Editor’s Note: Michael Weiss is a national security analyst for CNN and author of “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror.” Michael Weiss: The colorful political operative maintains he is looking forward to telling his side of the story about the Russia investigation Stone has disputed Rep. Adam Schiff's claim that he forecasted release of John Podesta's emails The Nixon tattoo on his back looks more expensive than the transplanted hair on his head. His fashion sense, about which he is outspoken and fastidious, seems ripped from Gilded Age cartoons about predatory industrial fat cats. He enjoys body-building, marijuana, swinging and martinis, which he sometimes blames for his vulgar sallies on social media against those with whom he disagrees, usually women (“disgusting lesbian dwarf”), minorities (“stupid negro”) and minority women (“Black beans and rice didn’t miss her”). Inevitably, then, Roger Stone has known and worked for the current president of the United States for four decades, on and off serving as a lobbyist, a political strategist and a campaign adviser before he quit or was fired in August 2015. He and President Trump have a lot in common. They share a mentor in the late McCarthyite attorney Roy Cohn, a love of Manhattan and Florida residences and an incurable penchant for peddling conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination and the Clintons. Even though Trump once described him as a “stone-cold loser” who “always tries taking credit for things he never did,” Stone has remained a stalwart defender of the man he calls “perhaps the greatest salesman in US history,” for whose unlikely ascent to national office he strangely doesn’t claim credit. “Donald Trump is his own strategist, campaign manager, and tactician, and all credit for his incredible election belongs to him,” Stone writes in his book, “The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution,” a score-settling account against everyone who has ever upset Roger Stone, which comes across as a feverish and dubiously sourced campaign journal. “I’m just glad to have been along for the ride.” Except that the ride is now taking the Republican operative and self-professed “dirty trickster” before the House Intelligence Committee, where he is scheduled to testify in closed session on September 26 as part of the panel’s investigation of Russian government interference in the 2016 election. Stone steadfastly denies any involvement, in yet another uncharacteristic display of modesty. Not that Stone isn’t loving every minute of the attention. He only regrets that the hearing will be held in private. As he told CNN, “I have again asked for immediate release of the transcripts so that there will be no confusion or misinformation about my testimony. I very much look forward to testifying and I am anxious to correct a number of the misstatements by committee members regarding my activities in 2016.” Stone first drew the scrutiny of Congress and counterintelligence officials after he seemed to uncannily forecast the embarrassment of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman. On August 21, Stone tweeted that it would soon be “Podesta’s time in the barrel.” Two months later WikiLeaks published a tranche of Podesta’s hacked Gmail correspondence. Much has since been made of Stone’s tweet, not least of all by Rep. Adam Schiff, the committee’s ranking Democrat, who extrapolated dark collusion from that admittedly vague comment. Stone, however, insists that his remark has been misinterpreted.  He was referring, he writes in his book, to Podesta’s forthcoming comeuppance for his “and his allies savaging of Paul Manafort,” the embattled former Trump campaign manager, over “a series of leaks and false claims regarding his business activities in Ukraine.” CNN reported this week that Manafort had been wiretapped by the FBI beginning in 2014, in part over his business activities in Ukraine, and that a source said that the surveillance of Manafort had lapsed for lack of evidence, before resuming on another matter related to the Russia investigation. Related video Stone: I talk to Trump on occasion Stone claims in the book that he knew from his “own research that Podesta had been involved in money laundering for the Clinton Foundation and the Russian Mob” and the tweet was about an article addressing these unproven allegations, which Stone would later post, also in October 2016, on his personal blog, StoneColdTruth.com. “It’s important to note that none of the information regarding Podesta’s activities in this article comes from WikiLeaks in their subsequent releases,” he writes in his book. “The two are not connected.” In a recent USA Today op-ed, Stone went even further, blaming “the entire allegation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign” as the “brainchild” of Podesta, “most likely to distract from the lucrative business contracts that he and his brother enjoyed with the oligarchs around Vladimir Putin.” (A spokesperson for Podesta didn’t reply to my request for comment.) Thus, according to the unsubstantiated story peddled by this longtime GOP operative, was a longtime Democratic operative like Podesta able to enlist the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, private cyber security firms, multiple bipartisan congressional committees and a legion of investigative journalists into an elaborate false-flag conspiracy. One can’t tell if Stone here is indignant or jealous. By his own admission — or at least one variation of it — he has “communicated” with Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, who has spent the last five years in paranoia and purdah behind the walls of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. (WikiLeaks says neither it nor Assange has ever communicated with Stone.) Stone has also copped to having had online conversations with Guccifer 2.0, the hacking entity responsible for the breach of Podesta’s emails and the Democratic National Committee’s and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s, all of which were then passed on to WikiLeaks. The FBI, CIA and NSA have all concluded “with high confidence” that Guccifer 2.0 was actually a cutout for the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, another allegation Stone disclaims. “It doesn’t seem to be the Russians that hacked the DNC,” he wrote in an August 5, 2016, column for the right-wing website Breitbart, “but instead a hacker who goes by the name of Guccifer 2.0.” Stone has posted what he says is the full online exchange he had with the account, via Twitter direct message, on his website. He apparently wrote that he was “delighted” the account had been reinstated on Twitter after being taken offline. Guccifer 2.0 replied, “i’m pleased to say u r a great man… and i think i gonna read ur books… please tell me if i can help u anyhow… it would be a great pleasure to meet.” Trump, too, has continually doubted or questioned Russia’s hacking of the DNC, DCCC and Podesta’s emails, both before and after the election, despite his now having access to all those agencies’ classified findings on the matter. Assange denies receiving his digital wares from Russian intelligence at all. Much like the embassy-bound anarchist, Stone is a notoriously unreliable and unscrupulous showman who revels in his own inflated reputation as a prime mover of historical events and a master of the dark political arts.  Among his “rules” for living is this forbidding combination of Evelyn Waugh and Sun Tzu: “Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack.” Which will make even an untelevised congressional hearing something of an unbound ego trip for him and the reason he wants his testimony publicized. Yet the Stone spectacle shouldn’t distract from the fact that he has been especially squirrely about his engagement with Assange. There are also circumstantial oddities to the story about the arms-length relationship enjoyed between supporters or fellow travelers  of Trumpland and WikiLeaks, about which Stone will no doubt be asked directly. Related video Roger Stone on Comey firing (entire interview) On August 8, 2016, Stone told the Southwest Broward Republican Organization, “I actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.” In fact, this proved to be quite an accurate guess, as WikiLeaks did release thousands of emails about the Clinton Foundation in October. As the website The Smoking Gun first reported, Stone’s gift for prophecy became acuter the closer WikiLeaks got to its Podesta data dump. On Saturday, October 1, 2016, he tweeted that “Wednesday [October 5] @HillaryClinton is done.” On Monday, October 3, at 12:24 p.m., Stone then appeared to explain why he thought this was going to be the case: “I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp.” Stone was off by two days: the release of Podesta’s hacked emails began on October 7, 2016. On October 12, Stone told CBS Miami that his “back-channel” to Assange was a “mutual friend” who “travels back and forth from the United States to London and we talk. I had dinner with him last Monday.” He elaborated further, on November 2, 2016, as to who this intermediary might be. Stone told Britain’s Observer newspaper that his point of contact with Assange was an unnamed American libertarian opinion journalist with no connection to the Trump team. In “The Making of the President,” he adds that this mystery friend informed him that Assange was “in possession of ‘unspecific political dynamite’ that would ‘adversely affect the Clinton campaign.’” Related article Mueller's Russia probe: Nothing is unrelated at this point That same Observer article also intriguingly cited an unnamed source “close to Trump Tower” who said that Stone once “boasted to him of meeting with Assange himself,” presumably within the span of the 2016 campaign cycle, which would have meant such a meeting can only have taken place at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Stone replied that the Observer’s source was “bull****ing” the broadsheet. Then, on March 19, 2017, he changed his story completely. Stone told CNN that he had never communicated with Assange “either directly or indirectly,” which would rule out having a go-between at all. This was mere days after he tweeted the following: “[N]ever denied perfectly legal back channel to Assange who indeed had the goods on #CrookedHillary.” The tweet was deleted within 40 minutes of its being posted. The essence of any congressional inquiry into Roger Stone’s engagement with WikiLeaks is on who exactly this mysterious “back channel” may have been, if one even exists. One of his friends, pollster Doug Schoen, told the New Yorker in 2008 that Stone is “not so much a Republican as an actor who likes to assume poses. The show is not a by-product of his life – it is his life.” Could that mean that the man who has taken credit for the prostitution-driven downfall of New York governor Eliot Spitzer and for blocking a crucial recount of votes in Miami-Dade County in the 2000 presidential election might be embroidering or misrepresenting his engagement with a retailer of stolen political secrets? I emailed Stone for this article, asking if he’d name his back channel to Assange. “I had an off the record conversation,” he wrote, “and I do not burn reporters with whom I have that ground rule so I will not expose this journalist. Nothing illegal or improper in his dialog with Assange.” Some in the left-leaning press have speculated, based purely on circumstantial evidence, that Stone’s interlocutor is actually Nigel Farage, the goofy-grinning, demagogic former leader of Britain’s pro-Brexit UK Independence Party and a staunch transatlantic Trump supporter.  (Trump has returned the admiration; just after the election, he tweeted that “Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!” This endorsement caused some displeasure in the British government, members of which sternly noted that they already had a fine ambassador in Sir Kim Darroch.) Stone has suggested, although Farage has denied, that he first put the former investment banker turned Member of European Parliament in touch with Trump. But, in that same email to me, he “categorically” denied that “Farage is the person who confirmed the WikiLeaks tweet of July 21 in which WikiLeaks said they had info on Hillary. My source, a journalist, confirmed this and was borne out in October.” Now here is why some question whether Stone is telling the truth. On August 8, 2016 — the same day he spoke before the Broward Republicans, saying that he had communicated with Assange — Stone tweeted this: “When I had dinner with Nigel Farage who lead [sic] the Brexit campaign in the UK he told me the polls had been rigged in that fight. MSM trick.” (“MSM” refers to “mainstream media.”) Assuming the misspelled “led” here suggests that the dinner took place after the Brexit referendum, that would place it sometime after June 23 but before August 8, 2016. We know that Farage and Stone were both in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, which was held from July 18 to 21. Furthermore, Farage’s spokesman told Mother Jones that at the RNC he “met Roger Stone in a restaurant in Cleveland during the RNC purely by chance. They subsequently met each other in a hotel in Washington during Trump’s inauguration, again without planning and by chance.” “Farage told me he was seeking a meeting with the candidate and I told him I would recommend it,” Stone wrote me, “which I subsequently did in conversations with Donald and Paul Manafort.” The former UKIP leader’s “capacity for drink and cigarettes are memorable,” Stone added. “Seemed like a very nice guy. I am confident Farage asked many in the Trump camp to help secure this meeting. I am certain others recommended it as well.” As to the subject of their exchange or exchanges during the convention and possibly also during the inauguration, “[n]either Julian Assange nor WikiLeaks came up in any context in that conversation or any subsequent conversation as, again, I don’t recall seeing or meeting him again,” Stone wrote me. Farage dined with President Trump, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump on February 25, 2017 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. and tweeted a photograph of the event that same day. On March 9, eleven days later, he was seen entering the Ecuadorian embassy in London by a local resident who alerted BuzzFeed to the fact. Farage was inside the embassy for 40 minutes before a BuzzFeed reporter buttonholed him as he was leaving, along with the head of operations of LBC, a British radio station on which Farage hosts a talk show. Farage told the outlet, “I never discuss where I go or who I see.” He later explained to Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper that his meeting with Assange was for “journalistic reasons, not political reasons… It was a private meeting.” Related video Stone: I talk to Trump on occasion Whatever was discussed at that conclave, Assange had urgent business to attend to. Later that day, the fugitive Australian gave a live press conference about WikiLeaks’ latest haul of leaked documents, the drip-drip publication of which had begun on March 7. It was a data dump pertaining to the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, which WikiLeaks code-named “Vault 7.” The timing of this leak was particularly propitious for those who not only doubted or dismissed the US intelligence community’s consensus on Russian cyber espionage in the 2016 election but who also conspiratorially insisted — as did Stone, Assange and Trump’s other perfervid supporters — that the current president was being undermined by a “deep state” of American spies. March, after all, had seen Trump’s tweeting of his accusation that he had been personally “wiretapped” by President Obama and the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions from the Trump-Russia investigation, a recusal Trump would later abhor publicly. “Vault 7” demonstrated how American spies use cyber warfare to snoop, via smart phones and televisions, on their friends and foes alike. If yours is the kind of mind that judges InfoWars and StoneColdTruth.com as standard-bearers of credibility, as against a compromised and biased “MSM,” what might you infer from these disclosures? Perhaps that such sophisticated eavesdropping capabilities make Langley a likelier culprit in the hacking of the Democrats’ correspondence, a “deep state” operation blamed unfairly on Putin. Didn’t the president himself compare the CIA to Nazis, after blaming it, without evidence, for leaking the notorious “dossier” on his alleged ties to Russia? Sign up for CNN Opinion’s new newsletter.Join us on Twitter and Facebook Just as he had done by publishing the first batch of Podesta emails within hours of Trump’s Access Hollywood grab-them-by-the-genitals scandal, on October 7, 2016, Julian Assange had again interrupted a news cycle unflattering to Donald Trump — and only a little more than a week after Nigel Farage sat at a dinner table with the commander in chief at the latter’s own hotel. The Observer asked Farage’s spokesperson if he was Stone’s line of communication to Assange and was told, “Definitely not.”  (My attempts to reach Farage via the UKIP press department were unsuccessful.) Sure, Farage isn’t an American, but he does travel back and forth between the United States and London and he is arguably a libertarian opinion journalist, partly in keeping with Stone’s description. He’s also a bit of a squish on the Kremlin. He has previously said he admires Vladimir Putin as an “operator” if not as a human being and he appears regularly on the Kremlin-financed English-language propaganda channel RT to talk about immigration to the UK, terrorism and the EU. In one especially outre piece of theatre, he was even “knighted” on RT’s air by a child dressed as Queen Elizabeth. US investigators might find it rather easy to determine who Stone’s “back channel” to Assange is — assuming such a person exists. Anyone who pays call on the fugitive WikiLeaks founder  is captured on CCTV, footage of which would be in the possession of MI5, Britain’s domestic security service, including, presumably, any American libertarian scribbler more closely hewing to Stone’s description of his interlocutor. The Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge lies around the corner from the department store Harrods and, thanks to its infamous resident, it’s one of the most surveilled buildings in London. It hardly needs stressing that if US counterintelligence officials in the FBI and CIA asked, MI5 would gladly share such CCTV footage with them. Which may mean that the House Intelligence Committee already knows more than the dirty trickster thinks it does. Not that he’s bothered by that. “I could care less if the [intelligence] leakers figure out who my source is,” Stone wrote me, “because neither he nor I know the source of the WikiLeaks disclosures.”


