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Assange blasts 'embarrassing' US intel report, insists Russia not his source

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fired back Monday at the U.S. intelligence community for its report stating the anti-secrecy website was used by the Russian government to distribute hacked information from Democratic figures during the run-up to the presidential election.
Assange, speaking during an audio-only Periscope Q&A session, said the source of his information was not a member “of any government” or “state parties” and did not “come from the Russian government.” The WikiLeaks editor-in-chief blasted Friday’s declassified intelligence report on “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections” as being inadequate and misleading.
“It was not an intelligence report,” Assange said. “It does not have the structure of an intelligence report. It does not have the structure of a Presidential Daily Brief. It was frankly quite embarrassing.”
He added: “It was clearly designed for political effect.”
WIKILEAKS OFFERS REWARD FOR ALLEGED OBAMA MISDEEDS
Asked Monday whether it's possible that WikiLeaks' source was a go-between affiliated with the Russian government, Assange said he didn't want to "play twenty questions with our sources."
The intelligence report, prepared at the direction of President Obama, laid the blame for the breach of top Democratic officials’ emails directly at the feet of the Russians, whom the report said launched cyber operations as part of a Vladimir Putin-ordered “influence campaign.”
“We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence … relayed material to WikiLeaks,” the report said, adding this included material from the DNC and senior Democratic officials.
WikiLeaks famously published emails from top DNC officials before the 2016 Democratic convention, and later published thousands of emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta -- but Assange has steadfastly insisted, including in a recent interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, that Moscow was not the source.
Asked Monday if he believed the intelligence community’s finding had been “fabricated,” Assange stopped just short, saying: “Most of this so-called intelligence report is not even fabricated. That is, it does not even make assertions for the most part to rise to the level of fabrications … it uses speculative terms and admits its own speculation.”
The report itself, perhaps in anticipation of such challenges, noted that the declassified version “does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.”
But Assange later indicated he didn’t think it mattered who supplied the information to his group.
“Even if you believed that hackers of some kind illicitly obtained the Podesta emails and the DNC emails we published … what are we talking about in terms of impact?” Assange said. “...What was discussed are the words of Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and her team revealing unethical practices, corruption, hypocrisy, etcetera.”
He asked: “Should the American people have been denied that true information?”
During the chat, which took place inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London where Assange has been holed up to avoid deportation on a rape accusation he denies since June 2012, the WikiLeaks boss leveled a new accusation at the Obama administration.
“Past administrations of both Republican and Democrat flavors have engaged in mass destruction of records as they’ve left office. We are told that destruction of records is occurring now in different parts of the Obama administration,” Assange said.
He urged anyone within those agencies to “get hold of that history and protect it; because that’s something that belongs to humanity and does not belong to a political party.”
Assange’s assertion of mass document destruction may be the reason for a Tuesday tweet from WikiLeaks offering $20,000 as a “reward for information leading to the arrest or exposure of any Obama admin agent destroying significant records.”
He also challenged the claim that WikiLeaks was in league with President-elect Donald Trump and wanted him to win the election.
“We knew we were creating substantial conflict between us and the person we expected to be the next president,” said Assange, noting he believed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would be the likely victor based on pre-election polling. “So we understood that we were putting ourselves in a more persecuted condition by relentlessly exposing this material, increasing the risk for us. Not decreasing at all.”
Trump, meanwhile, has not outright challenged the findings in Friday's report despite having voiced skepticism before about Russia's involvement.
Reince Priebus, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, told "Fox News Sunday" he thinks the president-elect “accepts the findings” and is “not denying entities in Russia are behind these particular hackings.”

