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Bannon to appear before Congress committee for Russia probe
Karen Freifeld, Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon will be interviewed next week by a U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

 

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Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's sunrise tweet casting aspersions on the domestic surveillance program his own intelligence officials have called essential set off a thunderclap of concern in Washington -- and underscored the pitfalls of the President's morning television tweet-alongs.

Phones at the White House began ringing almost immediately after Trump wrote at 7:33 a.m. ET that the FISA program up for reauthorization in the House on Thursday may have been used to "badly surveil" his campaign.

On the blinking lines: Republican lawmakers and top intelligence officials perplexed that Trump had appeared to contradict more than a week of public statements from the administration in support of the reauthorization, which allows the government to conduct warrantless spying on US soil.

Ultimately, the measure passed handily. But not until after a 101-minute long scramble to clean up the President's position ahead of the midday vote, which Republican leaders had been eying with optimism after spending weeks rounding up votes and batting down demands from the conservative and libertarian elements of their conference.

"(Chief of staff John) Kelly's phone was ringing off the hook," said one senior Republican official close to intelligence matters on Capitol Hill.

"No one could believe it," another Republican supportive of the FISA reauthorization said.

Five-and-a-half years after Edward Snowden leaked details of the government's secret spying programs, the dust-up over Trump's tweet underscored the still-roiling debate over domestic surveillance, technology and Americans' views of their own privacy.

But it also spoke to a more recent phenomenon: Trump's habit of tweeting whatever seems to come across his flat-screen televisions, no matter the advice of his aides nor the position of his administration.

When he sent his early morning message on Thursday, he quoted directly a banner graphic that had appeared on Fox News minutes earlier: "House votes on controversial FISA ACT today."

The headline was punctuated by a direct-to-camera appeal by the conservative judge Andrew Napolitano against re-upping the surveillance program.

"Mr. President, this is not the way to go," he said at 6:47 a.m. ET. "Spying is valid to find the foreign agents among us. But it's got to be based on suspicion, and not an area code."

Trump, who continues to brood over special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible ties between Russia and his associates, took less than an hour to link the FISA issue to his own disputes with US law enforcement agencies.

"This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?" he wrote.

Drafting a follow-up
As the tweet buzzed in notifications from Capitol Hill to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Trump's advisers hurried to draft a follow-up that might help preserve the administration's position in support of the act's reauthorization.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo -- one of Trump's most trusted advisers who regularly administers the presidential daily briefing -- was in touch with the White House to discuss the tweet, people familiar with the situation said. A former Republican lawmaker who once declared that Trump's tweets "help" his agency, Pompeo had made a forceful case for reauthorizing the FISA program during a television interview five days ago. A CIA spokesman declined to comment.

Tom Bossert, the homeland security adviser who helps coordinate the administration's national security posture, helped triage the fallout, according to two people familiar with the matter. Eventually, a clarification tweet appeared on Trump's page that read, in part, that Thursday's vote "is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land. We need it! Get smart!"

House Speaker Paul Ryan took a phone call from the President about his tweet and the surveillance issue, a source familiar with their conversation said, though they didn't discuss Trump's follow-up message about unmasking.

And Sen. Rand Paul, a forceful advocate for privacy safeguards, received a phone call from Trump after his initial tweet to discuss the matter, according to a senior aide to the Kentucky Republican.

Later, Paul appeared on MSNBC to further clarify Trump's position.

"I have spoken with the President, but I don't think it's necessary that you understand this as switching his position," Paul said on "Morning Joe."

"He still advocates -- or the administration says they advocate -- for reauthorization," he said. "So do I actually. I want reauthorization with reform. I don't think they're mutually exclusive."

White House declines to comment
The White House declined to comment on who spoke to the President on Thursday about the FISA issue.

But the tweet and its follow up continued to reverberate across Washington in the hours before the vote.

Rep. Mark Meadows, who is backing an amendment -- opposed by the White House -- to make major changes to the FISA bill, said the President's tweets have "given people pause."

And House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called Ryan and urged him to pull the reauthorization bill in light of the President's tweet, a senior Democratic source said. Later, Pelosi said during remarks on the House floor that she would vote for it.