Editor’s Note: Danny Cevallos is a CNN legal analyst and a personal injury and criminal defense attorney practicing in Pennsylvania and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Follow him on Twitter @CevallosLaw. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his. Danny Cevallos says it's too easy to invoke the Nazis as William Weld did on Trump There are better ways to counter Trump's immigration stance, Cevallos says Last week, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, who is seeking to become the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate, compared Donald Trump’s plan to remove some 11 million undocumented immigrants from the United States to Kristallnacht, the infamous “Night of the Broken Glass” in 1938, when anti-Semitic mobs spread across Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, burning homes and businesses and attacking and killing Jewish residents. When CNN’s Jake Tapper pushed back, asking if it was a “little strong” to make Holocaust comparisons, Weld engaged in a behavioral tradition used for millennia by politicians, defendants and generally anyone confronted with their own questionable choices. He doubled down. Instead of backing off or conceding any ground, he added more words to his original words. Related article Trump's casual racism toward Native Americans No, Weld insisted, it was not too much. Specifically, he intimated that because he served on a Holocaust commission sometime in the 2000s, he was uniquely qualified to make Nazi comparisons. Serving on a Holocaust commission is surely an honorable billet. It probably qualifies you to do and talk about a number of things. It does not bestow upon you a superior skill with Nazi analogies. In fact, the comparison game is dangerous whether you are a former Holocaust commission member, or just some angry guy on Facebook in mom’s basement with a Wi-Fi signal. It turns out Weld’s remarks are an echo of the principle known as Godwin’s law. I first heard about Godwin’s law from another lawyer friend, the kind of guy who tells riveting tales, unencumbered by such inconveniences as certainty, or facts. But unlike his other inventive tales, he was right about Godwin’s law; it was a real thing. Related article How gender could win Trump the White House If nothing else, Godwin’s law sounded important. Generally laws named after people are sound, scientifically proven, maybe even immutable. It’s hard to dispute Newton’s Laws of Motion, or Hubble’s Law of cosmic expansion. Godwin’s law is not exactly a hard science rule though.  It is more a theory of Internet sociology, but one as predictable as the conclusions of Einstein or Heisenberg. Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies states: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one – or a 100% probability. Internet philosopher Mike Godwin wrote about his observations back in 1994 when most of us didn’t even have an email address yet. Godwin’s observations were brilliant and prescient. Even then he noticed that online discussions of all kinds eventually led to analogies to Hitler or Nazis: gun control and the Second Amendment (“Hitler banned weapons!”), birth-control debates (“It’s genocide!”) and censorship (“The Nazis burned books!”). Related article Unite behind Trump, our best chance for a GOP victory Godwin’s law went viral in a pre-viral era, without the aid of a Snapchat or Periscope. It holds true today, too. Lazy logic and ineffective arguments are now part of the effluvia of public speech – online and otherwise. (We expect it from the Internet, but our politicians should be better at making their point than that.) In general, arguing by simile  is fraught with risk. Not everything is like the Holocaust. Not everything is like slavery, and not everything is like the Native American experience. If everyone compares their own, self-centered mission du jour to a present-day fight against Nazism, it eventually dilutes everyone’s message and minimizes those events in history. Trump’s immigration plans understandably sound unconventional and extreme to many. Even Trump may think so. He’s already indicated his willingness to back down on these controversial positions, saying his ban on Muslim immigration was a “suggestion.” If Trump is so willing to change his views on immigration or walls, maybe – just maybe, his opponents’ Kristallnacht comparisons might be a little premature. And extreme. And not helpful to promoting a dialogue. Related article Is Trump's past catching up with him? There are plenty of effective ways to argue with Trump.  John Kasich did this well during the debates. He called Trump’s immigration policy “silly” and quipped that if it weren’t for immigration, Kasich would be running for president of Croatia. Simple, even entertaining rhetoric. You can be an effective advocate against the toughest political foe without the improvident comparisons to genocide. But maybe Weld’s comments are just part of a new era of acceptable political discourse. After all, Twitter wars and genitalia jokes appear to have become part of public debate. Maybe there are no more rules to politics, and it’s open season on comparing immigration policies to genocide or reviled Aryan ideologies. But when it comes to advocating your point of view, or even expressing a cogent idea, we can do better. Join us on Facebook.com/CNNOpinion.Read CNNOpinion’s Flipboard magazine. Danny Cevallos is a CNN legal analyst and a personal injury and criminal defense attorney practicing in Pennsylvania and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Follow him on Twitter @CevallosLaw. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his.


