pitchman for U.S. energy exports, was also a subject in the subpoena that House Democrats served to Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani earlier this week. The subpoena includes a demand for documents and other communications involving Perry and the former New York City mayor connected to Ukraine. A second subpoena expected to be issued this week will seek details of conversations between acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Perry, as well as records from other current or former DOE officials.

Perry had been sharply critical of Trump in 2015, calling his then-rival's campaign "a cancer on conservatism." But Trump nevertheless tapped him to run the Energy Department — an agency Perry once pledged to shut down had he been successful in his White House bid. He came to D.C. wary of getting caught up in the sort of scandals that eventually forced out former Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt and former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, according to multiple people close to him.

Perry eagerly took the lead in Trump's effort to resurrect the struggling coal industry, but his bid to persuade energy regulators to establish financial support for coal power plants was soundly rejected by the bipartisan Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He shifted his attention to promoting U.S. supplies of coal, oil and natural gas to foreign governments, positioning U.S. energy supplies as a counterbalance to Russian and OPEC exports. Still, his earnestness often drew mockery, including his references to American natural gas as "molecules of U.S. freedom."

But he proved to be a successful promoter of liquefied natural gas exports, traveling regularly to Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and other Eastern European countries to pitch exports.

"We're going to bring our A-game," he said after a 10-day trip to Eastern Europe in 2018. "We're going to try to win every contract that we can, knowing that we can't win every contract and we can't supply every contract. But if we're in the game in a very substantive way, we will help drive the competition, which will drive down the cost of gas."

He also often touted the fuel's role in cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, even though he was criticized by Democrats and environmentalists for rejecting the scientific data showing carbon dioxide was the main factor in driving climate change. As recently as August, he ridiculed Democrats for living in a "fantasy world" in their calls for aggressive action to fight climate change.

 

[fraurosena]

We already know Bill Barr considers himself to be Trump's personal lawyer, but it's now clear the DOJ is also considered to be his personal law firm.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Elaine Chao favored Kentuckians in meeting with officials seeking grants"

Spoiler

In her first 14 months as Transportation secretary, Elaine Chao met with officials from Kentucky, which her husband Mitch McConnell represents in the Senate, vastly more often than those from any other state.

In all, 25 percent of Chao’s scheduled meetings with local officials of any state from January 2017 to March 2018 were with Kentuckians, who make up only about 1.3 percent of the U.S. population. The next closest were Indiana and Georgia, with 6 percent of meetings each, according to Chao’s calendar records, the only ones that have been made public.

At least five of Chao’s 18 meetings with local Kentuckians were requested in emails from McConnell staffers, who alerted Chao’s staffers which of the officials were “friends” or “loyal supporters,” according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The emails from McConnell’s office to Chao’s staff sometimes included details about projects that participants wanted to discuss with the secretary, or to ask her for special favors. Some of the officials who met with Chao had active grant applications before the Department of Transportation through competitive programs and the emails indicate that the meetings sometimes involved the exchange of information about grants and opportunities for the officials to plead their case directly before Chao.

After a meeting in the spring of this year, the mayor of Owensboro, Kentucky, a McConnell stronghold that had earlier received $11.5 million in DOT funding, thanked Todd Inman, a former McConnell campaign staffer working with Chao, for assembling “so many high level staffers. . . [to] answer questions and give advice on transit, roads and the political process needed to move our projects along such as I-165.

“Then, the icing on the cake, time with Secretary Chao herself. What a kind and generous lady, not to mention extremely smart, a true public servant, and a great friend to OBKY,” wrote the Owensboro mayor, Tom Watson, in May, 2019.

The fact that Chao’s calendar shows that one out of every four meetings with local officials was with Kentuckians is significant because the department has long maintained that it, and she, have shown no favoritism to the state represented by her husband, even while local officials from other states have complained about having trouble getting to see her.

The meetings also cast light on the ethical challenges of having a married couple as Transportation secretary and Senate majority leader. Federal ethics rules strictly prohibit any actions by government officials that benefit them personally or their close family members; McConnell and Chao’s political and personal fortunes are inextricably tied, and his re-election campaign frequently cites his ability to deliver federal dollars to his home state.

