North Korea's nuclear program 'ever closer' to putting US at risk, CIA boss says

North Korea’s nuclear program is believed to be aimed coercion rather than defense and is moving “ever closer” to putting the U.S. at risk, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Tuesday.

Pompeo, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said the next logical step for Pyongyang would be to develop its program to be able to fire multiple weapons toward the U.S., according to Reuters.

“I want everyone to understand that we are working diligently to make sure that a year from now I can still tell you that they are several months away from having that capacity,” he said.

Jan. 23, 2018: CIA Director Mike Pompeo speaks on intelligence issues at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.  (AP)

Pompeo said he believed that North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un would use the weapons to not only stay in power, but for the possibility of reuniting the Korean Peninsula. He said the hermit kingdom’s nuclear program has developed at a “very rapid clip,” but Kim is still hoping for more than just a parade showpiece.
The CIA chief declined to comment on whether there were options for strikes on North Korean weapons facilities that would not lead to a nuclear war, according to Reuters.
He said the CIA was working to prepare a full slate of options for President Trump to choose from and insisted the president was “laser-focused” on solving the nuclear crisis by diplomatic means.
“The president is intent on delivering a solution through diplomatic means. We are equally, at the same time, ensuring that if we conclude that is not possible, that we present the president with a range of options that can achieve his stated intention,” Pompeo said.
The Trump administration has reportedly said that all options were on the table in dealing with North Korea. The debate over possible military options has slowed because of the upcoming Olympics in South Korea, Reuters reported.

Trump fires back at Schumer: 'If there is no Wall, there is no DACA'

President Donald Trump fired back Tuesday night at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for offering, then rescinding, a deal to support border wall funding in return for an immigration package that protects illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. 

"Cryin’ Chuck Schumer fully understands, especially after his humiliating defeat, that if there is no Wall, there is no DACA," the president tweeted around 11 p.m. EST. "We must have safety and security, together with a strong Military, for our great people!"

Earlier Tuesday evening, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley slammed Schumer during an appearance on Fox News' "Outnumbered Overtime."
“He comes over here with a phony plan and a fake promise,” Gidley said, referring to Schumer, D-N.Y.
A Schumer aide confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday that the leader withdrew his offer of a boost in funding for the president’s proposed border wall. It was initially made during negotiations over the government spending bill with the president last Friday, the aide said.
Schumer’s office says he pulled the wall offer on Sunday.
But Gidley said they didn’t take the offer seriously, saying the Democrat offered less than one-tenth of what was needed to secure the border in his “bogus negotiation.” The administration wants $18 billion for a border wall.
“You can't rescind money you never really offered in the first place,” he said.
After a three-day government shutdown, Democrats agreed to re-open the government Monday after Republicans assured them the Senate would soon consider legislation that would protect the so-called Dreamers.
SCHUMER BASHED BY LEFT OVER SHUTDOWN-ENDING DEAL
During Tuesday’s press briefing at the White House, press secretary Sarah Sanders said the president opposes an immigration proposal brokered by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois.
“In a bipartisan meeting here at the White House two weeks ago we outlined a path forward on four issues: serious border security, an end to chain migration, the cancellation of the outdated and unsafe visa lottery and a permanent solution to DACA,” Sanders said. “Unfortunately, the Flake-Graham-Durbin agreement does not meet these bench marks.”

Gov. Shutdown Cartoon

Omarosa plans banner $500G speaking tour at $50G a speech after dramatic White House exit

President Trump’s former spotlight-seeking staffer Omarosa Manigault-Newman seems to be cashing in on her contentious time at the White House.

Manigault-Newman officially has signed with the American Program Bureau, joining its elite roster of speakers that includes Jay Leno, Diddy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, according to TMZ.

