Month: May 2019

The South Carolina couple’s lawsuit seeks to rescind the waiver. It also asks for a permanent injunction that would prevent the state from contracting with or licensing agencies that discriminate against prospective foster parents based on their religion, sex, sexual orientation or marital status as same-sex couples.

“Faith is a part of our family life, so it is hurtful and insulting to us that Miracle Hill’s religious view of what a family must look like deprives foster children of a nurturing, supportive home,” Brandy Welch said in a statement issued by the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the couple along with Lambda Legal and the South Carolina Equality Coalition Inc.

The lawsuit names as defendants HHS and its Administration for Children and Families division, which issued the waiver; Gov. Henry McMaster, who requested the waiver; and the state Department of Social Services.

The South Carolina Department of Social Services declined to comment on the pending litigation, and McMaster’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. HHS pointed CNN to a statement from January, when it issued the waiver.

In the statement, Lynn Johnson, assistant secretary for HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, cited the need for more families in the foster care system as a reason the agency had granted the state’s request.

“This decision preserves all of the foster care agencies currently available for children in South Carolina by ensuring faith-based organizations can continue to serve this vulnerable population. It protects minors who are in need of as many options as possible for being placed in loving foster families.”

The couple’s lawsuit charges that the waiver achieves the opposite by excluding prospective parents when demand exceeds supply. Civil rights organizations and child welfare advocacy groups share the position that religious exemptions harm children in foster care by limiting the pool of prospective parents.

“Defendants’ actions have created a public child welfare system in South Carolina, funded by taxpayer dollars, in which the suitability of prospective foster parents is assessed based on religious requirements,” the lawsuit claims.

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet connected his recent diagnosis and surgery for prostate cancer to his calls for “universal health care” during a CNN town hall Thursday night.

“I think about not only that, but what it would mean if you were an American citizen and you didn’t have a primary care doctor who could give you a screening that let you know I had cancer,” he said, adding that he had no symptoms.

Bennet said he supports a “public option” that would allow people to buy into Medicare. But he sharply criticized Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” proposal that would eliminate the role of private insurers.

Bennet said his plan is “Medicare for All — if you want it. But if you want to keep the insurance you have, then you could do that as well.”

“Now, Bernie is proposing, if you like your insurance, we’re going to take it away from you,” he said. Bennet said Sanders is “wrong to propose it. I think what we should do is give American people a choice.”

Overnight moves in stock futures can be amplified by lower trading volumes.

The threat sent the Mexican peso plunging about 2% against the US dollar.

The latest tariff threat comes at a delicate time in global financial markets.

US stocks have slumped and bond yields have plunged due in part to worries about the escalating trade war between the United States and China. Investors fear the tit-for-tat tariffs — and threats of non-tariff retaliation — will slow economic growth, dent consumer confidence and derail business investment.

Imposing tariffs on Mexico may only exacerbate those trade concerns.

The US Chamber of Commerce has estimated that about 6 million US jobs depend on trade with Mexico.

It was the kind of crisis that members of the President’s legal defense team thought called for Mueller to be in attendance.

Mueller apparently didn’t agree and didn’t attend.

For nearly two years, indictments bore the signature of the 74-year-old Justice Department veteran, as he served as the public face of the most high-profile investigation in decades, but he never uttered a single public word about his work.

Breaking his silence for the first time on Wednesday, Mueller said the work of the special counsel’s office “speaks for itself.” But the contours of his role on the investigation are still largely cloaked in secrecy.

A dozen CNN interviews with those who have worked by Mueller’s side or dealt regularly with his office offer somewhat conflicting depictions, but for many he served as an enigmatic figure.

He attended some interviews of key witnesses, such as former White House counsel Don McGahn, observing questions and exchanging polite greetings but not participating. Other witnesses pivotal in the Russia investigation, like former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, didn’t see him at all.

The President’s lawyers rarely spoke to him. He met only once with the legal team comprised of Jane and Marty Raskin, Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, according to sources familiar with the interactions.

He never appeared at any Justice Department press conference announcing charges or in court.

That’s not surprising, however, to those familiar with his managerial style who suggest that the media and larger public narrative built up a folklore around Mueller that doesn’t match reality.

“We’ve created this mythology around Mueller,” said one former official who worked closely with him and suggested it would be “unrealistic” to expect Mueller to exert a heavy hand, especially when surrounded by a team of experienced prosecutors.

Another official said his style going back to his days as FBI director was to set tone and expectations, and signing off on decisions, but leaving his team to do their work without micromanagement.

