Day: May 17, 2024

WASHINGTON, May 17 (Reuters) – Some of Donald Trump’s allies are assembling proposals to curtail the Justice Department’s independence and turn the nation’s top law enforcement body into an attack dog for conservative causes, nine people involved in the effort told Reuters.

If successful, the overhaul could represent one of the most consequential actions of a second Trump presidency given the Justice Department’s role in protecting democratic institutions and upholding the rule of law.

The plan is essentially twofold, according to the nine people interviewed by Reuters, some of whom requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

First: flood the Justice Department with stalwart conservatives unlikely to say “no” to controversial orders from the White House. Second: restructure the department so key decisions are concentrated in the hands of administration loyalists rather than career bureaucrats.

The FBI – which many Republicans see as biased against them – would have new constraints on its authority, with many of its responsibilities shifted to other law enforcement agencies, those people said.

“Trump feels that the DoJ has institutional problems,” said Steve Bannon, a prominent Trump ally who was prosecuted by the Justice Department and convicted for contempt of Congress. “It’s not just personnel: you do need to purge the DoJ, but you also need to reform it.”

In response to questions from Reuters, the Trump campaign pointed to a December statement from co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.

“Unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official,” they said.

The campaign itself has few full-time policy staffers. Trump and his team are in frequent contact with outside groups, such as those formulating recommendations on the Justice Department.

With Trump holding a lead in most swing states likely to decide November’s election, the former president’s advisers may have a shot at putting their ideas into practice.

Trump’s promises to remodel the Justice Department have been well documented, but less attention has been given to identifying the specific measures his allies and advisers are advocating.

Two prominent Trump allies told Reuters they support eliminating the FBI’s general counsel, an office that enraged Republicans during Trump’s 2017-2021 term for its role in approving an inquiry into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russian officials.

The general counsel provides legal advice to FBI employees regarding ongoing probes and other matters. Closing it would force the bureau to receive legal guidance from people closer to Trump’s attorney general in the chain-of-command and limit the FBI’s ability to conduct investigations without close political oversight, according to several Trump supporters and legal professionals with knowledge of the department’s workings.

Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Mousa said in a statement that Trump and his allies “were putting Trump’s own revenge and retribution ahead of what is best for America.” The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s allies argue that, as head of the executive branch, the president should have broad powers to command and oversee the Justice Department as he or she sees fit.

Most Democrats and even some Republicans reject that view. They say the Justice Department requires an unusual amount of independence because it’s responsible for administering justice in a non-partisan fashion. At times, that mandate includes investigating a president’s close political allies.

“There are always enforcement disputes … That is standard politics,” said Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor who is now at Protect Democracy, a non-profit legal advocacy organization.

“What is not standard politics is somebody basically coming in and saying we are going to jettison the idea that the Department of Justice should have a wall of separation between it and the personal political agenda of the president.”

Many Trump allies making these proposals are affiliated with a consortium of conservative think tanks known as “Project 2025”, which has been making detailed plans for a second Trump presidency. In a statement to Reuters, Project 2025 said it could not speak for the Trump campaign.

These allies are also combing through federal regulations for novel ways to bring stalwart conservatives into the Justice Department at the start of a potential Trump term, according to two people with knowledge of those deliberations.

These detailed preparations contrast with Trump’s chaotic 2016 transition, which involved relatively little policy planning, several people involved have acknowledged.

The former president spent the opening months of his first administration butting heads with his attorney general and FBI director, both of whom angered the president by failing to halt inquiries into his 2016 campaign.

It’s an experience, according to several associates who speak to Trump, that he’s determined not to repeat.

Trump currently faces a total of 88 charges in four criminal cases – two of which have been brought by the DoJ – over efforts to subvert the 2020 election, retaining classified documents after leaving office, and alleged efforts to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star.

The 77-year-old denies wrongdoing in all the cases and points to the charges as proof the Justice Department is biased against him. The department denies this and says it conducts all of its probes impartially.

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday deplored what he called “a series of unprecedented and frankly unfounded attacks on the Justice Department.”

While promising to establish a non-partisan justice system, Trump has called for many of his political opponents to be arrested. Last June, he pledged in a post on Truth Social to have a “special prosecutor” probe the 81-year-old Biden.

