Priebus pushes back on Russia meeting story, suggests Democrats, opposition research involved

hite House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Sunday suggested a recent news story about President Trump and his advisers meeting last summer with a Russian lawyer is part of a large political smear campaign orchestrated by a group that pushed out the largely discredited “Steele dossier.”

“The individual who set up the meeting may have been affiliated with Fusion GPS, which is an opposition research firm that is being subpoenaed and talked to by the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Priebus told “Fox News Sunday.”

Priebus was responding to a story posted Saturday afternoon by The New York Times about the June 2016 meeting, shortly before Trump won the Republican presidential nomination, between a Russian lawyer and Trump, Jared Kushner and political adviser Paul Manafort.
The story is among many attempting to connect the Trump presidential campaign to Russia meddling in the 2016 White House race.
The possible connection between the meeting and Fusion GPS was reported first by Circa.com.
Circa reported Saturday that the president’s legal team thinks the meeting may have been “part of a larger election-year opposition effort aimed at creating the appearance of improper connections between Trump family members and Russia that also included a now-discredited intelligence dossier produced by a former British intelligence agent named Christopher Steele who worked for a U.S. political firm known as Fusion GPS.”
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team, told Circa that lawyers have learned that “the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm that according to public reports was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the president and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier."
Priebus said Sunday that the Senate committee is questioning Fusion GPS about its role in “putting together that phony dossier.”
“So, this is a developing story,” he continued. “I don’t know much about it other than it seems to be on the end of the Trump individuals, a big nothing burger but may spin out of control for the (Democratic National Committee) and the Democrats.”
Fusion GPS is reportedly run by three former Wall Street Journal reporters and has helped Planned Parenthood.
The dossier largely included reports of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
The news media began reporting widely on the dossier in fall 2016, the homestretch of the White House race, but the unverified reports have since largely been dismissed as “fake news.”

Turkish Opposition Holds Anti-Govt Rally

Supporters of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party, rise their hands as they gather for a rally following their 265-mile ‘March for Justice’ in Istanbul, Sunday, July 9, 2017. Kilicdaroglu, along with thousands of supporters, walked from the capital Ankara to an Istanbul prison, to denounce the imprisonment of a party lawmaker, and the large-scale government crackdown on opponents in the wake of July 2016’s failed coup attempt. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

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Protesters rally in Istanbul in the final stage of a three-week justice march against the Turkish government.
The opposition leader held an event on Sunday in defiance of an intensifying government crack-down.
It comes after thousands of people marched from the country’s capital to Istanbul following the arrest of an opposition lawmaker.
They accuse the government of trying to create a one-party state in the wake of a failed coup last year, using powers under a state of emergency.

Pres. Trump Pushes GOP Leaders on Healthcare

FILE – In this photo taken June 27, 2017, the U.S. Senate is seen on Capitol Hill in Washington. July shapes up as one of the most critical tests for President Donald Trump’s agenda in Congress. Get healthcare done in the Senate, a budget in the House and overhaul of the nation’s tax code will be next up. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

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President Trump urges Republican leaders to continue their effort to repeal and replace Obamacare.
In a tweet Sunday, the President said for years he listened to Republicans push to repeal and replace the healthcare law and now they finally have their chance.
The President’s remarks come just one day before GOP senators return to work after the July 4th recess.
They delayed a vote before their break after failing to garner enough support behind the current bill.
President Trump recently indicated he would be open to repealing Obamacare first and developing a replacement later on.

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Roy Moore: Former chief justice, fiery and outspoken, stirs far-right base in Alabama Senate race

In the blood-red state of Alabama, a fiery, outspoken jurist is running for U.S. Senate by standing up for what he believes.

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore doesn’t shrink from telling voters he has twice been ousted from the bench for defying federal courts over the Ten Commandments and same-sex marriage.

Instead, he wears those rejections as a badge of honor, telling Republican voters that they are akin to battle scars.
“I will not only say what is right, I will do what is right,” Moore said during a June forum in the east Alabama city of Oxford.
Moore is part of a crowded GOP field vying to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old seat in the U.S. Senate. Moore’s iconic status in the culture wars gives him a strong GOP voter base and makes him a leading contender in the primary on August 15.

 

But he’s also a polarizing figure. Some voters said they are voting for him because of his past fights.

