Investigators probe Trump knowledge of campaign’s Russia dealings: sources

The following article by Mark Hosenball and John Walcott was posted on the Reuters website November 10, 2017:

Credit: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has questioned Sam Clovis, co-chairman of President Donald Trump’s election campaign, to determine if Trump or top aides knew of the extent of the campaign team’s contacts with Russia, two sources familiar with the investigation said on Friday.

The focus of the questions put to Clovis by Mueller’s team has not been previously reported.

“The ultimate question Mueller is after is whether candidate Trump and then President-elect Trump knew of the discussions going on with Russia, and who approved or even directed them,” said one source. “That is still just a question.”

Clovis testified in late October before the grand jury in Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He is also cooperating with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating the same issues.

Contacted late on Friday, the White House declined to comment.

One of the sources described Clovis as “another domino” after former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI over his own contacts with Russians during the 2016 election campaign.

“The investigators now know what Papadopoulos was doing on the Russian front, which he initially tried to conceal, and who he told that to,” said the other source. “Now [they] want to know whether Clovis and others reported these activities and others related to Russia, and if so, to whom,” this source said.

Attorneys for Clovis did not respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Papadopoulos had no immediate comment.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment.

According to court documents related to Papadopoulos’ guilty plea, he reported to Clovis in an email on a March 24, 2016, meeting he had in London with a professor later identified as Joseph Mifsud.

Mifsud in turn introduced him to a Russian woman and the Russian ambassador in London, and they discussed setting up meetings to talk about U.S.-Russia ties in a Trump presidency.

The documents showed Clovis responded to the proposed meetings by saying he would “work it through the campaign.” While he told Papadopoulos not to make a commitment then to set up those meetings, he congratulated him for “great work.”

In August 2016, after Trump won the Republican presidential nomination, Clovis encouraged Papadopoulos to “make the trip” when Papadopoulos proposed going to an off-the-record meeting with unnamed Russian officials, the court documents show.

Victoria Toensing, one of Clovis’s lawyers, said last week her client “always vigorously opposed any Russian trip for Donald Trump and/or the campaign”.

After Papadopoulos’ guilty plea, the White House and former Trump campaign officials dismissed Papadopoulos and Clovis as minor figures in the campaign.

The campaign’s National Security Advisory Committee, which Clovis formed, has become a focus of the investigations by both Mueller and the Senate, sources said.

“Sam built the first group of eight,” J.D. Gordon, the director of the campaign foreign policy group, told Reuters, adding that he and then-Senator Jeff Sessions, now the U.S. Attorney General, had “nearly doubled” it in size.

However, two other sources familiar with the investigations said investigators have been told the committee Clovis formed did very little, and that other advisers appeared to carry more weight with Trump.

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Climate-denying talk radio host Trump picked for top science post now at center of Russia scandal

The following article by Natasha Geiling was posted on the ThinkProgress website October 31, 2017:

Sam Clovis, who emailed with George Papadopoulos about Russia, is going before the Senate on November 9.

Sam Clovis Credit:  Charlie Neibergall/AP

Sam Clovis, one of the Trump administration’s more controversial nominees for a political appointment, was already raising eyebrows ahead of his November 9 confirmation hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee. To start, Clovis — who has been nominated to the position of undersecretary of research, education, and economics at the United States Department of Agriculture, the agency’s top science position — has no background in the the hard sciences, nor any experience with agricultural or nutritional science. Clovis is also a staunch climate science denier who accused President Barack Obama of “race baiting” and has called progressives “the real racists.”

But on Monday, Clovis’ nomination took on new meaning when it was revealed that, while working as national co-chairman of the Trump campaign, he had encouraged George Papadopoulos, a campaign foreign policy adviser, to meet with Russian nationals in a potential effort to bolster the campaign. On Monday, unsealed court documents revealed that Papadopoulos had plead guilty to lying to federal agents about his communication with Russia. Continue reading “Climate-denying talk radio host Trump picked for top science post now at center of Russia scandal”

Sam Clovis’s really bad excuse for greenlighting a Trump campaign meeting with Russians

The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website October 31, 2017:

Sam Clovis was one of the anonymous campaign officials cited in George Papadopoulos’s plea deal. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)

Sam Clovis was always a pretty suspect pick by President Trump to become the chief science adviser at the Agriculture Department — mostly because he’s not actually a scientist. His chief qualification for the job seems to be that he was national co-chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign. Democrats have also spotlighted his past comments skeptical of climate change and suggesting that laws protecting LGBT rights could lead to the legalization of pedophilia.

And now we can add another reason his nomination could be a key battle for Democrats — and a dicey proposition for Republicans.

The Washington Post’s Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger reported Monday night that Clovis was one of those anonymous campaign officials cited in former Trump aide George Papadopoulos’s plea deal. Clovis was the one named as a “campaign supervisor,” and he both praised Papadopoulos’s efforts to broker a meeting with the Russians as “great work” and later urged Papadopoulos to make the trip rather than Trump. Continue reading “Sam Clovis’s really bad excuse for greenlighting a Trump campaign meeting with Russians”