Which is why we (or Congress at least) need to know exactly what was said. If he said 'don't freak out over the sanctions', that'd probablt be fine, but if he said that and promised something regarding sanctions, then that might be a problem.
edit: That link doesn't work palsch, just gives a 'page not found' page.
Should work now, was editing a twitter link on mobile on a moving bus.
As far as this particular charge is concerned it only matters if he told a provable lie to the FBI. Something black and white in his statement to them that contradicts the transcripts they hold against him.
There are a couple of complications I haven't really seen discussed in much detail;
1) Why was there an FBI investigation? They wouldn't be investigating a Logan Act violation, the only law these calls seem to violate. Was there more there there than indicated so far? Was it really, as suggested in some places, a full counter intelligence operation believing he may actually be compromised?
2) Were all the calls actually recorded by the FBI? Flynn was a senior intelligence officer. He would know that the calls are recorded and would likely know ways around such surveillance. I saw one suggestion he may have attempted to encrypt the call, although it's possible he didn't manage to do so successfully. Could the transcripts have been obtained through other means? Did the FBI even have all the transcripts at the time they questioned Flynn?'
Other stories;
The AJC lays into Trump for evading question on anti-Semitism.Six White House staffers have been dismissed over failed FBI background checks. The example in the article sounds like she knew she couldn't pass the
rather detailed background check and so withdrew from the position to take a job with a lower barrier to entry.
Harward is playing hard to get with Trump. He is demanding his own team and Trump doesn't want to give him it. So he has initially declined but seems to still be negotiating according to
other sources. A demand not listed but commonly considered good sense is the disbanding of Bannon's
"shadow NSC".
Finally found a video source for this;
Mattis explicitly says Russia has interfered with a number of democratic elections (in the context of a question about interfering with the US election), while committing to NATO and saying that military cooperation is impossible with Russia without reform on their part.Today's great twitter source was
Tamara Cofman Wittes, another quarter of the Rational Security podcast. She had detailed coverage over the mess Trump, his Israel envoy nominee David Friedman, Secretary of State Tillerson and UN Ambassador Haley have managed to make over Israel in the last 24 hours. Trump managed to contradict his two appointed officials over the two state solution, then Friedman was grilled over grossly offence remarks - comparing liberal Jews to the "kapo" Jews forced to work alongside the Nazis to carry out the Holocaust to avoid being killed themselves - and came across as weak and ambivalent towards any potential peace process. For the record, his defence over the kapo remarks was a lie; he said it was overblown, regrettable rhetoric made in the heat of a campaign, but that
doesn't hold up (paywall).
Yet Friedman's attempt to pin it all on the tension of the election campaign stands against his own conduct. Almost a full month after Trump's election victory, at a time when there were already rumors that Friedman could have a role in Trump’s administration, Friedman spoke before the annual Saban Forum in Washington and refused to apologize or take back his inflammatory language, including the remark about J Street.
The New York Times reported that at one closed panel, Friedman was interviewed by The Atlantic's Jeffery Goldberg and the issue of his remarks came up. "At a private session this month at the Saban Forum, an annual gathering of Israeli and American foreign policy figures, Mr. Friedman declined to disavow the comments and even intensified the sentiment," the paper reported.
"Mr. Friedman was asked if he would meet with various groups, including J Street. Mr. Friedman said he would probably meet with individuals but not with the group, according to several people who attended. Mr. Goldberg then raised the kapos comparison and asked if he stood by it. Mr. Friedman did not back away. ‘They’re not Jewish, and they’re not pro-Israel,’ he said, according to the people in the room," the report said.
EDIT: Ninjaed on the Haward thing and I didn't even try to document Trumps blatant lies during the press conference today...
