Archive for May, 2017

Michael Flynn expected to invoke Fifth Amendment …

Flynn's refusal to cooperate comes as he faces scrutiny in several inquiries, including on Capitol Hill and a federal grand jury that has issued subpoenas to associates of the ex-national security adviser.

Flynn's refusal to cooperate will also intensify scrutiny over Trump's decision to hire him initially for the job and his decision to keep him on staff for 18 days after the President was warned by former acting Attorney General Sally Yates that Flynn may have been compromised by the Russians.

The Senate committee had asked Flynn earlier this month to produce all records over his communications with Russian officials by this Wednesday. But Flynn is expected to send a letter later Monday invoking his Fifth Amendment rights.

The source close to Flynn said it would be "highly imprudent for him not to exercise his Fifth Amendment rights" given that several members of Congress have called for his prosecution.

Flynn's decision to decline the subpoena does not come as a surprise to Senate intelligence leaders, as Flynn's lawyer, Robert Kelner, also told the panel last month he would not provide documents in response to an April request.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump blasted aides to Hillary Clinton for taking the Fifth Amendment in relation to the investigation of her use of a private email server while secretary of state. He said at a September Iowa rally: "So there are five people taking the Fifth Amendment, like you see on the mob, right? You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?"

Read more:
Michael Flynn expected to invoke Fifth Amendment ...

Michael Flynn to take the Fifth Amendment and decline Senate subpoena – ABC News

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to honor a Senate committee's subpoena request for documents relating to Russian interference in the election, a source close to Flynn confirms to ABC News.

The Fifth Amendment gives an individual the right to protect against self-incrimination.

"He will not be producing the documents they sought. He is entitled to decline pursuant to the Fifth Amendment," a source close to Flynn tells ABC News.

To date, Flynn is the only Trump associate whom the Senate has subpoenaed.

Legal experts told ABC News that Fifth Amendment rights do not just apply to someone seated at a witness table. It also allows the individual to decline to produce documents that could potentially be incriminating.

The Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Flynn's personal documents on May 10 after the former national security adviser declined to cooperate with their original April 28 request in relation to the panel's investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 election and its possible ties to Trump associates.

Prior to the April request, Flynn said through a statement from his lawyer that he wouldn't submit himself to questioning from the committee "without assurances against unfair prosecution."

President Trump then weighed in on Twitter, saying that Flynn was right to ask for immunity "in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!"

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on March 31 that the president "believes that Mike Flynn should go testify."

Spicer told reporters that Trump wants Flynn to "go testify, go get it out there, do what you have to do."

Last week, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, said that "Gen. Flynn's lawyers said that he would not honor the subpoena and that's not a surprise to the committee," but Burr's office later put out a statement saying that Flynn's attorneys had not yet gotten back to them.

More:
Michael Flynn to take the Fifth Amendment and decline Senate subpoena - ABC News

Flynn will invoke Fifth Amendment, source says – Chicago Tribune

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn will invoke his 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination as he notifies a Senate panel that he won't hand over documents in the probe into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

The notification will come in a letter to the Senate Intelligence committee expected later Monday. The person providing details spoke on condition anonymity in order to discuss private interactions between Flynn and the committee.

Flynn's decision comes less than two weeks after the committee issued a subpoena for Flynn's personal documents.

Legal experts have said Flynn was unlikely to turn over the personal documents without immunity because he would be waiving some of his constitutional protections by doing so. Flynn has previously sought immunity from "unfair prosecution" to cooperate with the committee.

The Senate committee is one of several congressional inquiries investigating possible collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. Flynn is also the target of other congressional investigations as well as an ongoing FBI counterintelligence probe and a separate federal investigation in Virginia.

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, was fired from his position as Trump's national security adviser in February. At the time, Trump said he fired Flynn because he misled senior administration officials, including the vice president, about his contacts with Russian officials.

Members of key congressional committees are pledging a full public airing as to why former FBI Director James Comey was ousted amid an intensifying investigation into Russia's interference with the U.S. election.

In Sunday show appearances, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers said they will press Comey in hearings as to whether he ever felt that Trump tried to interfere with his FBI work. Others are insisting on seeing any White House or FBI documents that detail conversations between the two, following a spate of news reports that Comey had kept careful records.

Comey was fired by Trump earlier this month. The former FBI director agreed to testify before the Senate intelligence committee after the Memorial Day holiday.

See original here:
Flynn will invoke Fifth Amendment, source says - Chicago Tribune

Erdogan returns as chief of Turkey’s ruling party – CNN.com

Until the April vote, Turkish presidents were obliged to cut ties with their parties to show their neutrality.

But the constitutional changes scrapped that rule, and on Sunday, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) returned the reins to Erdogan in a extraordinary Congress in Ankara.

"I am grateful to you for considering me worthy of becoming the leader of the Justice and Development Party once again," he said.

Erdogan could potentially remain president until 2029 under the country's new political structure.

The President appeared to have come to the Congress with the country's next elections in mind, reminding his supporters that "2019 is upon us."

"We will have local elections in March 2019, and general elections and presidential elections in November 2019. We shall not stop. We shall work hard and maintain our humbleness," he said Sunday. Some 80,000 supporters showed up to the Congress, according to media reports.

Erodgan co-founded the AKP in 2001, and the political powerhouse has ruled the country since its 2002 election win. Resuming leadership of the party would put Erdogan in control of both the executive branch of government and the largest party in Parliament.

It will also mean he can appoint his loyalists to more key posts.

The referendum, brought forward by the AKP, was widely condemned by European leaders and rights groups, who saw it as a blatant power grab by a leader showing increasing dictatorial tendencies.

