Trump’s Long-Awaited Briefing on Russian Election Interference Nears
■ President-elect Donald J. Trump will finally be briefed by the nation’s intelligence chiefs on their conclusion that Russia tried to help him win the U.S. presidency.
■ Mr. Trump appears to be seething before his intelligence briefing on Russian meddling in the election.
■ The president-elect acknowledges that Mexico will not be paying for that wall, at least not for now.
President-elect to finally hear evidence on Russian election meddling
Mr. Trump will meet the nation’s top intelligence leaders at midday in New York on Friday to hear their evidence that Russia hacked into the accounts of political organizations and members of the Clinton campaign and made their correspondence public in an effort to influence the election. The president-elect was sharply questioning those findings as late at Friday morning.
The meeting, at 12:30 at Trump Tower, will be the first time Mr. Trump hears the high points of a classified study ordered by President Obama. The briefers will include James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, who said Thursday that he was “more resolute” than ever in the conclusion that Russia was responsible for the hacking, and that it was part of a broader information warfare campaign.
The director of the C.I.A., John O. Brennan, the head of the National Security Agency and the United States Cyber Command, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, and the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, will also participate, officials said.
The meeting comes at a moment of remarkable tension between the intelligence agencies and Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly questioned the conclusions about Russia and suggested that there was political motivation behind the intelligence findings. Mr. Clapper and Admiral Rogers said, somewhat diplomatically, at a Senate hearing on Thursday that while they welcomed skepticism, they believed questioning the motives of the intelligence officials working on the issue was damaging to morale and to the agencies’ ability to retain top talent.
An unclassified version of the report Mr. Trump will hear about will be made public early next week. The president-elect will most likely hear the most-classified details, including information about the intercepts of conversation and computer traffic, and the human sources, that the intelligence agencies used to reach their conclusions.
Ahead of intelligence briefing, seething on Twitter
But before he sat down to learn how the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the National Security Agency and other agencies reached their conclusions, Mr. Trump continued Friday to seethe about the report, condemning leaks of its findings, casting doubt on its conclusions and saying that Russia had nothing to do with his victory.
She did beat him by nearly three million in the popular vote, but on Friday, Mr. Trump will officially be declared the winner of the Electoral College vote.
Mr. Trump appears to be worried about the turnout at his Jan. 20 inauguration as well.
A flurry of posts on Twitter on Thursday night captured Mr. Trump’s mood:
The first post was a reference to an NBC News report that United States intelligence agencies heard senior Russian government officials cheering Mr. Trump’s victory on election night. That was first reported by The Washington Post.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall at Trump Tower as the president-elect learns more.
And who will pay for it? The taxpayers
After CNN reported Thursday night that the incoming Trump administration would seek taxpayer funding for his promised border wall with Mexico, the president-elect took to Twitter on Friday morning acknowledging that Mexico would not be paying for it — at least not at first.
And whom did he blame? The news media.
Making Mexico pay for the border wall was a central campaign promise and a common chant at his rallies.
Now, Mr. Trump is working with congressional leaders to find the money on this side of the border. The multibillion-dollar building effort would most likely use authority approved in 2006, when President George W. Bush signed legislation to construct a “physical barrier” on the southern border. Mr. Trump’s transition team is already scoping out locations for the first legs of the “Great Wall.”
And the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, says he told Mr. Trump during the campaign that his country had no intention of paying for it.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee jumped on the issue immediately.
“House Republicans and Donald Trump have wasted no time in breaking their promise to voters by preparing to waste massive amounts of American taxpayer money on an infeasible wall instead of focusing on rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, creating jobs, and more effective approaches to improving our national security,” said a spokesman, Tyler Law.
President-elect denounces TV successor
The incoming president wants the country to know that the man who succeeded him on his reality television show, “The Apprentice,” is not doing so well. But hey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, supported Hillary Clinton, so what could we expect?
