NATION/WORLD
Saturday, May 13, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 9A
Hinting at secret tapes, Trump warns ousted FBI director
WASHINGTON
(AP)
—
Raging against a political firestorm,
President Donald Trump on Friday
shot a sharp warning at his ousted
FBI director about possible “tapes”
of their disputed private conversa-
tions, raising the provocative possi-
bility that recording devices have
been installed in the White House.
Trump’s top spokesman refused
to comment on whether listening
devices are active in the Oval Office
or elsewhere, a non-denial that
recalled the secretly taped conver-
sations and telephone calls that
ultimately led to President Richard
Nixon’s downfall in the Watergate
scandal.
Trump’s warning to fired FBI
Director James Comey prompted
new accusations of interference in
an investigation into allegations of
collaboration between Russia and
the Trump presidential campaign
last year.
It also escalated a potentially
damaging standoff between a
fuming, undisciplined president
and the unorthodox lawman he
dismissed three days earlier. Not
to mention Congress, which is also
investigating.
Democrats quickly seized on
the dispute, demanding the White
House turn over any tapes that
might exist of the president’s
conversations with Comey.
Trump’s behavior raises “the
specter of possible intimidation
and obstruction of justice,” wrote
Reps. John Conyers and Elijah
Cummings, ranking Democrats on
the House Judiciary and Oversight
committees, in a letter to White
House Counsel Don McGahn. “The
president’s actions also risk under-
mining the ongoing criminal and
counterintelligence investigations
and the independence of federal law
enforcement agencies.”
In an interview with Fox News
Friday, Trump declined to comment
on whether he has listening devices
in the White House.
“Well that I can’t talk about. I
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
White House press secretary Sean Spicer speaks during the daily
press briefing at the White House on Friday.
won’t talk about that. All I want is
for Comey to be honest. And I hope
he will be,” Trump said.
For a president whose tweets
frequently rattle Washington —
and foreign capitals — Trump’s
message early Friday morning was
particularly jarring: “James Comey
better hope that there are no ‘tapes’
of our conversations before he starts
leaking to the press!” the president
wrote.
The White House refusal to elab-
orate left open several questions:
Was Trump, as his predecessor
had in the 1970s, been covertly
taping conversations? Was he
trying to intimidate Comey? Was he
suggesting Comey had recordings?
Or was it merely a button-pushing
claim launched over frustration at
news coverage of the controversy.
The tweet appeared to refer
to a series of three conversations
in which, Trump claims, Comey
assured him he was not under FBI
investigation as part of the bureau’s
probe into Russia’s interference
in the 2016 election. Comey has
not explicitly denied the account.
But sources close to him have cast
doubt on the president’s account,
noting it would be extraordinary for
Dozens of countries EPA allows mine
hit by massive
to pursue permits
cyber attack
near Alaska bay
NEW YORK (AP)
— Dozens of countries
were hit with a huge
cyberextortion attack
Friday that locked up
computers and held
users’ files for ransom at
a multitude of hospitals,
companies and government
agencies.
It was believed to the
biggest attack of its kind
ever recorded.
The malicious software
behind the onslaught
appeared to exploit a
vulnerability in Microsoft
Windows that was
supposedly identified by the
National Security Agency
for its own intelligence-
gathering purposes and was
later leaked to the internet.
Britain’s national health
service fell victim, its
hospitals forced to close
wards and emergency
rooms and turn away
patients. Russia appeared to
be the hardest hit, according
to security experts, with the
country’s Interior Ministry
confirming it was struck.
All told, several
cybersecurity firms
said they had identified
the malicious software
responsible for tens of
thousands of attacks in
more than 60 countries,
including the United States,
though its effects in the
U.S. did not appear to be
widespread, at least in the
initial hours.
Computers were infected
with what is known as
“ransomware” — software
that freezes up a machine
and flashes a message
demanding payment to
release the user’s data.
In the U.S., FedEx
reported that its Windows
computers were
“experiencing interference”
from malware, but wouldn’t
say if it had been hit by
ransomware.
Mikko Hypponen,
chief research officer
at the Helsinki-based
cybersecurity company
F-Secure, called the attack
“the biggest ransomware
outbreak in history.”
Security experts said
the attack appeared to be
caused by a self-replicating
piece of software that
enters companies and
organizations when
employees click on email
attachments, then spreads
quickly internally from
computer to computer when
employees share documents
and other files.
