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Obama Appeal to Russia Caught Live
President Confides to Medvedev, After Conversation on Missile Shield, That He Will Have More Flexibility After Election

By
Laura Meckler and
Carol E. Lee
Updated March 27, 2012 8:03 a.m. ET

SEOUL—President Barack Obama was overheard confiding to Russia’s president that he would have to await his re-election before addressing the divisive issue of global missile defense, an unscripted moment that touched off a political backlash at home.

Mr. Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he can’t resolve the issue before the November election, but that afterward, he would have more “flexibility.” The comments were picked up by a live microphone.

Republicans seized on the exchange to suggest that Mr. Obama may talk tough during the campaign but then cave to Moscow once re-elected. They also questioned what else Mr. Obama has in store for a second term that he doesn’t want to disclose now.

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) said the words were those of “a real Etch A Sketch leader,” comparing them to a political adviser’s ill-fated comment last week that the campaign of GOP front-runner Mitt Romney would alter its positions for the general election, “like an Etch A Sketch.”

Let’s hear the tape.

The Flynn affair is a tale of intrigue, with head-spinning twists and turns, manipulative spies, narrative-weaving pols, and strategists who mostly outsmart themselves. It is easy to get lost in the weeds. There is one easy way to get to the bottom of it, though — one way to get a real sense of whether General Michael Flynn, the now-former national-security adviser, is a lying rogue who deceived every Trump administration official in sight, or the victim of an elaborate “deep state” scam whose real objective is to destroy not merely Flynn but the Trump presidency.

Let’s go to the audio tape: the government’s recording of a December 29, 2016, conversation, intercepted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), that Flynn had with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States.

For now, the so-called deep state — the intelligence operatives and highly placed officials who run the United States government because they have the power to ruin their opposition — would apparently prefer that we not hear the tape. Many of them are Obama functionaries who are content to shape opinion by leaking their edited version of events to media allies. Some of them are Trump functionaries whose mishandling of what may be a tempest in a teapot has made them vulnerable less than four weeks into the new administration. Perhaps, they calculate, handing up Flynn’s scalp makes their problem go away. In reality, it is just whetting the opposition’s appetite.

Let’s end the intrigue and go to the tape.

As late as Tuesday, General Flynn was still denying what is being widely reported as settled fact, namely, that he spoke with the Russian ambassador specifically about “sanctions” imposed by President Obama. Since Flynn knows there is a recording of the conversation, it is a strange thing for him to deny. So is he telling the truth? Let’s find out.

Intelligence operatives leaked parts of Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak — a felony violation of federal law. Now, they’ll blithely tell us that that they can’t release the whole conversation because it is classified. Should we buy that?

I wouldn’t.

To understand the smoke and mirrors of scandal here, it is critical to recreate what was happening in this country on December 29, when Flynn, already designated as Trump’s national-security adviser but three weeks away from taking office, called the Russian ambassador.

Donald Trump had shocked the world on November 8 by winning the 2016 election. Unwilling to come to grips with their defeat — to acknowledge that they had nominated a hopelessly flawed candidate and, in their leftwing extremism, alienated the working-class voters who were once their party’s backbone — Democrats settled on an alternative rationalization: “Russia hacked the election.”

This narrative is utter nonsense. While the vile Putin regime probably did have a role in hacking the e-mail accounts of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, they had not done a thing to compromise the actual voting process. And the embarrassing revelations published through WikiLeaks were not slanderous; they were true and accurate communications in which Democrats spoke candidly — meaning, they said things they wouldn’t want you to hear about.

As the state contemplates an income tax hike, Oregon’s elites line their pockets with taxpayer money.

In 2016, as politicians across America were fleeing voter wrath, Oregon’s governor and attorney general were blazing an unlikely trail – accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from businesses with state contracts.

Since 1940, at the federal level, individuals and entities negotiating or working under federal contracts are prohibited from giving political cash to candidates, parties or committees. In Oregon, however, this political patronage is perfectly legal, at least for now.

Our analysis at American Transparency (OpenTheBooks.com) found207 state contractors gave $805,876 in campaign cash to Governor Kate Brown ($518,203) and Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum ($287,673) since 2012. These businesses hold lifetime state contracts worth at least $2.6 billion. State contractor donations to the governor and attorney general represent 57 percent of current cash on hand in their campaign committees.

We found the data by looking at a universe of companies or their affiliated employees funding Brown or Rosenblum’s campaigns since 2012. We then matched those company names with the contract database provided by the State of Oregon. It’s a trail of conflicts of interest paved with campaign cash and contractor payments.

