Tag Archives: Obama

Attorney General Sessions sets up Hezbollah investigation team

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions listens as U.S. President Donald Trump holds a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 10, 2018.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has set up a team to investigate individuals and organizations providing support to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamist group in Lebanon that the U.S. has branded a terrorist organization, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Thursday.

Republicans have criticized former President Barack Obama following a December Politico report that the Obama administration hindered a Drug Enforcement Administration program targeting Hezbollah’s trafficking operations during its negotiation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Republican President Donald Trump says Obama gave away too much to Iran to secure the agreement, which gives Iran relief from sanctions in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Sessions said the Justice Department will assemble leading investigators and prosecutors for the Hezbollah Financing and Narcoterrorism Team to ensure all investigations under the DEA program, called Project Cassandra, will be completed.

“The Justice Department will leave no stone unturned in order to eliminate threats to our citizens from terrorist organizations and to stem the tide of the devastating drug crisis,” Sessions said.

(Reporting by Blake Brittain; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Bernadette Baum)

Houston-area woman charged with mailing explosives to Obama, Texas governor

Houston-area woman charged with mailing explosives to Obama, Texas governor

By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) – A Houston-area woman has been charged with mailing booby-trapped packages designed to explode to former U.S. President Barack Obama, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and a federal office in Maryland.

Julia Poff, 46, was ordered held in jail last week ahead of trial after she was indicted on charges of mailing packages last year that were designed to kill, transporting explosives and other criminal counts, court documents showed.

“Poff presents a real safety risk to witnesses and others in the community,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Frances Stacy wrote in a five-page order outlining the case.

Poff, who was charged earlier this month and pleaded not guilty last week, reached out to the Houston Chronicle to defend herself, the newspaper reported on its website on Thursday.

Poff told the Chronicle that investigators had taken trash from her home. The trash was “used in some serious crimes that we did not commit and know nothing about,” she was quoted as saying.

It was not clear whom Poff was referring to as “we.”

An explosive-laden package mailed to Obama in October 2016, while he was still in office, contained hair that an FBI crime lab matched to one of Poff’s cats, the judge wrote in the detention order.

Poff is said to have expressed dislike for Obama, who is a Democrat, according to the order. Packages sent to Obama and the U.S. Social Security Administration in Maryland were both stopped in screening, according to Houston TV station KPRC.

In October 2016, Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, opened a third package that also was rigged to explode, but it failed to detonate.

The judge’s detention order said Poff was upset with Abbott because she believed that in his previous role as state attorney general, he played a part in her inability to receive support from her ex-husband.

It was unclear what type of support Poff might have sought. The state attorney general’s office has a division that handles requests for child support after a divorce or separation.

The packages sent to Obama, the Social Security Administration and Abbott contained pyrotechnic powder, and investigators found a large amount of fireworks at Poff’s home in Brookshire, west of Houston, the court order said.

Poff is represented by a public defender, who could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

She is scheduled to appear in court for a hearing on Jan. 2.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank McGurty and Peter Cooney)

Russia pledges ‘harsh response’ to U.S. tit-for-tat measures

A sign outside the entrance to the building of the Consulate General of Russia is shown in San Francisco, California, U.S., August 31, 2017.

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Friday it would respond harshly to any U.S. measures designed to hurt it, a day after the United States told Moscow to close its San Francisco consulate and buildings in Washington and New York.

The warning, from Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, came as Russia said it was weighing a response to the U.S. move that will force it to shutter two trade missions in the United States as well as the San Francisco consulate by Sept. 2.

“We’ll react as soon as we finish our analysis,” Lavrov told students in Moscow. “We will respond harshly to things that damage us.”

Separately, a top Kremlin aide complained the U.S. demarche pushed bilateral ties further into a blind alley and fuelled a spiral of tit-for-tat retaliatory measures.

U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January, saying he wanted to improve U.S.-Russia ties which were at a post-Cold War low. But since then, ties have frayed further after U.S. intelligence officials said Russia had meddled in the presidential election, something Moscow denies.

Trump, himself battling allegations his associates colluded with Russia, grudgingly signed new sanctions on Moscow into law this month which had been drawn up by Congress.

When it became clear those measures would become law, Moscow ordered the United States to cut its diplomatic and technical staff in Russia by more than half, to 455 people.

