US attorney general Sessions recuses self from Russia probe

Under growing pressure from Democrats and Republicans alike, Attorney General Jeff Sessions agreed Thursday to recuse himself from an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. 

 

His action followed revelations he twice met with the Russian ambassador and didn't say so when pressed by Congress.

Sessions rejected any suggestion that he tried to mislead anyone about his contacts with the Russian, saying, "That is not my intent. That is not correct."

He did allow, though, that he should have been more careful in his testimony, saying, "I should have slowed down and said, 'But I did meet one Russian official a couple of times.'"

The attorney general said he made his decision to recuse himself after his staff recommended that he step aside from any investigation related to the Trump campaign, since he had been involved in that campaign. He said Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente would handle such matters.

Sessions added that his announcement "should not be interpreted as confirmation of the existence of any investigation."

Air Force One landed in Washington minutes before Sessions' news conference began. President Donald Trump, who had spoken earlier aboard a new aircraft carrier in Newport News, Virginia, stayed on the plane during the televised event, emerging only after Sessions finished answering questions.

The White House has stood behind Sessions, though officials say they first learned about his contacts with the ambassador from a reporter Wednesday night. Trump said he had "total" confidence in Sessions and didn't think he needed to step aside from the investigation.

The Justice Department has maintained there was nothing improper about Sessions' contacts or his answers to Congress, while the continuing allegations of Russian interference in American politics spurred Democratic calls for Sessions not only to recuse himself but to resign.

Sessions has faced increasing demands that he resolve the seeming contradiction between his two conversations in the summer and fall with Moscow's U.S. envoy, Sergey Kislyak, and his sworn statements to Congress in January, when he said he had not had communications with Russians during the campaign.

While there is nothing necessarily nefarious or even unusual about a member of Congress meeting with a foreign ambassador, typically members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee meet with foreign ambassadors, not Armed Services Committee lawmakers, whose responsibility is oversight of the military and the Pentagon. Congressional contact with Russian officials was limited after the invasion of Crimea and due to Moscow's close relationship with Syria, a pariah for much of the West
Calling for Sessions to resign, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused him of "lying under oath." Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said a special prosecutor should be appointed to examine whether the federal investigation into the Kremlin's meddling in the U.S. election — and into possible contacts between Trump associates and Russians — had been compromised by Sessions. Democrats also sought a criminal perjury investigation.

And more than a half dozen Republican lawmakers, including some who consider themselves personally close to Sessions, urged him to recuse himself from the Justice Department probe. They include Sen. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who said that though he found it impossible to believe that Sessions could have colluded with Russia, "If there is an investigation, he probably shouldn't be the person leading it."

The news comes on the heels of what had been the high point of Trump's young presidency: a well-received address to Congress Tuesday night that energized Republicans and appeared to wipe away some lawmakers' concerns about the administration's tumultuous start.

Trump has been trailed for months by questions about potential ties to Russia. He's vigorously denied being aware of any contacts his associates had with Russia during the campaign and has also insisted he has no financial ties to Russia.

The Justice Department acknowledged two separate Sessions interactions with Kislyak, both after cybersecurity firms had concluded that Russian intelligence agencies were behind cyber-hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

The first occurred after a Heritage Foundation event during the Republican National Convention in July, when the department says a group of envoys — including the Russian ambassador — approached Sessions. The second was a September conversation, which the department likened to the more than 25 conversations Sessions had with foreign ambassadors last year as a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

But Sessions, an early supporter of Trump's candidacy and a policy adviser during the campaign, did not disclose his discussions with Kislyak at his Senate confirmation hearing in January when asked what he would do if "anyone affiliated" with the campaign had been in contact with officials of the Russian government.

Sessions replied that he had not had communications with the Russians, and answered "no" in a separate written questionnaire when asked about contacts regarding the election.

Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said it was normal for Russian diplomats to meet with U.S. lawmakers. A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, told AP that meetings with American political figures were part of the embassy's "everyday business."

Revelations of the contacts, first reported by The Washington Post, came amid a disclosure by three administration officials that White House lawyers have instructed aides to Trump to preserve materials that could be connected to Russian meddling in the American political process.

The officials who confirmed that staffers were instructed to comply with preservation-of-materials directions did so on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly disclose the memo from White House counsel Don McGahn.

At the confirmation hearing in January, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asked Sessions about allegations of contact between Russia and Trump aides during the 2016 election.

Sessions said, "I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have, did not have communications with the Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it."

 

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Russia Looks to Exploit White House ‘Turbulence,’ Analysts Say

MOSCOW — The Kremlin, increasingly convinced that President Trump will not fundamentally change relations with Russia, is instead seeking to bolster its global influence by exploiting what it considers weakness in Washington, according to political advisers, diplomats, journalists and other analysts.

