Month: March 2017

The White House responded to a day of damaging testimony to Congress on Monday by FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers with a series of tweets intended to cast the news in the best possible light. The official @POTUS account sent out a series of clips from the House Intelligence Committee’s hearing into the 2016 election, focusing on three issues: Russian efforts to influence the vote, allegations that the Trump campaign was wiretapped, and the leaks to the media about contacts between Russian officials and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Comey said that the Department of Justice was looking into Russian interference with the election and potential ties to the Trump campaign but that he had no information to support the president’s claims, on Twitter, that Trump Tower had been wiretapped on the orders of former President Barack Obama.

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Testifying before the House Intelligence Committee on Monday, FBI Director James Comey deployed a sports analogy — and revealed something about his sports fandom that won’t make him any friends in New England. “I hate the New England Patriots,” Comey confessed while taking questions about the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s motivation to help Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. The quip was meant to illustrate the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia’s hatred of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was so intense, Moscow would do anything it could to help her opponent.

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Hours before FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before Congress on the bureau’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, President Trump took a few swings on Twitter. First, the president pointed out that former National Intelligence Director James Clapper had said in a recent interview that there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. “James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus colluded with Russia,” Trump tweeted.

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By Yeganeh Torbati and Ben Blanchard BEIJING (Reuters) – Despite a long list of potential pitfalls, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to China, the first by a senior member of the Trump administration, passed off relatively smoothly although there were no tangible gains to show. On the positive side, there was none of the awkwardness of the kind seen in Washington as President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel held the first summit meeting between two of the West’s biggest allies. “For setting up a new tone, it’s a good start,” said Sun Zhe, the co-director of the China Initiative of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

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On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Adam Schiff — the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee — defended his committee’s investigation, saying: "At the outset of the investigation, there was circumstantial evidence of collusion.

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