Lavrov hinted on Friday that Russia might look at ordering further reductions in U.S. embassy staff, suggesting Moscow had been generous last time by allowing Washington to keep “more than 150” extra people.

He said Russia had cut the U.S. numbers to tally with the number of Russian diplomats in the United States, but that Moscow had generously included more than 150 Russian staff who work at Russia’s representation office at the United Nations.

Lavrov said Moscow still hoped for better relations and blamed Trump’s political foes for the deteriorating situation.

“I want to say that this whole story with exchanging tit-for-tat sanctions was not started by us,” Lavrov said.

“It was started by the Obama administration to undermine U.S.-Russia relations and to not allow Trump to advance constructive ideas or fulfil his pre-election pledges.”

Barack Obama, then outgoing president, expelled 35 suspected Russian spies in December and seized two Russian diplomatic compounds. President Vladimir Putin paused before responding, saying he would wait to see how Trump handled Russia.

“We thought this administration could exercise common sense, but unfortunately the Russophobes in Congress are not allowing it to,” said Lavrov, who complained that the United States had only given Moscow 48 hours to comply with its latest demands.

 

(Additional reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

 

Russia to decide next week on retaliation against U.S. over compound seizures

Killenworth, an estate built in 1913 for George du Pont Pratt and purchased by the former Soviet Union in the 1950's, is seen in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, U.S., on December 30, 2016. REUTERS/Rashid Umar Abbasi

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia will next week take a decision about if and how it will retaliate against the United States over the seizure of its diplomatic compounds on U.S. soil, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

The outgoing Obama administration expelled 35 suspected Russian spies late last year and seized two diplomatic compounds over what it said was the hacking of U.S. political groups during the 2016 presidential election.

Russian President Vladimir Putin decided not to retaliate immediately, saying he would wait to see what the new administration of Donald Trump would do.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry, told a news briefing on Friday that “time was running out” for the problem to be resolved.

She said Moscow’s course of action would depend on the outcome of a meeting in Washington on July 17 between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Shannon.

Russia expected U.S. officials to set out proposals aimed at resolving the issue at that meeting, she added.

One possible retaliatory measure would be to reduce staff levels at the U.S. embassy in Moscow to those of the Russian embassy in Washington, she said.

(Reporting by Denis Pinchuk; Writing by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

North Korea says U.S. student’s death a ‘mystery to us as well’

FILE PHOTO - Otto Frederick Warmbier (C), a University of Virginia student who was detained in North Korea since early January, is taken to North Korea's top court in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released by Kyodo March 16, 2016. Mandatory credit REUTERS/Kyodo

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said on Friday the death of U.S. university student Otto Warmbier soon after his return home was a mystery and dismissed accusations that he had died because of torture and beating during his captivity as “groundless”.

The North’s foreign ministry spokesman also said in comments carried by the official KCNA agency that Warmbier was “a victim of the policy of strategic patience” of former U.S. President Barack Obama whose government never requested his release.

“The fact that Warmbier died suddenly in less than a week just after his return to the U.S. in his normal state of health indicators is a mystery to us as well,” the spokesman was quoted by KCNA as saying.

Warmbier, 22, was arrested in the reclusive country while visiting as a tourist. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel, North Korea state media said.

He was brought back to the United States last week in a coma with brain damage, in what doctors described as state of “unresponsive wakefulness”, and died on Monday.

His death heightened the conflict between the North and the United States already aggravated by North Korea’s defiant missile launches and two nuclear tests since early last year as part of its effort to build a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

U.S. President Donald Trump blamed “the brutality of the North Korean regime” for Warmbier’s death and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who had advocated dialogue with the North, said Pyongyang had a “heavy responsibility” in the events leading up to the American’s death.

The North’s spokesman said such accusations are part of a smear campaign to slander the country that had given “medical treatments and care with all sincerity” to a person who was “clearly a criminal”.

U.S. doctors who had traveled to the North last week to evacuate Warmbier had recognized that the North had “provided him with medical treatment and brought him back alive whose heart was nearly stopped,” the unnamed ministry spokesman said.

“Although Warmbier was a criminal who committed a hostile act against the DPRK, we accepted the repeated requests of the present U.S. administration and, in consideration of his bad health, sent him back home on humanitarian grounds,” the spokesman said.

