Senate Republicans push for answers on Trump team’s Russian Federation ties

Moscow has criticized news reports alleging associates of Donald Trump had numerous contacts with Russian intelligence during the election, with the Kremlin’s spokesman complaining that it’s hard to distinguish fact from fiction in the United States media lately.

The FBI interviewed Mr Flynn about the call around the same time, in a revelation that could expose him to criminal charges if it emerges he misled investigators.

Which returns us to Conway and Flynn. “One minute NATO is an impediment and doesn’t do anything for terrorism – the next minute NATO is the centrepiece of the global fight”, said retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis, a former supreme allied commander of NATO.

Amidst the chaos, some of Trump’s populist allies are turning on Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, whom they see as an ineffectual weakling. The only name it provided was that of Paul Manafort, who had to resign as Trump’s campaign manager after Ukrainian authorities accused him of having been involved in the corruption of the previous Ukrainian government. Though separate, Mr Flynn’s resignation and the New York Times report point to a much wider theme that has been troubling the intelligence community and Democrats for months: How much influence, if any, does Russian Federation have on members of the Trump administration? They have convinced many, this newspaper among them, that what we need now is affirmative proof that the president of the United States has not been compromised by Russian Federation.

To hear Trump tell it, the White House national security advisor is accused of having potentially illegal talks with Russian Federation, but the president was, and is, out of the loop. Even more execrable than his heinous travel ban has been Trump’s relentless assault on truth and on the media and the judiciary – the very institutions most responsible for safeguarding truth in a democracy.

That may have breached USA law on negotiating with foreign powers, and at the very least was a significant break with the norm that incoming administrations accept that the United States has “one government at a time”. Richard Blumenthal of CT, who wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions Wednesday, urging an independent special counsel “to investigate collusion with the Russian government by General Flynn and other Trump campaign, transition, and Administrative officials”. “Yeah, it’s time”, Mr. Trump told one of his advisers”.

Spicer said Trump didn’t care about the nature of Flynn’s call with the Russian Amb. A highly-regarded Army intelligence officer, Rayburn not only wrote the Pentagon’s official history of the Iraq war, but a book published in 2014, “Iraq after America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance”. According to two officials, staff have even talked about feeding the president “suggested Twitter posts” in order to better influence his policy.

“Bumping [chief strategist Steve] Bannon from his legally dubious role there must follow”.

Then, the conversation shifted to trust.

Ms Laurin added there was not enough evidence for impeachment to be considered.

He said the constant “dribble” of damaging news about Trump and Russian Federation was interfering with Congress’ ability to focus on urgent policy matters.

“The closest lawyers came to that was in the proceedings of Richard Nixon, but the court never decided the question”.

Later, he will meet with Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Unless the American president puts an end to this witch-hunt and stops surrendering his people, this will all end bad.

Mr Tribe said he was “angered, saddened and disgusted” by the number of potential ethical violations around the President, which resulted in people not being able to focus on one at a time. As saturation coverage of Russia-related leaks continues, it seems likely that more and more congressional Republicans will either distance themselves from Trump himself or work with the Trump White House to find scapegoats.