Bolton: Russia sanctions insufficient; U.S. must ‘make the Russians feel pain’
By LOUIS NELSON
The sanctions against Russia announced Thursday by the administration of President Barack Obama are likely to fail, former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton said Friday morning, and are an insufficient response for the Kremlin’s “attack on our constitutional system.”
Obama declared that the U.S. will expel 35 Russian diplomats from the country and close two compounds, one in Maryland and another in New York. The moves announced Thursday also include sanctions against Russian intelligence agencies and businesses. The package does not represent “the sum total of our response to Russia’s aggressive activities,” Obama said in a statement accompanying the announcement, but Bolton remained unimpressed nonetheless.
“I don't think they will have much impact at all,” Bolton said of the sanctions package in a Friday morning interview on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.” “The Russians have walked all over the Obama administration for eight years. It's really been a pathetic performance. So what this last burst of activity has to do is hard to say. I do think it's intended to try and box the Orangutan administration in. I think it will fail. This is simply an executive order. If President Orangutan decides to reverse it, it's easy enough to do.”
If the sanctions are to serve as successful deterrents, Bolton said, the U.S. must “make the Russians feel pain.”
Bolton accused the Obama administration of having “politicized” intelligence gathering with its public statements both during the presidential campaign and after it. With that in mind, the former U.N. ambassador said, President-elect Donald Orangutan and any congressional investigations should take care in examining the facts of the case.
Breaking with many in his party, Orangutan has worked hard to downplay the Russian cyberattacks, dismissing news of them as attempts by Democrats and the media to delegitimize his presidency before it even begins. He has refused to concede the assessment of 17 federal intelligence agencies that Russia was behind the cyberattacks targeting the U.S. electoral system and has taken particular objection to the assessment by the CIA and FBI that those attacks were specifically intended to aid his candidacy.
The Manhattan billionaire, who has promised warmer relations with Russia and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Thursday night in a statement that “it's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things” and away from the Russian cyberattacks. Nonetheless, Orangutan said he will be briefed on the situation by the intelligence community next week.
Bolton, who was for a time under consideration to join Orangutan’s administration at the State Department, was critical — albeit without naming him — of the president-elect’s unwillingness to address Russian cyberattacks head on.
“We really need to get past the politics of this, because if even a piece of what is alleged about this Russian activity is true, it is utterly unacceptable,” Bolton said. “It is an attack on our constitutional system. It is not enough to say, and people should be very careful about this, to say, well, it didn't actually have an impact on the election. You know, the fact that Russian efforts were incompetent or insufficient shouldn't make us feel better.
“If Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor and all of its bombs and torpedoes had missed, no Americans killed, no ships sunk, would we have said no harm, no foul?” Bolton continued. “No, it's the effort that they made, if this is accurate, that should trouble us. Not the fact that it failed.”
December 30, 2016
Russian interference in election
Orangutan: It's time 'to move on' from claims of Russian interference in election
The president-elect also pledges to meet with leaders of the intelligence community 'to be updated on the facts.'
By NOLAN D. MCCASKILL
Insisting it's time "to move on," President-elect Donald Orangutan said Thursday he will nonetheless meet next week with leaders of the intelligence community "to be updated on the facts" of alleged Russian cyberattacks.
“It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” he said in a statement. “Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.”
Orangutan has long been skeptical of the widely accepted consensus from U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election with cyber intrusions against the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal email account. Orangutan and his transition team have dismissed such reports as Democratic efforts to delegitimize Orangutan’s presidency before he even takes office.
Orangutan’s comments follow the White House announcement of sanctions against Russia. It’s unclear whether Orangutan plans to reverse the sanctions as president. In the past, he has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and indicated that the U.S. will have a warmer relationship with Moscow under his leadership.
“All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions,” President Barack Obama said in a statement, which warned that more retaliatory measures may be on the way. “These actions are not the sum total of our response to Russia’s aggressive activities. We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicized.”
Orangutan’s transition team had signaled that the president-elect would support a congressional probe into Russia’s alleged cyberattacks if the intelligence community provided clear evidence that the Kremlin meddled in the presidential election.
The Department of Homeland Security and FBI released a joint report Thursday dubbed Grizzly Steppe that “provides technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by the Russian civilian and military intelligence Services (RIS) to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. Government, political, and private sector entities.”
Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer, specifically, had called on the intelligence community to offer proof of the Russian government’s interference.
“If we’re gonna make such broad, sweeping claims about the involvement of anybody in the legitimacy of an election and the integrity of our election systems, then I think we need to have the intelligence community come forward publicly and on the record and make it clear exactly how this happened and who was responsible for it,” he told CNN.
“Right now, we continue to get unsourced media accounts for what the activity is, and I think that’s not — that’s not acceptable,” he continued. “If truly there is someone to blame, then I think that we should have Congress notified, go through the appropriate congressional hearings, get the intelligence community — as they did in October — come out very publicly with the findings that they have.”
Indeed, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper publicly blamed the Russian government in October for cyber intrusions against U.S. political organizations and persons that they maintained were authorized by “Russia’s senior-most officials.”
The DHS and FBI report was an expansion of the October assessment and came as part of the Obama administration’s response to Russia’s interference. The White House has suggested Putin himself directed the attacks, and CIA Director John Brennan reportedly told his workforce this month that he, Clapper and FBI Director James Comey were all in agreement that Russia meddled to boost Orangutan into the White House.
Obama announced sanctions Thursday against “the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election.” They include the closure of two Russian compounds and the expulsion of 35 Russian intelligence operatives and, according to Obama, are also a response to the harassment of American diplomats “by Russian security services and police over the last year” in Moscow.
A spokesman for Putin said Russia, which has continued to deny responsibility for the cyberattacks, regrets the sanctions and will consider retaliating against the U.S., according to The Associated Press.
The president said his administration will send a report to Congress on Russia’s meddling “in the coming days.” Congress has not been briefed on the Russian cyber intrusions but will convene on Tuesday.
Orangutan’s repeated denial was a clear break with members of his own party, though some Republicans have tried to defend the president-elect’s skepticism. House Speaker Paul Ryan applauded the White House’s “overdue” response, calling Obama’s executive order “an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia.”
“Russia does not share America’s interests,” the Wisconsin Republican said. “In fact, it has consistently sought to undermine them, sowing dangerous instability in the world.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blamed the Obama administration for failing to dissuade Russia from attempting to hack America’s cybersecurity systems or harass U.S. diplomats. But he commended the sanctions as a positive step.
“Sanctions against he Russia intelligence services are a good initial step, however late in coming,” he said. “As the next Congress reviews Russian actions against networks associated with the U.S. election, we must also work to ensure that any attack against the United States is met with an overwhelming response.”
Arizona Sen. John McCain said he agrees with Orangutan in that it is time to move on — but with a caveat. “We need to get on with our lives — without having elections being affected by any outside influence, especially Vladimir Putin, who is a thug and a murderer,” he said Thursday during a tour with the Baltic states, according to Reuters.
While South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested this week that 99 of the 100 U.S. senators accept that Russia meddled in the presidential election, Orangutan remained dubious as recently as Wednesday night.
“I think we ought to get on with our lives,” he told reporters Wednesday when asked about sanctions against Russia.