Mr. Trump has long been a ratings obsessive: he keeps photocopies of decade-old Nielsen charts and regularly called network executives at home to brag about “Apprentice” numbers. He likes to remind television news producers about the big ratings he attracts and, as a candidate, asked voters, “How do you think Arnold’s going to do?”
Arnold did not do great. Mr. Schwarzenegger’s debut on Monday attracted 4.9 million viewers, down from about 6.3 million for Mr. Trump’s most recent season premiere. The president-elect remains a paid executive producer, but if his Friday tweets were meant as promotional, it’s a funny way to go about it. A spokeswoman for Mark Burnett, who still runs the show, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Schwarzenegger responded on Twitter by quoting Abraham Lincoln’s appeal “to our better angels.”
There's nothing more important than the people's work, @realDonaldTrump. twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
There's nothing more important than the people's work, @realDonaldTrump. twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…
Please study this quote from Lincoln's inaugural, @realDonaldTrump. It inspired me every day I was Governor, and I hope it inspires you.
One last Obama dig on offshore drilling: No seismic tests
The Obama administration is expected to deny nearly all outstanding permit requests from energy companies wishing to conduct seismic testing for oil and gas deposits off the Atlantic coast, according to people familiar with the matter.
The announcement, which would block planned seismic tests on large portions of waters from the coast of New Jersey to the Florida shore, could come as soon as Friday.
The process involves creating loud underwater blasts sent from ships. The blasts can help determine the location and size of oil and gas deposits, but environmentalists opposed the method because they say it disrupts the habitats and mating of fish and marine mammals.
The move is the latest in a series of efforts by the Obama administration to create new environmental protections before President Obama leaves office.
Mr. Trump has vowed to open up America’s federal lands and waters to new drilling, but Mr. Obama has used some novel moves to attempt to block or delay new offshore drilling. Earlier this month, he used an obscure provision in a 1953 law to permanently ban drilling in large portions of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. And experts say the move to deny seismic testing permits on such a large scale so late in an administration is also unusual.
Even if the Obama administration denies the permits, companies could re-apply for them under the Trump administration. But the re-application process, combined with a current Obama plan which bans all offshore Atlantic drilling until 2022, could significantly delay the expected start time of the testing.
New rule allows lawmakers to target a single federal worker’s salary
Congressional Republicans appear to be preparing for battle — with the federal work force.
House Republicans reached back to 1876 to revive an obscure rule that gives Congress the power to cut an individual federal worker’s salary to as low as $1, The Post reported. Under the Holman Rule, resurrected by Representative Morgan Griffith, Republican of Virginia, any member can add an amendment to a spending bill targeting one or several government employees, or a single government program.
The amendment would need to clear both chambers of Congress, but in huge appropriations bills, small amendments do slip through.
Trump still dislikes AT&T and Time Warner deal
Mr. Trump recently told a close associate that he was still opposed to AT&T’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner, reiterating a public call during the campaign to block the mega media deal, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
The president-elect’s apparent objection to the $85.4 billion merger sent Time Warner’s stock down nearly 4 percent on Thursday, as reported by Bloomberg.
Mr. Trump’s negative view toward the deal is largely because of his frustration with CNN, which is owned by Time Warner. Like other news media organizations he has criticized, Mr. Trump has repeatedly called out CNN for what he believed was unfair coverage during the presidential campaign.
Analysts, however, had viewed the incoming Republican administration as a benefit for AT&T and Time Warner because of the general free-market ideals of conservatives. The deal was also seen as a test for all mergers in the new administration.
The companies filed weeks ago for regulatory review at the Justice Department, but they are still weighing whether they will need to also seek approval from the Federal Communications Commission. A review at the F.C.C. could be tougher because of its public interest standard that is subject to broad interpretation.
Mr. Trump’s administration would appoint members of the antitrust division of the Justice Department, giving him potentially great control over mergers.
AT&T declined to comment, and Time Warner did not respond to a request for comment.
P.C: http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/us/politics/donald-trump-transition.html
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