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Trump talks ISIS, Palestinians in call with Netanyahu, who accepts US invite

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday accepted a phone invitation from President Trump to visit the United States next month, according to the White House.
The call was purportedly part of a broader effort to strength U.S.-Israeli ties now that Trump is officially president and included Trump restating that defeating ISIS and other Islamic terrorist groups remains a top priority.
The two world leaders “agreed to continue to closely consult on a range of regional issues,” including the threats posed by Iran and relations between Israel and the Palestinians, the White House also said.
Trump during the call also “emphasized that peace between Israel and the Palestinians can only be negotiated directly between the two parties, and that the United States will work closely with Israel to make progress towards that goal,” according to the White House.
The two leaders spoke after Trump won the presidential election on Nov. 9. And Netanyahu called Trump “a true friend of Israel,” after Trump’s victory.
Trump, a Republican, has been critical of how his predecessor, Barack Obama, and his administration treated Israel, considered the United States’ closest Middle East ally.
Most recently, the administration effectively backed a United Nations resolution that opposed Israel building more settlements in the disputed West Bank.

Counterintelligence officials probe Flynn's links to Russia

U.S. counterintelligence agents have investigated communications that President Donald Trump’s national security adviser had with Russian officials, according to people familiar with the matter.
Michael Flynn is the first person inside the White House under Mr. Trump whose communications are known to have faced scrutiny as part of investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Treasury Department to determine the extent of Russian government contacts with people close to Mr. Trump.
A key issue in the investigation is a series of telephone calls Mr. Flynn made to Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., on Dec. 29. That day, the Obama administration announced sanctions and other measures against Russia in retaliation for its alleged use of cyberattacks to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election. U.S. intelligence officials have said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacks on Democratic Party officials to try to harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid
In a statement Sunday night, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: “We have absolutely no knowledge of any investigation or even a basis for such an investigation.”
Earlier this month, Sean Spicer, then spokesman for the Trump transition team and now White House press secretary, said the contacts between Messrs. Flynn and Kislyak dealt with the logistics of arranging a conversation between Mr. Trump and Russia’s leader.
“That was it,” Mr. Spicer said, “plain and simple.”
U.S. officials have collected information showing repeated contacts between Messrs. Flynn and Kislyak, these people said. It is common for American officials’ conversations with foreign officials to surface in NSA intercepts, because the U.S. conducts wide-ranging surveillance on foreign officials. American names also may surface in descriptions of conversations shared among officials of foreign governments.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is also looking into any possible collusion between Russia and people linked to Mr. Trump, top senators have said. That is part of the committee’s broader probe into Russian election interference. Counterintelligence probes seldom lead to public accusations or criminal charges.

Trump on throngs of Sunday protesters: 'Why didn't these people vote?'

President Trump on Sunday expressed his unfiltered opinion of the Women’s March on Washington and other protests this weekend organized largely in opposition to his presidency, tweeting, “was under the impression that we just had an election! Why didn't these people vote?”
He also said in the tweet, “Celebs hurt cause badly.”
Trump, a Republican sworn-in Friday, didn’t mention names. However, singer Madonna has been criticized for saying Saturday during the women’s march that she considered “blowing up the White House” after Trump’s victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The Secret Service declined to comment Sunday about reports the agency plans to investigate the comment as a threat.
Trump tweeted about 90 minutes later: "Peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I don't always agree, I recognize the rights of people to express their views."
The dueling tweets marked his administration's first response to the more than 1 million people who rallied at women's marches in Washington and cities around the world.
On “Fox News Sunday,” White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus responded to concerns that Trump would roll back women’s rights.
“President Trump wants to be president for all people, including every one of those marchers yesterday,” Priebus said. “And I think that over time, many of those people are going to be proud of this president.”
He also didn’t name Madonna but said, “Can you imagine saying that about President Obama?”
The suggestion that the Saturday rally in Washington appeared to attract more people than Trump's inauguration on Friday clearly irked the new president.
Trump spent his first full day in office berating the media over their coverage of his inauguration, using a bridge-building visit to CIA headquarters to air grievances about "dishonest" journalists and wildly overstating the size of the crowd that gathered on the National Mall as he took the oath of office.

Watchdog group to file lawsuit against Trump over foreign payments

A liberal-funded watchdog group said Sunday it plans to file a lawsuit against President Donald Trump alleging that he is violating the Constitution by allowing his business to accept payments from foreign governments.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics said they planned to file the lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on Monday.
The group claims Trump is violating a clause in the Constitution that prohibits his businesses from receiving anything of value from foreign governments and because he didn’t divest his businesses, the group claims he’s now receiving gifts from foreign governments via guests and events at his hotels, leases in his buildings and real estate deals abroad.
"When Trump the president sits down to negotiate trade deals with these countries, the American people will have no way of knowing whether he will also be thinking about the profits of Trump the businessman," the Washington-based organization said in a statement.

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• Trump talks ISIS, Palestinians in call with Netanyahu, who accepts US invite

White House Director of Strategic Communications Hope Hicks directed inquiries to Trump attorney Sheri Dillon.
Hicks said in an email to the Associated Press: "She was very clear on this issue two weeks ago and nothing has changed; the president has no conflicts."
The New York Times reported that the group won’t seek any monetary damages, but instead hopes New York will order Trump to stop taking payments from foreign governments.
Eric Trump told The New York Times that the Trump Organization had taken more than the steps required by law to avoid litigation. He dismissed the lawsuit as, “purely harassment for political gain.”
The group’s impending lawsuit is one of many expected lawsuits to be filed against Trump.
The Times noted that the American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request on Thursday asking the Department of Justice, the General Services Administration and the Office of Government Ethics for anything they have on addressing the possible ethical conflicts Trump faces.