Texas is preparing to deploy National Guard troops and vehicles to the border with Mexico, the state’s top military commander said Friday. About 250 troops will be sent by Monday to the state’s 1,254-mile long border with Mexico, Army National Guard Brig. Gen. Tracy Norris said. “This mobilization supports the priorities of the governor and the President in securing our borders,” she told reporters. More troops will be sent once mission requirements and locations are determined, she added. Notifications for troops will go in the mail Saturday telling troops they need to report as early as next week, Norris said. Texas already has 100 National Guard soldiers on the border from another operation that began in 2014. Related article Trump began the week tweeting about the border. Now he's sending troops. One other southwestern state announced its National Guard plans. Arizona is sending 150 troops to the border next week, the state’s department of military affairs said. Troops there will lend air support, help with reconnaissance and construction of border infrastructure and give logistics support. A spokeswoman for the Pentagon, Dana White, said Thursday: “These National Guard members will act in support of Border Patrol agents who are performing law enforcement duties.” Earlier, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said the department was looking at how it can support the department of Homeland Security. “We’ll figure it out,” he said. “It will be consistent with law and the spirit of Congress. No problem.” Related article Reality check on Trump's border war Late Friday, he and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen released a joint statement. “Tonight, National Guard troops are deploying to support border security missions along the US southwest border,” they said.  “Working closely with the border governors, the Department of Homeland Security identified security vulnerabilities that could be addressed by the National Guard.” The chief of the National Guard Bureau, Gen. Joseph Lengyel,  tweeted that the move involves 500 troops. “Moving up to 500 #NationalGuard troops immediately on the SW border security mission. Vehicles, equipment & helicopters on the way tonight,”  Lengyel wrote. Always Ready, Always There! Moving up to 500 #NationalGuard troops immediately on the SW border security mission. Vehicles, equipment & helicopters on the way tonight. https://t.co/nIjKEY5SSv Norris said Texas troops that moved Friday are planners. US law limits what the troops can do. Federal law prohibits the military from being used to enforce laws, meaning troops cannot actually participate in immigration enforcement. In the past, they’ve served in support roles like training, construction and intelligence gathering. Norris said whether an airman or soldier is armed during deployment depends on the nature of the mission, but the Guard is still working with Homeland Security on mission issues. Mattis late Friday signed an order for “up to 4,000 National Guard personnel to support DHS’s southern border security mission while under the command and control of their respective governors through September 30, 2018,” according to a Defense Department memo. The memo says troops will be armed only in limited situations that might require self-defense. President Donald Trump said Thursday he will deploy 2,000 to 4,000 troops to the border with Mexico. Related article 'It's not going to change anything:' Border towns react to possible troop deployment In a memo he signed Wednesday evening, Trump declared the defense secretary “shall request use of National Guard personnel” to secure the border and that the homeland security secretary will work with him to train and direct the troops in that mission. He said in the memorandum that “the security of the United States is imperiled by a drastic surge of illegal activity on the southern border.” Sending National Guard troops to the Mexico border is not unprecedented. Both of Trump’s predecessors did so, though the moves were criticized as costly and of limited effectiveness. Norris noted troops will need time to tell relatives and employers about their deployments. Troops typically head to an armory first, pick up their gear and get briefed before heading out on deployment. CNN’s Sheena Jones, Diane Ruggiero and Chris Boyette contributed to this report.

Texas National Guard deployment to the US-Mexico border


Donald Trump and his transition team must replace 4,000 political appointees It can be a tempting period for actors looking to disrupt the US government North Korea and Russia might not wait until January 20 to test the new president-elect. The weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day can be a key time for foreign adversaries to cause mischief for a new administration. Donald Trump and his transition team must replace 4,000 political appointees right off the bat, construct a foreign policy framework and get up to speed on an exploding array of international challenges. The staff’s change in approach and high learning curve can make it a tempting period for international parties to take steps without US supervision or that aim to disrupt the US government itself. RELATED: Russia’s Putin pleased as Trump win shocks world “Any presidential transition is a very vulnerable time for the country,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told an audience at the Intelligence and National Security Summit in Washington earlier this fall. President-elect Barack Obama’s 2008 transition period witnessed the deadly terror attacks in Mumbai, India, and an Israeli military incursion into the Gaza Strip. George H.W. Bush had to deal with the Lockerbie bombing and a deadly aerial clash between US and Libyan warplanes in 1988, while Richard Nixon took over from Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968 with the Vietnam War in full swing. While these crises weren’t necessarily tied to the transition, they kicked off as a new administration with little to no experience on the matter was preparing to take over. “We’re also looking at how some of our adversaries might try to take advantage of some type of transition that they think will lead to some discontinuity either in focus or attention,” CIA director John Brennan told CNN’s Erin Burnett last month. “The new team coming in, they need to get up to speed very quickly. So right after Election Day, we’re going to have the responsibility for briefing that new team, that new president, to make sure that they understand what lies ahead,” he added. The CIA expected its Cold War adversaries to take advantage of the unusually sudden transition between Nixon and Gerald Ford upon the former’s resignation. Analysts later wrote in the President’s Daily Brief that, “It may be that many have not had time to consider how the situation might be turned to advantage” after America’s enemies appeared to not act immediately after Nixon’s. RELATED: CIA declassifies Nixon, Ford daily intel briefings Former senior officials who have been through the presidential transition tend to agree with Brennan’s assessment that it’s a sensitive time. “Literally within hours of taking over power, you could be in the middle of a major crisis,” Stephen Hadley, President George W. Bush’s national security adviser, said at an event hosted by the Partnership for Public Service, an organization that has been pushing reforms to the transition process ahead of Election Day. Appearing alongside Hadley, Clapper’s predecessor, John Negroponte, agreed, stressing the need to adequately brief any incoming president. “You’ve got to prepare the president-elect for these potential contingencies, so get them thinking about that they’d do now before it actually happens.” He added, “What are you going to do if North Korea detonates a bomb or China captures all the Spratly Islands?” One crisis likely to face the incoming president on Day One is the fight against ISIS. The battle to recapture Mosul, the last ISIS bastion in Iraq, kicked off earlier in the month and is expected to be fierce, with an estimated 4,000-strong ISIS force defending Iraq’s second-largest city. The potential for a mass refugee exodus as the assault gets further underway is also growing. Some analysts also believe that some of America’s adversaries are ramping up their activity in order to take advantage of the transition. North Korea, for instance. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, released a study this month October estimating that a North Korean nuclear provocation was more likely in the period immediately before and after a US presidential election. “North Korean missile/nuclear tests and other major kinetic provocations have clustered increasingly closer to US elections,” the report said. Some experts think the Russian and Syrian regimes’ intensified bombing of Aleppo, Syria, is part of a bid to recapture that major city before a new administration is inaugurated and able to change US policy towards the five-year-long Syrian civil war – making a final bloody assault on the city during the transition period likely. Asked if he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin might take advantage of the transition, retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling told CNN: “I don’t think he will; I know he will.” The Trump transition is headed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. The team has long had planners at work, with intelligence briefings having been provided during the campaign and now being stepped up. President Harry S. Truman inaugurated the pre-Election Day intelligence briefings for nominees after feeling unprepared upon assuming the presidency in 1945 following the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “I’m really glad as a citizen he made the generous decision to prepare his successor,” Clapper said of Truman in September. With the election complete, the intelligence briefers will start holding daily briefings with the president-elect, including about the “crown jewels” – their term for the most sensitive intelligence. RELATED: The next US president faces a world of trouble “The sooner these kinds of briefings of the president, presidential candidates, and/or the president-elect start the better and the more deeply they get into it the better, because a lot of these issues are pretty complicated, there’s a lot of background to learn,” Negroponte said. “A good time to be asking lots of questions is when you haven’t yet assumed office, because the pace will pick up once you get in,” he added. Both Hadley and Negroponte, who were involved in several presidential transitions, said the process has improved significantly in recent years. “We’ve come a long way,” Hadley said, noting that when he left at the end of Ford administration, all the paper records were taken from his office the day the presidency was handed to Jimmy Carter, making it even more difficult for the incoming staffers to get up to speed. Recent legislation has helped to improve the process, however. A law passed in 2010 allowing staff picked by the nominees to undergo security clearance investigations before the vote has been held so that they can be ready to start the job on Day One. And a measure passed this year created presidential transition councils, which can meet with presidential candidates and enable additional planning even before the contenders have secured their party’s nominations. Secretary of the Army Eric Fanning in late October outlined some of the steps the services were taking in order to better prepare the incoming administration. “Travel dries up right after the election, so that we can make the transition as smooth as possible. So we have a whole series of binders and information papers and information available for the team when it shows up,” Fanning said as part of a panel moderated by CNN’s Barbara Starr at the Center for a New American Security. Fanning’s Navy counterpart, Secretary Ray Mabus, concurred, stressing the need for a smooth transition. “One thing the Pentagon does very well in my experience is get you ready to go in in terms of briefings, in terms of where we are in any specific thing, in terms of making sure that nothing falls through the cracks as you move from one administration to the next,” he said. “There’s no luxury of having a couple of days after the inaugural to figure things out,” he added. “You’ve got to be ready at 12:01 on January 20 to meet whatever comes.”