Double Standard? Obama '09 Cabinet picks slid through; Trump's face hold-up

Donald Trump’s team has a message for Senate Democrats threatening to slow-walk their nominees: Give the president-elect’s Cabinet picks the same treatment extended to President Obama’s.
Top transition officials, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., are citing a potential double standard as some Democratic lawmakers seek a delay in advance of a packed schedule of confirmation hearings.
Eight years ago, the Senate confirmed seven Cabinet-level nominees the day of Obama’s inauguration, including top picks like Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security secretary. Hillary Clinton was confirmed as secretary of state the following day.
Trump allies are optimistic he will get a comparable number confirmed from the outset -- Trump himself predicted Monday, "I think they'll all pass" -- but are warning Democrats they’ll suffer politically if they throw the brakes on the process.
“I think the Democrats will overplay their hand here,” senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told “Fox & Friends” on Monday. If key Trump nominees are held up, she said, “[Democrats] will be blamed, we won’t be blamed.”
TRUMP CABINET NOMINEES GET THEIR DAY
Conway cited the brisk confirmation pace for Obama’s nominees back in 2009, echoing McConnell from a day earlier.
“We confirmed seven Cabinet appointments the day President Obama was sworn in. We didn't like most of them either. But he won the election,” McConnell told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “So all of these little procedural complaints are related to their frustration in having not only lost the White House, but having lost the Senate.”
McConnell said, “We need to sort of grow up here and get past that. We need to have the president's national security team in place on Day One.”
Democrats indicate the reason they’re scrutinizing Trump’s nominees so closely is because they’re still awaiting important paperwork that could clarify any potential conflicts of interest the nominees -- in some cases millionaires and billionaires with complex personal finances -- might encounter on the job.
The director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, recently suggested Republicans were the ones breaking with precedent, noting the office had not even received initial draft disclosure reports for some nominees appearing before Congress this week -- when the Senate plans to hold at least nine confirmation hearings, beginning Tuesday.
"I am not aware of any occasion in the four decades since OGE was established when the Senate held a confirmation hearing before the nominee had completed the ethics review process," wrote Shaub.
But incoming Trump press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday that every nominee with a hearing scheduled this week now “has their paperwork in” to the Office of Government Ethics‎.
Senate committee aides also said hearings were held for former Education Secretary Roderick Paige and former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao before they received the same forms in 2001, and that they received the documents days after each of those hearings. Both were confirmed to serve in President George W. Bush's Cabinet.
Conway said Trump’s nominees, further, have answered more than 2,600 questions and met with dozens of senators, including Democrats.
But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., accused Republicans of trying to rush through Trump’s nominees. He said Monday they’re actually holding Trump’s picks to same standard McConnell set for Obama’s eight years ago.
Schumer has joined with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the Democratic National Committee and others in seeking a pause. Warren tweeted: “Cabinet officials must put our country's interests before their own. No conf hearings should be held until we’re certain that’s the case.”
In the end, Democrats can slow down the process but don’t have power to use the filibuster to block nominations, since they changed the threshold on such votes from 60 to 51 votes. If Republicans hold together, Trump’s nominees are virtually assured confirmation.
The hearings begin Tuesday with Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’ nomination for attorney general before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the same panel that in 1986 denied him a federal judgeship, following allegations he had made racist remarks and called the NAACP "un-American."
Civil rights groups are urging a thorough vetting of Sessions, but others are coming to his defense, with supporters going on air with pro-Sessions testimonials from those who have worked with him.
Another closely watched hearing will be ExxonMobil boss Rex Tillerson’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday, for his nomination to be secretary of State. Democrats and even some Republicans could press Tillerson not only on his financial interests but his ties to Russia.
While Republicans hope past will be prologue and the Senate swiftly confirms many nominees, they also have to contend with Democrats seeking payback for their treatment of Obama’s Supreme Court pick. While the Senate quickly confirmed Obama’s Cabinet picks in 2009, the chamber under Republican control steadfastly refused to consider Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court vacancy last year.
Even if the Senate moves to confirm Trump’s Cabinet nominees, his Supreme Court pick is likely to face a contentious confirmation fight.
In anticipation, the Judicial Crisis Network – the same conservative group that has been lobbying for Sessions’ confirmation – announced Monday it will spend at least $10 million on a campaign to confirm Trump’s eventual Supreme Court nominee.
Carrie Severino, JCN chief counsel, called it “the most robust campaign for a Supreme Court nominee in history,” vowing to pressure vulnerable Democratic senators on the vote.