“The marriage is the thing that underlies all of this,” said Mel Dubnick, a professor of government ethics and accountability at the University of New Hampshire. Home-state bias in federal government is a common issue in federal grant-making, he said, but Chao’s marriage to the country’s most powerful lawmaker makes the arrangement almost unprecedented.

McConnell – who, like many congressional leaders, has faced complaints from constituents of devoting more time to national issues than local concerns – points to his role in obtaining funds for local Kentucky communities as proof that he’s not lost touch with folks back home, and that his leadership post furthers their interests.

In a recent Morning Consult poll, only 36 percent of Kentuckians approved of his performance, the lowest of any senator facing re-election in 2020. But McConnell answers his critics by citing his support for President Donald Trump and his ability to deliver grants – some of which are from the department his wife leads.

“There are some distinct advantages to having me as the majority leader of the United States Senate,” he said at the August 2018, Fancy Farm picnic in western Kentucky. “I’m in a position to take special care of Kentucky.”

Jesse Benton, who was McConnell’s campaign manager for the bulk of the 2014 race, said the senator’s ability to flex his power in Washington resonates with Kentucky voters, even if he isn’t particularly well-liked.

“I started off thinking we needed to do things to. . . make people see what a warm guy he is,” said Benton. “People didn’t care. What they wanted to see was a McConnell who was powerful, strong and putting Kentucky first, whether it means keeping Kentucky in national conversations, or whether he’s making sure they take their fair share of federal program money.”

That apparently includes his ability to help constituents get meetings with his wife, who controls one of the richest sources of federal outlays. Chao and other Transportation officials declined through the department’s media office to be interviewed. In an emailed statement, a DOT spokesperson said, “The Office of the Secretary has an open-door policy, and welcomes meetings from all state and local officials across the country. Any suggestion to the contrary is not based in fact.”

The spokesperson added that “in the past week alone, the Department met with 28 state, local, and tribal delegations” but, when asked, declined to say how many of those meetings, if any, the secretary herself had sat in on.

Some local officials, however, say they have found it nearly impossible to reach Chao personally, even to discuss the largest projects in the country.

“Ever since she came in, it’s been very hard to figure out how to get time with her,” said Beth Osborne, executive director of Transportation for America, an organization which advises cities on transportation and urban planning. “At the beginning of the administration we got a lot of questions about what it takes to meet with the secretary. People don’t ask anymore. It’s like they’ve given up.”

Osborne, who was deputy and then acting assistant secretary for transportation policy under Transportation Secretaries Ray LaHood and Anthony Foxx in the Obama administration, noted that Chao’s light schedule of meetings with state and local officials “stands in stark contrast” to those secretaries, who instructed aides to accommodate as many meeting requests as possible.

Rather than ask to meet with Chao in Washington, Osborne said, she often recommends that local leaders invite the secretary to their town to see the project for herself, so that then when she has a grant application in her hands she’ll remember her personal experience with that project. “And while I was giving that recommendation I kept hearing from folks, ‘Oh, she doesn’t accept invitations to such things. She just doesn’t do that.’ And I heard that repeatedly: ‘We offered and we were told she just doesn’t do trips. That’s just not her thing.’”

A DOT spokesman said Chao has traveled to 31 states during the two-and-a-half years she’s been in office and meets with state and local officials on most of those trips.

The DOT spokesman also defended Chao’s meetings with officials from Kentucky, saying it’s natural for her to meet with them “given her home-state ties — she’s a proud Kentuckian.”

Kentucky, however, is an adopted home for Chao, who married McConnell in 1993, during his second term in the Senate. She was raised in New York after having emigrated from Taiwan at the age of eight. Many of her close family members still live in New York, and her family’s shipping business is based in New York City.