Manigault-Newman, who abruptly left the White House last year, will ask for up to $50,000 a speech, depending on the venue, the report added.
The firm’s goal is to book at least 10 appearances over the next three months. Robert P. Walker, APB’s founder and CEO, thinks that’s doable, according to TMZ.
“Since it’s Black History Month and Women’s History Month, I’m sure Omarosa will be in high demand, as she has always been,” Walker said.
During her stint at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Manigault-Newman worked as an assistant to the president and director of communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison, working on outreach to various constituency groups. In that role, she enjoyed a close relationship with Trump, and even held her April wedding at Trump’s D.C. hotel.
Fox News previously reported that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly gave Manigault-Newman the news of her dismissal in the White House Situation Room, a subterranean space under the West Wing where electronic and recording devices must be surrendered at the door.
The details of her termination emerged in December, hours after the reality star denied she was fired in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” She also denied reports that she made a scene while being escorted from the White House grounds and tried to enter the executive residence to see Trump.
“Where are the pictures or videos?” Manigault-Newman said at the time. “If I had confronted John Kelly, who is a very formidable person, it would garner someone to take a photo or a video.”
However, the nature of the Situation Room’s restrictions meant that neither Manigault-Newman nor anyone else would have been able to record her conversation with Kelly even if they had wished to.
The Secret Service said it was not involved in her “termination process” beyond deactivating the pass giving her access to the White House complex.

Republicans hope to release 'jaw-dropping' memo on surveillance abuses

House Republicans are hopeful that a four-page memo allegedly containing "jaw-dropping" revelations about U.S. government surveillance abuses will soon be made public.

Rep. Dave Joyce, a Republican from Ohio, told Fox News on Monday that the intelligence committee plans to work on releasing the document but warned that once Americans see it, they’ll “be surprised how bad it is.”

The process of releasing the memo could take up to 19 congressional working days which puts its release around mid-March. The document’s release would first need approval from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who can decide to bring the committee back together for a vote. If the majority of the committee votes to release the memo, it would then be up to President Trump.
If he says yes, the memo can be released.
Joyce said he’s personally read the memo twice and “it was deeply disturbing as anyone who’s been in law enforcement and any American will find out once they have the opportunity to review it.”

House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes, R-Calif., could move to release a key memo on alleged surveillance abuses.  (AP)

“The FBI has requested to receive a copy of the memo in order to evaluate the information and take appropriate steps if necessary.  To date, the request has been declined,” FBI spokesman Andrew C. Ames told Fox News.
Joyce and a handful of other conservatives have been pushing for the memo to be made public. They have suggested that it contains damning evidence the Obama administration used FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrants to spy on the Trump campaign as well as his transition team ahead of the president’s swearing-in.
GOP LAWMAKERS DEMAND RELEASE OF FISA MEMO

'It was deeply disturbing.'

A FISA warrant allows U.S. spy agencies to collect information on foreigners outside the country and was reauthorized by Congress earlier this month.
Obama officials have strongly denied the claims.
Democratic lawmakers argue the Republican uproar over the memo is a last-ditch attempt by conservatives to discredit the Russia investigation and cast doubt on the people who are running it.
California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff has called the memo “a profoundly misleading set of talking points drafted by Republican staff attacking the FBI and its handling of the investigation.”
He said it’s riddled with factual inaccuracies and said it gives a “distorted view of the FBI.”
But Joyce has hinted that the memo was so scandalous that “termination would be the least of these people’s worries” and suggested that some of the people involved might even be “prosecuted.”
The report was spearheaded by Nunes.
Over the weekend, Nunes met with Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., to discuss the possibility of releasing some of the information from the classified document.
Calls from Republicans to release the memo have been intensifying in recent days.
Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, who has called the memo “jaw-dropping,” is demanding “full transparency.”
“The House must immediately make public the memo prepared by the Intelligence Committee regarding the FBI and the Department of Justice,” Gaetz said.
North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows described the memo as “shocking” and “troubling.”
“Part of me wishes that I didn’t read it because I don’t want to believe that those kinds of things could be happening in this country that I call home and love so much,” he added.
Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania stated bluntly, “You think about, ‘is this happening in America or is this the KGB?’ That's how alarming it is.”

Hawaii governor took long to post on Twitter about missile alert because he forgot username, password

Gov. David Ige says he and his team took so long to post a message to social media about the recent missile alert being a false alarm because he didn't know his Twitter username and password.