Others said they want someone else for the same reasons. Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen, who filed the complaint that led to Moore’s removal, last year referred to him as the “Ayatollah of Alabama” for intertwining his personal religious beliefs and judicial responsibilities.
Incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, appointed last year by the state’s former governor and backed by Republican establishment, faces multiple challengers. Among them, in addition to Moore, is U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, a member of the House Freedom Caucus who has the endorsement of Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. The race could lead to a runoff between the top two primary finishers.
The Senate Leadership Fund, which has ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and tries to bank candidates perceived as winnable in general elections, has put its fiscal force behind Strange.
The Republican National Committee last week authorized its Senate campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to spend $350,000 on the Alabama Senate race, money that is expected to benefit Strange.
Moore is a West Point graduate and former military policeman during Vietnam. He became a prosecutor, circuit judge and then state chief justice.
But Alabama’s judicial discipline panel twice stripped him of his chief justice duties. In 2003 he was removed for disobeying a federal judge’s order to remove a boulder-sized Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse.
He re-took the chief justice’s office in 2012, but was suspended for the remainder of his term last year.
The suspension — not, technically, a removal — came after Moore wrote a memo telling probate judges that they remained under a state court order to deny marriage licenses to gay couples even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled gays and lesbians have a fundamental right to marry. While he was suspended, Moore left the bench to run for Senate.
“I stood up to same-sex marriage legally by pointing out active injunctions. They didn’t like that. I opposed the agenda of the Supreme Court, and they came after me,” Moore said in Oxford.
Thirty-nine-year-old Emily Holland said she admires Moore. “He goes by what the Bible says,” said Holland. “He has been to war. He refused to take down the Ten Commandments.”
Jean Hobson said she watched the Oxford debate to learn more about the other candidates, but knows she’s not voting for Strange or Moore.
“Judge Moore has been elected twice and thrown out twice,” Hobson said.
Moore also discusses other issues on the campaign trail — including a call for increased military spending — but it’s his well-known history that appears to be driving both his support and his opposition.
For now, “The Judge,” as Moore is nicknamed, revels in his outsider status in a year of anti-Washington sentiment.
“Washington doesn’t want me, evidently, from the money they are pouring behind one of the candidates and from the message we received from Washington. That’s OK,” Moore said with a slight grin as he removed his sunglasses during a sweltering June campaign stop on the Alabama Capitol steps. “I’m looking forward to going and representing the people of Alabama, what they stand for. What they believe in is what I believe in and I’ll take it to Washington whether they like it or they don’t.”

Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner respond to meeting with Russian lawyer

President Donald Trump’s eldest son, son-in-law, and then-campaign chairman met with a Russian lawyer shortly after Trump won the Republican nomination, in what appears to be the earliest known private meeting between key aides to the president and a Russian.

Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner’s attorney confirmed the June 2016 meeting of the men and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower. Then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended, according to the statement from Donald Trump Jr.

“It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow-up,” said Donald Trump Jr. in a statement released to Fox News. “I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.”
Trump Jr. does not serve in the administration and is not required to disclose his foreign contacts.
Kushner lawyer Jamie Gorelick, told Fox News in a statement: “As we have previously stated, Mr. Kushner’s SF-86 was prematurely submitted and, among other errors, did not list any contacts with foreign government officials. The next day, Mr. Kushner submitted supplemental information stating that he had had ‘numerous contacts with foreign officials’ about which he would be happy to provide additional information."
"He has since submitted this information, including that during the campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during transition," said Gorelick. "Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included, out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law, Donald Trump Jr. As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows.”
Manafort helmed Trump’s campaign for about five months until August and resigned from the campaign immediately after the Associated Press reported on his firm’s covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling political party. He is one of several people linked to President Trump who are under scrutiny by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees investigating Russian attacks on the U.S. during the 2016 campaign and potential collusion with Trump associates.
Manafort has denied any coordination with Russia and has said his work in Ukraine was not related to the campaign.

U.S. Rejects UN Treaty on Nuclear Weapons

A detail of the video board showing the votes in favor, against and the abstention is seen after a vote by the conference to adopt a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination, Friday, July 7, 2017 at United Nations headquarters. More than 120 countries have approved the first-ever treaty banning nuclear weapons at a U.N. meeting boycotted by all nuclear-armed nations. Friday’s vote was 122 countries in favor with the Netherlands opposed and Singapore abstaining.(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

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The United States, along with the other nuclear powered nations of the world, rejected the UN’s treaty to ban nuclear weapons on a global scale.
All of the world’s nuclear powers – including the U.S., France, Britain, and Russia – have refused to be part of the negotiations.
The vote was approved by 122 non-nuclear members of the United Nations Friday, with the Netherlands voting against the deal, and Singapore sitting out the vote.
The dissenting nations are also permanent members of the UN Security Council and stated the treaty was unrealistic.
They added countries like North Korea would never comply with a nuclear weapons ban.

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May talks with U.S. President Donald Trump during the G20 leaders summit in Hamburg, Germany July 8, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

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President Trump meets with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Hamburg to discuss the future of trade between the U.S. and the U.K.
The President told reporters he and the Prime Minister spoke on the sidelines of the G20 leaders summit and are working on a ‘powerful deal.’
While Britain can’t seal a separate trade deal with the United States until it has left the European Union, President Trump says, once that happens, the U.S. and the U.K. will get a deal done without hesitation.
The U.K. plans to exit the European Union in 2019.