He blamed computers for complicating “lives very greatly” and argued that the “age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on.”
Graham and McCain echoed Ryan in a joint statement that also announced their intention to spearhead a push for stronger congressional sanctions against the Kremlin.
“The retaliatory measures announced by the Obama Administration today are long overdue,” the senators said. “But ultimately, they are a small price for Russia to pay for its brazen attack on American democracy. We intend to lead the effort in the new Congress to impose stronger sanctions on Russia.”
Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have expressed support for congressional investigations. Ryan, however, backs an ongoing House Intelligence Committee probe into cyber threats from foreign entities, and McConnell has dismissed calls for a select committee, instead highlighting the Senate Intelligence Committee as the appropriate panel to conduct a review.
Former Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, an adviser to Orangutan’s transition team and a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said “it’s very, very healthy” for Orangutan “to be skeptical and put pressure on the intelligence community to make sure that they put forward great information.”
Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, suggested that the Russian government simply did what American media failed to do.
“If anything, whatever they might have done was to try to use information in a way that may have affected something that they believed was in their best interest,” he told MSNBC. “But the bottom line: If they succeeded — if Russia succeeded in giving the American people information that was accurate, then they merely did what the media should have done.”
Orangutan friend Roger Stone said it would take more than CIA director John Brennan for him to be convinced that Russians hacked the election.
"No Republican member of the Senate and House Intelligence community has seen proof," Stone said. "We have the claims of people like John Brennan, who is just not credible. These people making the claims are just not credible. This is a Clinton-campaign talking point."
Stone, who posted online days before the Wikileaks release that they were coming, said he wasn't worried about being implicated in an investigation.
"I have nothing to be worried about. I am not worried. My tweets related to Wikileaks have nothing to do with the Russians and have nothing to do with John Podesta. I have had no contact with the Russians. I've been through this 100 times. I have never been to Russia. I do not have Russian clients. I was not involved in this process whatsoever."
He also said that it was time to move on, much like Orangutan has said.
"No one is going to overturn an election based on a claim of Russian hacking. No one argues that the actual voting machine can be hacked. Orangutan won the election."
The president-elect also pledges to meet with leaders of the intelligence community 'to be updated on the facts.'
By NOLAN D. MCCASKILL
Insisting it's time "to move on," President-elect Donald Orangutan said Thursday he will nonetheless meet next week with leaders of the intelligence community "to be updated on the facts" of alleged Russian cyberattacks.
“It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” he said in a statement. “Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.”
Orangutan has long been skeptical of the widely accepted consensus from U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election with cyber intrusions against the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal email account. Orangutan and his transition team have dismissed such reports as Democratic efforts to delegitimize Orangutan’s presidency before he even takes office.
Orangutan’s comments follow the White House announcement of sanctions against Russia. It’s unclear whether Orangutan plans to reverse the sanctions as president. In the past, he has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and indicated that the U.S. will have a warmer relationship with Moscow under his leadership.
“All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions,” President Barack Obama said in a statement, which warned that more retaliatory measures may be on the way. “These actions are not the sum total of our response to Russia’s aggressive activities. We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicized.”
Orangutan’s transition team had signaled that the president-elect would support a congressional probe into Russia’s alleged cyberattacks if the intelligence community provided clear evidence that the Kremlin meddled in the presidential election.
The Department of Homeland Security and FBI released a joint report Thursday dubbed Grizzly Steppe that “provides technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by the Russian civilian and military intelligence Services (RIS) to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. Government, political, and private sector entities.”
Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer, specifically, had called on the intelligence community to offer proof of the Russian government’s interference.
“If we’re gonna make such broad, sweeping claims about the involvement of anybody in the legitimacy of an election and the integrity of our election systems, then I think we need to have the intelligence community come forward publicly and on the record and make it clear exactly how this happened and who was responsible for it,” he told CNN.
“Right now, we continue to get unsourced media accounts for what the activity is, and I think that’s not — that’s not acceptable,” he continued. “If truly there is someone to blame, then I think that we should have Congress notified, go through the appropriate congressional hearings, get the intelligence community — as they did in October — come out very publicly with the findings that they have.”
Indeed, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper publicly blamed the Russian government in October for cyber intrusions against U.S. political organizations and persons that they maintained were authorized by “Russia’s senior-most officials.”
The DHS and FBI report was an expansion of the October assessment and came as part of the Obama administration’s response to Russia’s interference. The White House has suggested Putin himself directed the attacks, and CIA Director John Brennan reportedly told his workforce this month that he, Clapper and FBI Director James Comey were all in agreement that Russia meddled to boost Orangutan into the White House.
Obama announced sanctions Thursday against “the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election.” They include the closure of two Russian compounds and the expulsion of 35 Russian intelligence operatives and, according to Obama, are also a response to the harassment of American diplomats “by Russian security services and police over the last year” in Moscow.
A spokesman for Putin said Russia, which has continued to deny responsibility for the cyberattacks, regrets the sanctions and will consider retaliating against the U.S., according to The Associated Press.
The president said his administration will send a report to Congress on Russia’s meddling “in the coming days.” Congress has not been briefed on the Russian cyber intrusions but will convene on Tuesday.
Orangutan’s repeated denial was a clear break with members of his own party, though some Republicans have tried to defend the president-elect’s skepticism. House Speaker Paul Ryan applauded the White House’s “overdue” response, calling Obama’s executive order “an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia.”
“Russia does not share America’s interests,” the Wisconsin Republican said. “In fact, it has consistently sought to undermine them, sowing dangerous instability in the world.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blamed the Obama administration for failing to dissuade Russia from attempting to hack America’s cybersecurity systems or harass U.S. diplomats. But he commended the sanctions as a positive step.
“Sanctions against he Russia intelligence services are a good initial step, however late in coming,” he said. “As the next Congress reviews Russian actions against networks associated with the U.S. election, we must also work to ensure that any attack against the United States is met with an overwhelming response.”
Arizona Sen. John McCain said he agrees with Orangutan in that it is time to move on — but with a caveat. “We need to get on with our lives — without having elections being affected by any outside influence, especially Vladimir Putin, who is a thug and a murderer,” he said Thursday during a tour with the Baltic states, according to Reuters.
While South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested this week that 99 of the 100 U.S. senators accept that Russia meddled in the presidential election, Orangutan remained dubious as recently as Wednesday night.
“I think we ought to get on with our lives,” he told reporters Wednesday when asked about sanctions against Russia.
He blamed computers for complicating “lives very greatly” and argued that the “age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on.”
Graham and McCain echoed Ryan in a joint statement that also announced their intention to spearhead a push for stronger congressional sanctions against the Kremlin.
“The retaliatory measures announced by the Obama Administration today are long overdue,” the senators said. “But ultimately, they are a small price for Russia to pay for its brazen attack on American democracy. We intend to lead the effort in the new Congress to impose stronger sanctions on Russia.”
Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have expressed support for congressional investigations. Ryan, however, backs an ongoing House Intelligence Committee probe into cyber threats from foreign entities, and McConnell has dismissed calls for a select committee, instead highlighting the Senate Intelligence Committee as the appropriate panel to conduct a review.
