Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Bret Baier: Obama used final speech to fire up his party
President Obama, in his farewell address Tuesday night, focused his speech on gains made during his two-term presidency and used the platform to urge his pary to rally after November's election.
“He’s trying to fire up his party,” Bret Baier, the anchor of “Special Report” said. He continued, “It is a party in the wilderness when it comes to the politics of where it goes.”
Obama issued a rallying cry to his supporters, saying: “If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try to talk with one in real life.”
“If something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and do some organizing. If you’re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clipboard, get some signatures, and run for office yourself,” he said. “Show up. Dive in. Stay at it. Sometimes you’ll win. Sometimes you’ll lose,” he said.
WATCH ENTIRE SPEECH: PART 1 | PART 2
He bid farewell to the country in his hometown of Chicago in front of 18,000 inside McCormick Place. His speech was forceful at times, especially when defending his major initiatives.
“If I had told you eight years ago that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history," he said, before listing off a series of other achievements, "...you might have said our sights were set a little too high," he said.
READ THE SPEECH
When he made a reference to the next president, Donald Trump, the crowd booed.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he said. One of the nation’s great strengths is the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next.”
Baier, who was interviewed after the speech by Tucker Carlson on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” pointed out that Obama got emotional when he talked about his family.
“No matter what your ideology is, you have to—at this moment—respect the sacrifice that a family goes through, when not only running for president, but being in that office for eight years. It comes with a lot of perks, but it comes with a lot of sacrifice as well.”
Kelly faces tough questions from Senate on border, heroin, cybersecurity in bid to lead Homeland Security
Retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly was pressed Tuesday at a Capitol Hill hearing for answers about how he would address the country’s most pressing security concerns, including heroin trafficking and border protection, in his quest to become the next Homeland Security secretary.
Kelly -- who remains the corps’ longest-serving, active-duty general -- fielded the questions during his Senate confirmation hearing as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the agency.
The 66-year-old Kelly said that heroin pouring in from Mexico and other problems along the U.S.-Mexico border begin “1,500 miles south,” in Central America, and that resolving them requires improving relationships with other countries.
“Physical barriers alone won’t do it,” he testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. “We have to get after drug transporters. We need better partnerships.”
His call for forging and maintaining relations was a theme throughout the hearing, with Kelly and his supporters citing instances in his career in which he has relied on consensus building to succeed.
“I have led platoons and divisions,” Kelly said in his opening remarks. “I have held senior command positions in Iraq, served as the combatant commander of the U.S. Southern Command and … with our allies, across agencies and the private sector.
“These assignments … shared the common characteristics of working within and leading large, complex and diverse mission-focused organizations, while under great pressure to produce results.”
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain, a fellow Naval Academy graduate, who introduced Kelly, each called him “supremely qualified” and adept at managing multiple agencies.
“I’m confident that he would do as well, as secretary of state,” Gates said.
Kelly, having testified numerous times on Capitol Hill, is widely respected among members of Congress and is largely expected to be confirmed by the GOP-led Senate as the Cabinet-level agency’s seventh secretary in its roughly 13-year existence.
However, he faced several tough questions Tuesday that he appeared to struggle to answer, including a request by Ohio GOP Sen. Robert Portman to name his top-three ideas to improve agency morale.
The agency, which has roughly 240,000 employees and 20 major offices, notoriously has low morale and problems recruiting and retaining top employees.
Lawmakers repeatedly asked Kelly about domestic terrorism and cybersecurity, which he acknowledged to be a complex and inter-connected problem that needs to be stopped in large part by “cracking the nut” on people getting self-radicalized on the Internet.
Perhaps the toughest questions were posed by newly-elected California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, who pressed Kelly on the Obama administration's immigration policy known as DACA, which allows deferred deportation for some illegal immigrants who entered the country as minors.
“I don’t know what the incoming administration is doing with that,” Kelly responded. “But I promise you, I will be involved in the process.”
However, he made clear his position about how he would deal with so-called sanctuary cities that don’t enforce U.S. immigration laws.
“The law is the law,” he said.
