Democrats hound Trump over closure of foundation

Democrats are hounding President-elect Donald Trump over his decision to dissolve his charitable foundation, blasting the group as a “slush fund” and demanding he take additional steps to avoid conflicts of interest.
The incoming president announced Saturday that he’s directed his counsel to complete the closure.
Trump said in a statement: “I am very proud of the money that has been raised for many organizations in need, and I am also very proud of the fact that the Foundation has operated at essentially no cost for decades, with 100% of the money going to charity, but because I will be devoting so much time and energy to the Presidency and solving the many problems facing our country and the world, I don’t want to allow good work to be associated with a possible conflict of interest.”
But the Democratic National Committee signaled the decision wasn’t good enough for them.
Deputy Communications Director Eric Walker, in a statement, called the announcement a “wilted fig leaf to cover up his remaining conflicts of interest and his pitiful record of charitable giving.”
During the presidential campaign, Democrats sought to draw attention to controversies surrounding Trump’s foundation as Republicans hammered Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over her family’s foundation – and its alleged conflicts while she was secretary of state.
Walker renewed those allegations in the wake of Trump’s announcement, saying his charity “has a pitiful record of service, and instead has served as a slush fund for Trump to bribe elected officials, attack his political enemies and buy portraits of himself.”
The statement also took a jab at the president-elect over his controversial business holdings: "Shuttering a charity is no substitute for divesting from his for-profit business and putting the assets in a blind trust -- the only way to guarantee separation between the Trump administration and the Trump business."
Walker further questioned how the shut-down would “accommodate the investigation into the foundation.”
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been investigating the foundation following media reports that foundation spending went to benefit Trump's campaign. A spokeswoman says the foundation cannot close until the investigation is complete.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press in September showed Schneiderman's scrutiny of The Donald J. Trump Foundation dated back to at least June, when his office formally questioned the donation made by the charity to a group supporting Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Bondi personally solicited the money during a 2013 phone call that came after her office received complaints from former students claiming they were scammed by Trump University.
The Trump Foundation check arrived just days after Bondi's office told a newspaper it was reviewing a lawsuit against Trump University filed by Schneiderman. Bondi's office never sued Trump, though she denies his donation played any role in that decision.
Trump later paid a $2,500 fine over the check from his foundation because it violated federal law barring charities from making political contributions.
A 2015 tax return posted on the nonprofit monitoring website GuideStar shows the Donald J. Trump Foundation acknowledged that it used money or assets in violation of IRS regulations -- not only during 2015, but in prior years.
Those regulations prohibit self-dealing by the charity. That's broadly defined as using its money or assets to benefit Trump, his family, his companies or substantial contributors to the foundation.
The tax filing doesn't provide details on the violations. Whether Trump benefited from the foundation's spending has been the subject of the Schneiderman probe.
In his statement on Saturday, Trump said his foundation has “done enormous good works over the years in contributing millions of dollars to countless worthy groups, including supporting veterans, law enforcement officers and children. However, to avoid even the appearance of any conflict with my role as President I have decided to continue to pursue my strong interest in philanthropy in other ways.”
Trump's announcement came a day after the president-elect took to Twitter to declare it a "ridiculous shame" that his son Eric will have to stop soliciting funds for his charitable foundation, the Eric Trump Foundation, because of a conflict of interest.
"My wonderful son, Eric, will no longer be allowed to raise money for children with cancer because of a possible conflict of interest with my presidency," Trump tweeted. "He loves these kids, has raised millions of dollars for them, and now must stop. Wrong answer!"
Trump was highly critical during the campaign of the Clinton Foundation. At the final presidential debate, he challenged Clinton to "give back the money" that came from donors in countries that fail to respect various human rights.
More than half the people outside the government who met with Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money -- either personally or through companies or groups -- to the Clinton Foundation. The proportion indicated possible ethics challenges had she been elected president.