Thousands of Canadians are without power California wildfires saw thousands evacuated from homes over weekend CJ Summers described the fire that destroyed two of his family’s barns like something out of an action movie. “It looked just like a wall of fire,” he said. “It sounded like a jet engine, like a tidal wave.” Summers, a 31-year-old who lives in Vancouver, grew up on his parents’ ranch. He and his brother were on the ranch when a fire traveled from the forest nearby, eventually igniting some of their property and destroying two of their barns. And they’re not alone. There were 202 wildfires burning in Canada’s British Columbia province by Tuesday night and 14,000 people had been forced to evacuate their homes. On Monday, 39 new fires began, said Kevin Skrepnek, Chief Fire Information Officer for the British Columbia Wildlife Service. Since the start of the wildfire season on April 1, the province has seen 604 fires, with the damage estimated at $53.5 million Canadian dollars (US $41 million). The hot, dry conditions that create the blazes are expected to persist in the coming days, he said, with potential winds and lightning threatening to make the situation worse. Several of the fires in the southern region of British Columbia – those near Ashcroft, Princeton and 100 Mile House – are together burning 70,000 hectares, officials said, or more than 170,000 acres. Authorities estimate 14,000 people have been evacuated, according to Robert Turner, British Columbia’s Assistant Deputy Minister of Emergency Management. Military assistance has been brought in to help the 1,000 fire personnel currently fighting the fires, which are mostly in rural areas. Canada’s Minister of Public Safety Ralph Goodale said in a news conference Monday that an additional 300 personnel were on their way to assist. British Columbia also enlisted the help of the Canadian Armed Forces’ aircraft to help transport the more than 1,000 fire personnel currently fighting the fires, Goodale said. Here's what the devastation looks like at the Boston Flats. Roughly 30 homes were razed to the ground. https://t.co/9DL8qdlEqy #bcwildfire pic.twitter.com/PGHHMfdfty The fires have left thousands without power, according to BC Hydro and Power Authority, one of the province’s electricity distributors, which said it had 100 crews working to repair electrical infrastructure. But officials believe there’s a long way to go before the fires are brought under control. Dave Scott was at his home Friday outside 100 Mile House when a friend of his, a volunteer firefighter in the area, sent him an ominous text: “Get out now.” “I’ve never been so panic stricken in my life,” said Scott, who moved to the area two years ago from the coast near Vancouver. “As a city boy, I was not prepared,” he said. “I’m worried that if my home burns – I’m 44 years old. I’ve worked hard to get here in life. What do I do for clothing? What do I do for food? Do I have a job? Do I have a future in this town?” In the hot, dry conditions over the weekend, thousands of Californians evacuated homes at risk from wildfires. Cal Fire said Tuesday night that nearly 5,000 Californians were still under evacuation orders. The scorching weather comes after California’s prolonged drought emergency was declared officially over in April. Extremely low humidity and winds are helping to fuel the wildfires, not just in California but also Arizona. On Tuesday one of the most dangerous blazes – the Whittier Fire in Santa Barbara in coastal Southern California –  had spread to 11,281 acres with 48% of the blaze contained, according to Cal Fire. Winds out of the southeast are pushing the fire away from Santa Barbara and toward Santa Ynez, authorities said. A path toward Santa Ynez has already burned, which is helping firefighters contain parts of the fire. On Sunday, Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in Butte County, where the blaze known as Wall Fire started Friday. By Tuesday night, it had burned 5,800 acres and was 55% contained, Cal Fire said, but 5,400 homes were still threatened. More than 2,000 personnel were fighting the Alamo Fire in San Luis Obispo County, which had spread to more than 28,000 acres and was 60% contained, according to Cal Fire’s website Monday evening. And the Jennings Fire in Lakeside, outside San Diego, forced evacuations Tuesday afternoon after it grew from 100 to 400 acres in a matter of hours. CNN’s Jeanne Bonner, Joe Sutton, Haley Brink, Tony Marco, Nicole Chavez and Charles Levin contributed to this report.

wildfire management and emergency response in British Columbia and California


Algerian gas complex attackers may have trained in Libyan jihadist camps, sources say Jihadists from Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali and elsewhere train there, sources say Libyan oil fields could now be at high risk of attack, former Libyan intelligence chief says A Salafist group in eastern Libya has called for protests over French involvement The terrorists who attacked the In Amenas gas complex in eastern Algeria appear to have been of several nationalities, and may have trained in jihadist camps across the border in southern Libya, according to sources familiar with the situation there. Read more: Power struggle: The North African gas industry targeted by militants Algerian security sources told Reuters late Thursday that the militants whose bodies had been recovered from the complex so far included three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a French citizen. Read more: Algerian hostage crisis enters 3rd day with ‘ongoing activity’ Other sources said the leader of the hostage-taking commando group dispatched to carry out the attack was Abou al-Barra, a jihadist who had previously belonged to the group that later became al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. A U.S. official told CNN Wednesday that the hostage-takers appeared to have crossed the Libyan border – some 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the gas complex – to carry out the attack. Read more: ‘Mr. Marlboro’: The veteran jihadist behind the attack in Algeria Libyan authorities have been aware for some time of the existence of three militant camps south of the desert town of Sabha, not far from the Algerian border, a regional security source told CNN. The source said the leader of one of those camps was a Libyan veteran of the 1980s Afghan war. Related video Hostage standoff in Algeria Related video Britain PM warns Algeria hostage takers Related video U.S. unaware in advance of Algeria raid Related video Escaping the Algeria hostage crisis Related video Military storms hostage takers Related video Brother: Semtex tied to hostages Related video Algeria: Some hostages have been killed Western intelligence officials had established that the man had met Moktar Belmoktar – the overall leader of the group that assigned al Barra to carry out the attack – during a trip Belmoktar made to Libya late in 2011. The source said the three camps include jihadists from Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Mali as well as ethnic Tuaregs, and that it was highly possible that these camps were connected to the attack. Read more: Islamists take foreign hostages in attack on Algerian oil field A former head of intelligence for the Transitional National Council in Libya also confirmed to CNN that he was aware of three camps in the area. Rami El Obeidi said the camps had been operational for about a year and confirmed that foreign fighters had been among the militants training there. El Obeidi also said that extremist militia in Libya were financing militant groups in Mali and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb as well as providing them with logistical support. Read more: Six reasons events in Mali matter The former intelligence chief said the Libyan army had little capability in this vast area of desert and there was a fear of confronting the extremists. With the French intervention in Mali, he said “a Pandora’s Box has been opened” – and he believed oil fields in Libya were also at high risk of being attacked. Foreign oil companies have gradually returned to Libya since the 2011 revolution that ousted Moammar Gadhafi, but much of Libya remains highly insecure and under the sway of independent militia. Read more: France continues Mali airstrikes; residents frantic A Salafist group in eastern Libya has called for protests after Friday prayers in Benghazi in response to the French intervention in Mali – posting on its Facebook page that “Mali is bleeding” because of the French involvement. El Obeidi said that al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb treated the whole region as one theater and was oblivious to the desert borders that divided the countries of the Sahel. North African media have described Abou al-Barra as the one of the most effective commanders of the Al-Mulathameen Brigade that is led by Belmoktar. Read more: U.S. Air Force evacuating foreigners from Algeria gas plant, source says He was born in Algeria in the 1970s and served in the Algerian army before joining the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which was heavily involved in the Algerian insurgency in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The group was held responsible for the kidnap of more than 30 European tourists in Algeria. A Mauritanian news agency – Alakhbar – named another of the attackers killed as Zarghawi Al-Mouritani,18. His real name was Abdallahi Ould Hmeida, the agency said. CNN is unable to verify the report of his death. The Algerian Communications Minister, Mohamed Saïd, told state media late Thursday that the terrorist attack was the work of a multinational group of terrorists whose aim was to implicate Algeria in the conflict in Mali, destabilize the Algerian state and destroy the Algerian economy, which is heavily reliant on oil and gas revenues. Other Algerian officials have repeated that there would be no negotiations with such groups. Follow along on the live blog