Yet officials from the New York and New Jersey area say they yearn for the kind of attention she gives to her husband’s constituents. While officials from small towns in Kentucky got to sit down with the secretary in the ninth-floor Lincoln conference room at department headquarters to discuss riverfront projects and highway improvements, she has given the cold shoulder to those advocating for one of the country’s largest infrastructure projects: the repair and replacement of the bridges and tunnels connecting New York and New Jersey that together are known as Gateway.

“One can’t help but think: Would we have already broken ground on Gateway if it were located in Kentucky, not New Jersey and New York?" Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) said last June in reference to previous POLITICO reporting on Chao’s favoritism toward Kentucky.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said he has had better luck getting time with President Donald Trump than Chao.

“I've spoken to the president on a couple of occasions,” he said at a roundtable on Gateway in May. “As a general matter, I have gotten a sense of goodwill in those conversations from him, but the direction has been to take it up with Secretary Chao. I have attempted, at his direction, we have attempted to get on the phone. I've offered to come and sit before her and so far that has not happened. We had a call scheduled that was canceled, at least once if not twice. So it's been frustrating.”

Murphy did speak with Chao by phone shortly after he made these comments.

Meanwhile, Chao has yet to meet with another entity with a tense relationship with DOT: the California High-Speed Rail Authority, from which DOT clawed back nearly $1 billion in rail funds earlier this year. The authority is looking to build a high-speed connection between the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, which is intended to compress a six-hour car ride into a two-hour-and-forty-minute train trip.

“We have made numerous attempts to meet with the secretary and the administrator’s office, and we hope such a meeting can still occur,” said California High-Speed Rail Authority spokeswoman Annie Parker.

When asked whether Chao had met with the high speed rail authority, a DOT spokesman responded that she had spoken with California Gov. Gavin Newsom at the White House, which Newsom's office said was a reception for the National Governor's Association.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, a coalition of state transportation departments, on the other hand, says Chao has been “very accessible.”

“We haven’t heard anything from our members to say that they feel like there’s been any preferential treatment one way or the other,” said Lloyd Brown, communications director at AASHTO, noting that Chao has met with the group’s entire board of directors.

Though POLITICO’s analysis extends only for the 14-month period covered by the calendars that DOT released following an open records lawsuit brought by liberal watchdog group American Oversight, local news reports show that Chao continues to give facetime to Kentuckians. In September 2019, the Paducah, Kentucky, Chamber of Commerce traveled to Washington to ask DOT for $15 million for local riverfront and riverport improvements as well as funding for a new terminal at Barkley Regional Airport.

After having met with McConnell and others in the state’s congressional delegation, according to local reporting, “Chao surprised the group and welcomed the west Kentucky contingent,” noting that “the grant application process is competitive” and that “she loves the entire Paducah riverfront area.”

She signaled that DOT was giving the city’s grant request close attention.

“As we go forward for new and additional needs for the airport, we want to be helpful," she told the group, according to WPSD, a western Kentucky TV station. "I can't promise anything right now, but I can say for the first time in a long time Paducah's going to have a fair shot."

After noting how competitive it can be to get federal transportation money, the station’s report added, “That’s why it goes a long way to shake hands and meet face to face with the people making the decisions.”

***

Chao’s meetings with Kentucky officials included state legislators, mayors, county executives, airport directors and other elected officials, nearly all of whom had grant applications or other official business before the department.

One county official emailed a McConnell staffer discussing how he wanted to head off the Federal Highway Administration, which was advocating for a highway sewer pipe upgrade that he said would cost the county $1 million. Another official hoped to pitch Chao on a transportation project in Southeastern Kentucky that would help put “coal miners back to work.”

McConnell’s staff noted when meeting requests came from officials with close ties to the majority leader.

One constituent, a private consultant who sits on the board of Kentuckians for Better Transportation, an umbrella advocacy group composed of politicians, chambers of commerce and businesses, relayed in an email to McConnell’s office that the majority leader himself had suggested a meeting with Chao.

McConnell’s staffers typically forwarded the requests directly to Inman of DOT, whom Chao had hired as her Director of Operations in early 2017. POLITICO has previously reported that Inman served as a special point-of-contact for Kentuckians with business before the Secretary — a claim the department has repeatedly denied.