Spree of Obama actions revives GOP concerns over ‘midnight’ regs, agenda

A flurry of big decisions out of the Obama administration just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office has rekindled Republican concerns about President Obama’s plans for jamming through so-called “midnight regulations” and other leftover items from his wish-list on his way out the door.
In the last week alone, the Obama administration blocked future oil and gas leases in swaths of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans; granted a record number of pardons and commutations for a single day; and scrapped a dormant registry for male immigrants from a list of largely Muslim countries.
Defense officials told Fox News there is an effort underway to transfer up to 22 additional detainees out of Guantanamo Bay. And Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations stunned Israel on Friday by abstaining on a Security Council measure condemning settlement activity, allowing it to pass.
And Obama still has a month left in office. The most recent announcements were made while the first family was on vacation in Hawaii – leaving unclear what Obama has in store for when he gets back to Washington.
GINGRICH: OBAMA IN 'DESPERATE FRENZY'
Hanging over any final actions is the likelihood that Trump, once in office, will roll back many of them. “The things he’s done this week will be turned around,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said of Obama on “Fox News Sunday.” “He’s in this desperate frenzy.”
But Democrats are urging the outgoing president to pursue further actions, as the administration weighs its next steps.
Among the possibilities:

• Sixty-four House Democrats recently asked Obama to use his pardon power to preserve his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which spared millions of illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children from deportation. Led by Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Ill., the lawmakers asked Obama in a letter to “exercise your Constitutional authority to provide pardons to young people who are American in every way but on paper.” The goal is to make it more difficult for Trump to potentially deport them.
• The White House already has teed up the strong possibility of more clemency for nonviolent drug offenders and others. After Obama pardoned 78 people and granted another 153 commutations on Monday, White House Counsel Neil Eggleston said he expects “more grants of both commutations and pardons before [Obama] leaves office.”
• Former President Jimmy Carter has called on Obama to go further in the Middle East and recognize a Palestinian state before leaving office. In a New York Times op-ed, he wrote: “The simple but vital step this administration must take before its term expires on Jan. 20 is to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine.”

The White House has expressed reluctance to take some of these steps.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said “there is a process at the Department of Justice to review pardon applications” and “the president has said he is not going to do anything to circumvent that process.” As for Carter’s appeal, Schultz said, “I don't think [Carter’s] views are new today, so I don't have any new positions or views from us on that.”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest also said recently that any executive actions the president takes at this stage likely were in the works before the November election.
“What I can rule out are any sort of hastily added executive actions that weren’t previously considered that would just be tacked on at the end,” Earnest said.
Regulation ‘Finish Line’
While Obama weighs his last batch of policy decisions, many regulations already are coming through the pipeline. The final plans reportedly include as many as 98 regulations classified as “economically significant,” meaning each would cost the economy $100 million through compliance and consumer impact.
According to an analysis by the conservative American Action Forum, based on the Federal Register agenda, the administration is eyeing $44.1 billion in “midnight regulations” – or rules pushed in the final two months of an outgoing administration.
“This has been the most active December ever for regulations,” Sam Batkins, AAF’s director of regulatory affairs.
Gina McCarthy, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, didn’t conceal her eagerness in a staff memo sent after the election. “As I’ve mentioned to you before, we’re running—not walking—through the finish line of President Obama’s presidency,” McCarthy wrote.
By late November, the EPA announced stronger greenhouse gas emission standards, pushing 54.1 miles-per-gallon fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks for model years 2022-2025. In mid-November, the Interior Department finalized a rule to cut methane emissions during oil and natural gas production on federal lands.
Among regulations expected to take effect: the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services plans to make it easier for employers to sponsor highly skilled immigrants in the country; the Education Department is working on student debt relief at for-profit colleges; and on the financial services side, the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission are working on matters such as executive pay and mutual fund management.
According to an administration official, the number of active rules at the end of this administration still is 15 percent lower than at the end of the George W. Bush administration. The administration also notes that some economically significant regulations help the economy.
Republican Roll-Back
Congressional Republicans are bent on stopping or reversing the onslaught of new rules.
In a Dec. 5 letter, 20 Republican senators asked Obama to “honor the will of the American people and refrain from working on or issuing any new, non-emergency regulations while carrying out your remaining term in office.”
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in a Nov. 15 letter to federal agency heads signed by other House committee chairmen, asserted, “we will work with our colleagues to ensure that Congress scrutinizes your actions—and, if appropriate, overturns them.”
The Congressional Review Act of 1996 allows Congress, with the president’s signature, to rescind regulations and prohibit agencies from imposing rules that are substantively the same.
That, however, would have limits even when Trump takes office, Batkins said.
“Congress can rescind regulations when it gets back, using the CRA, but the House and Senate will be working on health care, the economy and infrastructure,” Batkins told FoxNews.com. “Congress has a lot on its plate. Of the 100 or more midnight regulations that could fly through, there probably won’t be more than a dozen they would be interested in repealing.”
Asked at a November press conference about GOP calls to hold off on finalizing rules in his final weeks in office, Obama defended their rulemaking pace: “The regulations that we have issued are ones that we've been working on for a very long time. … These aren't things that we've been surprising people with.”