Ige told reporters Monday he's since put his username and password into his cellphone. He says he can now use social media without waiting for his staff.

The governor was asked why his Twitter account relayed a Hawaii Emergency Management Agency tweet about the false alarm at 8:24 a.m. on Jan. 13 even though Ige learned about the mistake 15 minutes earlier at 8:09 a.m.
A Hawaii GOP gubernatorial candidate labeled Ige "Doomsday David" and called on him to resign over the state's recent false alarm fiasco.
Republican John Carroll said this week that the public lost faith in Ige because of an erroneous missile alert Jan. 13 that had Hawaii residents fearing for their lives for nearly 40 minutes.
“Doomsday David Ige has got to go now,” Carroll said, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Ige's communications staff members manage his social media accounts, as is the case with many politicians.
Ige spokeswoman Cindy McMillan said Friday the governor had to track her down to prepare a message for the public before they could post anything.

Trump lauds 'big win' after Dems 'cave' on shutdown, Schumer criticized

President Trump signs a bill late Monday night in the Treaty Room at the White House. The bill reopens the federal government.  (Dan Scavino/The White House/Twitter)

President Trump struck an optimistic tone on Twitter after he signed a bill to reopen the government late Monday night after a 69-hour federal government shutdown that led to Senate Democrats backing off their opposition.

Earlier in the day, Congress agreed on a measure that will fund the government for three weeks. The agreement will keep the government funded until Feb. 8.

“Big win for Republicans as Democrats cave on Shutdown,” Trump tweeted, after he kept a low profile during the weekend. “Now I want a big win for everyone, including Republicans, Democrats and DACA, but especially for our Great Military and Border Security. Should be able to get there. See you at the negotiating table.”
Some items on the top of the agenda are Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and border security. Trump has said he wants a deal in place to legalize the country's 700,000 Dreamers.
Despite getting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., to allow debate on the immigration issue, Democrats faced immediate backlash within their own ranks for not pushing harder on the immigration law.
“Nor did they get a promise that the Senate will approve their desired change, nor did they get any commitment from House Republicans to do anything at all,” James Freeman wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who backed Monday's agreement during a speech on the chamber's floor, was criticized for his handling of the negotiations.
Schumer was seen by some centrists in the party as putting too much emphasis on immigration, while those on the left blamed him for agreeing to the deal without a DACA win.
"Now there is a real pathway to get a bill on the floor and through the Senate," Schumer said of legislation to halt any deportation efforts aimed at the younger immigrants.
Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of the activist group Indivisible, told Politico that Schumer’s job was to “keep his caucus together” and “he didn’t do it.”
Cristina Jimenez, the executive director of United We Dream, said the members of the group are "outraged." She added that senators who voted Monday in favor of the deal "are not resisting Trump, they are enablers."
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told Politico, Schumer is "doing a great job under very difficult circumstances."
Earlier, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told The Journal that Democrats did not have the public's support during negotiations and were being blamed for the shutdown. He said he believed Democrats “overgamed” the gridlock.
“I think they gambled and didn’t win. Nobody wins when the government shuts down,” he said.
The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial titled, “Chuck Schumer, Shut Down,” wrote that the New York Democrat exposed his colleauges running for re-election in "Trump states" to “placate his progressive base, and then he caved on the shutdown and ended up with the approval of neither.”

Government Shutdown Cartoons

California Democrats want some businesses to fork over half tax-cut savings to state

Two Democrats have targeted money that some businesses in the state are expected to save under the Trump administration's tax plan.  (California State Assembly)

Calling the Trump administration’s tax reform plan a “middle-class tax increase,” two California lawmakers introduced a bill that would force large companies to fork over half of their expected savings to the state.

Assemblymen Kevin McCarthy and Phil Ting, both Democrats, introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment 22, which calls for a 10 percent surcharge on companies with a net earnings over $1 million. The plan could potentially raise billions for the state's social services programs.