Former Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, an adviser to Orangutan’s transition team and a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said “it’s very, very healthy” for Orangutan “to be skeptical and put pressure on the intelligence community to make sure that they put forward great information.”
Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, suggested that the Russian government simply did what American media failed to do.
“If anything, whatever they might have done was to try to use information in a way that may have affected something that they believed was in their best interest,” he told MSNBC. “But the bottom line: If they succeeded — if Russia succeeded in giving the American people information that was accurate, then they merely did what the media should have done.”
Orangutan friend Roger Stone said it would take more than CIA director John Brennan for him to be convinced that Russians hacked the election.
"No Republican member of the Senate and House Intelligence community has seen proof," Stone said. "We have the claims of people like John Brennan, who is just not credible. These people making the claims are just not credible. This is a Clinton-campaign talking point."
Stone, who posted online days before the Wikileaks release that they were coming, said he wasn't worried about being implicated in an investigation.
"I have nothing to be worried about. I am not worried. My tweets related to Wikileaks have nothing to do with the Russians and have nothing to do with John Podesta. I have had no contact with the Russians. I've been through this 100 times. I have never been to Russia. I do not have Russian clients. I was not involved in this process whatsoever."
He also said that it was time to move on, much like Orangutan has said.
"No one is going to overturn an election based on a claim of Russian hacking. No one argues that the actual voting machine can be hacked. Orangutan won the election."
Russia response
Putin: Russia won’t ‘expel anyone’ in response to U.S. hacking sanctions
By ERIC GELLER
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not kick out American diplomats in response to President Barack Obama's expulsion of 35 alleged Russian spies.
"Although we have the right to retaliate," Putin said in a statement, "we will not resort to irresponsible 'kitchen' diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-U.S. relations based on the policies of the Orangutan Administration."
"We will not create any problems for U.S. diplomats," he added. "We will not expel anyone."
Obama on Thursday ordered 35 Russian diplomats and their families to leave the country by noon Sunday for using their protected status as cover for spy work.
The announcement was one of several U.S. responses to alleged Russian cyberattacks that disrupted the presidential election. Obama also imposed sanctions on Russian government agencies, companies and individuals and shuttered two Russian diplomatic facilities in New York and Maryland that the administration said were being used for intelligence gathering.
Putin called those actions "unfriendly," "provocative" and "contrary to the fundamental interests of both the Russian and American people."
Putin's remarks were surprising, as they came just hours after Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated in televised remarks that such a retaliatory move was likely.
By ERIC GELLER
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not kick out American diplomats in response to President Barack Obama's expulsion of 35 alleged Russian spies.
"Although we have the right to retaliate," Putin said in a statement, "we will not resort to irresponsible 'kitchen' diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-U.S. relations based on the policies of the Orangutan Administration."
"We will not create any problems for U.S. diplomats," he added. "We will not expel anyone."
Obama on Thursday ordered 35 Russian diplomats and their families to leave the country by noon Sunday for using their protected status as cover for spy work.
The announcement was one of several U.S. responses to alleged Russian cyberattacks that disrupted the presidential election. Obama also imposed sanctions on Russian government agencies, companies and individuals and shuttered two Russian diplomatic facilities in New York and Maryland that the administration said were being used for intelligence gathering.
Putin called those actions "unfriendly," "provocative" and "contrary to the fundamental interests of both the Russian and American people."
Putin's remarks were surprising, as they came just hours after Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated in televised remarks that such a retaliatory move was likely.
Obama's Russia sanctions
Obama's Russia sanctions put Hill Republicans in a box
They're caught between the GOP's longstanding tough-on-Russia stance and Donald Orangutan.
By AUSTIN WRIGHT
President Barack Obama’s eleventh-hour Russia sanctions present a big test for congressional Republicans, who are torn between decades-old GOP principles and their new standard-bearer's unorthodox embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Democrats are already seeking to exploit this rift, drafting legislation designed to make it harder for President-elect Donald Orangutan to unilaterally roll back Obama’s new sanctions.
The goal is to force Republicans into a tough spot in which they can either soften their long-standing animosity toward Russia, opening themselves to charges of hypocrisy — or defy Orangutan, who on Wednesday dismissed efforts to punish Russia by saying “we ought to get on with our lives.”
“Now is not the ‘time to get on with our lives,’” Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “The executive branch has acted, but it is imperative the legislative branch now pick up the ball and move it forward. Congressional sanctions can complement and strengthen these new executive sanctions.”
The Maryland senator vowed to introduce bills next month to create an independent commission to investigate Russian meddling in the election and hit the country with "comprehensive enhanced sanctions." Other Democrats are also pushing legislation to codify the Obama-era sanctions.
A Senate Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it will be telling whether Republicans get on board with such measures. “It remains to be seen whether these guys are all talk and no action,” said the aide, who noted that “this is the Republican Party that in 2012 called Russia the No. 1 geopolitical foe for the United States in the world.”
Democrats will likely have support in these efforts from two of the Senate’s leading GOP defense hawks, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. They issued a joint statement Thursday saying they “intend to lead the effort in the new Congress to impose stronger sanctions on Russia.”
McCain and Graham, though, have repeatedly defied Orangutan on the Russia issue, pushing for expanded investigations into Russia’s election interference. It remains to be seen where other Republicans will come down on the sanctions issue.
After the sanctions announcement on Thursday, Orangutan said he would meet next week with intelligence officials for a briefing on Russian cyberattacks.
"It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things," he said in a statement. "Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."
Following Obama's rollout of the new sanctions, statements poured in from Democrats offering support, many saying they wanted more done to punish a country that U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded tried to tilt the presidential election in Orangutan’s favor.
There were fewer statements from Republicans, who tempered their support for the new sanctions with criticisms of Obama’s overall approach to dealing with Russia.
House Speaker Paul Ryan called the new sanctions “overdue,” but a spokesman declined to comment when asked whether the Wisconsin Republican would support legislation making it harder for Orangutan to roll them back.
“While today’s action by the administration is overdue, it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia,” Ryan said in a statement. “And it serves as a prime example of this administration's ineffective foreign policy that has left America weaker in the eyes of the world."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the sanctions "a good initial step, however late in coming."
“As the next Congress reviews Russian actions against networks associated with the U.S. election," McConnell said, "we must also work to ensure that any attack against the United States is met with an overwhelming response.”
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), meanwhile, said the sanctions are “too little, too late.”
“These meager steps will not decisively change Putin's calculation that his aggressions are worth the risk,” Sasse said. “We cannot afford to be in the same place a year from now — our adversaries must be deterred by knowing that cyber attacks will be met with swift and decisive responses."
Obama’s new sanctions are a follow-up to those his administration imposed in 2014 in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Thursday's sanctions target Russian security and intelligence assets, including booting 35 Russian intelligence operatives from the United States. Like the earlier sanctions, these were put in place through executive actions that Orangutan could potentially undo with the stroke of a pen.
“I hope the incoming Orangutan administration, which has been far too close to Russia throughout the campaign and transition, won’t think for one second about weakening these new sanctions or our existing regime,” said incoming Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “We need to punch back against Russia, and punch back hard.”
They're caught between the GOP's longstanding tough-on-Russia stance and Donald Orangutan.