RNC clarifies part of Christmas message after social media criticism

A Republican National Committee official lashed out at critics after part of a Christmas statement it made Sunday sparked outrage on social media.
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus released a three-paragraph statement on the holiday, but it was the first paragraph that drew critics’ attention.
“Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King."
The message kicked off a heated debate on social media over whether the reference to a “new King” was about President-elect Donald Trump.
John Weaver, a top aide to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, was among those who tweeted their displeasure with the statement.
RNC spokesman and future Trump press secretary Sean Spicer defended the message, telling CNN the reference didn’t have anything to do with Trump and “Christ is the King in the Christian faith.”
Spicer later said that it was “sad & disappointing you are politicizing such a holy day.”
The statement also asked Americans to keep military members in their thoughts and prayers and to “rise to meet the material, emotional, and spiritual needs of individuals all around us.”

United Nations Cartoons

Diplomatic terrorism at the UN, courtesy President Obama

The vicious condemnation of Israel at the UN Security Council on December 23, 2016 is a watershed moment in U.S.-UN relations – albeit not as President Obama hoped. Following the vote of fourteen in favor and one American abstention, Palestinian representative Riyadh Mansour and American Ambassador Samantha Power exchanged a telling handshake. Evidently, President Obama believes that he has put one over on Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the incoming Trump administration. But here’s another possibility: treachery at the UN will not be cost free.
Let’s be absolutely clear about what has just happened. The Palestinians have completed the hijacking of every major UN institution. The 2016 General Assembly has adopted nineteen resolutions condemning Israel and nine critical of all other UN states combined. The 2016 Commission on the Status of Women adopted one resolution condemning Israel and zero on any other state. The 2016 UN Human Rights Council celebrated ten years of adopting more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than any other place on earth. And now – to the applause of the assembled – the Palestinians can add the UN Security Council to their list.
Resolution sponsors Malaysia and New Zealand explained UN-think to the Council this way: Israeli settlements are “the single biggest threat to peace” and the “primary threat to the viability of the two-state solution.” Not seven decades of unremitting Arab terror and violent rejection of Jewish self-determination in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.
This is not just any lie. This is the big lie of modern antisemitism. This is the lie that drove a Palestinian teenager in June of this year to creep into the home of 13-year old Hallel Ariel and butcher her with a knife in the back as she slept in her bed.
The bed was located in the “settlement” of Kiryat Arba – on Arab-claimed territory whose ownership – by agreement – is subject to final status negotiations instead of back-stabbing UN resolutions. So to skip the UN-eze, today’s hate fest was diplomatic terrorism.
Obama’s failure to veto the resolution is at odds with long-standing American foreign policy that has insisted on peace through negotiations, and not UN-fiat, as the only way to ensure genuine and long-lasting recognition and cooperation. His excuse for throwing bipartisan wisdom overboard was delivered by Ambassador Power, in one of the most disingenuous statements in the history of American diplomacy.
Power began by likening Obama’s deed to Ronald Reagan’s treatment of Israel. She repeatedly claimed that the move was nothing new and “in line” with the past, though “historic” is how speaker-after-speaker and the President of the Council himself described it. She noted “Israel has been treated differently than other nations at the United Nations” and then doubled-down on more of the same. She complained that Council “members suddenly summon the will to act” when it comes to Israel, after the White House had actively pushed the frantic adoption of the resolution with less than 48 hours’ notice.
At its core, this UN move is a head-on assault on American democracy. President Obama knew full well he did not have Congressional support for the Iran deal, so he went straight to the Security Council first. Likewise, he knew that there would have been overwhelming Congressional opposition to this resolution, so he carefully planned his stealth attack.
He waited until Congress was not in session. Members of his administration made periodic suggestions that nothing had been decided. There were occasional head fakes that he was “leaning” against it. He produced smiling photo-ops from a Hawaiian golf course with no obvious major foreign policy moves minutes away. Holiday time-outs were in full-swing across the country. And then he pounced, giving Israel virtually no notice of his intent not to veto.
Profound betrayal of a true democratic friend of the United States is the only possible description.
Israel’s Ambassador Danny Danon held up a Bible in that sanctuary of idolatry and spoke of the holiday of Chanukah, about to commence this calendar year on Christmas Eve. He reminded his listeners that over two thousand years ago another King had banished the Jewish people from the Temple in Jerusalem, and tried to sever Jews from their religion and their heritage.
And he continued: “But we prevailed. The Jewish people fought back. We regained our independence and relit the Menorah candles…We overcame those decrees during the time of the Maccabees and we will overcome this evil decree today.”
The Security Council and President Obama leave a trail of devastation across the planet, with evil empowered and good forsaken. But their record does not have to be our future. Today’s vote reminds us of what it takes for evil to triumph.
Doing nothing is not an option for our new President and our incoming Congress. The time has come to undertake an urgent and full review of America’s relationship to the United Nations, and to suspend financial support until that review can identify how best to use American dollars in the interests of peace, security and human dignity. The perfidy of Barack Obama will not be the last word.