DPRK is short for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The exact cause of Warmbier’s death remains unclear. Officials at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he was treated after his return from the North, declined to provide details, and his family asked the Hamilton County Coroner on Tuesday not to perform an autopsy.

Thousands of friends and family members gathered at Wyoming High School in suburban Cincinnati on Thursday for a memorial service for Warmbier, who graduated from the school as salutatorian in 2013.

The United States has demanded North Korea release three other U.S. citizens it holds in detention: missionary Kim Dong Chul and academics Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song.

Warmbier was freed after the U.S. State Department’s special envoy on North Korea, Joseph Yun, traveled to Pyongyang and demanded the student’s release on humanitarian grounds, capping a flurry of diplomatic contacts, a U.S. official has said.

The North previously released American detainees it had accused and convicted of crimes against the state on the occasion of high-level visits by U.S. officials.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Russia may seize U.S. property if its own compounds not returned: Kommersant

FILE PHOTO: A convoy of diplomatic vehicles leave a Russian owned compound, after President Barack Obama abruptly ordered the compound closed on Thursday, in Centreville, Maryland, U.S., December 30, 2016. REUTERS/Joel Schectman

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia may seize U.S. diplomatic property in Moscow and complicate life for an Anglo-American school unless Washington hands back two diplomatic compounds in the United States before July, the daily Kommersant newspaper reported on Friday.

In December, then U.S. president Barack Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russians over what he said was their involvement in hacking last year’s U.S. presidential election, allegations Moscow flatly denies.

The U.S. authorities seized two Russian diplomatic compounds, one in Maryland and another on Long Island, at the same time. Moscow did not retaliate, saying it would wait to see if relations improved under the incoming U.S. president, Donald Trump.

Kommersant, citing unnamed diplomatic sources, said on Friday that Moscow wanted the compounds back before a possible meeting at the G20 in Germany in July between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump.

If that did not happen, the newspaper cited the sources as saying Russia could retaliate by seizing a U.S. diplomatic dacha, or country house, in Serebryany Bor in north-west Moscow and a U.S. diplomatic warehouse in Moscow.

It said that Russian authorities could also complicate life for Moscow’s Anglo-American school by altering its legal status.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on Thursday that Moscow was still waiting for the return of its U.S. compounds and could retaliate in kind if that did not happen.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Christian Lowe)

Supreme Court reins in president’s appointment powers

The U.S. Supreme Court building seen in Washington May 20, 2009. REUTERS/Molly Riley

By Daniel Wiessner and Lawrence Hurley

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday put new restrictions on presidential powers, limiting a president’s authority to staff certain top government posts in a case involving an appointment to the National Labor Relations Board.

The court decided 6-2 to uphold a lower court’s ruling that then-President Barack Obama exceeded his legal authority with his temporary appointment of an NLRB general counsel in 2011.

In an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said that under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, a person cannot serve as the acting head of a federal agency once the president nominates him or her to permanently serve in the role if it is a position that requires U.S. Senate confirmation.

SW General Inc, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based private ambulance company and a subsidiary of Envision Healthcare Holdings Inc <EVHC.N>, had challenged the makeup of the NLRB as it sought to invalidate a board ruling that said it violated federal labor law by discontinuing bonus payments for longtime employees.

The NLRB had argued that the law’s restriction applied only to politically appointed “first assistants” who are first in line for acting positions when the heads of agencies leave office, and not to other officials.

The ruling will give President Donald Trump and future presidents less flexibility in filling jobs that require Senate confirmation.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, saying the court ignored the fact that since the law governing vacancies was adopted in 1998, more than 100 people have served in acting roles while the U.S. Senate considered their nominations for permanent jobs.

The case focused on Obama’s appointment of Lafe Solomon as the NLRB’s acting general counsel to fill a vacancy in the job. The position requires Senate confirmation.

Obama nominated Solomon to fill the position permanently but also named him to fill in for former general counsel Ronald Meisburg, who resigned in 2010, in the interim while awaiting Senate action. Obama eventually withdrew Solomon’s nomination after it stalled for more than two years. The Senate ultimately confirmed Richard Griffin to the post in 2013.