By AUSTIN WRIGHT
President Barack Obama’s eleventh-hour Russia sanctions present a big test for congressional Republicans, who are torn between decades-old GOP principles and their new standard-bearer's unorthodox embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Democrats are already seeking to exploit this rift, drafting legislation designed to make it harder for President-elect Donald Orangutan to unilaterally roll back Obama’s new sanctions.
The goal is to force Republicans into a tough spot in which they can either soften their long-standing animosity toward Russia, opening themselves to charges of hypocrisy — or defy Orangutan, who on Wednesday dismissed efforts to punish Russia by saying “we ought to get on with our lives.”
“Now is not the ‘time to get on with our lives,’” Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “The executive branch has acted, but it is imperative the legislative branch now pick up the ball and move it forward. Congressional sanctions can complement and strengthen these new executive sanctions.”
The Maryland senator vowed to introduce bills next month to create an independent commission to investigate Russian meddling in the election and hit the country with "comprehensive enhanced sanctions." Other Democrats are also pushing legislation to codify the Obama-era sanctions.
A Senate Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it will be telling whether Republicans get on board with such measures. “It remains to be seen whether these guys are all talk and no action,” said the aide, who noted that “this is the Republican Party that in 2012 called Russia the No. 1 geopolitical foe for the United States in the world.”
Democrats will likely have support in these efforts from two of the Senate’s leading GOP defense hawks, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. They issued a joint statement Thursday saying they “intend to lead the effort in the new Congress to impose stronger sanctions on Russia.”
McCain and Graham, though, have repeatedly defied Orangutan on the Russia issue, pushing for expanded investigations into Russia’s election interference. It remains to be seen where other Republicans will come down on the sanctions issue.
After the sanctions announcement on Thursday, Orangutan said he would meet next week with intelligence officials for a briefing on Russian cyberattacks.
"It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things," he said in a statement. "Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."
Following Obama's rollout of the new sanctions, statements poured in from Democrats offering support, many saying they wanted more done to punish a country that U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded tried to tilt the presidential election in Orangutan’s favor.
There were fewer statements from Republicans, who tempered their support for the new sanctions with criticisms of Obama’s overall approach to dealing with Russia.
House Speaker Paul Ryan called the new sanctions “overdue,” but a spokesman declined to comment when asked whether the Wisconsin Republican would support legislation making it harder for Orangutan to roll them back.
“While today’s action by the administration is overdue, it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia,” Ryan said in a statement. “And it serves as a prime example of this administration's ineffective foreign policy that has left America weaker in the eyes of the world."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the sanctions "a good initial step, however late in coming."
“As the next Congress reviews Russian actions against networks associated with the U.S. election," McConnell said, "we must also work to ensure that any attack against the United States is met with an overwhelming response.”
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), meanwhile, said the sanctions are “too little, too late.”
“These meager steps will not decisively change Putin's calculation that his aggressions are worth the risk,” Sasse said. “We cannot afford to be in the same place a year from now — our adversaries must be deterred by knowing that cyber attacks will be met with swift and decisive responses."
Obama’s new sanctions are a follow-up to those his administration imposed in 2014 in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Thursday's sanctions target Russian security and intelligence assets, including booting 35 Russian intelligence operatives from the United States. Like the earlier sanctions, these were put in place through executive actions that Orangutan could potentially undo with the stroke of a pen.
“I hope the incoming Orangutan administration, which has been far too close to Russia throughout the campaign and transition, won’t think for one second about weakening these new sanctions or our existing regime,” said incoming Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “We need to punch back against Russia, and punch back hard.”
11th-hour foreign policy
Giuliani: Obama trying to create problems for Orangutan with 11th-hour foreign policy moves
By LOUIS NELSON
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani dismissed the sanctions against Russia announced Thursday by President Barack Obama as “petty little actions” intended to box President-elect Donald Orangutan into a corner and accomplish little else.
“There's a certain pettiness that I hadn't seen before. I mean, to do this after 18 months, when you could have prevented it 10 months ago,” Giuliani said Friday morning on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.” “Petty little actions like this don't mean very much. It's almost a mockery to say this is too little too late. It should have been done 10 months ago, 11 months ago, 12 months ago. If it is really true, the response should be much stronger.”
The sanctions announced Thursday by the White House target Russian intelligence services as well as businesses and individuals. The package also expels 35 Russian diplomats and closes two Russian compounds that the White House said in a statement were used for “intelligence-related purposes.” Friday morning, Giuliani scoffed at the notion of closing the compounds, telling the Fox News hosts that “if you are going to solve a murder, you arrest the murderer. Not the candy store the murderer went to before he committed the murder.”
Taken together with the White House’s decision to abstain from a United Nations Security Council vote condemning Israel for settlement building, Giuliani said Obama’s last-minute foreign policy moves are “taking tremendous leverage away” from Orangutan, who has promised warmer relations with both the Russians and Israelis. The former mayor said he had “never seen a president try to create more problems for a future president.”
Obama’s actions should be taken with an extra-large grain of salt, Giuliani said, because of the president’s track record, specifically his labeling of the Islamic State militant group as “a JV team” and his scoff at a 2012 remark from then-GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney that Russia was America’s top “geopolitical foe.”
Orangutan, of course, has spoken especially warmly of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. The president-elect has thus far been unwilling to concede the assessment of all 17 federal intelligence agencies that Russia was behind the cyberattacks that prompted Thursday’s sanctions, and Orangutan has taken particular offense to the assessment of the CIA and FBI that those Russian cyberattacks were launched specifically to help install him as president. Orangutan said Thursday that “it's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” but said he would be briefed on the situation next week.
Those cyberattacks launched by the Russian government were largely targeted at the email accounts of prominent Democratic officials and institutions like the Democratic National Committee. Ultimately, Giuliani said, Democrats have only themselves to blame for the embarrassing content of their leaked emails. “If they hadn't written awful things, the hacking would have meant nothing,” he said.
Giuliani, who works as a security consultant for foreign governments, said Orangutan should not automatically trust the intelligence coming from the Obama administration and instead should ask his own national security team for its assessment.
“Here’s what you do: You get your own people to review it,” he said. “There's no question that the intelligence that President Obama has been getting has either been incompetent or politicized. I do cybersecurity for a living, and this is prolific, and there should be very strong reactions against anyone who did it. But I would urge President Orangutan, when he becomes President Orangutan, to have his own intelligence people do their own report, let’s find out who did it, and let's bang them back really hard.”
By LOUIS NELSON
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani dismissed the sanctions against Russia announced Thursday by President Barack Obama as “petty little actions” intended to box President-elect Donald Orangutan into a corner and accomplish little else.
“There's a certain pettiness that I hadn't seen before. I mean, to do this after 18 months, when you could have prevented it 10 months ago,” Giuliani said Friday morning on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.” “Petty little actions like this don't mean very much. It's almost a mockery to say this is too little too late. It should have been done 10 months ago, 11 months ago, 12 months ago. If it is really true, the response should be much stronger.”
The sanctions announced Thursday by the White House target Russian intelligence services as well as businesses and individuals. The package also expels 35 Russian diplomats and closes two Russian compounds that the White House said in a statement were used for “intelligence-related purposes.” Friday morning, Giuliani scoffed at the notion of closing the compounds, telling the Fox News hosts that “if you are going to solve a murder, you arrest the murderer. Not the candy store the murderer went to before he committed the murder.”