Kelly, the White House chief of staff who was inundated with phone calls earlier in the morning, traveled to Capitol Hill for the vote and spoke with lawmakers inside the GOP cloakroom just off the House floor. A retired Marine general who has insisted that Trump's tweets don't have the potential to derail the administration's agenda, he denied again on Thursday that the President's dispatches were harmful.

"It's not more difficult," Kelly said. "It's a juggling act."

 

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A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen, these people said.

Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, has privately alleged the encounter with Mr. Trump took place after they met at a July 2006 celebrity golf tournament on the shore of Lake Tahoe, these people said. Mr. Trump married Melania Trump in 2005.

Mr. Trump faced other allegations during his campaign of inappropriate behavior with women, and vehemently denied them. In this matter, there is no allegation of a nonconsensual interaction.

“These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election,” a White House official said, responding to the allegation of a sexual encounter involving Mr. Trump and Ms. Clifford. The official declined to respond to questions about an agreement with Ms. Clifford. It isn’t known whether Mr. Trump was aware of any agreement or payment involving her.

In a statement, Mr. Cohen didn’t address the $130,000 payment but said of the alleged sexual encounter that “President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels.”

Mr. Cohen added in the statement, addressed to The Wall Street Journal: “This is now the second time that you are raising outlandish allegations against my client. You have attempted to perpetuate this false narrative for over a year; a narrative that has been consistently denied by all parties since at least 2011.”

The Journal previously reported that Ms. Clifford, 38 years old, had been in talks with ABC’s “Good Morning America” in the fall of 2016 about an appearance to discuss Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. In that article, the Journal reported the company that owns the National Enquirer agreed to pay $150,000 to a former Playboy centerfold model three months before the election for her story of an affair a decade earlier with the Republican presidential nominee, which the tabloid newspaper didn’t publish. The company said she was paid to write fitness columns and appear on magazine covers.

Mr. Cohen also sent a two-paragraph statement by email addressed “TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN” and signed by “Stormy Daniels” denying that she had a “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Mr. Trump.

“Rumors that I have received hush money from Donald Trump are completely false,” the statement said.

Ms. Clifford didn’t respond to multiple emails seeking comment.

After the agreement, Ms. Clifford’s camp complained the payment wasn’t being made quickly enough and threatened to cancel the deal, some of the people familiar with the matter said.

The payment was made to Ms. Clifford through her lawyer in the matter, Keith Davidson, with funds sent to Mr. Davidson’s client-trust account at City National Bank in Los Angeles, according to the people.

“I previously represented Ms. Daniels,” Mr. Davidson said, referring to Ms. Clifford’s stage name. “Attorney-client privilege prohibits me from commenting on my clients’ legal matters.”

A spokeswoman for City National Bank declined to comment.

The agreement with Ms. Clifford came as the Trump campaign confronted allegations from numerous women who described unwanted sexual advances and alleged assaults by Mr. Trump.

In October 2016, the Washington Post published a videotape made, but never aired, by NBC’s “Access Hollywood” in which Mr. Trump spoke of groping women.

Mr. Trump denied all allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct and apologized at the time for his remarks on the tape, calling them locker-room banter.

Mr. Cohen worked at the Trump Organization from 2007 until after the election. As Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Cohen said he would work in private practice and act as Mr. Trump’s personal attorney. “I am the fix-it guy,” he said in an interview in January 2017 before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

Ms. Clifford has appeared in about 150 adult films, and was considered among the industry’s biggest stars when the then-27-year-old met Mr. Trump at the American Century Championship in 2006, held at Edgewood Tahoe golf course in Nevada.

Another adult-film star, Jessica Drake, later alleged in an October 2016 news conference that Mr. Trump kissed her and two other women without permission in a hotel suite after the same 2006 golf event.

“I did not sign [a nondisclosure agreement], nor have I received any money for coming forward,” Ms. Drake said this week in an emailed statement. “I spoke out because it was the right thing to do.”

A White House official responded to questions about Ms. Drake by referring to a previous statement by the Trump campaign, which called her account “totally false and ridiculous.”

 

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