Mueller’s reputation, earned over years that stretched from heroic military service to highly regarded prosecutor and FBI director, also helped protect the investigation against the relentless attacks of Trump and his allies.

But after his initial appointment as special counsel in May 2017, his fingerprints become harder to trace, and questions still remain about his part in the investigation, even as his time at the Justice Department has come to a close.

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‘Classic Bob Mueller’

In the immediate days following Mueller’s appointment as special counsel in late spring 2017, his office reached out to top officials at the FBI and tried to get up to speed quickly. There was a massive amount of information to digest in a short amount of time and Mueller was ready to dig in, according to one former official.

Mueller, along with his two top deputies, James Quarles and Aaron Zebley, went over to the FBI for a lengthy briefing and as the official described it, he was “Classic Bob Mueller” — engaged, “drilling down,” asking probing questions, trying to get his arms around what cases were opened and why.

FBI officials from the counterintelligence division thought it was important to give Mueller the context and history of the investigation at an elevated level, but Mueller showed his tendency toward learning even the most granular details, and the meeting ended up spanning over three hours.

Once his core team was in place, Mueller did an orientation with the group he’d assembled from across different US attorneys’ offices and FBI bureaus, making clear his expectations, the mission, and how they were going to get the job done. After the meeting was over, he immediately went back to his office to get to work while others caught up with their colleagues — never being one for water cooler, small talk.

The Mueller mythology

Over several weeks last fall, as Manafort, one of the highest-ranking defendants to face charges in the investigation, sat for hours-long interviews at the special counsel’s office, Mueller never participated.

Mueller was present for most of the time McGahn was questioned during the course of the investigation, according to a source familiar with the interview. McGahn’s observations and interactions with Trump ultimately served as critical evidence in the special counsel team’s analysis of whether the President obstructed justice, and Mueller only left the room for roughly an hour, apologizing for his departure, but never asked any questions — that was left up to Quarles and Andrew Goldstein. On the other hand, Mueller did not attend the interview of McGahn’s chief of staff, Annie Donaldson, who took meticulous notes on Trump’s behavior in office.

The President’s own lawyers spoke to Mueller directly only on a few occasions, instead mostly interacting with Quarles, Goldstein and other lawyers in the office.

After the president hired a new legal team in 2018, they met with Mueller and his team to introduce themselves. The Trump team thought one of the advantages of hiring Jane and Marty Raskin was their past as colleagues with Mueller and Quarles. Jane Raskin worked with Mueller at the Justice Department, and she later worked with Quarles in private practice.

Last November, Trump’s legal team prepared to provide written answers to a list of questions the Mueller team had provided months earlier on his actions prior to the inauguration. It was a deal that resolved months of battling over prosecutors’ request for a sit-down interview of the President.

The document, known as a “Statement of the Offense,” didn’t accuse Trump of any crime. But the President’s lawyers were fuming that Trump was even mentioned by name while others were anonymized.

The Trump lawyers, led by Jay Sekulow and Jane Raskin, protested to Quarles, and the following day, they drove a few blocks to meet with Ed O’Callaghan, the senior official in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s office, who led day-to-day oversight of the Mueller investigation.

Members of the President’s legal team were surprised that Mueller didn’t show up given that they had specifically requested to meet with him at the Justice Department, a person familiar with the meeting says, although Mueller had not directly promised to attend.

Corsi ultimately made the document public, but he didn’t sign a plea agreement and the special counsel’s office didn’t file any charges against him.

As the investigation marched on, the Raskins dealt almost exclusively with Quarles over months of back and forth talks.

The fact that Mueller didn’t attend interviews of key witnesses or participate in certain meetings can be understood when his role is viewed through the prism of his history said one former official who worked closed with him.

“The role that he’s most familiar with and has done most recently is FBI director — the leader of the investigators,” the former official explained. As a result, it would be “unrealistic” to expect Mueller to hover over his team.

But that’s also not to say he’d be prone to let his team run over him.

“Nobody rolls Bob Mueller,” said the former official.

‘Very, very little, virtually no contact’

After weeks of speculation, Mueller made clear Wednesday he has no interest in appearing before Congress voluntarily, suggesting his team’s exhaustive report on the Russia investigation “is my testimony.”

“I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak to you in this manner,” Mueller said.

Lawmakers heard little directly from Mueller himself during the investigation as well.

When the special counsel was first appointed, Mueller went to Capitol Hill for a series of meetings with leaders of congressional committees that were also investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But that apparently was the end of his interaction with lawmakers.

“Once,” GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said when asked how many times he had spoken to Mueller. Grassley, who was Senate Judiciary chairman in the last Congress, said he and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the panel’s top Democrat, met with Mueller to talk about process and how they would interact.