Taken together with the White House’s decision to abstain from a United Nations Security Council vote condemning Israel for settlement building, Giuliani said Obama’s last-minute foreign policy moves are “taking tremendous leverage away” from Orangutan, who has promised warmer relations with both the Russians and Israelis. The former mayor said he had “never seen a president try to create more problems for a future president.”
Obama’s actions should be taken with an extra-large grain of salt, Giuliani said, because of the president’s track record, specifically his labeling of the Islamic State militant group as “a JV team” and his scoff at a 2012 remark from then-GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney that Russia was America’s top “geopolitical foe.”
Orangutan, of course, has spoken especially warmly of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. The president-elect has thus far been unwilling to concede the assessment of all 17 federal intelligence agencies that Russia was behind the cyberattacks that prompted Thursday’s sanctions, and Orangutan has taken particular offense to the assessment of the CIA and FBI that those Russian cyberattacks were launched specifically to help install him as president. Orangutan said Thursday that “it's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” but said he would be briefed on the situation next week.
Those cyberattacks launched by the Russian government were largely targeted at the email accounts of prominent Democratic officials and institutions like the Democratic National Committee. Ultimately, Giuliani said, Democrats have only themselves to blame for the embarrassing content of their leaked emails. “If they hadn't written awful things, the hacking would have meant nothing,” he said.
Giuliani, who works as a security consultant for foreign governments, said Orangutan should not automatically trust the intelligence coming from the Obama administration and instead should ask his own national security team for its assessment.
“Here’s what you do: You get your own people to review it,” he said. “There's no question that the intelligence that President Obama has been getting has either been incompetent or politicized. I do cybersecurity for a living, and this is prolific, and there should be very strong reactions against anyone who did it. But I would urge President Orangutan, when he becomes President Orangutan, to have his own intelligence people do their own report, let’s find out who did it, and let's bang them back really hard.”
Call it quits?
Which senators will call it quits?
Retirement rumors are swirling, and the decisions could roil the 2018 Senate midterm election.
By SEUNG MIN KIM and BURGESS EVERETT
Orrin Hatch and Dianne Feinstein will be 84 and 85 years old, respectively, on Election Day 2018. If that thought alone isn’t tiring enough, here’s another way of looking at it: If they run and win, both would eclipse the 90-year mark by the end of their term.
But if the serenity of Utah or coastal beauty of California is beckoning either senator into retirement, neither is willing to publicly entertain it just yet.
“Age doesn't seem to be a factor,” said Hatch, the Utah Republican who is now in the presidential line of succession and heads the powerful Senate Finance Committee. “I’m tough and strong and I have the usual infirmities that anybody my age has but nothing stops me.”
Hatch, who said after his last reelection in 2012 that this would be his last term, added, “I don’t think I’m ready to give up the ghost yet.”
As the 115th Congress — and the 2018 election cycle — begins in earnest next week, so is the accompanying speculation about who will retire, pursue other political ambitions or step down for other reasons. Much of the retirement whispering has centered on Hatch and Feinstein, two long-serving members with influential roles and seniority in the chamber.
For her part, Feinstein declined to elaborate on her future political plans, telling a reporter recently on whether she planned to run for reelection: “Oh, I’m not going to answer that now.” But her longtime colleague, retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), insisted Feinstein was going nowhere.
“Oh I think she is. I think she is running. I think she’ll run. I support her,” Boxer said. “She said she’s running. She told me she’s running. And I know she’s doing fundraising. So my expectation is she will.”
Like Hatch, Feinstein is also embracing a powerful role as the new lead Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she will be the caucus’s point person on the fight over Orangutan’s Supreme Court nominees and help litigate contentious political issues such as immigration and criminal justice reform. Feinstein also has a healthy $2.5 million in her campaign account.
No incumbent so far has announced plans to leave. Party leaders are working to keep senators from politically reliable states in place and prevent departures that could alter the balance of power in the chamber, which will be narrowly divided with a 52-48 GOP majority next year.
Republicans will try to widen that advantage in 2018, when Senate Democrats face a daunting political map that includes 10 of their members up for reelection in states Orangutan won in November. Five of them — Joe Manchin in West Virginia, Jon Tester in Montana, Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Joe Donnelly in Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota — are considered especially vulnerable.
Heitkamp also remains in the mix for a job in the Orangutan administration, though she said during a recent interview with a North Dakota radio station that she's "likely" to stay in the Senate. Moving to the Orangutan administration would cede her seat to Republicans because GOP Gov. Doug Burgum would pick her replacement.
Also on the watch list is Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a 74-year-old former astronaut who has represented Florida for three terms in the Senate. His retirement would throw his coveted seat up for grabs, a prospect Democrats are eager to avoid. But Nelson, whose home state Orangutan won last month, says that’s not going to happen.
“Oh, of course,” Nelson said when asked whether he will run for reelection. Nelson said he assumes Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who is term limited, is looking at challenging him — a helpful motivator, he said. “I run scared as a jackrabbit. That’s the way I always run," Nelson said.
Some senators, however, are hedging.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), a former governor and now a three-term senator, said he has yet to decide his plans and will consult with his wife before he does so. Carper has just $300,000 in his campaign account, although he’d be heavily favored for reelection in the Democratic state.
“I need to talk to the boss, at home,” Carper, 69, said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) is ramping up his political activity in anticipation of a 2018 reelection bid, even as he faces a September trial on multiple federal corruption charges. Menendez hosted a holiday party on Dec. 11 with an invite list that political adviser Michael Soliman called a “veritable who's who of New Jersey elected officials, opinion-shapers, friends and supporters.”
Menendez is also planning fundraising trips to California, Florida and Texas in the first quarter of 2017, according to Soliman.
“He intends to run and run aggressively for reelection,” Soliman said in an e-mail. “There is absolutely nothing that would indicate that this is a United States senator who is contemplating retirement.”
Senators who might be weighing retirement are loath to even hint at it, lest they invite an opponent or prematurely bestow lame-duck status upon themselves.
“Everything that I am planning to do would indicate that I am, but I’m not gonna make any announcements yet,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who is also up in two years. “I’m gonna campaign based upon what I think is consistent with my record and a strategy to win elections.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who ran a surprisingly strong campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, said he hasn’t made a decision whether to run. “But everything being equal, I think I will, yes,” Sanders added in a recent interview.
Despite having just $160,000 in his campaign coffers, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said he was “absolutely” running even if he draws a prominent opponent like Gov. Paul LePage. A person close to King said that his meager campaign account — the smallest among the class of 2018 — does not reflect his plans.
It’s not just older senators who could be flight risks. While Republicans try and buttonhole Hatch to run, the GOP also found two of its younger members wooed by the prospect of being governor: Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Dean Heller of Nevada. Privately, Republicans believe Scott is unlikely to bolt, given rising-star status in the Senate and the weak governor’s office in the Palmetto State.
Heller, on the other hand, publicly flirted with a gubernatorial run. Popular Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval is term-limited, and Heller has a back-breaking commute from his home in northern Nevada to Washington. But he says he enjoys his work in the Senate nonetheless and on Thursday announced he would run for reelection after his colleagues pressed him to stay.
