‘Be careful’: GOP Intel chair threatens to ‘investigate’ reporters for persisting on Sessions



http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/be-careful-gop-intel-chair-threatens-to-investigate-reporters-for-persisting-on-sessions/

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, warned reporters on Thursday that they could find themselves under investigation if they continued to ask questions about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ ties to Russia.

During a press conference, Nunes dismissed calls for his committee to investigate Sessions following reports that the Attorney General may have lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he said that he had no contact with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.

“I read about this in the newspaper and I see some of you talking about,” Nunes told reporters. “If you have those names [of anonymous sources], if you want to come forward as a whistleblower and bring those to us, we would greatly appreciate it. Because we would like to have those names, bring those people in.”

“Look, I’m sure some of you are in contact with the Russian embassies,” the congressman said ominously. “So be careful what you ask for here because if we start getting transcripts of any of you or other Americans talking to the press then do you want us to conduct an investigation on you or other Americans because you were talking to the Russian Embassy.”

Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK is to be delayed until October and will take place mostly in Scotland, according to reports.

The Daily Mail has reported that planners want to shift much of the US president’s trip - originally pencilled in for the first week in June - to the Queen’s residence at Balmoral, Aberdeenshire, in a bid to deter protesters.

The president could spend as little as one day in London before heading to Scotland.

The reported delay also means that Parliament will be in recess, making it impossible for MPs to “snub” the President by refusing him the honour of making an address.

Officials believe the delay could also allow tempers to cool over Mr Trump’s controversial policies, and that the autumn weather may make mass protests less likely.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/trump-takes-to-twitter-to-brag-about-economy-as-russia-questions-swirl-around-sessions/

Spicer: Anyone asking for Sessions to recuse himself from Russia case should be ‘ashamed’



http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/sean-spicer-anyone-asking-for-sessions-to-recuse-himself-from-russia-case-should-be-ashamed/

In an excerpt released from a Fox News interview that will be aired in full on Friday, Spicer lashed out at people who are calling for Sessions to either resign or recuse himself.

“There’s nothing to recuse himself [from],” said Spicer. “He was 100% straight with the committee, and I think people who are choosing to play partisan politics with this should be ashamed of themselves.”

Sessions has come under fire for not disclosing at his Senate confirmation hearing that he twice met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Several Democrats — including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — have called on Sessions to resign. In addition, several Republicans — including Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Raul Labrador (R-ID) — said Sessions should recuse himself from any investigations into ties between Russian officials and the Trump campaign.

Ted Cruz shrugs off Sessions ties to Russia as ‘nothing burger’: Questions are just ‘political theater’

“What we are seeing is a lot of political theater,” Cruz said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“Everyone is in high dudgeon about the meeting,” Cruz said. “The underlying meeting is a nothing burger. It’s what senators do every day. Meeting with foreign ambassadors, that’s part of the job.”

Several GOP leaders — including House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — have called on Sessions to recuse himself from the investigation into Trump ties to Russia.

“I think everyone is getting all worked up because it’s a chance to beat up the attorney general and to beat up the president,” Cruz said. “But I think the underlying meeting is he is doing his job.”

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/ted-cruz-shrugs-off-sessions-ties-to-russia-as-nothing-burger-questions-are-just-political-theater/

Sessions strongly denied ever discussing campaign-related issues with anyone from Russia.

"I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign," he said in a statement. "I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false."

Sessions' spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said there was nothing "misleading about his answer" to Congress because he "was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign -- not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee."

"Last year, the Senator had over 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, including the British, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Indian, Chinese, Canadian, Australian, German and Russian ambassadors," Isgur Flores said in the statement.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/02/politics/democrats-sessions-russia-resignation-call/index.html?adkey=bn

Via Media Matters, co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade did their best to spin Sessions’s meetings with Kislyak — as well as reports that foreign intelligence agencies had discovered frequent contacts between Russian officials and members of Trump’s presidential campaign — as completely routine and not something that’s actually worth talking about.

“The New York Times has a story today that said the Obama administration had scrambled to keep this so-called intelligence together and keep it from the Trump administration in order to, I guess, a lot of people feel, make sure that they can move forward with an investigation, maybe without the Trump administration knowing,” said Kilmeade. “Even the State Department led by John Kerry also took part in intelligence sharing. They claim the Dutch and British also have information about meetings between Trump officials and — they claim to — Trump officials and Russian officials.”

Doocy chimed in to note that the “the timing is suspicious” of the stories, as they dropped shortly after President Donald Trump’s well received speech before Congress on Tuesday. Earhardt agreed that “the timing’s interesting,” before Kilmeade then suggested that rival cable news networks were intentionally over-reporting on this story to not talk about the triumphant Trump speech.

“Other networks are doing special programming around this because they’d rather talk about anything but what went on with that speech yesterday,” he said.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/watch-fox-friends-questions-release-timing-of-so-called-intelligence-on-trumps-russian-ties/

The rapid start of construction, promised throughout Trump's campaign and in an executive order issued in January on border security, was to be financed, according to the White House, with "existing funds and resources" of the Department of Homeland Security.

But so far, the DHS has identified only $20 million that can be re-directed to the multi-billion-dollar project, according to a document prepared by the agency and distributed to congressional budget staff last week.

The document said the funds would be enough to cover a handful of contracts for wall prototypes, but not enough to begin construction of an actual barrier. This means that for the wall to move forward, the White House will need to convince Congress to appropriate funds.

An internal report, previously reported by Reuters, estimated that fully walling off or fencing the entire southern border would cost $21.6 billion - $9.3 million per mile of fence and $17.8 million per mile of wall.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-funds-idUSKBN1685SY?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social