“It was kind of how do we communicate? And I never talked to him after that,” Grassley said.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he also had a single conversation with Mueller after he was appointed.

“We had one interaction at the very beginning in the process, and I have not spoken to him since,” Warner said.

Lawmakers and congressional aides say that the primary purpose of Mueller’s Capitol Hill meetings was to discuss how to avoid getting in each other’s way, so that the congressional probes did not interfere with the special counsel’s criminal investigation. But after Mueller made his initial rounds, the special counsel’s team and congressional liaison did all further communicating with Congress.

“It was more staff doing deconfliction,” said Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr.

Over the life of the nearly two-year investigation, conversation went almost entirely in one direction, aides say. The committees would also check in with the special counsel’s office before taking various actions and congressional investigators, for instance, provided Mueller’s team with interview transcripts when requested, but the special counsel’s office provided almost no information about its ongoing work back to the committees, aides say.

“There was very, very little, virtually no contact” with the special counsel’s office throughout the course of the investigation, Warner said.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler wouldn’t say Wednesday whether he’s willing to issue a subpoena for the testimony, but Mueller said he would not provide any information “beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.”

Those who know Mueller say his reluctance to enter the political maelstrom of appearing before Congress is to be expected.

“He’s never been a guy who likes the spotlight,” the former official explained. “He wants to stay out of the circus as much as you can.”

The United Kingdom and Australia are members of the critical so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, rounded out by the United States, New Zealand and Canada.

Both have so far publicly stayed quiet, emphasizing their friendships with the US but national security officials in those countries are watching and waiting, following closely while refraining from criticizing a process that could call into question their intelligence gathering and reveal their methods and sources.

“If the review were to declassify sensitive intelligence — especially if doing so compromised the safety of sources — that would cause very grave concern,” a former senior British ambassador told CNN. “It could even affect the readiness of close allies like Britain to continue sharing the most sensitive material with the US.”

“This is a matter for the US authorities,” a senior British official in London added, while the embassy in Washington declined to comment.

One official from a Five Eyes partner said that a balance needs to be struck between the review of intelligence and national security matters with the need to protect classified information.

Australian officials declined to comment but Foreign Minister Marise Payne told a radio interviewer on Monday they don’t want to “engage in a public commentary that might entirely risk that we seem to prejudice the ongoing examination of these matters in the US.”

There is increased wariness because of the President’s signature unpredictability but Barr is seen as a steady hand and intelligence partners are comforted by their lengthy friendships with their American counterparts.

In Britain’s case, the drama surrounding Brexit also means they are keen not to rock the boat.

“For Brexit and other reasons, the British government is keen to stay closely aligned with the Trump administration, despite significant differences on climate, trade, and foreign policy,” the former British ambassador said. “The UK will probably not want to say much in public about the Barr review of inter-agency links.”

Trump might bring up Five Eyes spying with May

Until now, the Barr review hasn’t gotten much public attention in the UK, with recent headlines dominated by the dramas surrounding Brexit, May’s resignation and European Parliament elections. But the British press’ attention will soon turn back to the Trump and the tension in the “special relationship” with the President’s state visit to the UK next week.

Asked whether he would raise the possibility of Five Eyes countries spying on his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump told reporters on Friday he could do so with outgoing Prime Minister May.

“There’s word and rumor that the FBI and others were involved, CIA were involved, with the UK, having to do with the Russian hoax,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “And I may very well talk to her about that, yes.”

Despite the public disagreement between Trump and the US intelligence community over whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election, the top US intelligence chief said the Barr will get “all the appropriate information” for the review of intelligence into Russia’s election attacks.

But Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned Barr against being too public with what he declassifies.

“I am confident that the Attorney General will work with the IC in accordance with the long-established standards to protect highly-sensitive classified information that, if publicly released, would put our national security at risk,” Coats said in a statement.

When asked if the Department of Justice has provided any assurances regarding the protection of intelligence provided by foreign partners, an ODNI spokesperson referred CNN to Coats’ statement from last week.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Foreign intelligence and the 2016 election

It was the Australians who tipped off the FBI that Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos knew about the Russians having damaging emails that could influence the election, months before that information became public.

The Australians knew because Papadopoulos bragged about it to the Australian ambassador to the UK in May 2016, and they brought the tip to the FBI’s attention in July 2016, after WikiLeaks started releasing hacked Democratic emails.

According to the Mueller report, which never identified Australia by name, “the FBI opened its investigation of potential coordination between Russia and the Trump Campaign a few days later based on the information.”