Russia has continued to test the United States on the military front, with fighter jets flying close to an American warship in the Black Sea this month and a Russian naval vessel steaming conspicuously in the Atlantic off the coast of Delaware.

“They think he is unstable, that he can be manipulated, that he is authoritarian and a person without a team,” Alexei A. Venediktov, the editor in chief of Echo of Moscow, a liberal radio station, said of President Trump.

The Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has long sought to crack the liberal Western order, both as a competitor and as a champion of an alternative, illiberal model. To that end, he did what he could to buttress the electoral chances of Mr. Trump, who seemed like a kindred spirit with his harsh denunciations of NATO and the European Union, his endorsement of the British withdrawal from the European Union and his repeated shrugs over Russia’s destabilizing Ukraine.

In this context, Mr. Trump’s election was an unexpected bonus, but the original giddiness has worn off, and Moscow has returned to its tried-and-true formula of creating turmoil and exploiting the resulting opportunities.

“They are all telling each other that this is great, he created this turbulence inside, as we wanted, and now he is focused on his domestic problems and we have more freedom to maneuver,” Mr. Venediktov said. “Let them deal with their own problems. There, not in Ukraine. There, not in the Middle East. There, not in NATO. This is the state of mind right now.”

Sergei A. Markov, a leading analyst friendly to the Kremlin, made much the same point. “Right now the Kremlin is looking for ways that Russia can use the chaos in Washington to pursue its own interests,” said Mr. Markov, a member of the Civic Chamber, a Kremlin advisory group. “The main hope is that the U.S. will be preoccupied with itself and will stop pressuring Russia.”

Any turbulence that Russia foments also gives the Kremlin leverage that it can try to trade in the global arena at a time when it does not have much that others want.

Mr. Venediktov compared the Russian position to an intrusive neighbor who promises to be helpful by avoiding noisy restoration activity at night even though it breaks the apartment building rules in the first place.

Analysts say the Kremlin is aware that the tactic of creating and exploiting disarray can become self-defeating, in that prolonged instability could allow threats like the extremist group Islamic State to flourish.

“It is important for Russia that America does its job in foreign policy,” said Alexey Chesnakov, a periodic Kremlin political adviser and the director of the Center for Current Politics, a trend analysis group in Moscow. “If there is nobody to do that job, it might not be good for us, either.”

The Middle East provides examples of both vectors, analysts say, a moment of chaos to exploit and concerns about achieving stability for the long-term future.

Moscow has begun courting Libya, where Mr. Putin seems to want to prove that the Obama administration and other Western powers made a mistake by working to force Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from power in 2011. Russia invited various powerful figures to Moscow and sent the country’s lone aircraft carrier, the somewhat dilapidated Admiral Kuznetsov, on a port call to Libya on its way back from Syria last month. Khalifa Haftar, the military commander in eastern Libya, got a tour. The government invited veteran officials and analysts from around the Arab world this week to discuss the future of Libya and Yemen, among other topics.

Syria, on the other hand, underscores the limits to Russian power. In the two months since Russian-backed government forces took back the city of Aleppo, there has been little movement in forging peace.

Not least, Russia can ill afford the billions of dollars needed to rebuild the country. For that it needs Washington to help persuade its allies like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who all seek a political transition away from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Like much of the world, nobody in Moscow can figure out who makes Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, never mind what it will be. Since the inauguration, it has become clear that Mr. Trump’s rosy view of Mr. Putin is not shared by the president’s top foreign policy advisers, with the possible exception of Stephen K. Bannon, his chief White House strategist.

We cannot understand how they will work in concert,” said Igor Yurgens, a Russian economist who is prominent in business and development.

The Kremlin has adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward Mr. Trump, analysts said, expecting the first meeting with Mr. Putin in Europe sometime this summer to set the course for relations.

Dmitry K. Kiselyov, the anchor of the main state propaganda program “News of the Week,” recently pronounced what seemed to be the new party line on the air. “Let’s not judge too harshly, things are still unsettled in the White House,” he said. “Still not a word from there. Only little words, and that doesn’t amount to a policy.”

Just how unsettled was underscored on Monday, when the White House announced plans to increase military spending by $54 billion, an amount just about equal to what Russia spends in total on its military annually.

While the appearance of such turmoil in the White House has probably been surprising, even gratifying, to the Kremlin, analysts say Russia’s government is worried about having too much of a good thing. “It would be better for us to have a predictable partner,” Mr. Markov said. “An unpredictable one is dangerous.”