Ex-US diplomats urge Trump to rescind US-Cuba intelligence sharing
A Florida congresswoman has joined five former U.S.
diplomats in publicly urging President-elect Donald Trump to rescind
President Obama’s recent directive that U.S. intelligence agencies share
information with Cuba’s government.
Opponents, meantime, are defending the October 2016 directive.
The provisions on intelligence sharing were part of a 12-page directive Obama issued in October on trade and travel to Cuba. It instructs the U.S. director of national intelligence, the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to cooperate and share information with counterparts in Cuba on drug trafficking, immigration and counterterrorism.
Last week, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., sent a letter to Trump asking him to rescind the intelligence-sharing directives, according to the Miami Herald.
Ros-Lehtinen, who sits on the House Foreign Relations Committee, told FoxNews.com that such action was urgent.
"Any intelligence sharing with the Castro regime should cease as soon as the new administration takes power,” she said. “Sharing information with an avowed enemy of U.S. harms our national security interests because the Cuban regime has an advanced espionage apparatus that sells our intelligence to our adversaries across the world.”
The Cuban “dictatorship cannot be trusted with any kind of information,” she said, “and instead has developed strong ties with countries like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran who want to use Cuba as a launching pad for their spying capabilities against our nation.”
Ros-Lehtinen’s letter follows a Dec. 22 letter to Trump from five former U.S. diplomats – Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, James Cason, Everett Briggs and Jose Sorzano – that said the Cuban regime, which the U.S. long had included on a list of countries that sponsor terrorism, cannot be trusted and intelligence should not be shared with Havana.
Meanwhile, supporters of Obama’s directive say it is a practical step that merely extends an existing policy on ways to fight terrorism and drug trafficking.
William M. LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University and co-author of “Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana,” told FoxNews.com that U.S.-Cuba intelligence sharing is not new and has existed for decades in areas such as immigration and fighting drug trafficking.
“For many years, it was a relatively low level of cooperation, on a case-by-case basis,” LeoGrande said. “If the U.S. Coast Guard spotted a trafficker with a plane or boat, going into Cuban airspace or waters, they’d contact the Cuban Coast Guard and cooperate with them in interdicting, and vice versa.”
Critics of expanded cooperation between the two countries, LeoGrande said, have a broader agenda of dismantling the renewed diplomatic ties.
“They’re overblowing it because they’re opposed to every aspect of normalizing relations,” he said. “There’s really no downside to this [sharing]. One has to trust the intelligence community to decide what things are too sensitive to share, and what things are not.”
Opponents, meantime, are defending the October 2016 directive.
The provisions on intelligence sharing were part of a 12-page directive Obama issued in October on trade and travel to Cuba. It instructs the U.S. director of national intelligence, the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to cooperate and share information with counterparts in Cuba on drug trafficking, immigration and counterterrorism.
Last week, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., sent a letter to Trump asking him to rescind the intelligence-sharing directives, according to the Miami Herald.
Ros-Lehtinen, who sits on the House Foreign Relations Committee, told FoxNews.com that such action was urgent.
"Any intelligence sharing with the Castro regime should cease as soon as the new administration takes power,” she said. “Sharing information with an avowed enemy of U.S. harms our national security interests because the Cuban regime has an advanced espionage apparatus that sells our intelligence to our adversaries across the world.”
The Cuban “dictatorship cannot be trusted with any kind of information,” she said, “and instead has developed strong ties with countries like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran who want to use Cuba as a launching pad for their spying capabilities against our nation.”
Ros-Lehtinen’s letter follows a Dec. 22 letter to Trump from five former U.S. diplomats – Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich, James Cason, Everett Briggs and Jose Sorzano – that said the Cuban regime, which the U.S. long had included on a list of countries that sponsor terrorism, cannot be trusted and intelligence should not be shared with Havana.
Meanwhile, supporters of Obama’s directive say it is a practical step that merely extends an existing policy on ways to fight terrorism and drug trafficking.
William M. LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University and co-author of “Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana,” told FoxNews.com that U.S.-Cuba intelligence sharing is not new and has existed for decades in areas such as immigration and fighting drug trafficking.