Following an attempted military coup last year, Erodgan has led an ongoing purge that has gutted public institutions and crushed his political opponents. More than 100,000 people have been either jailed, arrested or suspended from their jobs.

He has been able to use heavier-handed tactics under the country's state of emergency, which was declared following the coup attempt and extended several times. On Sunday, Erdogan said that he had no plans to end it.

"We will end it when peace and safety and security is restored. Why should we end it? Schools are open. Factories are running. Everything is going on as normal," he said.

The tentacles of Erdogan's crackdown have also reached the country's universities and media organizations, once bastions of free thought and expression in Turkey. Academics and journalists considered critics of the government have been imprisoned for months without trial.

Erdogan also appears to have taken this brutality to the United States, where men who appeared to be his bodyguards were captured on a video by Voice of America on Tuesday outside the Turkish ambassador's home pushing and repeatedly kicking anti-Erdogan protestors.

Two law enforcement officials confirmed to CNN that Turkish security officials were involved in the bloody brawl.

It is not the first time members of Erdogan's entourage have been filmed fighting in public.

A little more than a year ago in the same city, journalists accused members of Erdogan's security detail of manhandling them and cursing them at a speech the Turkish president gave at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

CNN's Joseph Netto, Elise Labott, Zachary Cohen, Paul P. Murphy and Peter Morris contributed to this report.

See more here:
Erdogan returns as chief of Turkey's ruling party - CNN.com

Erdogan’s Grip on Turkey Tightens as He Retakes Ruling Party

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday took back control of the ruling party he founded, a step that gives the nations most powerful man additional authority to appoint loyalists to parliament lists and party posts across the nation.

Just a month after a vote approved transferring Turkeys center of political power to the presidency from parliament, the AK Partys leadership and tens of thousands of party faithful convened to anoint Erdogan at an extraordinary congress in Ankara. The referendums result allowed the president, until then constitutionally an impartial head of state, to be a member or leader of a political party.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan on May 20.

Photographer: Metin Pala/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Erdogan, 63, who has already defanged Turkeys once-influential military, neutralized the opposition and subordinated the press, will now wipe out any vestiges of dissent within the ruling party. A new set of party regulations includes stiffer penalties for breaking discipline, and expulsion for anyone who acts in a way perceived as serving the purposes of another party, Hurriyet newspaper reported.

The congress took place under extraordinary security measures, amid a state of emergency thats been in place since the aftermath of a July 15 coup attempt. Some 60,000 people were brought into Ankara by bus from outside the city, Hurriyet reported. By 9:30 a.m., security forces could be seen using pepper spray against masses of supporters who had congregated outside the arena and were fighting to get closer.

Erdogan founded the AK Party in 2001 as a conservative, free market-oriented, Islam-inspired political movement that was an alternative to the long-time domination of rigid secularists -- the successors of modern Turkeys founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The AK Party swept to power in an election the next year, winning almost two-thirds of the seats in parliament with just 34 percent of the vote.

Since then, the party has lost its commanding majority in the legislature just once, in June 2015: the elections were repeated five months later amid an upsurge in violence and an inability of opposition parties to form a coalition government. Leaders of the main pro-Kurdish party, whose boost in support was instrumental in stripping the AK Party of its ability to rule alone after that election, were later jailed on terrorism charges.

In a speech to business group Tusiad earlier this week, Erdogan said that Turkey needed to keep its rate of economic growth at 6 percent or higher, which is more than double the average forecast of economists in Bloomberg surveys for this year. He also said that Turkey would keep the state of emergency in place as long as needed.

In a nearly two-hour speech at the congress, Erdogan highlighted 15 years of economic achievements and attributed any democratic shortcomings to threats from terrorist organizations. He again rejected calls for the removal of the state of emergency, known as Ohal in Turkish, which allows him to rule by decree.

Its not going to be lifted, he said. Are your factories not working? Are the schools closed? Why should the Ohal be lifted?

The most important business stories of the day.

Get Bloomberg's daily newsletter.

Some 150,000 people have been swept up in purges since the coup attempt, including academics, journalists and opposition politicians whove been jailed for months without trial. Last week, arrest warrants were issued for four people, including the owner, at one of the nations last remaining opposition newspapers, Sozcu, which has a vehemently secularist-nationalist bent. They were accused of working with the Islamic group Erdogan says was behind the failed coup, the movement of exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Changes made to the partys central board, the MKYK, included adding pro-government businessman Ethem Sancak, whose group of companies includes defense interests and media outlets, according to Aksam newspaper. Ministers Veysi Kaynak and Mehmet Muezzinoglu were dropped, along with Saban Disli, a party coordinator for economic affairs, and Yasin Aktay, the party spokesman.

Changes to the cabinet could be made within a couple of days, Haberturk TV cited AK Party Deputy Bulent Turan as saying. The replacement of 19 of 50 MKYK members signals that 20 to 30 percent of the cabinet could also be replaced, said Mustafa Elitas, another deputy.

Erdogan will present his return to the party as the start of a new era for Turkey, but the countrys economic and political outlook has deteriorated, according to Wolfango Piccoli, co-founder of Teneo Intelligence in London. The change may usher in a cabinet reshuffle in which appointees are named based on loyalties rather than talent, he said.

Erdogan has achieved a long-held dream of establishing a presidential system where the president faces little, if any, checks and balances on his power, Piccoli wrote in a report on Turkey. The AKP has gradually become Erdogans personal vehicle while losing its way and vision.

Read more here:
Erdogan's Grip on Turkey Tightens as He Retakes Ruling Party