The perception of weakness calls into question here in Moscow whether Mr. Trump can ever live up to the many statements he made during the campaign about forging closer ties with Mr. Putin and Russia. “The overwhelming view of the Kremlin is that Trump is not very strong,” said Valeriy Solovey, a professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. “He might have sympathy toward Russia, but he is contained within the political establishment.”

Russia’s far right regularly predicts Mr. Trump’s assassination at the hands of the American establishment, a view occasionally echoed on state television.

Alexander Dugin, a nationalist Russian philosopher, called Mr. Trump’s inauguration the happiest day of his life because it signified the demise of the liberal international order. Mr. Dugin seemed most eager for Mr. Trump to get on with his promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington, although he worried about the consequences. “It can kill,” Mr. Dugin said in an interview. “It is not so easy to drain the swamp.”

Since the inauguration, however, enthusiasm for Mr. Trump in official Russia lurched from cool to uncool seemingly overnight. Dmitri S. Peskov, the presidential spokesman, denied that the new skepticism had been ordered from the top. The speed of the change was striking, however.

Russia’s political class marvels at how much time it now spends chewing over the minutiae of the American political system. Some attribute that to the fact that domestic politics are comatose, with Mr. Putin assured of winning another six-year term in 2018.

“Nobody is talking about the Putin election,” said Mr. Chesnakov, the political consultant. “We are discussing relations between Congress and Trump.”

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Russia Vows to Veto West-sponsored Sanctions Resolution on Syria

United Nations: Russia vowed on Friday to use its veto to block a proposed UN resolution drafted by the United States, France and Britain that would impose sanctions on Syria for the use of chemical weapons.
The trio are pushing for a vote early next week on the measure that would slap sanctions on 11 Syrians and 10 entities linked to chemical attacks in the nearly six-year war.

"I just explained our position very clearly to our partners. If it is tabled, we will veto it," Russian Deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov told reporters following a closed-door meeting of the Security Council.

Safronkov rejected the measure as "one-sided", saying it was based on "insufficient proof" and contradicted "the fundamental principle of presumption of innocence until the investigation is over".

Russia has used its veto six times to shield its Damascus ally from any punitive action by the Security Council. The draft resolution follows a UN-led investigation which concluded in October that the Syrian military had carried out at least three chlorine attacks on opposition-held villages in 2014 and 2015.

The joint panel of the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) also found that Islamic State jihadists had used mustard gas in an attack in 2015.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley said she was not swayed by the Russian arguments.

"How much longer is Russia going to continue to babysit and make excuses for the Syrian regime?" she said.

"People have died by being suffocated to death. That's barbaric."

"You are either for chemical weapons or you are against it," she added.

The fresh clash with Russia came as a new round of peace talks in Geneva struggled to get off the ground, with Syrian government and opposition delegations haggling over the format of meetings.

The vote expected Monday or Tuesday would mark the first major council action by the new US administration of President Donald Trump, who took office on January 20 seeking warmer ties with Russia.

Britain and France had circulated the draft text weeks ago, but held off on action to give the Trump administration time to study it.

The vote would see the Trump administration joining old allies France and Britain to confront Russia over its support for Syria.

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Guardiola warns Manchester City of Monaco goal threat

Monaco have been the highest goalscorers across Europe's Big Five leagues this season - reason enough for Manchester City to take them seriously when they visit the Etihad on Tuesday night.

 

Pep Guardiola has told his Manchester City players to remember what happened to Barcelona against Paris Saint-Germain last week as his Manchester City side prepare to face French league leaders Monaco in the Champions League on Tuesday.

The visit of Monaco sees a return to England of Radamel Falcao who endured two miserable spells on loan with Manchester United and then Chelsea, but who has looked back to his best this season.

Guardiola believes the striker, with 21 goals in 27 games, will be a significant threat for a team which has scored more goals than any other in Europe’s Big Five leagues this season.

Falcao, who was a prolific goalscorer for Atletico Madrid when Guardiola was in charge at Barcelona, scored only four goals in 29 appearances during a season-long arrangement for United, and just once during an equally dismal loan spell with Chelsea.

“At Atlético Madrid he did an amazing job,” Guardiola said. “After that, he was injured, unfortunately, and you need time to recover. I don’t know what happened with him here but there can be many reasons sometimes why it goes well or not. That is a question for Radamel Falcao. But the way Monaco play now is perfect for him. They attack inside and cross a lot – and he needs that. That’s why he’s back. I am happy for him, he is a good professional and a nice guy, and back at his level scoring goals.”

Monaco have scored 76 goals in 26 games in Ligue 1, establishing a three-point lead at the top, and Guardiola believes Barcelona’s 4-0 defeat in the first leg in Paris illustrates the threat posed by French sides.
“For me, Barcelona remains the best team in the world,” Guardiola said.