JUNEAU, Alaska
(AP) — In a sharp reversal,
the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency has
cleared a way for a company
to seek permits to develop
a massive copper and gold
deposit near the headwaters
of a world-class salmon
fishery in southwest Alaska.
As part of a court
settlement with the Pebble
Limited Partnership, the
EPA agreed to begin the
process of withdrawing
proposed restrictions on
development in the Bristol
Bay region, an area that
produces about half of the
world’s sockeye salmon.
The agreement, signed
Thursday but released
on Friday, comes four
months into the Trump
administration, which
supporters of the proposed
Pebble Mine hoped would
give it a fairer shake than
they believed they received
under President Barack
Obama.
The mining industry has
seen promising signs from
the administration, including
a willingness to take a
different look at projects
and to review regulations
seen as overly burdensome,
said Luke Popovich, a
spokesman for the National
Mining Association.
“I think the public is in
no danger of seeing genuine
environmental protection
diminished,” he said. “We’re
simply asking for a more
efficient process.”
Environmental groups
see the Pebble agreement
as potentially giving a
go-ahead to industry to
challenge EPA actions or to
seek permits about which
they previously might have
been uncertain.
“It obviously sends a
psychological message to
big mining companies that
if they were nervous about
getting permits in the past
... that this is their golden
opportunity to get their mine
through the process,” said
Brett Hartl, government
affairs director for the Center
for Biological Diversity
environmental group.
Critics of the Pebble
settlement called it a
backdoor deal and a slap in
the face to residents of the
region who petitioned the
EPA in hopes of securing
environmental protections.
Pebble sued in federal
court over what it claimed
was EPA’s collusion with
mine opponents.
an FBI director to discuss an open
investigation.
On Friday, a person close to the
former director recounted a different
version. At a one-on-one dinner
at the White House in January,
Trump asked Comey to pledge his
loyalty to the president and Comey
declined, instead offering to be
honest with him, according to the
person, who requested anonymity
to discuss private conservations.
White House spokesman Sean
Spicer denied that account, insisting
that the president simply “wants
loyalty to this country and the rule
of law.” Details of the dinner were
first reported by The New York
Times.
The firing of Comey already has
left Trump with the dubious distinc-
tion of being the first president since
Nixon to dismiss a law enforcement
official overseeing an investigation
tied to the White House.
He also, like Nixon, has grown
increasingly isolated in the White
House, recently relying on only a
small circle of family members and
loyal advisers while livid about the
West Wing’s failing efforts to get
ahead of the damaging Russia story,
according to several people close to
Attorney general
sparks fear with
push for harsh
sentences
WASHINGTON
(AP) — The nation’s
federal prosecutors should
bring the toughest charges
possible against most crime
suspects, Attorney General
Jeff Sessions instructed in a
move that critics assailed as
a return to failed drug-war
policies that unduly affected
minorities and filled prisons
Trump. They also commented only
condition of anonymity to discuss
private conversations.
Those people also describe him
as deeply frustrated by what he
views as unfair media coverage —
irritation that emerged in a separate
tweet in which he suggested he
may shut down the regular press
briefings at the White House.
Trump was widely known to
record some phone conversations
at his office in Trump Tower during
his business career, sometimes
remarking to aides after a call as to
whether or not he had taped it.
“I would note that New York
is a one-party consent state, and
President Trump has always abided
by the law,” said Sam Nunberg, a
former campaign aide. Federal law
and the law in New York State do
not require both parties on a call to
be aware that it was being recorded.
In Florida, where the president
frequently spends weekends, both
parties must consent to recording.
Spicer, who kept his answers
short during Friday’s briefing and
largely dodged specific questions
about Trump’s meeting with
Comey, said he was not aware that
any recording of the Trump-Comey
meeting exists. Associates of the
former FBI director, who remained
out of sight Friday at his suburban
Virginia home, said they believed
any tapes would validate Comey’s
side of the story.
It was not clear when Comey
would speak for himself. He
declined an invitation to appear
at a closed meeting of the Senate
intelligence committee next week.
The
face-to-face
meeting
between the president and the
director raised other concerns.
It came just days after the FBI
interviewed Trump’s then-National
Security Adviser Mike Flynn about
his conversations with the Russian
ambassador and a day after acting
Attorney General Sally Yates first
alerted the White House that she
believed Flynn had lied about the
with nonviolent offenders.
The move announced
Friday is a reversal of
Obama-era policies that is
sure to send more people to
prison and for much longer
terms. It has long been
expected from Sessions, a
former federal prosecutor
who cut his teeth during the
height of the crack cocaine
epidemic and who has
promised to make combating
violence and drugs the
Justice Department’s top
priority.