Nevada is one of the few states where Democrats will have a chance to flip a GOP-held seat in 2018; an open contest would have dramatically improved the odds of a Democratic pickup.
Top Republicans, for their part, are upbeat after a surprisingly strong showing in 2016 and favorable map in 2018.
“We’re focused ... on seats where we have pickup opportunities,” said Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), the incoming chairman of the National Republican Senatorial committee. “It’s an exciting time to be in the majority."
Retirement rumors are swirling, and the decisions could roil the 2018 Senate midterm election.
By SEUNG MIN KIM and BURGESS EVERETT
Orrin Hatch and Dianne Feinstein will be 84 and 85 years old, respectively, on Election Day 2018. If that thought alone isn’t tiring enough, here’s another way of looking at it: If they run and win, both would eclipse the 90-year mark by the end of their term.
But if the serenity of Utah or coastal beauty of California is beckoning either senator into retirement, neither is willing to publicly entertain it just yet.
“Age doesn't seem to be a factor,” said Hatch, the Utah Republican who is now in the presidential line of succession and heads the powerful Senate Finance Committee. “I’m tough and strong and I have the usual infirmities that anybody my age has but nothing stops me.”
Hatch, who said after his last reelection in 2012 that this would be his last term, added, “I don’t think I’m ready to give up the ghost yet.”
As the 115th Congress — and the 2018 election cycle — begins in earnest next week, so is the accompanying speculation about who will retire, pursue other political ambitions or step down for other reasons. Much of the retirement whispering has centered on Hatch and Feinstein, two long-serving members with influential roles and seniority in the chamber.
For her part, Feinstein declined to elaborate on her future political plans, telling a reporter recently on whether she planned to run for reelection: “Oh, I’m not going to answer that now.” But her longtime colleague, retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), insisted Feinstein was going nowhere.
“Oh I think she is. I think she is running. I think she’ll run. I support her,” Boxer said. “She said she’s running. She told me she’s running. And I know she’s doing fundraising. So my expectation is she will.”
Like Hatch, Feinstein is also embracing a powerful role as the new lead Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she will be the caucus’s point person on the fight over Orangutan’s Supreme Court nominees and help litigate contentious political issues such as immigration and criminal justice reform. Feinstein also has a healthy $2.5 million in her campaign account.
No incumbent so far has announced plans to leave. Party leaders are working to keep senators from politically reliable states in place and prevent departures that could alter the balance of power in the chamber, which will be narrowly divided with a 52-48 GOP majority next year.
Republicans will try to widen that advantage in 2018, when Senate Democrats face a daunting political map that includes 10 of their members up for reelection in states Orangutan won in November. Five of them — Joe Manchin in West Virginia, Jon Tester in Montana, Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Joe Donnelly in Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota — are considered especially vulnerable.
Heitkamp also remains in the mix for a job in the Orangutan administration, though she said during a recent interview with a North Dakota radio station that she's "likely" to stay in the Senate. Moving to the Orangutan administration would cede her seat to Republicans because GOP Gov. Doug Burgum would pick her replacement.
Also on the watch list is Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a 74-year-old former astronaut who has represented Florida for three terms in the Senate. His retirement would throw his coveted seat up for grabs, a prospect Democrats are eager to avoid. But Nelson, whose home state Orangutan won last month, says that’s not going to happen.
“Oh, of course,” Nelson said when asked whether he will run for reelection. Nelson said he assumes Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who is term limited, is looking at challenging him — a helpful motivator, he said. “I run scared as a jackrabbit. That’s the way I always run," Nelson said.
Some senators, however, are hedging.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), a former governor and now a three-term senator, said he has yet to decide his plans and will consult with his wife before he does so. Carper has just $300,000 in his campaign account, although he’d be heavily favored for reelection in the Democratic state.
“I need to talk to the boss, at home,” Carper, 69, said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) is ramping up his political activity in anticipation of a 2018 reelection bid, even as he faces a September trial on multiple federal corruption charges. Menendez hosted a holiday party on Dec. 11 with an invite list that political adviser Michael Soliman called a “veritable who's who of New Jersey elected officials, opinion-shapers, friends and supporters.”
Menendez is also planning fundraising trips to California, Florida and Texas in the first quarter of 2017, according to Soliman.
“He intends to run and run aggressively for reelection,” Soliman said in an e-mail. “There is absolutely nothing that would indicate that this is a United States senator who is contemplating retirement.”
Senators who might be weighing retirement are loath to even hint at it, lest they invite an opponent or prematurely bestow lame-duck status upon themselves.
“Everything that I am planning to do would indicate that I am, but I’m not gonna make any announcements yet,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who is also up in two years. “I’m gonna campaign based upon what I think is consistent with my record and a strategy to win elections.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who ran a surprisingly strong campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, said he hasn’t made a decision whether to run. “But everything being equal, I think I will, yes,” Sanders added in a recent interview.
Despite having just $160,000 in his campaign coffers, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said he was “absolutely” running even if he draws a prominent opponent like Gov. Paul LePage. A person close to King said that his meager campaign account — the smallest among the class of 2018 — does not reflect his plans.
It’s not just older senators who could be flight risks. While Republicans try and buttonhole Hatch to run, the GOP also found two of its younger members wooed by the prospect of being governor: Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Dean Heller of Nevada. Privately, Republicans believe Scott is unlikely to bolt, given rising-star status in the Senate and the weak governor’s office in the Palmetto State.
Heller, on the other hand, publicly flirted with a gubernatorial run. Popular Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval is term-limited, and Heller has a back-breaking commute from his home in northern Nevada to Washington. But he says he enjoys his work in the Senate nonetheless and on Thursday announced he would run for reelection after his colleagues pressed him to stay.
Nevada is one of the few states where Democrats will have a chance to flip a GOP-held seat in 2018; an open contest would have dramatically improved the odds of a Democratic pickup.
Top Republicans, for their part, are upbeat after a surprisingly strong showing in 2016 and favorable map in 2018.
“We’re focused ... on seats where we have pickup opportunities,” said Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), the incoming chairman of the National Republican Senatorial committee. “It’s an exciting time to be in the majority."
Clemency?
Snowden and Manning ask Obama for clemency
Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning are among four leak-probe targets who asked Obama for pardons or commutations.
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Four of the most well-known targets of President Barack Obama’s war on leaks — including Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning — are among those who have requested pardons or commutations in the waning days of his presidency.
Lawyers who track Obama’s approach to clemency applications say all four — which also include retired Marine Corps Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright and former CIA officer John Kiriakou — face long odds in part because of intense attention to the dangers of hacking and the national security leaks that follow.
The fact that the requests don’t meet the usual Justice Department criteria and aren’t covered by the special initiative Obama set up to reduce the sentences of non-violent drug offenders sentenced to long terms in federal prison also make them more unlikely.
“I think he’s going to announce a lot of names in the next few weeks. I don’t think any of them will be these big-name figures,” said Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. “This administration does have an aversion to high-profile cases generally.”
Obama also appears to be intent on avoiding the political firestorm that arose in 2001, after departing President Bill Clinton pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich.