Kushner joins father-in-law's White House as senior adviser

Jared Kushner will serve as a senior adviser in father-in-law Donald Trump's White House, the Trump Presidential Transition Team said Monday.
The announcement ends speculation about Kushner’s post-campaign role but fuels questions about the future of his family’s Manhattan real estate business.
Kushner's lawyer has said his client would step down as chief executive of the family business if he takes a White House position and divest some of his assets to comply with federal ethics laws that apply to government employees.
The law requires Kushner, who was among Trump's most trusted and powerful campaign advisers, to take more significant steps than Trump to disentangle his business interests, given that conflict-of-interest laws largely do not apply to the president.
But attorney Caleb Burns, a partner in the Washington, D.C., firm Wiley Rein, hit back Monday at Democrats like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others who have suggested that Trump, Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson and now Kushner aren’t doing enough to separate themselves from business interests.
“Jared Kushner has done everything he’s required to do and more. He’s simply required to recuse himself from any decision that would have a ‘direct and predictable’ impact on his financial holdings,” Burns, who specializes in government ethics law, said Monday. “They're cloaking political issues in legal garb."
The transition team said Kushner will work closely with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon to execute President-elect Trump’s agenda.
“Jared has been a tremendous asset and trusted adviser throughout the campaign and transition, and I am proud to have him in a key leadership role in my administration” said Trump, in the announcement.
Kushner’s decision also ends speculation about whether he would join Trump’s administration or take an outside advisory role.
But it will likely further ignite the political squabble over whether the 35-year-old Kushner's post violates a no-nepotism law that bars officials from appointing relatives to government positions. (Some Trump aides have argued that the law does not apply to the White House.)
Kushner, married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, was deeply involved in the campaign's digital efforts and was usually at Trump's side during the election's closing weeks.
He has since continued to play a central role in the transition, taking part in Cabinet interviews and often getting a last word alone with Trump after a meeting concludes.
Whether Kushner, a Harvard graduate, will be an adviser on domestic or foreign policy, or both, remains unclear.
Trump has suggested since winning the White House race in November that he would like Kushner involved in helping with Middle East peace.
Kushner has never publicly distanced himself from Trump's more provocative stances, including his campaign call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration.
The announcement follows Kushner being among the few advisers to join Trump in meeting President Obama at the White House and reports about him and his family already having decided on a home in Washington’s Kalorama neighborhood.
Like his father-in-law, Kushner pushed a mid-sized real estate company into the high-stakes battlefield of Manhattan. Though he is often viewed as more moderate than Trump, people close to him say he fully bought in to the Trump campaign's fiery populist message that resonated with white working class voters.
Prior to the campaign, Kushner and Ivanka Trump were not overtly political. Kushner's father was a Democratic fundraiser while Ivanka, whose personal brand has a focus on young working mothers, counted Chelsea Clinton among her friends.
“It is an honor to serve our country,” Kushner said. “I am energized by the shared passion of the president-elect and the American people and I am humbled by the opportunity to join this very talented team.”

Trump picks for attorney general, DHS kick off week of confirmation hearings

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees to lead the departments of Justice and Homeland Security will appear before Senate commitees Tuesday to kick off what is likely to be a contentious confirmation process.
Late Monday, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., announced that he would testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee against the nomination of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to be attorney general. Booker will be joined by Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La. — the head of the Congressional Black Caucus — as part of an effort by Democrats to portray Sessions as out of the mainstream on civil rights legislation.
Booker is believed to be the first sitting Senator to testify in a confirmation hearing against another sitting senator nominated for a Cabinet position.
"I do not take lightly the decision to testify against a Senate colleague," Booker said in a statement. "But the immense powers of the Attorney General combined with the deeply troubling views of this nominee is a call to conscience.
"The Attorney General is responsible for ensuring the fair administration of justice, and based on his record, I lack confidence that Senator Sessions can honor this duty," the senator added.
Democrats don't have the power to block the nomination of either Sessions or retired Marine Gen. John Kelly to head DHS, since Republicans control the Senate and only need a simple majority to confirm both men.
However, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are expected to try and paint Sessions as being out of the mainstream on issues critical to the party's core voters — Hispanics, African Americans and women — ahead of the 2018 election cycle.
Sessions has been a leading advocate not only for cracking down on illegal immigration, but also for slowing all legal immigration, increasing mass deportations and giving more scrutiny to those entering the United States. He vehemently opposed the bipartisan immigration bill that the Senate passed in 2013 that included a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who worked with Republicans to craft the immigration legislation, indicated last week that he would have a hard time supporting Sessions, saying "he has been more anti-immigration than just about any other single member of Congress."
In 1986, Sessions was nominated to the federal bench by then-President Ronald Reagan, but was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee over allegations that he had called a black attorney "boy" — which he denied — and described the NAACP and ACLU as "un-American."
Last week, the NAACP staged a sit-in at one of Sessions' Alabama offices, and its legal defense fund said it was "inconceivable that he should be entrusted with the oversight of our civil rights laws."
Hank Sanders, a Democratic state senator in Alabama, points to cases Sessions pursued as a prosecutor against civil rights activists in the 1980s. "They called them voter fraud cases," said Sanders, who won acquittals for the defendants. "I called them voter persecution cases."
However, Albert Turner Jr., the son of two of those defendants recently said he believed Sessions "is not a racist" and "was simply doing his job" when he prosecuted the cases.
Supporters describe Sessions as a man of integrity who fought for desegregation during his career as a local GOP leader, prosecutor and elected official.
As U.S. attorney, Sessions' office investigated and helped secure convictions in the 1981 Ku Klux Klan lynching of Michael Donald, a black teenager found hanging from a tree.
Greg Griffin, a black Alabama judge who worked as a state attorney when Sessions was Alabama attorney general, told the Associated Press over the weekend that Sessions "always treated me with respect" and called him "one of the best bosses I ever had."
While in the Senate, Sessions voted to confirm Obama's first attorney general, Eric Holder, the first black man to lead the Justice Department. He also worked with Democratic colleagues on efforts to combat prison rape and to reduce federal sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses, saying the gap unfairly targeted the "African-American community simply because that is where crack is most often used."
Kelly, who is expected to be easily confirmed by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the full Senate, would be the first non-civilian to head DHS since the department was created in 2002. He is expected to be questioned closely about his views on border security.
Trump famously vowed to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico when he announced his run for president, and stuck to that vow throughout the campaign.