Advocates warned the
conversations and could be black-
mailed by Moscow.
Former National Intelligence
Director James Clapper said Friday
that Comey was uneasy about
attending the dinner due to the
“appearance of compromising the
independence of the FBI which is a
hallowed tenet in our system.”
Clapper also told MSNBC that
he didn’t know if there was collu-
sion between the Trump campaign
and Russian officials, contradicting
the president’s assertion that the
former director had cleared him of
wrongdoing.
The swirling controversy has
obliterated any momentum from
the House passage of the Repub-
lican health care bill last week and
threatens to overshadow Trump’s
first international trip, beginning
next week, in which the president
will meet with leaders in both the
Middle East and Europe.
Trump, in an NBC interview
Thursday, said that he had been
intending to fire Comey — whom
he derided as a “showboat” and
“grandstander” — for months and
that it had nothing to do with the
Russia investigation. But he also
said, “In fact when I decided to just
do it, I said to myself, I said you
know, this Russia thing with Trump
and Russia is a made-up story, it’s
an excuse by the Democrats for
having lost an election that they
should have won.”
Even before Trump’s provoca-
tive tweets, the White House was
scrambling to clarify why Comey
was fired. It initially cited a Justice
Department memo criticizing
Comey’s handling of last year’s
investigation into Hillary Clinton’s
emails as the impetus, only to have
that version undercut by Trump
himself.
Senate intelligence committee
Chairman Richard Burr said he
doesn’t think the FBI’s Trump-
Russia investigation was the reason
for the firing. But he called Trump’s
tweet “inappropriate.”
shift would crowd federal
prisons and strain Justice
Department resources. Some
involved in criminal justice
during the drug war feared
the human impact would
look similar.
“It ruined families and
took away a large number
of African-American men
from their communities at
their prime working years,”
said Georgetown law
professor Paul Butler, who
was a federal prosecutor
during the 1990s. “You had
people who weren’t able to
be responsible fathers for
their kids, who weren’t able
to serve a couple of years
for making a mistake, then
come home and do better.
That’s the era Jeff Sessions
wants to return us to.”
The announcement is
an unmistakable undoing
of Obama administration
criminal justice policies that
aimed to ease overcrowding
in federal prisons and
contributed to a national
rethinking of how drug
criminals were prosecuted
and sentenced.
BUTTE CHALLENGE
THANK YOU
A special thank you to everyone who helped with the East Oregonian and Hermiston Herald 18th
Annual Butte Challenge 5 & 10k Walk & Run. Each of you had a part in the success of this event.
We should all be proud to be living in such a wonderful community!
PROCEEDS WILL BE DONATED TO THE HERMISTON HIGH SCHOOL CROSS COUNTRY TEAM
A&W Space Age
Affordable Family
Eyewear
American Printing
BBSI
Banner Bank
Big 5
Big River Golf Course
Cell Fix
City of Hermiston
Columbia Bank
Community Bank
Cottage Flowers
Desert Dental (Wieseler,
Ryan DMD)
Desert Lanes
Echo Hills Golf Course
Express Employment
First Community Credit
Union
Good Shepherd Medical
Center
Greg’s Sleep Center
Heller & Sons, Inc.
Kopacz Nursery & Florist
Jones, Greg DMD
Larson, Jeremy DMD
Larson, Joanna (Arbonne)
Les Schwab - Hermiston
Lucky Endz Gifts
Oxford Suites - Hermiston
Papa Murphy’s
Pendleton Country Club
Rick’s Car Wash
Runner’s Soul
60 Minute Photo
Safeway
Sanitary Disposal, Inc.
Sears Hometown Store
(Hermiston)
Third Day Creations
Tom Denchel Ford Country
USA Subs & Grill
Umatilla County Fair
Umatilla Electric
Cooperative
Westwinds Nursery
Ye Olde Pizza Shoppe
Thank you to our technical T-Shirt sponsors: Eastern Oregon Physical Therapy
and Advanced Orthopedics & Sports Medicine Institute.
Thank you to Inflatable Fun Gym for donating a bounce house.
Also, thank you to our volunteers: Audra Workman, Shannon Paxton, Sam & Leslie
Weimer, Jaimie Renteria, Cheri Montee, Jessica Oster, Lorena Wiley, Samantha Parsons
& Kathy Aney for donating their time to make this such a great community event.
The Hermiston High School Cross Country team is very grateful.