Repeated violence blighted Turkey in 2016, threatening its popularity with tourists Country is in crosshairs of two groups: radical Islamists and Kurds In Istanbul’s horrific New Year terror attack the message is clear: 2017 has begun, expect more of the same to come. The echo of the black-clad gunman’s bullets on such a globally festive night will reverberate long and hard. The year 2016 had already laid a terrible and bloody foundation of terrorist mayhem for Turkey’s citizens: Dozens of attacks, from Europe’s easternmost tip in Istanbul through to Turkey’s southern border with Syria. Why Turkey is such a target for terrorVictims from 14 countriesHorrifying scene inside massacre nightclubIstanbul club was a hot spot for celebrities Why Turkey is such a target for terrorVictims from 14 countriesHorrifying scene inside massacre nightclubIstanbul club was a hot spot for celebrities At times last year it felt that barely a week went by between strikes, from a brazen gun and bomb raid at Istanbul’s main international airport to carnage on the city’s tourist-filled streets, to the assassination of Russia’s ambassador in the capital, Ankara, 12 days ago. Such was the crescendo of attacks in the last few months of 2016 that the terror at Reina nightclub had a feeling of inevitability about it – if not there precisely, then someplace similar: upmarket, secular, serving alcohol. Barely two months ago, the US State Department warned that “extremist groups are continuing aggressive efforts to attack US citizens in areas of Istanbul where they reside or frequent.” In a year, Turkey has gone from popular tourist destination to disturbingly dependable terror venue. That’s not a reputation any country wants – and particularly not Turkey, with its economy struggling following an attempted coup last summer. This has not come out of nowhere. READ MORE: Dozens killed in upscale nightclub attack There are two brands of terror targeting Turkey now: Kurdish and radical Islamist. It would be easy to lay the blame for the growth of both at the feet of Turkey’s increasingly autocratic and powerful President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but that would be to oversimplify the upheaval underway in this once secular country. Yet Erdogan shapes Turkey’s destiny more than any other single person. Related article Timeline: Turkey's bloody year Four years ago he ended three decades of bloody conflict with the country’s Kurds. They make up one fifth of Turkey’s 80 million people. Tens of thousands died in a terror campaign as they fought the state for better rights. With peace came popularity, a secular Kurdish party winning seats in the following national elections. But their gains threatened Erdogan’s grip on parliamentary power. As this was playing out, the war in neighboring Syria was heating up. The United States did a deal with Turkey to use its Incirlik airbase close to the Syrian border in order to strike ISIS targets. In return, Turkey agreed to strike “terrorists” too. But when Turkey did, its focus wasn’t ISIS, but its old foe the Kurds, whom, it was feared, were gaining ground inside Syria. Within months, Turkey’s war with the Kurds was back on; snap elections a few months later crippled the Kurdish vote and restored Erdogan’s party’s hold on government. By 2016, Kurdish tit-for-tat bombings, ambushes and gun attacks – mostly against military and police targets – had become the ugly background music of the year. To that already monstrous din, ISIS has added its own sordid battle noise. Like the renewed conflict with the Kurds, this too has its roots in Syria, and once again President Erdogan played a leading role in shaping its course. In the early years of the Syrian uprising, Erdogan sought to unseat his onetime friend President Bashar al-Assad by backing Sunni rebels. Unlike the US and Europe, Erdogan didn’t seem so picky about who benefited from his largesse, often choosing conservative Islamist rebels, rather than moderates. As ISIS grew in strength, they profited from Turkey’s policy toward rebels. Thousands upon thousands of ISIS recruits transited Turkey on their way to the war. Near-open borders allowed ISIS fighters and their weapons to pour across, and most damaging for Erdogan, resupply hubs, escape routes and safe houses to develop right under his nose. Before the country belatedly tightened its border security, Turkey became riddled with ISIS. As the war in Syria morphed and Russia moved in to save Assad, Erdogan began to reassess. With the US an ineffective partner in the war – for his aims at least – the Turkish leader turned to the increasingly influential Vladimir Putin in Moscow to cut a deal. The assassination of the Russian ambassador by a Turkish policeman in Ankara the week before Christmas highlighted how swift an about-face Erdogan has executed. Few Turks expected his support of their co-religionists, the Sunni rebels, to wither so fast. It is clear however, that ISIS saw the writing on the wall. Turkey was transitioning from benign conduit to outright enemy. They didn’t immediately claim responsibility for the July attack on Ataturk airport, but by the end of the end of the year the gloves were off. In recent weeks, pro-ISIS groups had called for attacks in Turkey, urging lone wolf assaults on clubs, markets and movie theaters over the holiday season to turn them in to days of “terror and blood.” ISIS waited barely 24 hours to claim responsibility for the Reina nightclub attack. Neither ISIS nor the Kurds have any reason to scale back their assault, and Turkey is well and truly in their crosshairs. The Kurds will focus on military and police targets, civilian collateral an accepted part of their terror package. ISIS will gravitate towards westerners and to undermining the Turkish state. They’ll target tourists to hit the economy, and wage open war on Turkey’s secularists to rive at the wound Erdogan has already opened between conservatives and the less religious. READ MORE: Turkey can no longer conceal deep fault lines ISIS’ aim will be to create chaos, the Kurds’ to continue a generational fight. Neither bodes well for Turkey, its neighbors in Europe or its allies in Washington. It’s clear that 2016 killed the status quo, and 2017 is already a dark canvas.


Marco Rubio is back in the thick of it. The Florida Republican, who reversed his decision to quit the Senate after his losing the GOP presidential nomination, suddenly finds himself at the center of the political intrigue swirling around Donald Trump’s nascent administration. Rubio’s tough questioning Wednesday of Rex Tillerson, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, and unresolved doubts about the former ExxonMobil chief’s nomination, present him with a set of provocative political choices. Related video Tillerson and Rubio spar on human rights The senator was expected to meet Tillerson on Thursday after expressing reservations over the potential top US diplomat’s answers on Russia, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia – particularly on human rights – during Wednesday’s confirmation hearing. “We’re still working through it, so you know, we’ll have a decision here soon,” Rubio told CNN on Thursday. In some ways, Rubio’s position at the center of the Tillerson confirmation drama validates his decision to return to the Senate. At the time, the Florida senator argued that his deep interest in foreign policy and the clutch of threats to US national security justified his decision to reverse his resolve to turn his back on Washington. The Tillerson confirmation process gives him immediate platform to shape the course of the new administration’s foreign policy. Rubio, Tillerson critics clash with nominee over human rights In a baser sense, it also offers him an opening to exact revenge: a decision to slow or stall the Tillerson nomination would poke Trump in the eye. That might be a temptation for Rubio after he saw his presidential dreams crushed last year by the billionaire who ridiculed him as “Little Marco” during the bitter primary race. Rubio could complicate Tillerson’s nomination fight by declining to back him in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote. Assuming all of the panel’s Democrats also oppose him, that would force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to resort to some legislative gymnastics to bring the nomination to the full Senate. Such a step would position Rubio as an early – and likely irredeemable – critic of Trump administration foreign policy, particularly the President-elect’s determination to repair estranged US relations with the Kremlin. But coming out against Tillerson would also threaten to diminish Rubio’s future capacity to influence Trump’s foreign policy from the Senate since he would immediately become persona non grata for the new administration. A decision to come out against Tillerson would effectively see Rubio line up with Senate GOP foreign policy hawks like John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Like Rubio, McCain and Graham have yet to decide on whether to back Tillerson. Given the narrow GOP Senate majority, a decision by the trio to oppose him could doom the nomination, should all of the 48 Democrats in the Senate band together in opposition. Rubio has come under intense implied pressure from establishment Republicans who are backing Tillerson, including former defense secretary Robert Gates and former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. Alienating that establishment could hurt Rubio if he hopes to one day advance in national politics. Who is potential Trump Secretary of State Rex Tillerson? Apart from his shaky performance in Wednesday’s hearing, Tillerson came across as a down-the-line establishment Republican foreign policy type who is far more conventional on key questions than the President he will serve if he is confirmed. That means Rubio has to consider whether alienating the establishment national security wing of the GOP would erode the foreign policy sway on which he has anchored his second Senate term. He might also conclude that if Tillerson were to fail, Trump could nominate someone more in line with his own foreign policy beliefs and farther from the Republican mainstream. These concerns aside, there appears to be a more fundamental reason for Rubio’s concern about Tillerson – one that is often dismissed in the cynicism of Washington. It may well be a question of principle. Rubio’s questions to Tillerson on Wednesday were consistent with the way he has approached foreign policy throughout his career. He took exception to Tillerson taking refuge in the fact that he had not yet had classified briefings on many human rights questions, judging that the nominee fell short of the sharp moral clarity Rubio believes should underpin America’s engagement with the world. What the last 48 hours told us about Trump’s next 4 years The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio has often viewed America’s foreign policy through the prism of human rights and a deep antipathy towards communism and authoritarian governments. He has spoken out in favor of Chinese dissidents, branded Russian President Vladimir Putin a “gangster” and pushed for democratic reforms in the Western Hemisphere in particular. He told Tillerson on Wednesday he had no questions about his character or patriotism, but was troubled that he was unable to label Putin a war criminal, condemn thousands of extra-judicial killings in the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drugs purge or to judge that Russian bombings of Syrians in formerly rebel-held districts of Aleppo amounted to war crimes. “The position that you’ve been nominated to is, in my opinion, the second most important position in the US government, with all due respect to the vice president,” Rubio told Tillerson. “It is the face of this country for billions of people, for hundreds of millions of people as well, and particularly, for people that are suffering and they’re hurting.” “We need a secretary of state that will fight for these principles,” Rubio said.