“When that team is at their level, no one can compete – they’re the best – but in 90 minutes anything can happen. In the Champions League, everyone can beat you and say bye-bye.

“The level, and pressure, is so high there has to be 100% focus. I don’t need a result like PSG-Barcelona to realise how good French football is and how physical they are.”

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Wet winter may help Colorado River push off problems, but it will not end the drought

California is not the only place in the West confronting startling amounts of rain and snow.

Drought conditions have declined substantially across the region in recent weeks, with heavy storms replenishing reservoirs and piling fresh powder on ski resorts.

Yet there is one place where the precipitation has been particularly welcome and could be transformative: the Colorado River basin, which provides water to nearly 40 million people across seven states.
“We’re in a really good spot as far as snow accumulations,” said Malcolm Wilson, who leads the Bureau of Reclamation’s water resources group in the upper Colorado River basin.

In fact, if the Rocky Mountains continue to see substantial snowfall this winter, there is a chance that later this year, water managers for the Colorado could do something that seemed inconceivable just a few weeks ago: They could start giving water away.

Under federal guidelines that kick in when water flows reach certain volumes, the Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees the river basin’s largest reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, could release enough water from the former to raise the elevation of the latter by 20 feet or more — providing a remarkable shot in the arm for a lake that has been declining steadily during a devastating drought that started in 2000.

The process — lowering one reservoir to lift another — is called equalization, and a few weeks ago, it was not even viewed as a viable option. Now, Wilson said, “It’s in the realm of possibility.”

Even if that optimistic scenario does not play out — the region would need several more weeks of strong precipitation without a substantial warmup — there is still reason to savor a moment of relief on the Colorado.

“For the last four years, it was all about where can we get extra water. Now, all of a sudden in the last six weeks, it’s a completely different mindset.


As of last month, the bureau was forecasting about a 50% chance that, for the first time, the river and its reservoirs would not be able to fulfill the water demands of states that rely on it, beginning in 2018.
But this week, the bureau quietly updated that forecast, saying the chance was only about 34%. By the end of this year, it expects Lake Mead to be at least 3 feet above the threshold at which an official “shortage” would be declared.

Not only that, the bureau said the likelihood of a shortage through 2021 is no greater than 33%. Just a few weeks ago, the chances of shortages in that time frame were about 60%.
Still, no one is declaring this the end of a drought that has fallowed farm fields, depleted groundwater and even inspired a dystopian novel, “The Water Knife,” from 2015, which imagines the Southwest descending into crime and chaos as people fight over the shrinking Colorado.

While California has been climbing out of its drought — albeit the hard way, with brutal storms, mudslides and a mass evacuation ordered earlier below the damaged Oroville Dam spillway — the drought on the Colorado may never truly end.

That is because no matter how deep the snowpack may get one year — some drainages are seeing close to 200% of normal this year — the river itself functions at what its managers call a “structural deficit.” The amount of water to which cities, tribes, farmers and others have legal rights is larger than the amount that, on average, flows into the system. In addition, climate change models for the future show declining snowpack and rising temperatures, potentially leading to more evaporation.

That all means that delicate negotiations that have been underway to get the seven states which use the water — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — to increase the amount of water they conserve are still crucial.

The effort, called the drought contingency plan, has been going on for several years, though negotiations intensified in 2016. The idea is to add a layer of voluntary conservation measures to prevent Lake Mead from falling below 1,075 feet, the level that triggers more painful, involuntary conservation measures.

Water managers had hoped to reach an agreement by the end of the Obama administration but ran into challenges resolving concerns among agricultural and other interests within individual states, particularly in Arizona and California.

Now, some water managers worry they may face a new challenge: that the wet winter may reduce the sense of urgency to complete the drought contingency plan.

“It potentially makes it harder, to tell you the truth,” said Tom Buschatzke, the head of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, who is trying to build support for the plan among the state’s competing interests, “because sometimes crisis mode drives outcomes.”

Buschatzke noted that 2011 was also a very wet year, with strong snowpack, but less than four years later, water managers were again preparing for the possibility of a shortage. The Colorado provides 41% of Arizona’s water.

“We need to make sure the wet winter doesn’t stop the momentum we’ve built,” he said. “Mother Nature does not bail us out.”

Both the drought and the recent deluges demonstrate how the region’s water issues are connected. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California relies on the Colorado for about 45% of its water on average, but during the drought, the Colorado has provided as much as 90% of the utility’s water.

The recent heavy rain in California has changed the balance again, allowing the utility to leave more water in Lake Mead, which helps the rest of the basin guard against a shortage.