“It is unconscionable to force working families to pay the price for tax breaks and loopholes benefiting corporations and wealthy individuals,” Ting said in a statement, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. “This bill will help blunt the impact of the federal tax plan on everyday Californians by protecting funding for education, affordable health care and other core priorities.”
The paper reported that the two lawmakers face an up-hill battle because Democrats in the state have lost their supermajority in the Legislature.
The Trump administration’s tax bill cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. The administration contends that the lessened tax burden will stimulate the economy and help the U.S. stay competitive on a global scale.
About 2 million workers have received a bonus after the bill’s passage.
Congressional Democrats said the bill was rushed through and benefits the top 1 percent of earners.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has diminished the corporate bonuses as mere “crumbs.”
An editorial last week in The Sacramento Bee called the McCarthy-Ting proposal “dumb.”
“California’s tax system should be updated to match a 21st century economy,” the editorial read.  “The high sales tax rate, which hits low-income people hardest, ought to be lowered, and certain services used by wealthier people and corporations ought to be subject to taxes. Proposition 13, the property tax cutting measure approved by voters 40 years ago, could be revisited.”
The editorial pointed out that the state will maintain a $13.5 billion reserve this year, but, “Bills that blindly seek to soak big business and the rich at a time of budget surplus solve nothing.”

Newly released texts between ex-Mueller team members suggest they knew outcome of Clinton email probe in advance

The Justice Department has given various congressional committees nearly 400 pages of additional text messages between two FBI officials who were removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

One of the newly discovered messages, lawmakers said, appeared to indicate that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page knew that charges would not be filed against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a result of the investigation into her email server -- before Clinton was interviewed by the bureau.

Strzok and Page were pulled off the probe last summer after it emerged that some of their messages to each other included anti-Trump content. Strzok, an FBI counterintelligence agent, was reassigned to the Bureau's human resources division after the discovery of the exchanges with Page, with whom he was having an affair.
According to a Saturday letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the Justice Department provided 384 pages of messages to lawmakers on Friday. However, Johnson noted that additional texts sent between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17 of last year were not preserved by the FBI's system.
One exchange between Strzok and Page, dated July 1, 2016, referenced then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch's decision to accept the FBI's conclusion in the Clinton investigation. Lynch's announcement came days after it was revealed that the attorney general and former President Bill Clinton had an impromptu meeting aboard her plane in Phoenix.
"Timing looks like hell," Strzok texted Page.
"Yeah, that is awful timing," Page agreed. In a later message, she added: "It's a real profile in couragw [sic], since she knows no charges will be brought."
Four days later, then-FBI Director James Comey announced that no charges would be brought against Clinton, even though -- as he put it -- her actions in regard to the private server were "extremely careless."
Another exchange from the day before referenced a change to Comey's statement closing out the investigation. While an earlier draft of the statement said Clinton and President Barack Obama had an email exchange while Clinton was "on the territory" of a hostile adversary, the reference to Obama at first was changed to "senior government official" and then omitted entirely in the final version.
'F TRUMP': TEXTS BETWEEN EX-MUELLER TEAM MEMBERS EMERGE, CALLING TRUMP 'LOATHSOME HUMAN,' 'AN IDIOT'
Last month, the Justice Department released hundreds of text messages that the two had traded before becoming part of the Mueller investigation. Many focused on their observations of the 2016 election and included discussions of the Clinton investigation. Republican lawmakers have contended the communication reveals the FBI and the Mueller team to be politically tainted and biased against Trump — assertions Wray has flatly rejected.
In Johnson's letter to Wray, he asked whether the FBI had any records of communications between Strzok and Page during that five-month window and whether the FBI had searched their non-FBI phones for additional messages. He also asks for the "scope and scale" of any other records from the Clinton investigation that have been lost.
A source on the committees receiving the texts told Fox News it was "outrageous" that the FBI had not previously indicated that the five-month gap in the messages existed. The source said it was incumbent on the FBI to prove that the missing texts do not constitute "obstruction" of congressional oversight or "destruction of evidence."
The source added that congressional investigators want to know if the Justice Department's inspector general has copies of the messages.