Iranian dissidents seeking meeting with Trump

Trump promises to expand US nuclear capability

President-elect Donald Trump infuriated the Chinese by breaking with years of protocol in accepting a call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Now, members of the Iranian opposition are seeking a similar phone call – even a sit-down – with the incoming president, hoping he keeps to his campaign vows to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal and get tough with Tehran.
Fox News has exclusively obtained a letter being presented soon to Trump from a group of influential Iranian dissidents, asking him to follow through on reconsidering the deal, even as President Obama has cautioned against ripping it up.
"During the presidential campaign, we and millions of Iranians followed your forthright objection to the nuclear agreement reached between the Obama administration and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the letter reads. “We sincerely hope that with your election, the new administration and the United States Congress will have the opportunity for the first time to review the regional and international outcomes of that disastrous agreement without any reservations, as was promised to the voters."
Signatories include several former Iranian political prisoners and human rights activists such as former political prisoners Ahmad Batebi and Siavash Safavi, also a member of the Iranian Liberal Students & Graduates.
"We hope under your leadership the United States helps the Iranian people to take back their country from the Islamist gang which has been in charge for the last four decades," they wrote.
Although not party to the letter, The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) is widely seen as the most organized opposition group – and also is welcoming engagement with Trump.
"Obviously, the president-elect is preoccupied with forming his Cabinet and laying out a roadmap to meet the challenges his administration will be facing once he is sworn in. But the expectation is that the new administration would pursue a decisive policy vis-à-vis the Iranian regime and impose sanctions, as they relate to Tehran's gross violations of human rights of its citizens as well as its involvement in terrorism, including its role in the bloodbath we have been witness to in Aleppo in recent weeks. Any engagement should be with the Iranian people and not their oppressors," said Ali Safavi, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the NCRI.
While the Iranian government calls the group terrorists, the NCRI’s network of supporters in Iran helped the U.S. with intel during the Iraq invasion, and the group also helped expose Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Over the past several years, the pro-Iran nuclear deal lobby led by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) had the Obama administration’s ear. Now, some are now hoping Trump will reach out to the myriad Iran opposition groups, ranging from the Monarchists to the Liberals.
The NCRI has supporters among some in Trump's circle, according to a source close to the Trump campaign and team.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the source told Fox News that senior Trump advisers such as Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and former ambassador John Bolton have "very close ties to the strongest component of the Iranian opposition, the NCRI."
"These advisers, though, will be pushing a cooperation with the Iranian opposition to force Iran to cooperate," he said.
It’s unclear whether Trump has any plans to take a meeting with Iran dissidents and groups. The transition team has not responded to a request from Fox News for comment on whether any meetings had been held or scheduled.
The regime likely would be outraged by any such discussions, according to Saeed Ghasseminejad of the Foundation for Defense and Democracies in Washington D.C.
"In the short term [the mullahs] will show some anger and will test the new administration, but in the medium term, they understand the Trump administration is serious and will have to adjust their behavior knowing that [Trump] means business,” Ghasseminejad said. “Meeting with a diverse group of representatives of major opposition parties sends a strong message to the regime and Iranian people that the new administration supports democracy and human rights for Iran."
Lisa Daftari, an Iran and foreign affairs analyst and editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk, believes it would be a positive move for Trump to meet opposition members from other groups so he can "get an accurate read on the people of Iran."
"In cutting a deal with Iran, President Obama went straight to the mullahs, leaving out the Iranian people,” she said. “It would be a strategically strong move for President-elect Trump to include the Iranian people -- a force of almost 80 million that continues to be the Achilles’ heel of its government."