Oregon Gov, Kate Brown speaks to the crowd of supporters after being elected at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Steve Dykes)

We found 41 law firms holding state contracts with a lifetime value of nearly $50 million who gave political donations to Rosenblum ($196,093 in donations) and Brown ($89,958 in donations) since 2012. Oregon outsources legal work to these firms despite Rosenblum’s Department of Justiceemploying up to 1,228 staffers at an annual taxpayer cost of $74 million. Why put state employees to work when you can outsource it to potential donors? By comparison, the Attorneys General of Illinois and New York have 875 and 1,685 employees respectively.

State campaign disclosures show that firms themselves, or their affiliated partners, principals, and employees gave the following:

Markowitz Herbold PC – $25,084 in campaign donations to the governor and AG. Separately, the firm received new and amended state contracts valued at $13 million from 2013-2015.
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP – $16,331 in campaign donations to the governor and AG. Separately, the firm held state contracts worth a lifetime value of $2.995 million.
Stoll, Stoll, Berne, Lokting & Shalchter PC – $15,617 in campaign donations to the governor and AG. Separately, the firm held contracts worth a lifetime value of $2.71 million.

U.S. intelligence officials have withheld sensitive intelligence from President Donald Trump because they are concerned it could be leaked or compromised, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.

The officials’ decision to keep information from Mr. Trump underscores the deep mistrust that has developed between the intelligence community and the president over his team’s contacts with the Russian government, as well as the enmity he has shown toward U.S. spy agencies. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump accused the agencies of leaking information to undermine him.

In some of these cases of withheld information, officials have decided not to show Mr. Trump the sources and methods that the intelligence agencies use to collect information, the current and former officials said. Those sources and methods could include, for instance, the means that an agency uses to spy on a foreign government.
A White House official said: “There is nothing that leads us to believe that this is an accurate account of what is actually happening.”

A spokesman for the Office of Director of National Intelligence said: “Any suggestion that the U.S. intelligence community is withholding information and not providing the best possible intelligence to the president and his national security team is not true.”

Intelligence officials have in the past not told a president or members of Congress about the ins and outs of how they ply their trade. At times, they have decided that secrecy is essential for protecting a source, and that all a president needs to know is what that source revealed and what the intelligence community thinks is important about it.

But in these previous cases in which information was withheld, the decision wasn’t motivated by a concern about a president’s trustworthiness or discretion, the current and former officials said.

It wasn’t clear Wednesday how many times officials have held back information from Mr. Trump.

Andy Puzder withdrew his nomination for Labor Secretary Wednesday after a ferocious union and media assault, and is President Trump paying attention? This is what happens, sir, when a White House starts losing, losing, losing.

Mr. Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, was a rare business executive willing publicly to support Mr. Trump during the campaign. As an expert in labor management, he was ideal to reform a Labor Department that was run for eight years as a wholly owned subsidiary of the AFL-CIO. He would also have been a much-needed advocate for free markets in Mr. Trump’s senior economic councils.

Mr. Puzder’s reward was to get caught in a cross-fire between the union left and the anti-immigration right. Unions rolled out a misinformation campaign broadcasting worker grievances at his Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants, though the number and nature were politically concocted and his corporate stores are business models.

Mr. Puzder was also targeted by some on the right because he supported more legal immigration to meet the needs of a growing U.S. economy, which is a mortal sin on the restrictionist right. Mr. Puzder had once employed a housekeeper he didn’t know was undocumented, and though he fired her and paid back taxes, restrictionists wanted to punish him for supporting immigration reform. Heaven forfend he’d help farmers address their severe labor shortage. Did White House aides Stephen Bannon or Stephen Miller give the word to Breitbart and other Trumpian news outlets that they could unload on Mr. Puzder?

Certainly the White House did little to defend the businessman. His small nomination team had to rebut the false charges more or less on their own. While outside groups spent millions of dollars to bolster nominees Scott Pruitt,Jeff Sessions and Betsy DeVos, almost nothing was spent to help Mr. Puzder.

The White House should be especially concerned that Republican Senators dumped Mr. Puzder so easily. As many as a dozen were worried about the left-right assaults and asked the White House to spare them from a vote to confirm by withdrawing the nomination. So much for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s promise that all Trump nominees would make it. This is what happens when Republicans begin to feel they must distance themselves from an unpopular President.

The White House will compound its mistakes if it responds by trying to appease the union left or restrictionist right with its next nominee. Mr. Trump needs a Labor secretary who can help workers prosper in a competitive world, not treat labor economics as a zero-sum game of political redistribution.