Some allies stop short of embracing Trump’s rhetoric of revenge. But they agree Trump should have greater control over the Justice Department and FBI.

“Whenever you have power centers … that have enormous resources, coercive power and investigative tools at their disposal, and they are presumed to be independent of any control down the chain of command from the president, that is a recipe for abuse of power,” said Steve Bradbury, a former Justice official who briefly served as Trump’s acting Transportation Secretary.

In interviews with Reuters, Bradbury and Gene Hamilton, a senior Justice Department official under Trump, both endorsed the measure to eliminate the FBI’s general counsel.

They said they do not speak for Trump, but both are contributing ideas to Project 2025. Hamilton is a trusted lieutenant of Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s closest policy advisers. Miller did not respond to requests for comment.

Both Bradbury and Hamilton also endorsed changing the Justice Department’s chain of command so the FBI director reports to a pair of politically appointed assistant attorneys general.

The director currently reports to the deputy attorney general, a more senior official who in practice is too busy and has too large a portfolio to oversee and guide FBI probes, Bradbury said.

Bradbury and other legal experts said that change could be done without congressional authorization. He said these steps are necessary to ensure that the bureau’s enforcement priorities align with the White House’s policy preferences. Detractors say these measures will undermine the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI.

Some Trump allies and advisers also want to narrow dramatically the types of crimes the FBI can investigate, arguing the bureau’s focus is too sprawling for political appointees to oversee effectively.

In a publicly available policy memo, which was published last July but received little attention, Bradbury said other law enforcement agencies, like the Drug Enforcement Administration, could take the lead where their jurisdiction overlaps with the bureau.

The remnants of the bureau, Bradbury wrote, could focus exclusively on “large-scale crimes and threats to national security” that require a federal response.

As important as restructuring the department, Trump allies argue, is ensuring it is stacked with allies unlikely to slow-walk Trump’s demands.

Trump has publicly embraced a potential executive order known as “Schedule F” that would give him the power to replace thousands of civil servants with conservative allies.

That would allow his administration to expand the number of political appointments in the Justice Department, which sits in the low hundreds, though allies have not settled on precisely how many positions could be created.

Some Trump allies at Project 2025 also want to expand the use of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, an obscure statute that allows departments to bring in outside experts with the help of non-profits, several people with knowledge of those deliberations said.

AFSCME Local 2830, a union representing some Justice Department employees, said in a statement to Reuters it is “concerned that Trump officials will fill positions to further their partisan agenda instead of impartially carrying out federal laws and regulations and upholding the Constitution.”

With the right structure and personnel in place, Trump will be better prepared to pursue conservative policy goals, his supporters say. While his allies have floated dozens of ideas, many relate broadly to how the federal government polices civil rights.

For instance, Hamilton argued that the Justice Department should examine whether corporations are discriminating against whites by instituting programs designed to boost the number of people of color in the workplace.

The department could derive its authority, he said, from the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars hiring or compensation decisions based on “race” or “sex.”

Hamilton also called for radically curtailing court-monitored settlements known as “consent decrees” between the Justice Department and local police departments, which are used to help curb civil rights abuses against people of color, the disabled and the mentally ill.

Conservatives portray these agreements as heavy-handed federal actions that interfere with local agencies trying to fight crime. Rights advocates say such arguments ignore centuries of documented inequities.

Christy Lopez, a Georgetown professor who formerly served as a Justice Department Civil Rights Division official, said the department reduced its police accountability work during Trump’s first term.

“There’s no reason to believe that his administration won’t double down,” she said.

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BEIJING/MOSCOW, May 16 (Reuters) – China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Thursday pledged a “new era” of partnership between the two most powerful rivals of the United States, which they cast as an aggressive Cold War hegemon sowing chaos across the world.

Xi greeted Putin on a red carpet outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where they were hailed by marching People’s Liberation Army soldiers, a 21-gun salute on Tiananmen Square and children waving the flags of China and Russia.

China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War Two.

“The China-Russia relationship today is hard-earned, and the two sides need to cherish and nurture it,” Xi told Putin.

“China is willing to … jointly achieve the development and rejuvenation of our respective countries, and work together to uphold fairness and justice in the world.”

Russia, waging war against NATO-supplied Ukrainian forces, and China, under pressure from a concerted U.S. effort to counter its growing military and economic strength, increasingly have found common geopolitical cause.

