monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

“In terms of what the Russians are doing in the United States, it’s far broader than just the Trump campaign,” Schiff told me. “In that sense when people think that the Russian intervention was just about tipping the scales to one of the candidates in 2016, they’re thinking far too narrowly.”

President Trump reportedly ordered that former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon limit his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.

Trump's decision came after receiving advice from Uttam Dhillon, a deputy White House counsel, Foreign Policy reports.

Dhillon reportedly thought the administration could have legitimate executive privilege claims in the situation, sources told Foreign Policy. But Dhillon also found the administration doesn't have legitimate executive privilege claims to limit the testimony of Bannon and other officials from giving information to special counsel Robert Mueller.

Foreign Policy's findings come after it was reported earlier this week that an attorney for Bannon relayed questions to the White House in real time while his client was testifying before the House Intelligence Committee.

The Associated Press reported that Bannon's attorney, Bill Burck, was communicating with the White House counsel's office via phone to check on whether it would allow Bannon to answer certain questions.

During the hearing, Bannon refused to answer questions related to his tenure on the Trump transition team or in the White House. That refusal frustrated lawmakers on the committee, who issued a subpoena to compel Bannon's cooperation.

The White House on Wednesday defended itself against reports that it sought to limit the kinds of questions Bannon could answer in the interview with the Intelligence panel.

"We're following the procedure whether it's in this committee or any other committee down the road," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a press briefing.

White House chief of staff John Kelly said Wednesday the White House didn't tell Bannon to invoke executive privilege and refuse to answer questions in Congress's investigation into Russia's election meddling.

Reports also surfaced earlier this week that Bannon had been subpoenaed by Mueller. CNN reported Wednesday that Bannon struck a deal with Mueller's team to be interviewed by prosecutors instead of testifying before a grand jury.

Sanders said the White House expected everyone involved in the investigative process to cooperate with the special counsel.

"We're going to be fully cooperative with the special counsel and encourage everybody involved in the process to be fully cooperative," she said.

The Deutsche Bank has evidence that the real estate investor Jared Kushner or related companies or persons in their business could have directed suspicious money through Deutsche Bank. This is reported by manager magazin in its current issue (release date: January 19). Kushner is the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump , who also worked as a real estate entrepreneur prior to his election.

Your information has been transmitted by Deutsche Bank to the German Financial Supervisory Authority Bafin. They are also to approach the US special investigator Robert Mueller, who is researching possible security-related financial ties of the Trump clan - including Russia.

Turnover In Trump's White House Is 'Record-Setting,' And It Isn't Even Close
If President Trump's first year in office seemed chaotic from a staffing perspective, there's a reason. Turnover among top-level staff in the Trump White House was off the charts, according to a new Brookings Institution report.

Turnover in Trump's first year was more than triple that in former President Barack Obama's first year, and double the rate in President Ronald Reagan's White House. A full 34 percent of high-level White House aides either resigned, were fired or moved into different positions in this first year of the Trump presidency.

Nigel Farage may have given Julian Assange a thumb drive of data and was possibly a more frequent visitor than was publicly known to the Ecuadorian embassy where the WikiLeaks founder lives, according to testimony given to US congressional inquiry into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to the Kremlin.

Glenn Simpson, a private investigator whose company compiled the controversial dossier alleging a conspiracy between Trump campaign officials and Russian agents, told the House intelligence committee that he was told by an unnamed source that the former Ukip leader had given data to Assange, but had no proof of the exchange.

“I’ve been told and have not confirmed that Nigel Farage had additional trips to the Ecuadoran [sic] Embassy than the one that’s been in the papers and that he provided data to Julian Assange,” Simpson told the committee, according to a transcript released on Thursday.

Asked what kind of data Farage was alleged to have passed to the WikiLeaks founder, Simpson replied: “A thumb drive.”
Simpson told the committee – which is privy to classified US intelligence – that it would be possible to confirm how often Farage had visited Assange through a routine inquiry.

His remarks were made in a private interview by the committee, which peppered Simpson with questions about Russian money laundering and the possibility that Donald Trump could be compromised.

A spokesman for Farage told the Guardian last year that Farage had only met with Assange in March 2017 and not on any other occasion.

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In 1999, then-real estate mogul Donald Trump said that while he hates “the concept of abortion,” he will always be “very pro-choice.”

“It may be a little bit of a New York background, of course there is some different attitude in different parts of the country. … But I am strongly for choice,” he told NBC in October 1999.

Now, he’s apparently so pro-life that Vice President Mike Pence on Friday called him the “most pro-life president in American history.”

Trump reaches out to Schumer as shutdown looms

With hours left before a possible shutdown, President Trump huddled at the White House with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Friday to discuss striking a deal to keep the government open.

The meeting involving two New Yorkers set off alarms among congressional Republicans, who are holding firm in support of the short-term spending bill that passed the House Thursday night.

Neither Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) nor House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) attended the White House meeting, according to GOP aides, leaving unclear exactly what Trump and Schumer might do.

Russia-linked Twitter accounts are working overtime to help Devin Nunes and WikiLeaks

- Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations have begun promoting the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo.
- It's a reference to a document written by Rep. Devin Nunes that purports to show abuse by the Obama administration of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
- The frequency with which the accounts have been promoting the hashtag has spiked by 233,000% over the past 48 hours, according to an analysis.
- The most-shared URL has been a link to WikiLeaks' "submit" page.