Inman, who has now advanced to be Chao’s chief of staff, helped arrange meetings once he received the forwarded requests. In one instance, Inman helped set up a meeting that DOT staff had planned to decline when it was initially requested through other channels. He reconsidered after the request came directly from McConnell's office.

“I will revisit with her as we initially were going to decline,” Inman wrote to McConnell’s Kentucky State Director Terry Carmack.

“So in cases like this, if [Elaine Chao] can’t do it, is it possible to host them at DOT, and get an assistant secretary or 2 to meet with them?” Carmack replied. “That way it is not taking up the Secretary’s time but they feel special. Just a thought.”

Ultimately, Chao held the meeting as requested in May 2017.

According to Chao’s official calendar logs, Inman was listed as an attendee for nearly 90 percent of her meetings with Kentucky state and local officials, but fewer than half of her meetings with officials from other states.

A Department of Transportation spokesperson said that the attendee lists do not necessarily reflect who actually attended a particular meeting, and that many staffers are added to calendar events simply for awareness.

However, public records obtained by POLITICO show that Inman followed up with meeting participants via phone and email, offering extra information and useful favors from his position in the department.

Inman was frequently in contact with local officials from his hometown of Owensboro, which successfully applied for an $11.5 million grant after multiple meetings with Chao. Over email, Inman gave local leaders advice about securing letters of support for their project from McConnell’s and Rep. Brett Guthrie’s offices, and then forwarded those letters to Chao through a direct channel, “so she will see it tonight,” according to Inman.

In another exchange, an Owensboro official asked Inman if the city’s initial application for a grant had been successful, or if they should begin spending resources on a second application. While the grant winners had not yet been announced, Inman suggested that an award was unlikely this round — referencing his knowledge of high-level DOT decision-making — and advised the official to begin work on a second application.

Inman also offered access to higher ranking DOT officials after learning that the Owensboro official was planning to meet with lower-ranking contacts in the Maritime Administration.

“I can see about getting your meeting elevated,” Inman wrote, “the Administrator and Deputy Administrator are good friends and always welcoming.”

Inman’s efforts were also appreciated elsewhere in Kentucky.

Inman phoned and emailed with Boone County Judge-Executive Gary Moore, who met with Chao in December 2017. After winning a $67 million transportation grant in 2018, Moore wrote to Inman to express his gratitude for “your work and the valuable advise [sic] along the way.”

“I was back in Kentucky doing some state visits in August and your name came up during some of my meetings,” a McConnell staffer wrote to Inman in September 2017. “Everyone is very appreciative of the great work you are doing up here.”

***

The attention Chao has shown toward her adopted home state dovetails with the electoral objectives of her husband, who for years has boasted about his ability to leverage his influence in Washington to help Kentucky — including as he gears up for his 2020 reelection.

“As the only one of the four congressional leaders who isn’t from the coastal states of New York or California, I view it as my job to look out for middle America and of course Kentucky in particular,” he wrote in a May op-ed for Kentucky Today, the online publication of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. “That means I use my position as Majority Leader to advance Kentucky’s priorities.”

That could be especially important as Democrats target his seat, having recruited the heavily financed former fighter pilot Amy McGrath to run against him, and as he increasingly relies on his ties to Trump to argue for reelection. When he appeared at Fancy Farms in 2018, a key stop for campaigns in the Bluegrass State, the Senate majority leader had to strain to be heard above the heckling of activists in the crowd.

While Steve Robertson, a former state GOP chairman, said he doubts that Kentucky voters specifically view McConnell’s marriage to Chao as a sign of his influence, the senator’s clout “absolutely contributes to his ability to withstand what people inside the beltway think are political headwinds,” he said.

As such, Chao’s efforts to give special attention to Kentucky officials — even if couched in terms like giving them a “fair shot” — concern experts in government ethics.

“She’s delivering transportation time and resources to Kentucky citizens in a manner that’s not consistent with other states,” said Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group.