Here’s a look at the life of former Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte. Birth date: July 21, 1939 Birth place: London, England Birth name: John Dimitri Negroponte Father: Dimitri John Negroponte, shipping magnate Mother: Catherine (Coumantaros) Negroponte Marriage: Diana (Villiers) Negroponte (December 1976-present) Children: Marina, Alejandra, John, George and Sophia Education: Yale University, B.A., 1960 Speaks five languages: English, French, Greek, Spanish and Vietnamese. Attended Harvard Law School for one week. Left after he was accepted into the Foreign Service. All of his children were adopted from Honduras. Has been accused of having knowledge of human rights abuses happening while he was ambassador to Honduras. Negroponte denies these claims. Has taught at Yale and George Washington University. 1960-1997 - Member of the Career Foreign Service, serving at eight different posts in Europe, Asia and Latin America. 1968-1969 - Member of the US delegation to Paris peace talks on Vietnam. 1973-1975 - Serves as a political counselor in Quito, Ecuador. 1975-1977 - US Consul General in Thessaloniki, Greece. 1977-1979 - Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and Fisheries Affairs. 1980-1981 - Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. 1981-1985 - US Ambassador to Honduras. 1985-1987 - Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and Environmental and Scientific Affairs. 1987-1989 - Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. 1989-1993 - US Ambassador to Mexico. 1993-1996 - US Ambassador to the Philippines. 1997-2001 - Executive Vice President at McGraw-Hill Companies. 2001-2004 - US Ambassador to the United Nations. April 19, 2004 - President George W. Bush nominates Negroponte to be US ambassador to Iraq. He is confirmed by the Senate May 6. February 17, 2005 - Bush names Negroponte as the country’s first director of national intelligence. He is confirmed by the Senate April 21. January 5, 2007 - Bush nominates Negroponte as deputy secretary of state. 2007-2009 - Deputy Secretary of State. 2009 - Joins advisory firm McLarty Associates. 2012-2015 - Chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) Board of Directors. 2018-present - Serves as the James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Public Affairs. February 13, 2020 - Negroponte’s daughter, Sophia, is arrested and charged with murder after being accused of stabbing a man to death at a home in Rockville, Maryland. She is later found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 35 years in prison.


If you invade, don’t expect our people to make it easy for you. That was the message Lithuania sent to Russia Friday as it published a manual for its three million citizens on how to defend their homeland in the event of invasion. Since Russia annexed Crimea two years ago, Lithuanians have been on edge. Related article NATO bolsters presence in Eastern Europe as Russia tension rises Conscription has been restarted and defense spending ramped up, not to mention their now-answered calls for NATO to deploy more troops to the Baltics. But even this is not enough to assuage anxiety – the Lithuanian government has Friday issued a 75-page guide on what to do if the country is invaded, entitled “Prepare to survive emergencies and war.” “Attention needs to be paid to the actions of the neighboring country – Russia,” says the manual. “This country does not hesitate to use a military force against its neighbors, and at this moment it basically continues the military aggression against Ukraine.” It notes the Russian method of using “denial and ambiguity” at the beginning of an invasion and warns: “It is most important that the civilians are aware and have a will to resist – when these elements are strong, an aggressor has difficulties in creating an environment for military invasion.” It is the third time the Lithuanian government has distributed a handbook of this type to its citizens since the Russian annexation of Crimea. The last one, published in December 2015, was entitled “Prepare to survive emergencies and war: a cheerful take on serious recommendations.” It included cartoons of a family with a cat and noted that “while no country is immune to adversities of any nature” it is important not to panic if there is an emergency. There is nothing cheerful about the latest edition, which details how Lithuanians should spy and inform on the enemy if Russia succeeds in occupying part of the country. There are also detailed images of Russian-made tanks, grenades, mines and guns and instructions on how to recognize different types. Further instructions cover first aid and surviving in the wild. There will be 30,000 copies available in schools and libraries and it will also be published online. Lithuania borders Russia’s strategically important enclave of Kaliningrad where it has been enhancing its already muscular military options, including the arrival of a nuclear-capable short-range ballistic missile system earlier this month. The document reminds Lithuania’s people – of whom around six percent are Russian, according to the last census in 2011 – that the defense of the country is “the right and duty of every citizen”. Karolis Aleksa from the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense, the editor of the manual, said that in times of invasion, “people become your early warning system,” and by reporting crucial details they can help intelligence officers and soldiers. “This doesn’t scare people when you give them this, so we will see actually society is waiting for this,” he told CNN. Additionally, he suggested, simply creating and distributing the manual publicly and with “fanfare” could deter potential aggression from Russia. “It is precisely to send a message to Russia – don’t do it – we are ready and will not be hoodwinked like Ukrainians,” he said. Related article Analysis: Why are Russian warships in British waters? Lithuania’s defense minister, Juozas Olekas, told CNN “We demonstrate that whoever crosses our border will have strong resistance from our society, from our military forces” Lithuania lived under Soviet rule from 1940-1991. Thirty thousand Lithuanian resistance fighters were killed in the first 10 years as they tried to fight the Red Army from flimsy hideouts in Lithuania’s sprawling forests. With ramped up defense spending, the reinstatement of conscription and NATO’s troops, Lithuania is at the front line of a new Cold War. Its defense minister sees no thaw any time soon, telling CNN: “President Putin only understands power against power.” The new handbook aims to place some of that power in the hands of Lithuania’s people.


Libya army chief has previously expressed opposition to plan European Commission to consider mandatory numbers of migrants EU countries must accept UK expresses opposition to any mandatory quotas on number of people to be resettled The European Union, facing a rising tide of migrants, asked the United Nations on Monday to authorize military action to destroy boats used to smuggle people from Africa to Europe. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, outlined for the U.N. Security Council the EU’s plan to destroy boats used by smugglers as long as the boats are known to be empty. The boats are used to transport people who are bent on escaping violence, or desperate for a better life, from North Africa primarily to Italy – which happens to be Mogherini’s home country. Many of the migrants are from sub-Saharan Africa and Syria, or are foreign workers who have lost their livelihoods. They know that traffickers can take them to Europe from Libyan shores. But many die at sea. More than 3,400 migrants died in 2014, according to estimates from the U.N refugee agency. And nearly 2,000 have lost their lives already this year, the agency estimates. Mogherini said the EU could not stem mass migrations on its own. “This has to be a common global effort,” she said. Any migrants found on the boats will be processed as refugees or asylum seekers, she said, rather than being forced to return to their home countries. But the proposal will not meet with unanimous approval in the region. In an interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson at the end of April, Libyan army head Gen. Khalifa Haftar said his country had not been consulted, would not cooperate – and, he hinted, might even resist military action on its territory. The EU is also pushing a plan to accommodate those migrants who do make it to Europe – one that will not meet with universal approval on the continent. The plan, a draft of which CNN has seen, would call for quotas on the number of migrants each EU country would be required to take in. A spokeswoman for the European Commission said repeatedly Monday that the document was still being redrafted, and she would not comment on whether any EU countries would be able to opt out of the quotas. The commission, which is the EU’s executive arm, will consider the proposal Wednesday. Related gallery Europe's migrant crisis Britain has already made it clear that it opposes quotas. “The UK has a proud history of offering asylum to those who need it most, but we do not believe that a mandatory system of resettlement is the answer,” a representative for the British Home Office said. “We will oppose any EU Commission proposals to introduce a nonvoluntary quota.” Skepticism of the EU runs high in Britain, as does concern over the number of migrants entering the country. David Cameron, the newly re-elected Prime Minister, has promised to hold a nationwide referendum by the end of 2017 on whether the UK should leave the EU. Journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau contributed to this report.