Since Trump won the election, British and American intelligence officials have insisted they continue to work together as closely as ever, despite the tumult at tops of their leadership. But Trump’s disregard for the intelligence community has strained ties with some of its strongest partners.

A former senior US official pointed to the President sharing highly classified intelligence about ISIS obtained from Israel with Russia’s foreign minister and US ambassador during an Oval Office meeting in May 2017 as an example of Trump’s casual attitude when it comes to protecting sensitive information.

“Going all the way back to that point we’ve seen strains in the intelligence sharing relationship we have within the Five Eyes community,” the former official said. “I have not seen these types of strains in our relationship since the immediate aftermath of the [2013] Edward Snowden revelations.”

That added pressure is particularly problematic when the intelligence concerns Russia, as it does in the Barr review, the former official added. “Intelligence related to Russian activities and influence around the world is through not only our own collection but comparing what we gather with what our other Five Eyes partners are gathering.”

On Capitol Hill, Democrats have blasted the President’s decision to declassify the pre-election intelligence.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff accused Trump of “conspiring to weaponize” classified information while Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Mark Warner told CNN that the move “has the potential to jeopardize” key relationships with foreign partners.

“Trust and confidentiality are essential aspects of our partnerships with foreign intelligence services — and the President’s bizarre decision to allow the Attorney General to selectively and unilaterally declassify information certainly has the potential to jeopardize those relationships,” Warner said.

MANDEL NGAN / Contributor

Special counsel Robert Mueller stressed what he previously wrote in his 448-page report: If President Donald Trump had not committed a crime, investigators would have said so.

In other words: They never gave Trump that clean bill of health. 

Mueller made very clear that no matter what they discovered on obstruction, the overriding principle that a president could not be indicted prevailed. Those Justice Department guidelines, which say a sitting president has temporary immunity from federal prosecution, date back to the Nixon era and were reaffirmed in the Clinton administration.

Mueller’s statement Wednesday on this topic was not in line with Attorney General William Barr’s previous comments downplaying the role of the decades-old guidance from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

The role of Congress: Additionally, Mueller made clear he believes Congress has a role, saying the Constitution allows for a process outside of the criminal justice system to hold federal officeholders accountable. This was also featured in his report, which explicitly said that Congress has the power to a President accountable for obstruction-of-justice offenses.

He also defended his team and the right to investigate the issue of obstruction, amidst repeated charges by the President that the investigation was a politically motivated “witch hunt” that was riddled with corruption. Mueller noted that the order appointing him as special counsel in May 2017 explicitly authorized his obstruction inquiry. 

Special Counsel Robert Mueller will be making a statement at 11 a.m. ET on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The statement will be on camera at the Department of Justice. There will be no questions.

Note: Mueller was appointed in May 2017 to investigate Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election, including any links or coordination “between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”

On March 22, 2019, Mueller ended that investigation and delivered his report to Attorney General William Barr, who promptly released a summary. On April 18, 2019, a redacted version of Mueller’s report was released.

Berman says the Supreme Court sometimes votes to overrule a previous precedent to keep up with national progress. In the case of Plessy and Brown, and in various other overturned cases, the Supreme Court is called upon to directly interpret the Constitution.

“These kinds of decisions happen, but rarely, and the Court has historically been very careful in making sure that there have been major societal decisions that have change the viability of a ruling over time,” he says.

“Plessy was decided at the end of the Civil War. There was obviously a huge change in societal opinion. In general this is an example of the American political system moving concurrently with that.”

To reflect the tide of social opinion

“Again, this was American culture changing its views with regard to privacy and consensual relationships in general, and homosexual relationships in particular,” Berman says. “And with this decision, the Supreme Court was acknowledging that fact.”

Of course, by 2003, homosexual activity was not generally seen as illegal, and had been openly depicted and expressed for quite a while. This is another example, Owens says, of a precedent that had been eroded in practice long before it was officially changed.

“The Court concluded [the original Bowers decision] had been wrongly decided, and there had been an attack on that precedent over time,” he says.

When a precedent has been eroded by other rulings

Though it isn’t unheard of for the Supreme Court to overturn rulings, it certainly isn’t easy. Supreme Court rulings often establish a nationwide precedent or interpretation of the law that can have ripples far outside the legal or political sphere.

Owens says one of the Supreme Court’s duties is to generate legal stability and that overturning a previous ruling can upset that if it is not done judiciously.

“Courts ought to be disinclined to upset established precedents,” Owens says, “But there are some legal conditions that the courts have identified to overrule.”

One of these, he says, is the idea that the conditions of the original ruling were wrongly decided.