“For the last four years, it was all about where can we get extra water,” said Bill Hasencamp, who manages Colorado River resources for the Metropolitan Water District. “Now, all of a sudden in the last six weeks, it’s a completely different mindset. We’re storing as much water as we can in Lake Mead, storing it in our desert groundwater account, storing it in every reservoir account we have.”

Hasencamp said the improvement in short-term forecasts for the Colorado could make it easier for California to approve the drought contingency plan, in part because the state’s water rights already make it least likely to suffer major cuts.

Besides, he noted, the plan is merely a temporary fix, one that may not have to be implemented if Lake Mead improves for a few years. The truly complex negotiations will begin in 2020 for what is supposed to be a long-term solution.

“Lake Mead is like going to Vegas,” Hasencamp said. “You might win a couple of times. You might even hit a jackpot. But in the end, the odds are stacked against you.”
 

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Mark Zuckerberg urges people to take action against backlash to globalisation

Mark Zuckerberg has warned of a growing backlash against globalisation and urged people to respond by building a “global community” instead of “sitting around being upset”.
The Facebook founder was speaking as he published a 5,800 word essay on the future of social media and the global economy.
In it, he said globalisation was beneficial but risked leaving some people behind.
“Every year, the world got more connected and this was seen as a positive trend. Yet now, across the world there are people left behind by globalisation, and movements for withdrawing from global connection”, he wrote.

“There are questions about whether we can make a global community that works for everyone, and whether the path ahead is to connect more or reverse course.”
In an interview with BBC News to coincide with the essay, which was posted on his Facebook page, Mr Zuckerberg said leaders had failed to foresee the negative consequences of global changes.
"For a couple of decades, maybe longer, people have really sold this idea that as the world comes together everything is going to get better”, he said.

"I think the reality is that over the long term that will be true, and there are pieces of infrastructure that we can build to make sure that a global community works for everyone.
"But I do think there are some ways in which this idea of globalisation didn't take into account some of the challenges it was going to create for people, and now I think some of what you see is a reaction to that.”

The billionaire argued that people should respond to anti-globalisation movements by building “smaller communities” and “intimate social structures” that meet people’s “personal, emotional and spiritual needs”.
He added: "If people are asking the question, is the direction for humanity to come together more or not? I think that answer is clearly yes. But we have to make sure the global community works for everyone. It is not just automatically going to happen.

"If you are upset about the direction things are going in, I hope you don't just sit around and be upset, but you feel urgent about building the long-term infrastructure that needs to get built.”
Mr Zuckerberg has come under pressure in recent months from critics who say Facebook is not doing enough to tackle fake news. Some people have blamed the site for serving as a platform for untrue news stories that many believe helped Donald Trump become US President.

In his essay, however, Mr Zuckerberg said he understood the importance of tackling fake news.
"Accuracy of information is very important," he said. “We know there is misinformation and even outright hoax content on Facebook.

"We've made progress fighting hoaxes the way we fight spam, but we have more work to do.
"In a free society, it's important that people have the power to share their opinion, even if others think they're wrong. Our approach will focus less on banning misinformation, and more on surfacing additional perspectives and information, including that fact checkers dispute an item's accuracy."

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Putin is Again Bombing Ukraine: Will Evangelicals Call on Trump to Take Action?

Ukrainians are again facing aggression from Russia, initiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Christian blogger Warren Throckmorton asks whether U.S. evangelicals will step in to help.
In a post titled “Do Evangelical Leaders Still Care about Ukraine?” Throckmorton recalls a short time ago when evangelicals spoke out about Putin’s actions toward Ukraine and called out President Obama for seemingly being unwilling to confront Putin’s aggression toward Russia’s neighbor.
However, now evangelicals seem to be remaining silent while President Trump also allows Putin to bomb Eastern Ukraine.

Trump has been accused for some time of being too friendly with Russia, although he alleges that having a diplomatic relationship with Putin is an asset for the U.S.
Paul Kengor of Grove City College and The Center for Vision & Values notes that “The ‘Putin-likes-me’ attitude of Trump is a fatal conceit, and it’s something that Donald Trump should have learned from watching two terms of Barack Obama’s naïve statements and attitude toward the Russians. It is also the polar opposite of Ronald Reagan’s statements and attitude toward the Russians.”

Throckmorton writes that if evangelical leaders still care about the plight of the Ukrainian people “I hope they will use their clout with Trump in order to educate him about the dangers of trusting the Russian leader, especially given his recent actions. If anything, Trump’s rhetoric is more in lines with a desire to Make Russia Great Again than #MAGA.”

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