On Wednesday morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee released a slew of transcripts related to its investigation of a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between the top brass of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and several Russians, including Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer. The meeting was arranged by Rob Goldstone, a publicist for Emin Agalarov, a Russian music star and the son of billionaire Aras Agalarov, with the express purpose of sharing “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. It has become one of the critical moments of the ongoing special counsel investigation into Russia’s interference into the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign. The transcripts released Wednesday provide the most detailed version of events of that day we have seen to date. (You can see them all here.) I zeroed in on Don Jr.’s testimony – all 232 pages of it! – given that he is not only the eldest son of the President of the United States but was also Goldstone’s contact in setting up the meeting. The 31 most important, intriguing, insightful and, occasionally, odd lines from Don Jr. are below. 1. “As will become clear, I did not collude with any foreign government and do not know of anyone who did.” Don Jr. gets the big thing out of the way early on in his opening statement. To paraphrase someone else: “No collusion!” 2. “Rob was among the many individuals who would reach out from time to time to congratulate us on winning a primary or to show their support.” It appears as though Goldstone, the music publicist, was doing what he could to get in good with the Trumps – making sure Don Jr. and even Don Sr. knew he was following the presidential race closely, and that he was 100% behind Trump. 3. “In his email to me, Rob suggested that someone had official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary Clinton and her dealings with Russia and that the information would be very useful to the campaign.” This isn’t new – we know that Goldstone promised “dirt” on Clinton – but it is helpful to have Don Jr. on the record about what he thought he was getting from Goldstone. The Trump Jr. argument, which he makes repeatedly later in his testimony, is that there was nothing wrong with his interest in Goldstone’s information because he believed Goldstone to be a bit of an exaggerator and wanted to know more rather than take what the publicist was saying at face value. 4. “As much as some have made of the phrase ‘I love it,’ it was simply a colloquial way of saying that I appreciated Rob’s gesture.” Hmmm. Trump responded to Goldstone’s email that he had “dirt” on Clinton by saying he loved it because it was a way of thanking Goldstone for the gesture, not an indication that he was excited about what the information might be? A simple “thank you” wouldn’t have sufficed? 5. “While Rob said he would send me the names of the attendees for the June 9th meeting, he never did.” This is very important. Trump says – under oath no less! – that he had no idea who was coming to the meeting in which the dirt was promised. Yes, Goldstone said he had dirt and that it came from Russians but that was it. And, as I mentioned above, Trump Jr. argues that because he didn’t take Goldstone super-seriously he wasn’t really sure about the source of the information or the information itself. 6. “After perfunctory greetings, the lawyers began telling the group very generally something about individuals connected to Russia supporting or funding Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton or the Democratic National Committee. It was quite difficult for me to understand what she was saying or why.” This is the alleged “dirt.” Which Trump portrays as a total and compete nothing-burger – and simply a ruse by the Russians to get a meeting with him, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort about the Magnitsky Act. 7. “I have no recollection of documents being offered or left for us.” This isn’t quite a “no.” So, there is a possibility the Russians – Veselnitskaya, etc. – may have left documents for the Trump team. But, Don Jr. can’t remember. 8. “Did you inform your father about the meeting or the underlying offer prior to the meeting?” “No, I did not.” Important. Trump Jr. is asked if he ever mentioned the June meeting at Trump Tower to his father. He is definitive: “I did not.” 9. “Again, I don’t remember much from the meeting because I didn’t give it much credence at the time.” This is a tactic Don Jr. used repeatedly in his testimony – he lacks clear recollection of what happened because it was sort of a useless meeting. He thought he was getting dirt on Clinton. When it was clear – and this happened quickly – that he wasn’t, he sort of checked out mentally. 10. “[Kushner] showed up a few minutes late and left a few minutes early to take a phone call.” Jared Kushner is all of us. 11. “Did you take any notes at the meeting?” “I didn’t, no.” I’m not sure whether Trump’s lack of note-taking was purposeful – leave no paper trail and all that – or whether he simply didn’t think there was anything of note in the meeting. We’ll never know which it was because, well, Trump Jr. didn’t take notes. 12. “After the meeting but prior to the news of it breaking this summer, did you discuss the meeting with anyone?” “No, I did not.” Trump Jr., according to his version of events, goes to a meeting with Russians and two top members of the campaign apparatus. But, he never speaks of the meeting – not to his father, not to the other meeting attendees – ever again. 13. “I do not know. I imagine I was talking about Russian government people, not Russian nationals, because I would have no way of knowing how many people of Russian descent that I would have met along the campaign trail every day for two and a half years.” This is in reference to a quote Don. Jr. gave to The New York Times in March 2017. Here are the relevant lines from the story: “Asked at that time whether he had ever discussed government policies related to Russia, the younger Mr. Trump replied, ‘A hundred percent no.’” The meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 would seem to contradict that claim, given that the Magnitsky Act was discussed. Trump Jr’s attempt to threat that needle is to argue that he interpreted the Times question to be in reference to official represetnatives of the Russian government – which he had no idea that anyone in the June 2016 meeting was. 14. “It did not talk about what got them into the door and I didn’t expand on it because I didn’t think it was relevant to discuss what the meeting was not actually about even if that’s what the email was.” Don Jr.’s first statement in the wake of the revelation of the June 2016 meeting was, in retrospect, decidedly narrow and, by almost any reading, misleading in what it left out. Here’s that statement: “It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.” The argument he made to the Senate Judiciary Committee was that he didn’t mention why the meeting happened in the first place – to get “dirt” on Clinton – because no dirt was gotten. 15. “I don’t know. I never spoke to my father about it.” Don Jr. here insists he never spoke directly to his dad about that initial statement about the Trump Tower meeting. 16. “To the best of your knowledge, did the President provide any edits to the statement or other input? “He may have commented through Hope Hicks.” So.  Trump Jr. and Trump didn’t speak or communicate directly about the initial statement. But, Trump Jr. leaves a BIG opening to allow for the idea that his father simply told Hicks the changes he wanted made and then she conveyed those to Trump Jr. and his lawyers. 17. “[Hope Hicks] asked if I wanted to actually speak to him, and I chose not to because I didn’t want to bring him into something that he had nothing to do with.” Maybe. But also to protect Trump from jeopardy related to being directly involved in dictating a statement about the meeting which, remember, according to Don Jr., he had zero idea about. 18. “I have one phone.” Same. But, I was sort of surprised Don Jr. wasn’t a two- or even three-phone guy. 19. “He’s sort of a big personality, creates sort of a vacuum.” Don Jr.’s assessment of his dad is, um, spot on. 20. “I think, especially knowing Goldstone and his personality, I imagine there was a discount factor to anything that was written.” Again, Trump Jr. is very interested in portraying Goldstone as a sort-of loveable huckster who he never took all that seriously. Which, theoretically, explains why he wanted to verify the “dirt” Goldstone was promising before speaking to lawyers or anyone else about it. 21. “I responded in 20 minutes because if I get an email, I respond to it. If I see it, I respond.” My inbox currently has 13,032 unopened emails. I hate myself. 22. “I didn’t think that listening to someone with information relevant to the fitness and character of a presidential candidate would be an issue, no.” The key here is that Trump Jr. is fuzzy – in his telling – about exactly where the information is coming from. He says he had no reason to believe it was from any sort of official Russian channel and had even less reason to believe it was totally credible because Goldstone was sort of a cartoonish and unreliable figure. What’s difficult to square is this line from Goldstone’s emails with Don Jr. setting up the meeting: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.” 23. “Did you tell your father about this email?” “I did not.” Again, Trump Jr. is totally and completely definitive that he didn’t show or tell his father about the Goldstone email setting up the June 2016 meeting. 24. “It just became pretty obvious to me that they were not representatives of the Russian government.” It’s not clear to me how this became evident so quickly to Trump Jr. in the June 2016 meeting. But, it informs his belief, I suppose, that he was doing nothing wrong by talking to them about alleged “dirt” on Clinton. 25. “So was any information specific to Hillary Clinton provided during the meeting?” “No, there was not.” This much-ballyhooed meeting promising negative information amounted to absolutely nothing, according to Don Jr. 26. “I think the only time I responded to them was, hey, when I am I going to receive the next leak. And they would reach out on a few occasions, sort of passing along news, hey, you may want to tweet this, this would be of interest probably with some sort of admin there.” Don Jr. acknowledges that, yes, he was in some very limited contact with WikiLeaks – and that he reached out to them at one point asking when they were going to leak more stuff 27. “I believe it was after we had already secured – meaning after the election, but I could be mistaken. The only reason I’m aware of it is because it occurred in my office. I came back from the gym and they were in there.” After working out, Trump Jr. came back to a meeting in his office between Kushner, Michael Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. (He thinks.) He did not go into the meeting because of, well, sweat. 28. “I don’t do Snapchat, I have enough forms of of social media.” Story of my life, Donnie J. Story of my life. 29. “Do you have a home landline?” “I believe I do, but I don’t even know the number of it.” It’s like he’s in my head! 30. “Have you ever been told that Russia has compromising information on your father?” “No.” No Kompromat! And, worth noting that Don Jr. also told the Senate committee that he was unaware that the Russians had any compromising information on his father or any top official in the Trump campaign. 31. “Have you and your father ever discussed the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election?” “No, not that I remember.” This is amazing to me. President Trump is absolutely fixated on Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election. But, he and his eldest son NEVER had a conversation about it! Not once! Correction: This story incorrectly identified the committee that released the transcripts. It was the Senate Judiciary Committee.