Xi has told Putin the two have the chance to drive changes the world has not seen in a century, which many analysts see as an attempt to challenge a U.S.-led global order.

Their governments, pushing back against perceived humiliations of the 1991 Soviet collapse and centuries of European colonial dominance of China, have sought to portray the West as decadent and in decline, with China challenging U.S. supremacy in everything from quantum computing and synthetic biology to espionage and hard military power.

But China and Russia face their own challenges, including a slowing Chinese economy and an emboldened and expanding NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Washington casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat.

Putin’s visit comes weeks after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to China to raise concerns about China’s support for Russia’s military.

That trip appears to have done little to dent Xi’s deepening relationship with Putin.

By picking China for his first foreign trip since being sworn in this month for another six-year term, Putin is sending a message to the world about his priorities and the strength of his personal ties with Xi.

The joint statement was described as deepening the strategic relationship, and mentioned plans to step up military ties and how defence sector cooperation between the two nations improved regional and global security.

It singled out the United States for criticism.

“The United States still thinks in terms of the Cold War and is guided by the logic of bloc confrontation, putting the security of ‘narrow groups’ above regional security and stability, which creates a security threat for all countries in the region,” the statement said. “The U.S. must abandon this behaviour.”

It also condemned initiatives to seize assets and property of foreign states, a clear reference to Western moves to redirect profits from frozen Russian assets or the assets themselves, to help Ukraine.

State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told a daily news briefing that China “cannot have its cake and eat it too” in backing Moscow.

“You can’t want to have good, further, stronger, deepened relationships with Europe and other countries while simultaneously continuing to fuel the biggest threat to European security in a long time,” Patel said, calling Beijing’s help in reconstituting Russia’s defence industrial base “deeply problematic”.

After the West imposed the most severe sanctions in modern history on Moscow due to the war in Ukraine, Putin pivoted Russia towards China.

Beijing, once the junior partner to Moscow, remains by far the most powerful of Russia’s friends – and its top buyer of crude.

That closeness has perturbed some in the Russian elite who fear that Russia is now too dependent on China, with which the Soviet Union came to the brink of war in 1969 over a border dispute.

Xi said both sides agreed that a political settlement to the Ukraine crisis was the “right direction” and the joint statement said both countries were opposed to a drawn out conflict.

Putin, who arrived on Thursday for a two-day visit, said he was grateful to China for trying to solve the Ukraine crisis, adding that he would brief Xi on the situation there, where Russian forces are advancing on several fronts.

Describing his initial talks with Xi as “warm and comradely”, he outlined sectors where the two countries were strengthening ties, from nuclear and energy cooperation to food supplies and Chinese car manufacturing in Russia.

Putin and Xi will participate in a gala celebration marking 75 years since the Soviet Union recognised the People’s Republic of China, which Mao Zedong declared in 1949.

It was not immediately clear if Putin would make any further stops in Asia.

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An F.B.I. agent, testifying for the government, described his search of Senator Robert Menendez’s house in New Jersey.

Jurors in the corruption trial of Senator Robert Menendez on Thursday were handed plastic bags containing gold bars, allowing them to touch an object at the heart of the government’s case.Credit…Andrew Kelly/Reuters

By Benjamin Weiser and Maia Coleman

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have issued a one-sentence statement about nuclear war as part of their “new era” strategic partnership.

Putin and Xi announced plans to deepen their partnership on Thursday, issuing a statement addressing their position on a number of issues facing the world, ranging from questions about the economy to the war between Russia and Ukraine. China and Russia have steadily strengthened ties as the two countries have found regularly themselves at odds with much of the West.

The United States has seen its long-frayed relations with both countries become even more strained in recent years. Washington emerged as a staunch supporter of Ukraine after Putin ordered an invasion of the Eastern European nation in February 2022, delivering billions of dollars of aid to help Kyiv defend itself.

