(Reuters) – Fox News, owned by Fox Corp, has signed former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders as a contributor to its channels, it said on Thursday.
Sanders, who served at the White House for President Donald Trump from July 2017 through June 2019, will contribute to political commentary and analysis across all of FOX News Media, the company said.
(Reporting by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Stephanie Grisham, the communications director for first lady Melania Trump and a longtime aide to President Donald Trump, will succeed Sarah Sanders as White House press secretary, Mrs. Trump announced on Tuesday.
Melania Trump announced the development in a tweet to close out the president’s search for a press secretary after Sanders decided to resign and go back home to Arkansas earlier this month.
Grisham, 42, a fixture in the Arizona Republican Party, was one of Trump’s first hires for his presidential campaign – as a press aide in 2015. She served as a deputy press secretary in the White House when he took office in January 2017 and eventually moved over to the first lady’s operation.
A clue that the president was leaning toward Grisham for the job was when aides said she had now been added to the White House team going with Trump to the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, this week.
The fact that Mrs. Trump announced the appointment, instead of the president himself, showed that the first lady was willing to part with Grisham for the greater good.
Grisham will have the dual role of press secretary and communications director. Sanders had essentially been doing both roles as well, without the communications director title.
Melania Trump’s tweet said: “I am pleased to announce @StephGrisham45 will be the next @PressSec & Comms Director! She has been with us since 2015 – @potus & I can think of no better person to serve the Administration & our country. Excited to have Stephanie working for both sides of the @WhiteHouse. #BeBest”
Grisham was viewed internally as the candidate with the best rapport with President Trump, a key requirement.
With his tweets and multiple exchanges with reporters, Trump is in many ways his own press secretary and communications director, and Sanders’ role grew to being a senior adviser.
Whether Grisham would bring back the daily press briefing was unclear. Trump has all but ended the practice and it has been more than three months since the last one.
The other top candidate had been Sanders’ principal deputy press secretary, Hogan Gidley.
Tony Sayegh, a former Treasury Department spokesman, had been considered as well but was in the midst of a move home to New York. Former State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert withdrew herself from consideration.
Gidley tweeted his congratulations to Grisham.
“Amazing announcement! So proud and blessed to have my good friend @StephGrisham45 working with our team. She is a rockstar and perfect to fill Sarah’s shoes!” he said.
Sanders is contemplating a political future in Arkansas, considering a 2022 run for state governor, a position once held by her father, Republican Mike Huckabee.
(Reporting By Steve Holland; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
By Makini Brice and Susan Heavey
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House said on Monday it was up to the U.S. Justice Department to decide if detailed findings from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation would be made public, a day after the attorney general said President Donald Trump had been cleared of any collusion.
Mueller wrapped up his investigation after nearly two years on Friday and submitted his findings to Attorney General William Barr, who on Sunday released a four-page summary saying there was no evidence of criminal collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 election. Mueller’s report left unresolved whether Trump obstructed justice.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin on Monday said President Vladimir Putin was ready to improve ties with the United States following the release of Barr’s summary and called on the United States to formally recognize there was no collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign.
Trump last week openly backed the public release of the report from the investigation, which he had repeatedly lambasted as a “witch hunt.”
U.S. Attorney General William Barr leaves his house after Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 election in McClean, Virginia, U.S., March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
The Barr summary handed Trump a political victory ahead of his 2020 re-election effort, even as Democratic challengers and lawmakers vowed to press on with other investigations into his business and personal dealings.
Democrats also called for the full findings from Mueller to be released to Congress and the public and vowed to call Barr to appear before lawmakers to answer questions.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that while Trump wanted the special counsel’s report to come out, it was not up to him.
“I think that the president is doing exactly what he should and that’s leaving that decision into the hands of the attorney general and we’ll see what decision he makes on that front,” Sanders said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” program on Monday.
Sanders declined to comment on whether Trump would invoke presidential privilege to withhold any information. But Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, said it “would be very inappropriate” to release the president’s written answers to the special counsel, saying they were confidential. Despite lengthy negotiations, Mueller never obtained an in-person interview with the president.
“As a lawyer, you don’t waive privileges and you don’t waive investigative detail absent either a court order or an agreement between the parties,” Sekulow told CNN in an interview, adding that Barr would make the final decision.
Trump embraced the summary’s findings, retweeting Barr’s assessment and related headlines news media despite years of decrying the “fake news” as #ReleaseTheFullMuellerReport trended nationwide on social media.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in a conference call with reporters, called on Washington to make the first move to reset ties and repeated Moscow’s denial of any interference in U.S. elections and internal affairs or those of any other country.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry also said the allegations of election meddling against a number of Russians were politically motivated.
Mueller’s investigation led to charges and guilty pleas against dozens of people, including a series of Russian nationals and companies as well as several advisers to President Donald Trump, including this former campaign chairman and national security adviser.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Makini Brice; Editing by Bill Trott)
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Kremlin aide said on Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump suggested the White House as the venue for a summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin when they discussed the idea of meeting in a telephone call last month.
Since that call, on March 20, preparations for a possible summit have not progressed because of a diplomatic row, the aide, Yuri Ushakov, said.
“When our presidents spoke on the phone, Trump proposed having the first meeting in Washington, in the White House,” Ushakov told reporters at a briefing.
“Trump called Putin last month to congratulate him on his election victory and told reporters he believed he and Putin would meet “in the not too distant future.”
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders did not confirm an invitation had been issued to Putin, but said the two had discussed a number of venues for a potential meeting, including the White House.
“We have nothing further to add at this time,” she told reporters on Monday.
Rolling out a welcome for Putin in the White House, rather than at a neutral location, could anger Trump’s domestic critics, who accuse Russia of hostile acts against Western countries, including the United States.
Some current and former members of Trump’s team are under investigation for alleged collusion with Russia in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration. Trump denies any collusion.
Since the March 20 phone call, Washington expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed a Russian consulate over allegations that Russia was behind the poisoning of former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain.
Russia denies involvement and has retaliated against the diplomatic sanctions in kind.
“Against the backdrop of these events, it’s difficult to discuss the possibility of holding a summit”, Ushakov said.
“We want to believe that the discussions (on a proposed summit) will begin,” Ushakov said.
“We want to hope that… one day, at one time or another we can arrive at the start of a serious and constructive dialogue.”
(Reporting and writing by Denis Pinchuk; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by Christian Lowe and Robin Pomeroy)