A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on Obama’s plans regarding his clemency power during his final days in office. Clemency applicants can go directly to the president without filing applications at the Justice Department, but Obama has suggested he’s intent on observing the typical process without the chaos that surrounded last-minute grants under Clinton 16 years ago.
Outside legal experts say the best-positioned of the leakers may be Manning, who received a 35-year prison sentence from a military judge after being convicted at a court martial of disclosing hundreds of thousands of classified and unclassified diplomatic cables and military reports to WikiLeaks.
The 35-year term stunned many observers because it was by far the longest sentence ever imposed in a leak case. There was also testimony that Manning, a transgender woman who was once deployed to Iraq, was experiencing a mental breakdown around the time of the leaks, sometimes collapsing in a fetal position on the floor of a military command center in Iraq. Her doctors say she has continued to suffer from gender dysphoria, which has proven difficult to treat in military prison. In September, facing a lawsuit, the Army agreed to provide surgery to allow Manning to complete the transition from male to female.
About 116,000 people have signed a petition on the White House website asking Obama to commute Manning’s sentence to the roughly six years she has already served. However, she remains outside traditional pardon or commutation guidelines because her appeal is still pending in an Army court.
The clemency request presenting the most delicate timing for Obama comes from Cartwright, who pleaded guilty in October to lying to investigators probing leaks about top secret U.S. efforts to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. The retired four-star Marine general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is set to be sentenced by a federal judge Jan. 17, three days before Obama leaves office and President-elect Donald Orangutan is sworn in.
Cartwright faces a maximum of up to five years on the false statements charge and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentencing guidelines appear to call for a much shorter sentence, in the range of zero to six months, but federal prosecutors may ask for more time.
A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed Cartwright’s pardon application, which could be supplemented with a commutation request after the sentence is imposed later this month. One of Cartwright’s attorneys, former Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig, declined to comment.
As Obama’s presidency has drawn to a close, human rights and privacy activists have also stepped up calls for Obama to pardon Snowden, the computer specialist who triggered an intense global debate on surveillance practices after disclosing the NSA’s program collecting details on billions of phone calls made and received by Americans.
The disclosure led to legislation Congress passed and Obama signed last year ending so-called bulk collection of the phone data by the government, but providing a streamlined process to collect portions of it from phone companies on a case-by-case basis.
Snowden, who took refuge in Russia after his high-profile leaks of NSA data in 2013, is wanted on three federal felony charges stemming from the disclosures. Administration officials have signaled that a pardon for Snowden is highly unlikely, in part because he turned over top secret information to journalists that went far beyond the controversial NSA domestic call-snooping program and included far more traditional intelligence-gathering overseas, including in war zones. His flight to Hong Kong and then Moscow has also undercut and complicated calls for a pardon, officials said.
The White House has urged Snowden to return from Russia and stand trial, but he and his lawyers have noted that he could face decades in prison and would likely not be allowed to argue to a jury that his disclosures were in the public interest or expose illegality.
“I can't pardon somebody who hasn't gone before a court and presented themselves, so that's not something that I would comment on at this point,” Obama said last month in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. “I think that Mr. Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system.”
Experts agree that Obama’s pardon power is virtually unlimited, so his statement that he “can’t” pardon Snowden appears to have reflected his conclusion that it would be unwise to do so.
Obama does have some more exotic options open to him to try to encourage Snowden to come back, including the possibility of an advance commutation that would effectively cap the punishment the former NSA contractor could receive for allegedly stealing and disclosing national security secrets.
Legal experts said it’s hard to see Obama offering Snowden a commutation, without a carefully negotiated set of conditions that would likely involve Snowden acknowledging error on his part and pleading guilty to some offense. Without such a deal, even with a commutation, Snowden could still force the government into the spectacle of a trial and likely force more disclosures about sensitive surveillance programs.
“If Obama was of any mind to do this, he’d want meaningful conditions to be imposed on the commutation before trial that would make it acceptable to the public,” said Harold Krent, dean of the Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Rounding out the leak-related clemency requests is a pardon application from Kiriakou, who pled guilty in 2012 to disclosing classified information about a fellow CIA officer that connected him to the spy agency’s interrogation program for terrorism suspects. Kiriakou received a two-and-a-half year prison sentence which he completed in 2015.
Kiriakou and his supporters have long argued that it is bizarre that he was punished for disclosing the CIA’s use of techniques, like waterboarding, that many regard as torture, but those who designed, authorized and carried out the program never faced any charges.
There is some historical precedent for presidents granting clemency in leak-related cases.
In 2007, President George W. Bush granted a commutation to Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis Libby, who had been convicted of lying and obstruction of justice in an investigation into the disclosure of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Bush wiped out Libby’s two-and-a-half- year prison sentence, but left intact Libby’s conviction and a $250,000 fine.
In Bush’s final months in office, Cheney pushed Bush to grant Libby a full pardon, but the president refused—reportedly further straining his relationship with Cheney.
And in 2001, Clinton issued a pardon to Samuel Morison, a former Navy intelligence analyst who was convicted in 1985 under the Espionage Act of sending classified spy satellite photos to Jane’s Defense Weekly.
Since Morison had long completed his prison sentence—originally set at two years, but cut to eight months under parole rules at the time—the pardon more than a decade later cleared Morison’s record, while also raising questions about the use of the tough, espionage-related law to pursue leak cases.
Such cases were rare before the Obama administration, with only three filed in nearly a century. However, at least eight were brought during Obama’s time in office, leading to criticism from First Amendment and whistleblower advocates.
Obama administration officials have said there was no deliberate effort to step up such prosecutions. They also noted that several of the cases came under investigation before Obama took office.
However, there were apparently some second thoughts about controversial tactics used to investigate the leaks. That reassessment led to policy changes in 2013 from Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder. Justice Department guidelines were revised to make it more difficult to obtain search warrants for journalists’ emails and to force reporters’ testimony in court cases. Justice officials also pledged to notify news organizations in advance when seeking to obtain their telephone records.
“I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” Obama said then. “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law.”
Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning are among four leak-probe targets who asked Obama for pardons or commutations.
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Four of the most well-known targets of President Barack Obama’s war on leaks — including Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning — are among those who have requested pardons or commutations in the waning days of his presidency.
Lawyers who track Obama’s approach to clemency applications say all four — which also include retired Marine Corps Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright and former CIA officer John Kiriakou — face long odds in part because of intense attention to the dangers of hacking and the national security leaks that follow.
The fact that the requests don’t meet the usual Justice Department criteria and aren’t covered by the special initiative Obama set up to reduce the sentences of non-violent drug offenders sentenced to long terms in federal prison also make them more unlikely.
“I think he’s going to announce a lot of names in the next few weeks. I don’t think any of them will be these big-name figures,” said Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. “This administration does have an aversion to high-profile cases generally.”
Obama also appears to be intent on avoiding the political firestorm that arose in 2001, after departing President Bill Clinton pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich.
A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on Obama’s plans regarding his clemency power during his final days in office. Clemency applicants can go directly to the president without filing applications at the Justice Department, but Obama has suggested he’s intent on observing the typical process without the chaos that surrounded last-minute grants under Clinton 16 years ago.