Niels Ackermann and Sebastien Gobert have tracked down fallen statues of Vladimir Lenin in Ukraine Over 1,000 statues of Lenin have been removed since 2013 When revolution comes, statues find themselves on the front line. And like pawns on a chessboard, they’re often the first to fall. It’s as true for Ukraine as anywhere else in the world. Nearly a century after his death, monuments to Vladimir Lenin have come down in parts of the country, thumbing its nose at pro-Russian unrest in eastern regions. But what of the shattered pieces? Can there be new life after the death of a statue? Swiss photographer Niels Ackermann and journalist Sebastien Gobert seek answers to these questions as they zigzag across western Ukraine in their hunt for fallen Lenins. Their ongoing project “Lost in Decommunisation” documents the fate of the leader as he goes to ground and becomes an unlikely trophy for everyone from ultra-nationalists to local officials. Ackermann and Gobert say that once upon a time Ukraine possessed around 5,000 statues of Lenin – a number more impressive when you consider Russia, 28 times its size, held only 2,000 more. Approximately half of Ukraine’s Lenins disappeared with independence in 1991, but the pair estimate a further 1,200 have fallen since unrest began in 2013. The move is one aspect of Ukraine’s ongoing decommunization effort. Soviet symbols, from flags to statues to road signs, were banned in 2015; Lenin Street became John Lennon Street in one humorous corner in the southwest, but by and large the process has been a somber erosion of a chapter of Ukraine’s history. The destruction of monuments – dubbed “Leninopad” (“Lenin-fall”) – has been fractious and symbolic, suggest Ackermann and Gobert. “They’re all still owned by municipalities – at least on paper,” Ackermann explains. In some communities local governments have voted to remove statues of Lenin. Elsewhere vigilante groups and ultra-nationalists have torn down statues independent of authorities’ will. Presidential playground: Ashgabat, the marble city “The way that the Lenins fall down, it’s being implemented in a very dysfunctional way,” says Gobert. “There’s not just one process, there’s not a single way that it is done.” Gobert says tracking down the fallen Lenins has brought to light “two very strong symbols of contemporary Ukraine: the heavy bureaucracy and the lack of law.” Finding their subjects means talking to figures on both sides of the law, often negotiating a web of red tape and cloak-and-dagger secrecy. Officials are often content to pass the buck when approached by Ackermann and Gobert, and private individuals in possession of statues are sometimes wary of revealing the location of their contraband. “There’s many [points of opposition],” says Gobert, “but it’s what makes this project fun.” “Some statues we’ve been negotiating since last September to shoot,” he explains. “We have to write tons of official request letters… We’ve become lost in all the layers of bureaucracy.” Ackerman recalls one failed attempt to win round municipal staff in the southeast of the country. “We started by calling them. They said ‘No, we don’t want to show you,’” he says. “Then a letter – they politely said no.” Uncovered: The hidden history of Poland's radical post-war churches Gobert and Ackermann visited anyway and negotiated in person, but officials stood firm. Ackermann summarizes their reaction: “‘We do not want to show you the Lenins because your project does not show our country in a positive way.’” The photographer describes the “outlaws” who sequester relics of Lenin as a diverse group. Many have moved Lenin into sheds and outhouses around the region, beyond prying eyes. On occasion the ideologue finds company alongside Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin and other communist figures. “Nationalists would collect them as trophies,” says Gobert, recalling one individual who “would collect the image of Lenin like you’d collect stamps.” A house is being built inside a cliff, thanks to the internet Gobert says there are plinths bearing the name of Lenin that have been without his likeness for three and a half years in parts of the country. Tearing Lenin down is a move “against the past and their Soviet heritage,” he argues, “but it’s not for anything either.” The duo say they are still on the hunt to find more Lenins, suggesting the numbers are on their side. Whether they’ll be able to turn Ackermann’s lens on all the statues they uncover is a different debate entirely. “[The project] keeps on changing and dragging us to new spots with new people,” says Gobert. “It’s like a never-ending story.”


Editor’s Note: Jen Psaki, a CNN political commentator and spring fellow at the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, served as the White House communications director and State Department spokeswoman during the Obama administration. She has worked as a consultant for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Follow her: @jrpsaki. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers. Jen Psaki: The true challenge of events like Manchester is in how we react in the days to come At times like this, we need a President who also guides us away from allowing fear to morph into prejudice and hatred As a mom, the scenes from the terrorist attack in Manchester make me want to lock my daughter up in her room, ban her from attending concerts and shut out the world. And she is not even two years old. Fear is a human response. But it is also what the terrorists are after. The images and stories of the young victims that begin to emerge in the coming days will put our resolve to not be afraid to the test. And it is times like this when we need the President of the United States to be a steady voice – one who acknowledges the human reaction to tragedy, but who also guides us away from allowing fear to morph into prejudice and hatred. But this kind of leadership will require a new approach from the Commander in Chief, one that differs from what he has said and done in the past. In the days after the Paris attack, for instance, then-candidate Donald Trump called for banning all Muslims from entering the United States and for building a registry that would ensure we knew the identity of all of the Muslim-Americans living peacefully among us. He stoked anger against Muslims and helped spur, across the country and among members of Congress, a fear of refugees that led in part to more stringent restrictions on refugee resettlement. I was working for President Barack Obama at the time, and our own reaction from the White House to the Paris attack was not perfect either. We were so wrapped up in our own outrage at Donald Trump’s attacks on the Muslim community, and against refugees, that we failed to focus enough of our energy on communicating to the public the strengths of our own system – our law enforcement, our vetting process, and our own protections to keep the American people safe. President Obama was also criticized at the time for not reacting to the attacks with more emotion, with more anger. Some of that criticism was justified. He was on a trip in Asia, and was not digesting the raw reaction in the United States. His answers during press conferences were wrapped in the steady and pragmatic tone that had long been his signature. But in the days following the attack, he also didn’t do enough to acknowledge the impact of the attacks back home. Related article How we react to Manchester is a defining choice While his approach was frustrating to many of us in the White House in the moment, his steady calm proved in retrospect to contain wisdom as well. He refused to get into a race to the lowest common denominator, to heighten his own language or ways of thinking to mirror the fear and emotions of the people in the country he led. He told us that he needed to be the voice of reason. He was right. It has been 18 months since the Paris attack. There is a new President in office. He may not want to take a page out of the calm and steady Obama playbook, but I hope he can at least learn from how the people of Manchester, citizens who have lost neighbors and classmates and  children, have already responded. Muslim taxi drivers are offering free rides in the city. Citizens are banding together. We are in some ways more vulnerable to reactive prejudice in the United States. The population of Muslim Americans here pales in comparison to countries like the UK, where Muslims are about 15% of the population in Manchester, according to the last census in 2011. Yet there is not a flood of talk about kicking Muslims out of the city. There is not a movement by even the conservative leadership of the United Kingdom to register Muslims or ban entry of Muslims into the country. There is an effort at the grassroots level to live together. To stand together. The true challenge of events like Manchester is not how we respond with sympathy for the victims, and anger at the “evil losers” (as our President has called them) in the immediate aftermath, but in how we react in the days to come. Sign up for CNN Opinion’s new newsletter.Join us on Twitter and Facebook If history is a guide to how President Trump will react in the weeks ahead, we have reason for concern. As citizens, we must hope he will not use this horrific attack as an opening to turn anger and fear into discrimination and either way, resolve not to let that happen.


Democrats on Monday presented a new economic message Schumer said blame for the party's 2016 losses is wide-ranging Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, denied Monday that his party is overly fixated on Russia as Democrats rolled out a new campaign focused on economics. Schumer, in an interview for CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” said the party’s primary concerns are health care and “the economic well-being of the working family” – not the various investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. “Those are our two big focuses,” Schumer said. “Obviously Russia is in the news. Obviously we want Bob Mueller to be able to pursue and our committees to be able to pursue their investigations unimpeded.” But Schumer did allow that the party has had a longstanding messaging problem and needs to make its economic agenda known. The Senate’s minority leader was speaking from Berryville, Virginia, just after joining other Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, to unveil the party’s new agenda, titled “A Better Deal.” He said because of his focus on the rollout, he had not kept up with the comments about Russia from Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and top adviser to President Donald Trump, or Trump’s own tweet calling Attorney General Jeff Sessions “beleaguered.” Schumer said moving forward, Democrats will focus on health care, jobs training and breaking up monopolies, and that the party would “fill this agenda out” further in coming months. The new agenda is a reaction to systemic issues in the Democratic Party’s outreach efforts, Schumer said, avoiding pointing specifically to the Hillary Clinton campaign. “It’s not just 2016. It’s 2014 as well,” Schumer said. “The blame goes all around, and the bottom line is people didn’t know what we stood for.” When Tapper pointed to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll that found most people think the Democrats stood against Trump as opposed to “for something,” Schumer reiterated his point and explained the new campaign is intended to demonstrate the party has a real economic agenda. “I’m not going to point any specific fingers,” Schumer said. “We’re all to blame, but what you said, that 52% of Americans don’t know what we stand for, that changes today.”