Ex-campaign aides building pro-Trump 'superstructure' outside White House

President-elect Donald Trump is rewriting the rules of the presidency, but he is stealing a page from his predecessor’s playbook -- with allies creating an outside political operation to communicate and generate support for his agenda.
“It is almost exactly the model used by Obama,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told FoxNews.com. “There is a lot to be said for having people out there fighting for your agenda.”
Serious talk of forming a group modeled after Organizing for America, the network founded in 2009 by President Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe, was sparked earlier this month after Kellyanne Conway raised the issue on Twitter.
“West Wing welcome mat is out, but we need a superstructure like the one Plouffe built,” she tweeted.
Until she joined the administration as counselor to the president -- a move announced Thursday -- Conway looked like a front-runner to head up the so-called “Trump superstructure.” But speaking Thursday with Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo, Conway again advocated for the idea, calling the outside network "incredibly important to help the president in pushing through his legislative agenda and his Cabinet nominees, ultimately his Supreme Court nominees."
THE WEEK IN PICTURES
The "structure" appears to be forming, even if the planning remains in its infancy and Conway is not at the top.
While Gingrich told FoxNews.com he will not be involved with the emerging outside network -- focusing instead on his new mission to develop a strategic plan to shrink and modernize government -- former Trump campaign digital director Brad Parscale confirmed to The Associated Press he was forming a nonprofit focused on “supporting the conservative agenda and what the Trump movement stands for.”
Parscale is not the only former Trump insider to set up shop on the periphery of Trump World.
Former campaign manager and onetime CNN contributor Corey Lewandowski announced this week that he and former Trump campaign strategist Barry Bennett were launching Avenue Strategies, a political consulting firm down the street from the White House.
The firm will cater to clients, but Lewandowski also told "Fox & Friends" he wants to be helpful in advancing Trump’s economic agenda.
Meanwhile, Parscale, who has a firm in San Antonio, Texas, lacks Washington experience but like Lewandowski possesses something more important -- Trump’s trust and an understanding of how the president-elect thinks.
“[Parscale] is a capable political operative who also is someone trusted by the Trump inner circle and understands the uniqueness of the Trump organization and Trump himself,” said Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist and former aide to Mitt Romney.
While there is agreement that an external organization is needed, Politico reports there is dissension within the Trump orbit about who should control it.
Williams told FoxNews.com an outside political operation is an important component of a successful administration because it can raise the funds needed to support GOP candidates and also defend the Trump agenda from well-funded liberal groups.
“The president will want to ensure there is an outside organization to support his agenda that won’t cannibalize resources from the established party structure,” he said.
Largely self-financed, Trump did receive support from large donors through the Great America super PAC, the political action committee led by veteran GOP strategist and one-time Reagan aide Ed Rollins. While it's unclear what Rollins plans to do next, the PAC spent nearly $30 million on ads during the campaign, and post-election has concentrated its efforts on raising money to support Trump’s agenda, according to The Washington Post.
Any concerns that big-dollar Republican donors will balk at backing such an effort are misplaced, Gingrich said.
“These people are so delirious that Hillary Clinton was not elected that they will do anything to get on board, particularly with Republicans in control in the House and in the Senate,” he said.
Expectations for such organizations can be high. The Obama-allied OFA came under intense criticism from Democratic insiders after the 2010 midterm elections when Republicans gained 63 seats and the majority in the House. Some Democrats complained the wave was a result of OFA’s decision not to play an active role in the midterms.
Well before the ages of Obama and now Trump, Ronald Reagan also recognized the benefit of having an arm outside the West Wing to rally the grassroots.
Shortly after Reagan’s first successful campaign for the White House, wealthy Republican businessman Lewis E. Lehrman created Campaign for America, which was described at the time as a “nonpartisan civic group banded together in the common interest of building a stronger America.”