“It looks like constituent services,” she continued.

McConnell, never one to apologize for his brand of politics, has done little to clear up perceptions of special treatment for Kentucky.

When asked for comment for this story, McConnell said in an email, “Communities throughout Kentucky were awarded competitive federal grants, bringing critical resources to projects in our state. I was proud to support many of these applications. If you are interested in applying for competitive federal grants, I hope you will contact my office.” His office also sent a rundown of other federal grants McConnell helped secure, including $743,000 for drone technology and $11 million for the Blue Grass Airport near Lexington.

In June, when reporters asked the senator if he was getting special treatment from his wife’s department, McConnell quipped: “You know, I was complaining to [Chao] just last night, 169 projects and Kentucky got only five.”

Federal ethics regulations stipulate that employees in the executive branch should not participate in matters in which family members or business associates have a stake: “Where the employee determines that the circumstances would cause a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts to question his impartiality in the matter, the employee should not participate in the matter,” the regulations state.

But there’s no statutory mechanism to mandate recusals at such senior levels in the department, at least not for cases like this, Dubnick, the University of New Hampshire professor, said.

As such, while Chao’s coziness to Kentucky interests could help her husband win elections in a historically poor state where federal dollars have long carried extra weight, she may not be breaking any rules.

“There’s nothing illegal about what’s going on, as long as there’s no quid pro quo,” Dubnick said.

McConnell, as he’s done in the past, can point out that he’s simply helping his state. The department, as it’s done in the past, can point out that Kentucky ranks roughly in the middle in the amount of DOT program money it receives, and that, of course, Chao loves her adopted home state.

“We’re not so much an issues state so much as a patronage state,” said longtime political columnist Al Cross. “We want things from the federal government. I look at patronage in the larger sense, it’s bringing home the bacon. And Kentuckians appreciate his ability to bring home the bacon.”

 

[Howl]

Not that this is making waves like the arrest of two of Giuliani's associates, but Pompeo's senior adviser at State, a career diplomat, has resigned over "what he saw as Pompeo's insufficient public support for department officials implicated in Trump's dealings with Ukraine and subsequently called to testify in House Democrats' investigation" according to CNN.  

I find this an ambiguous sentence, but I'm assuming it's a resignation to protest Pompeo's lack of support for these career officials to testify honestly about what went on in Ukraine.  It won't be good if it comes out that Pompeo was attempting to block testimony in one way or another. 

Mike Pompeo's senior adviser resigns

This article was posted online at 3:23 am.  I suspect reporters covering DC don't get much sleep these days. 

Edited October 11, 2019 by Howl

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

Not that this is making waves like the arrest of two of Giuliani's associates, but Pompeo's senior adviser at State, a career diplomat, has resigned over "what he saw as Pompeo's insufficient public support for department officials implicated in Trump's dealings with Ukraine and subsequently called to testify in House Democrats' investigation" according to CNN.  

I find this an ambiguous sentence, but I'm assuming it's a resignation to protest Pompeo's lack of support for these career officials to testify honestly about what went on in Ukraine.  It won't be good if it comes out that Pompeo was attempting to block testimony in one way or another. 

Mike Pompeo's senior adviser resigns

This article was posted online at 3:23 am.  I suspect reporters covering DC don't get much sleep these days. 

Heh. Does his resignation now free him up to testify? *rubs hands*

[Howl]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Heh. Does his resignation now free him up to testify? *rubs hands*

I suppose it would, but Ukraine was not part of his portfolio at State, so he may not have much, or anything, to offer in that regard. 

[fraurosena]

42 minutes ago, Howl said:

I suppose it would, but Ukraine was not part of his portfolio at State, so he may not have much, or anything, to offer in that regard. 

The inquiry is not only about Ukraine, thankfully, so even though he might not may know much about that paritcularly, I think he could have a lot to say about the goings on at the State Department. Potentially he has a lot of knowledge about obstruction of justice, especially the attempts to prevent people from testifying and the culture of fear that Pompeo is rumored to have sown at the department.