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Navy, Trump planning biggest fleet expansion to deter Russian, Chinese threats

BATH, Maine –  With President-elect Donald Trump demanding more ships, the Navy is proposing the biggest shipbuilding boom since the end of the Cold War to meet threats from a resurgent Russia and saber-rattling China.
The Navy's 355-ship proposal released last month is even larger than what the Republican Trump had promoted on the campaign trail, providing a potential boost to shipyards that have struggled because budget caps that have limited money funding for ships.
At Maine's Bath Iron Works, workers worried about the future want to build more ships but wonder where the billions of dollars will come from.
"Whether Congress and the government can actually fund it, is a whole other ball game," said Rich Nolan, president of the shipyard's largest union.
Boosting shipbuilding to meet the Navy's 355-ship goal could require an additional $5 billion to $5.5 billion in annual spending in the Navy's 30-year projection, according to an estimate by naval analyst Ronald O'Rourke at the Congressional Research Service.
The Navy's revised Force Structure Assessment calls for adding another 47 ships including an aircraft carrier built in Virginia, 16 large surface warships built in Maine and Mississippi, and 18 attack submarines built in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Virginia. It also calls for more amphibious assault ships, expeditionary transfer docks and support ships.
In addition to being good for national security, a larger fleet would be better for both the sailors, who'd enjoy shorter deployments, and for the ships, which would have more down time for maintenance, said Matthew Paxton, president of the Shipbuilders Council of America, which represents most of the major Navy shipbuilders.
"Russia and China are going to continue to build up their navies," he said. "The complexities aren't going to get any easier. The Navy, more than any of the services, is our forward presence. We're going to need this Navy."
Many defense analysts agree that military capabilities have been degraded in recent years, especially when it comes to warships, aircraft and tanks.

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The key is finding a way to increase Navy shipbuilding to achieve defense and economic gains "in a fiscally responsible way that does not pass the bill along to our children," said independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, a member of the Armed Services Committee.
Even when Trump takes office, no one envisions a return to the heady days during the Cold War when workers were wiring, welding, grinding, pounding and plumbing ships at a furious pace to meet President Ronald Reagan's audacious goal of a 600ship Navy.
The Navy currently has 274 deployable battle force ships, far short of its old goal of 308 ships.
Lawrence J. Korb, a retired naval officer and former assistant defense secretary under Reagan, said the Navy's request isn't realistic unless the Trump administration is willing to take the budget "to levels we've never seen."
"You never have enough money to buy a perfect defense. You have to make trade-offs," said Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
But investors apparently are betting on more ships.
General Dynamics, which owns Bath Iron Works, Connecticut-based Electric Boat and California-based NASSCO, and Huntington Ingalls, which owns major shipyards in Virginia and in Mississippi, have both seen stock prices creep upward since the election.
"To the generic military shipbuilder, it's a bull market right now," said Ronald Epstein, an analyst at Bank of America's Merrill Lynch division.
In Bath, the 6,000 shipbuilders aren't going to count their eggs before they hatch.
"A lot of people are hopeful that it'll happen," Nolan said. "But they're taking a wait-and-see approach. They've heard it before and then seen it not come to fruition."