Putin reaches out to Trump, while thumping Dems

Putin: Don't blame me for Democrats' election loss

Russian President Vladimir Putin followed up a warm letter to Donald Trump with a more terse message for U.S. Democrats Friday: Don't blame me for your November drubbing.
President-elect Trump on Friday released the Dec. 15 note from Putin, who Democrats blame for tilting the election Trump won against Hillary Clinton, and called it a "very nice letter."
In it, Putin wished Trump "warmest Christmas" greetings and expressed hope that Trump would "bring our level of collaboration on the international scene to a qualitatively new level."
In addition to praising the tone of the letter from Putin, Trump said, "His thoughts are so correct. I hope both sides are able to live up to these thoughts, and we do not have to travel an alternate path."
But Putin, in a year-ending address from Moscow Friday, had a different message for Democrats as he offered his analysis of the American political scene.
“Democrats are losing on every front and looking for people to blame everywhere," he said. "They need to learn to lose with dignity.
“The Democratic Party lost not only the presidential elections, but elections in the Senate and Congress. .…Is that also my work?” he said.
He went on to ridicule Democrats for never-say-die efforts to overturn the Nov. 8 presidential election, first by calling for recounts, then trying to get electors to flip.
"The fact that the current ruling party called Democratic has blatantly forgotten the original definition of its name is evident if one takes into consideration unscrupulous use of administrative resource and appeals to electors not to concede to voters’ choice," Putin said, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
THE WEEK IN PICTURES
The former KGB officer even invoked President Ronald Reagan, the staunch anti-communist who worked with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War in the 1980s.
"I think Reagan would have been glad to see representatives of his party winning everywhere," the president said. "And he would have been happy for the newly elected president [Donald Trump], who was sensitive enough to feel the moods of the society and worked exactly within that paradigm, going to the end, though nobody but you and I believed that he would win."
"Outstanding figures in American history from the ranks of the Democratic Party would likely be turning in their graves. [Franklin D.] Roosevelt certainly would be."
Supporters of defeated Democratic standard-bearer Hillary Clinton have cited alleged Russian “hacking” of the election for her surprising loss on Nov. 8.
Putin moved back his news conference a day to attend the funeral of his ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, who was assassinated at an Ankara art gallery in a brazen public shooting by a Turkish policeman shouting slogans about the war in Syria.