Though the final decision was controversial, it wasn’t sudden. Conservative groups had been challenging the original Abood decision for more than a decade, and other Supreme Court decisions suggested the court’s opinion on Abood was changing.

“[When the Janus decision was made], they noted the history, and that recent courts had nibbled away the original ruling,” Owens says. “Within the last decade the Supreme Court had really undercut portions of the foundations of Abood, so by the time the Janus decision came about, they already had a disinclination to keep it around.”

This, Owens says, is another situation that may lead the Supreme Court to consider a precedent-changing ruling.

“Consider how a case has been treated by the courts over time,” he says. “If it’s something that they have attacked piece by piece, eventually they’ll say the whole edifice has to come down.”

To account for technological changes

Most of the most well-known Supreme Court decisions represent changing cultural and social precedents, but there are plenty that encompass economic and technological changes as well.

A 2018 decision concerning how sales tax is paid offers an interesting reflection on these shifts.

The case of South Dakota v. Wayfair established a new precedent in regards to online commerce: Previously, the Supreme Court had used the Dormant Commerce Clause in the Constitution to claim states couldn’t charge sales tax on orders made, say, online or by mail, when the retailer didn’t have a physical presence in the state.

“In the age of online retailing, the old precedent made less and less sense,” Berman says. “The old statute became unworkable. This is the kind of case where overturning precedent may make some kind of sense.”

To bestow more individual civil rights

The Obergefell decision now represents the kind of precedent that would be extremely difficult to reverse, for an abundance of reasons.

“When the Supreme Court overturns a prior precedent, it is potentially changing a settled constitutional arrangement or a settled set of rights that people come to rely on.” Berman says.

“If right now, someone brought a new case to overturn Obergefell, there would be serious questions. Are those unions legitimate? Who gets to inherit money? Who gets visitation rights?”

“To my knowledge, there has never been a major decision that was overturned in a way that would limit rights,” he says.

Furthermore, Berman says, the court always tries to be careful when it comes to interpreting the Constitution.

“The Constitution is supposed to be enduring and stable. It is supposed to move forward slowly, and not lurch forward suddenly in one direction or the other.”

To give US states more autonomy

However, when it comes to rights and the Supreme Court, individual rights aren’t the only ones that matter.

“One of the questions with regards to constitutional adjudication is how much freedom to leave the states,” Berman says. “Once the Supreme Court says that a certain right or a certain arrangement is required under the Constitution, it means no state can implement a law counter to that right.”

Still, there is often room for interpretation among the lower courts. Capital punishment is a good example of an issue which has been addressed several times in the Supreme Court, and is interpreted at the state level.

“In 1972 the Supreme Court, in a very polarized capacity, says the death penalty is unconstitutional,” Owens says. “Four years later, they reversed course in Gregg v. Georgia.”

The 1972 ruling essentially made death penalty sentences impossible because of the way states were required to hand down such sentences to comply with the 8th Amendment, which forbids “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The overruling decision made these guidelines more workable and gave states a clearer infrastructure in which to hand down death penalties.

“Just because a precedent is made doesn’t mean the states don’t have room for discretion in terms of applying these decisions,” Owens says.

What it could mean for Roe v. Wade

When it comes to the future of Roe v. Wade, states rights and the power of the state to interpret federal law are key considerations. There has already been a precedent, decided in 1992, that grants states power over abortion decisions that were not originally in the 1972 Roe v. Wade ruling.

The Casey decision overturned two previous rulings that upheld Roe’s original conclusion that states could not regulate abortions within the first trimester. Instead, the new decision defined a period of “fetal viability” in which states could regulate abortions and said states could regulate abortions earlier as long as the rules did not impose an “undue burden” on the woman.

Recent laws that could be seen as a challenge to Roe v. Wade, including Georgia’s heartbeat bill, could use this vague language to escape any claims that they go against current precedents provided by the Supreme Court.

“Most likely, a state law would come about that imposes some significant restrictions on the right to an abortion, and it gets challenged,” Owens says. “The challenge would be that the state violates Roe, and if the court were to rule in favor of the state, they would essentially be saying Roe was wrongly decided.”

This is why, Owens says, interpretation and implementation are so important when considering Supreme Court precedents. Rarely do Supreme Court decisions legalize or criminalize something outright; they present constitutional and statutory regulations in which states have to operate.

In the case of Roe v. Wade, overturning the decision wouldn’t criminalize abortion — but it would allow states to.

“It would return to the states and the state legislatures,” Owens says. “A lot of people think the Supreme Court decides something and that settles the issue. But while the Court has the first word, it may not have the last.”