SW General argued that Solomon should not have continued to fill the position on a temporary basis pending Senate confirmation, and the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed.

The case is National Labor Relations Board v. SW General Inc, U.S. Supreme Court No. 15–1251.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Jonathan Oatis)

At peace talks, Syria rebels urge Trump to correct Obama’s “catastrophic mistakes”

Syria's main opposition delegation with High Negotiations Committee (HNC) leader Nasr al-Hariri (C) attend a meeting with United Nations (UN) Syria envoy during Syria peace in Geneva, Switzerland, February 27, 2017. REUTERS/ Fabrice Coffrini/Pool

By Tom Miles and John Irish

GENEVA (Reuters) – The lead Syrian opposition negotiator at peace talks in Geneva said he hoped U.S. President Donald Trump would correct the “catastrophic” errors of his predecessor Barack Obama to become a reliable partner against “devilish” Iran.

The U.N.-led negotiations edged forwards on Wednesday, for the first time in six days, as both sides saw hope of shaping the agenda to their liking, but with indirect talks wrapping up this weekend there is little prospect of any real breakthrough.

“The people in Syria paid a high price because of the catastrophic mistakes made by the Obama administration,” Nasr al-Hariri told reporters in a briefing after meeting U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura.

“Obama lied and he didn’t keep any of the promises he made for the Syrian people. He drew red lines that he erased himself, he kept silent on crimes committed by Bashar al-Assad.”

Obama long maintained that Assad, Syrian president for 17 years, must step down after presiding over a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions.

The United States has provided training, weapons and funding for rebel groups, but stopped short of attacking Assad’s forces, which slowly turned the tide of the war with massive Russian and Iranian help.

“We reiterated the devilish role that Iran is playing through hundreds of thousands of fighters on the Syrian soil,” Hariri said in response to a question on what he had told Russian officials during their landmark meeting on Thursday.

The opposition and the Russians had not previously met at the Geneva talks. Diplomats said the meeting may be uncomfortable for Assad, Moscow’s ally, who regards his opponents as terrorists.

Trump has said his priority is to fight Islamic State, which has left Russia in the diplomatic driving seat and put Russia, Turkey and Iran in charge of overseeing a shaky ceasefire.

He has also made it clear he wants to rein in Tehran’s regional ambitions.

Trump’s administration has so far done little to suggest it is willing to engage in finding a political solution for Syria.

“Their policy is still unknown,” said a Western diplomat at the talks. “They are almost not here.”

While Western envoys were coordinating with the Syrian opposition in Geneva, the U.S. envoy kept his head down and left after a few days to deal with other issues.

“The U.S. is not a direct participant in the UN-led talks,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Mission in Geneva said. “The U.S. remains committed to any process that can result in a political resolution to the Syrian crisis.”

When asked during a White House briefing this week about the talks, spokesman Sean Spicer gave no clear answer on how Washington saw the process or Assad’s role.

Hariri said the opposition had common ground with Trump because both wanted to fight terrorism and curtail Iranian influence. Washington, he said, should support the opposition.

“We are really waiting for the United States to build their positions on true information to have an active role in the region and to correct the grave mistakes of the Obama administration,” Hariri said.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams)

NATO allies lock in U.S. support for stand-off with Russia

Donald Trump and Melania Trump

By Robin Emmott and Andrius Sytas

ZAGAN, Poland/RUKLA, Lithuania (Reuters) – Immediately after Donald Trump was elected, U.S. diplomats urged Lithuania to rush through an agreement to keep American troops on its soil, reflecting alarm that the new, Russia-friendly U.S. president might try to stop more deployments in Europe.

The agreement was signed just a few days before Trump’s inauguration, according to a document from the Lithuanian defense ministry, and became the first step locking the new U.S. president into a NATO strategy to deter Russia in Poland and the Baltics, following Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

European allies are growing confident that, with the arrival of U.S. troops in Poland, plans ordered by Barack Obama will hold. They are reassured by Trump’s remarks to U.S. forces in Florida this week, when he said: “We strongly support NATO.”

“When you put soldiers on the ground, tanks like this, that signifies a long-term commitment,” Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the U.S. army’s top commander in Europe, said at the snow-covered base in Zagan, Poland where thousands of U.S. troops are arriving before fanning out across the region.