“For many years, it was a relatively low level of cooperation, on a case-by-case basis,” LeoGrande said. “If the U.S. Coast Guard spotted a trafficker with a plane or boat, going into Cuban airspace or waters, they’d contact the Cuban Coast Guard and cooperate with them in interdicting, and vice versa.”
Critics of expanded cooperation between the two countries, LeoGrande said, have a broader agenda of dismantling the renewed diplomatic ties.
“They’re overblowing it because they’re opposed to every aspect of normalizing relations,” he said. “There’s really no downside to this [sharing]. One has to trust the intelligence community to decide what things are too sensitive to share, and what things are not.”
President
Barack Obama talks with Cuban President Raul Castro before a bilateral
meeting, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015, at the United Nations headquarters.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Ethics official takes heat for knocking Trump Cabinet hearings, giving Clinton a 'pass'
The director of the Office of Government Ethics fueled Democrats’ concerns about Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks over the weekend by accusing Republicans of rushing their hearings. But one conservative group says Walter Shaub was just showing his partisan stripes – and claims his office even “covered for” Hillary Clinton when Congress sought records on her speech income more than a year ago.
America Rising PAC claims Shaub’s office displayed “utter incompetence” when it came to documenting then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s income -- which Shaub, in a House Oversight Committee hearing in December 2015, said the office did not have to disclose.
“Walter Shaub gave Hillary Clinton a complete free pass on her unethical activity, especially her lucrative paid speeches,” Scott Sloofman, the PAC’s rapid response director, told FoxNews.com. “His outburst over the weekend reeks of partisan politics from an embittered Democrat still reeling from November’s election result.”
At the time of the Clinton questions, Republicans complained Clinton had not disclosed compensation for at least five speeches that was then sent to the Clinton Foundation between 2014 and 2015. They pressed the OGE for answers, but Shaub told the House oversight committee the funds were not required to be disclosed.
The Washington Examiner first reported on the PAC’s concerns.
The Office of Government Ethics had no comment on America Rising PAC’s claims, referring FoxNews.com to the original letter Shaub sent to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., raising concerns about the Trump nominees' hearings.
“For as long as I remain Director, OGE’s staff and agency ethics officials will not succumb to pressure to cut corners and ignore conflicts of interest,” Shaub wrote in the letter.
Shaub’s letter outlined concerns regarding the speed of the Senate confirmation hearings schedule, and that several nominees had not completed the ethics review process. Shaub wrote that the announcement of nominees prior to consulting OGE for an evaluation of ethics issues also complicated this “normally intensive process.”
Schumer responded saying the OGE letter made “crystal clear” the transition team’s “collusion” with Senate Republicans was unprecedented.
“The Senate and American people deserve to know that these cabinet nominees have a plan to avoid any conflicts of interest, that they’re working on behalf of the American people and not their own bottom line, and that they plan to fully comply with the law,” Schumer said in a statement. “Senate Republicans should heed the advice of this independent office and stop trying to jam through unvetted nominees.”
Some hearings have since been delayed, a development cheered by Schumer.
Meanwhile, former White House ethics counsel officials are coming to Shaub’s defense, calling the claims against him unfair.
“I worked with Walter when he was at OGE and I was at the Bush White House,” Richard Painter, former White House Ethics Counsel under President George W. Bush, told FoxNews.com in an email. “He bent over backwards to get things done – he was a strong supporter of our ethics program.”
Painter told Foxnews.com that the attacks on the OGE are “disturbing” and that the motives seem “quite transparent.”
Ambassador Norm Eisen, former White House Ethics Counsel under President Obama, told FoxNews.com this was an “unfair attack.”
“Director Shaub has served presidents of both parties with distinction – sometimes we agreed and sometimes we disagreed, but he always tries to do the right thing – I say to those smearing him, have they no shame?” Eisen said.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
Tit for Tat ? ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — A statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass was ripped from its base in Rochester on the an...
-
NEW YORK (AP) — As New York City faced one of its darkest days with the death toll from the coronavirus surging past 4,000 — more th...