Trump's Cabinet nominees get their day before Senate, as partisan wrangling intensifies

Confirmation hearings begin this week on Capitol Hill for Alabama Sen. Jeff Session as U.S. attorney general and other Cabinet picks from President-elect Donald Trump -- amid increasing partisan threats about derailing nominees and calls to keep politics out of the process.
The most recent exchange began Saturday when Democrats called for a delay in the hearings -- including at least seven this week -- because several of Trump’s nominees have purportedly failed to complete ethics reviews to avoid conflicts of interest.
Democrats called for the delay based on letter this weekend from the Office of Government Ethics to Senate leaders stating that some of the nominees scheduled for hearings have yet to complete their ethics review process.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday the complaints are merely “procedural” and are being raised by Democrats frustrated about him and fellow Republicans now controlling the House, Senate and White House.
"I understand that. But we need to sort of grow up here and get past that,” the Kentucky senator told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We confirmed seven Cabinet appointments the day President Obama was sworn in. We didn't like most of them either. But he won the election.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the ethics review is to ensuring wealthy Cabinet members work for the American people instead of "their own bottom line and that they plan to fully comply with the law."
Republicans are intent on getting as many Trump nominees through the arduous confirmation process before the incoming Republican president takes the oath of office on Jan. 20.
Several of Trump’s picks are wealth Americans with far-reaching business connections -- Republican mega-donor Betsy DeVos, for education secretary; ExxonMobile CEO Rex Tillerson, for secretary of state; Billionaire private-equity investor Wilbur Ross, for commerce secretary and former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin for treasury secretary.
Despite all of the wrangling ahead of the Senate confirmation hearings, Trump’s nominees will almost certainly get enough votes in the chamber's GOP-led committees. However, they could run into delays when both parties cast final votes on the Senate floor, despite needing only 51 “yeahs.”
Democrats could use procedural moves to extend the debate on each of the nominees. But they don’t have the power to use the filibuster to block the nominations, because in the last Congress they changed the threshold on such filibusters from 60 to 51 votes.
The hearings begin Tuesday with Sessions in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the same panel that in 1986 denied him a federal judgeship, following allegations that he had made racist remarks and called the NAACP "un-American."
Still, Session, an immigration hawk and the first U.S. Senator to endorse Trump, a fellow Republican, is expected to be confirmed without much delay or fight.
Still, civil rights groups are urging a thorough vetting of Sessions. Last week, NAACP President Cornell William Brooks and other group members were arrested after a sit-in protest in Sessions' Mobile, Alabama, office, and could do something similar on Capitol Hill.
The two-day hearing includes a day for Sessions to address the committee, and a day for rebuttal witnesses from those opposing his nomination.
Session will be followed Tuesday by retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, the nominee for the post of Homeland Security secretary.
Tillerson’s hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to run the State Department, arguable the most important and high-profile Cabinet post, could be the most contentious.
His job leading oil giant ExxonMobile, which included deals with Russia and connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is raising concerns, especially after a recent U.S. intelligence report stated both meddled in this year’s presidential election.
However, the expected showdown with Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain -- who last week suggested he’d vote for Tillerson when “pigs fly” -- appears less likely.
McCain said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that still has questions but that a meeting last week with Tillerson eased concerns.
“Every president should have the benefit of the doubt as to their nominees,” he said. “So there has to be a compelling reason not” to vote for him.
Democrats and others argue that Ross, who founded the private equity firm WL Ross & Co., is the type of Wall Street tycoon that Trump has vowed to keep out of Washington.
But Ross' record has so far shown no potentially damaging conflicts of interest.
Schumer and other Democrats have purportedly targeted DeVos, Sessions and Tillerson as well as Mnuchin and South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney, for the Office of Management -- whose hearings have yet to be scheduled.
“If Republicans think they can quickly jam through a whole slate of nominees without a fair hearing process, they’re sorely mistaken,” Schumer said last week.
One of the committees that hasn't yet received the ethics review forms is the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which will hold the DeVos hearings.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee said it had also not received the forms for Ross, though a spokeswoman said they expect them soon.
Committee aides said they have received ethics forms for Sessions, Tillerson, Treasury Secretary nominee and retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis and Elaine Chao, for transportation secretary.
The Government Ethics office did not list which of Trump's Cabinet choices hadn't turned in their disclosures.
Other confirmation hearings next week include Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, for director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Ben Carson for housing secretary.