“I am not hearing anything that would tell me otherwise,” Hodges said when asked whether Trump might scale back deployments. The president has described NATO as “obsolete” and has praised Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

But it will be hard politically for Trump to bring troops home “on the orders of Russia”, one senior alliance diplomat said. The U.S. soldiers featured in a TV commercial seen by millions of Americans at the end of the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Worried since Russia’s seizure of Crimea that Moscow could invade Poland or the Baltic states, the Western military alliance wants to bolster its eastern flank without provoking the Kremlin by stationing large forces permanently.

The troop build-up is NATO’s biggest in Europe since the end of the Cold War, using a web of small eastern outposts, forces on rotation, regular war games and warehoused U.S. equipment ready for a rapid response force of up to 40,000 personnel.

Britain, Germany and Canada are playing major roles in the force build-up. “Every ally is locked in,” said Adam Thomson, a former British ambassador to NATO and now director of the European Leadership Network think-tank in London.

GRAND BARGAIN?

Apparently confident of Washington’s commitment to Obama’s strategy, Poland’s Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz declared “God bless President Trump” at a welcoming ceremony for U.S. forces in Zagan last week.

But European governments remain concerned Trump could use the troop deployments as a chip with Moscow in a grand bargain. Political analysts say that could involve giving Moscow a free hand in much of the former Soviet Union in return for a commitment not to interfere in Europe.

“Trump is a businessman and he wants to negotiate from a position of strength,” a central European diplomat in Brussels said of the decision to allow U.S. deployments to continue.

Trump held an hour-long phone call with Putin in late January but avoided talk of Crimea and the rebellion in eastern Ukraine that the West accuses Moscow of sponsoring.

Trump has suggested lifting economic sanctions imposed on Russia over Crimea in return for a reduction of nuclear weapons.

He might offer to scale back NATO projects like the new Polish site set to form part of the alliance’s missile shield in the region. NATO says the system is designed to intercept Iranian rockets but Moscow says it is aimed at disabling Russian missiles.

The shield was developed by the United States and is now part of NATO. “It is impossible for Washington to act unilaterally without upsetting allies,” Thomson said.

For now, Obama’s “dialogue and deterrent” remains the NATO mantra – talking to Moscow but also sending U.S. tanks back to Europe and reopening Cold War-era storage sites.

“We stick with the facts, not the forecasts,” Salvatore Farina, the NATO commander coordinating forces in Poland and the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, told Reuters at the Rukla military base in Lithuania, where both a German battle group and U.S. infantry are based.

(Anditional reporting by Andrea Shalal in Berlin; editing by Andrew Roche)

Germany condemns Israel’s plans for more settlement homes on occupied land

Israeli settlement

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany, in unusually strong criticism of Israel, said on Wednesday plans to build 2,500 more settlement homes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank put in doubt Israel’s stated commitment to a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

Israel announced the plans on Tuesday in the second such declaration since U.S. President Donald Trump took office signaling he could be more accommodating toward such projects than his predecessor Barack Obama.

Martin Schaefer, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, said the announcement went “beyond what we have seen on it in the last few months both in terms of its scale and its political significance”.

He said the German government doubted whether the Israeli government still stood by its official goal of a peace agreement under which Palestinians would get a state in territory now occupied by Israel and co-exist peacefully with it.

If Israel were to move away from this goal, the basis of the whole Middle East peace process would be thrown into question, Schaefer added. The last round of U.S.-brokered peace talks collapsed in 2014.

The European Union has also warned that Israel’s settlement plans threaten to undermine the chances of peace with the Palestinians.

Germany went to great lengths to make amends for the Nazi era genocide of Jews, including establishing strong relations with Israel, which now considers Germany to be among its most important European allies.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told parliament on Wednesday to expect more announcements on settlement-building and earlier this week told senior ministers that there were no more restrictions on construction.

“We can build where we want and as much as we want,” an official quoted Netanyahu as telling the ministers.

Most countries consider settlements illegal and an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace, as they reduce and fragment the territory Palestinians need for a viable state.

Israel disagrees, citing biblical, historical and political connections to the land – which the Palestinians also assert – as well as security interests.

(Reporting by Andreas Rinke in Berlin and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; writing by Michelle Martin; editing by Mark Heinrich)