Meanwhile, relations with China remain tense over, among other concerns, Taiwan. The question of Taiwanese independence has been a sticking point between the U.S. and China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping appear in Beijing on May 16, 2024. In a joint statement, Putin and Xi addressed their position on the use of nuclear weapons.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping appear in Beijing on May 16, 2024. In a joint statement, Putin and Xi addressed their position on the use of nuclear weapons.
ALEXANDER RYUMIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Beijing’s “One China” policy dictates that Taiwan, an island off the country’s coast, is part of China. Taiwan’s leaders, however, consider the island to be its own nation. While the United States does not officially recognize the island’s independence, it has pledged to defend it against a Chinese invasion.

Some experts and officials have raised concerns that these regional conflicts could eventually escalate into a wider war with the United States, culminating in fears that nuclear weapons could eventually be used.

However, China and Russia addressed their stance on nuclear war in their joint statement issued on Thursday.

“There can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be fought,” the statement reads.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and China’s International Press Center for further comment via email.

Javed Ali, a professor at the University of Michigan and former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, told Newsweek on Thursday the statement “indicates the confidence both countries feel about declared nuclear powers and how those weapons—like for the United States, France, and Great Britain–are part of each country’s national security posture.”

The summit is an “indicator of the strong relationship” between the two counties as the two leaders both believe the U.S. and allies have worked to diminish their influence, according to Ali.

“The degree to which these Russian and Chinese ties endure is an open question, since both President Xi and President Putin also have to manage their national interests and may view the current framework as more transactional than strategic,” he said noting that U.S. policy treats Russia and China differently given deeper economic ties to Beijing.

Putin warned during a statement in March that the chances of nuclear war would increase if Western nations send troops to Ukraine, which has long been viewed as a red line for Russia that Ukraine’s allies have not been willing to cross.

While Russian authorities have long sought to downplay nuclear fears, pundits on Russian state TV, which aligns with the Kremlin, have repeatedly discussed the possibility of nuclear war, fueling concerns.

In response to Putin’s remarks in March, Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, warned about the risks of nuclear war just days later.

“In January 2022, leaders of the five nuclear-weapon states issued a joint-statement, affirming that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” she said. “China believes that all nuclear weapon states need to embrace the idea of common security and uphold global strategic balance and stability.”

Mao continued: “Under the current circumstances, parties need to jointly seek de-escalation and lower strategic risks.”

Moscow says it will keep pushing its offensive in Ukraine, though NATO doubts Russia has the resources to make a significant breakthrough.

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NATO’s top military officer has said Russia’s armed forces are incapable of any major advance.

“The Russians don’t have the numbers necessary to do a strategic breakthrough,” NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe Christopher Cavoli told reporters on Thursday.

“More to the point, they don’t have the skill and the capability to do it; to operate at the scale necessary to exploit any breakthrough to strategic advantage,” the general said. 

His comments come as Ukrainian forces engage in fierce battles with Russia’s troops for control of Vovchansk, a key town in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. 

Kyiv claimed on Thursday it had checked Russia’s advance, but a senior Moscow official said the Russian army had enough resources to keep going. 

Euronews could not independently verify either claim. 

Vovchansk, located just 5 kilometres from the Russian border, has been a hotspot in the fighting in recent days. 

Asked if Russia was about to launch its anticipated summer offensive early, top US and NATO commander, Cavoli said: “We can never be sure.” 

However, he added: “What we don’t see is large numbers of reserves being generated some place” needed for such an offensive.

Russia began an operation in the Kharkiv region last week, marking its most significant border incursion since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

The move has piled pressure on Ukraine’s outnumbered and outgunned forces which are waiting for deliveries of crucial military supplies from the West. 

Delays in Western assistance have “likely helped” Russia’s offensive by forcing Ukrainian forces to conserve material and limiting their ability to defend themselves, according to the US-based Insitute for the Study of War. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met top military commanders in Kharkiv on Thursday, saying the region “is generally under control.” 

But he acknowledged on social media that the situation was “extremely difficult”.

Former Russian defence minister – now the head of the National Security Council – Sergei Shoigu insisted Russian troops are pushing the offensive in many directions and that “it’s going quite well.”

“I hope we will keep advancing. We have certain reserves for the purpose, in personnel, equipment and munitions,” he said in televised remarks.

The Institute for the Study of War calculated that Moscow’s army had advanced no more than 8 kilometres from the shared border in Kharkiv.

It says Moscow’s main aim in the region is to create a “buffer zone” that will prevent Ukrainian cross-border strikes on Russia’s neighbouring Belgorod region.