Outside legal experts say the best-positioned of the leakers may be Manning, who received a 35-year prison sentence from a military judge after being convicted at a court martial of disclosing hundreds of thousands of classified and unclassified diplomatic cables and military reports to WikiLeaks.
The 35-year term stunned many observers because it was by far the longest sentence ever imposed in a leak case. There was also testimony that Manning, a transgender woman who was once deployed to Iraq, was experiencing a mental breakdown around the time of the leaks, sometimes collapsing in a fetal position on the floor of a military command center in Iraq. Her doctors say she has continued to suffer from gender dysphoria, which has proven difficult to treat in military prison. In September, facing a lawsuit, the Army agreed to provide surgery to allow Manning to complete the transition from male to female.
About 116,000 people have signed a petition on the White House website asking Obama to commute Manning’s sentence to the roughly six years she has already served. However, she remains outside traditional pardon or commutation guidelines because her appeal is still pending in an Army court.
The clemency request presenting the most delicate timing for Obama comes from Cartwright, who pleaded guilty in October to lying to investigators probing leaks about top secret U.S. efforts to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. The retired four-star Marine general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is set to be sentenced by a federal judge Jan. 17, three days before Obama leaves office and President-elect Donald Orangutan is sworn in.
Cartwright faces a maximum of up to five years on the false statements charge and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentencing guidelines appear to call for a much shorter sentence, in the range of zero to six months, but federal prosecutors may ask for more time.
A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed Cartwright’s pardon application, which could be supplemented with a commutation request after the sentence is imposed later this month. One of Cartwright’s attorneys, former Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig, declined to comment.
As Obama’s presidency has drawn to a close, human rights and privacy activists have also stepped up calls for Obama to pardon Snowden, the computer specialist who triggered an intense global debate on surveillance practices after disclosing the NSA’s program collecting details on billions of phone calls made and received by Americans.
The disclosure led to legislation Congress passed and Obama signed last year ending so-called bulk collection of the phone data by the government, but providing a streamlined process to collect portions of it from phone companies on a case-by-case basis.
Snowden, who took refuge in Russia after his high-profile leaks of NSA data in 2013, is wanted on three federal felony charges stemming from the disclosures. Administration officials have signaled that a pardon for Snowden is highly unlikely, in part because he turned over top secret information to journalists that went far beyond the controversial NSA domestic call-snooping program and included far more traditional intelligence-gathering overseas, including in war zones. His flight to Hong Kong and then Moscow has also undercut and complicated calls for a pardon, officials said.
The White House has urged Snowden to return from Russia and stand trial, but he and his lawyers have noted that he could face decades in prison and would likely not be allowed to argue to a jury that his disclosures were in the public interest or expose illegality.
“I can't pardon somebody who hasn't gone before a court and presented themselves, so that's not something that I would comment on at this point,” Obama said last month in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. “I think that Mr. Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system.”
Experts agree that Obama’s pardon power is virtually unlimited, so his statement that he “can’t” pardon Snowden appears to have reflected his conclusion that it would be unwise to do so.
Obama does have some more exotic options open to him to try to encourage Snowden to come back, including the possibility of an advance commutation that would effectively cap the punishment the former NSA contractor could receive for allegedly stealing and disclosing national security secrets.
Legal experts said it’s hard to see Obama offering Snowden a commutation, without a carefully negotiated set of conditions that would likely involve Snowden acknowledging error on his part and pleading guilty to some offense. Without such a deal, even with a commutation, Snowden could still force the government into the spectacle of a trial and likely force more disclosures about sensitive surveillance programs.
“If Obama was of any mind to do this, he’d want meaningful conditions to be imposed on the commutation before trial that would make it acceptable to the public,” said Harold Krent, dean of the Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Rounding out the leak-related clemency requests is a pardon application from Kiriakou, who pled guilty in 2012 to disclosing classified information about a fellow CIA officer that connected him to the spy agency’s interrogation program for terrorism suspects. Kiriakou received a two-and-a-half year prison sentence which he completed in 2015.
Kiriakou and his supporters have long argued that it is bizarre that he was punished for disclosing the CIA’s use of techniques, like waterboarding, that many regard as torture, but those who designed, authorized and carried out the program never faced any charges.
There is some historical precedent for presidents granting clemency in leak-related cases.
In 2007, President George W. Bush granted a commutation to Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis Libby, who had been convicted of lying and obstruction of justice in an investigation into the disclosure of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Bush wiped out Libby’s two-and-a-half- year prison sentence, but left intact Libby’s conviction and a $250,000 fine.
In Bush’s final months in office, Cheney pushed Bush to grant Libby a full pardon, but the president refused—reportedly further straining his relationship with Cheney.
And in 2001, Clinton issued a pardon to Samuel Morison, a former Navy intelligence analyst who was convicted in 1985 under the Espionage Act of sending classified spy satellite photos to Jane’s Defense Weekly.
Since Morison had long completed his prison sentence—originally set at two years, but cut to eight months under parole rules at the time—the pardon more than a decade later cleared Morison’s record, while also raising questions about the use of the tough, espionage-related law to pursue leak cases.
Such cases were rare before the Obama administration, with only three filed in nearly a century. However, at least eight were brought during Obama’s time in office, leading to criticism from First Amendment and whistleblower advocates.
Obama administration officials have said there was no deliberate effort to step up such prosecutions. They also noted that several of the cases came under investigation before Obama took office.
However, there were apparently some second thoughts about controversial tactics used to investigate the leaks. That reassessment led to policy changes in 2013 from Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder. Justice Department guidelines were revised to make it more difficult to obtain search warrants for journalists’ emails and to force reporters’ testimony in court cases. Justice officials also pledged to notify news organizations in advance when seeking to obtain their telephone records.
“I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” Obama said then. “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law.”
Orangutan deportation
Orangutan deportation plan could be ‘impossible’
People who’ve been on the front lines of immigration enforcement say it will take too much money and time.
By TED HESSON
Donald Orangutan is pledging to deport two to three million gang members, drug dealers and other criminals who are in the U.S. illegally. But people who’ve actually run the nation’s immigration enforcement agencies say it can’t be done — at least not without spending billions and taking years.
“It’s impossible, period,” said John Sandweg, who was acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2013 and 2014.
Orangutan’s hard-line stance on immigration has been central to his platform ever since he called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers on the day he announced his candidacy, and his pledges to build a border wall and create a deportation force resonated with the voters who elected him. But his continued promises to round up immigrants as president-elect could be one of the first reality checks on his administration.
Orangutan would need tens of billions of dollars in new spending approved by Congress. He’d also need years to hire and train new legions of enforcement agents, and to deploy hundreds of judges to relieve the nation’s severely backlogged immigration courts. And to find even two million undocumented immigrants to deport, he’d have to change how he defines criminal acts worthy of removal — or start rounding up people without convictions. Added together, the obstacles could be insurmountable.
“This is not just, ‘Oh we can just plus-up officers’ and everything else magically happens,” Sandweg said.
The first problem is the expense. At an average cost of $12,213 for each, according to ICE, 2 million deportations would add up to more than $24.4 billion over four years. That includes all ICE costs necessary to identify, arrest, detain, process and remove those immigrants. It doesn’t include personnel salaries.
That’s more than the entire current budget for ICE and Customs and Border Protection (which deals with border security), which amounted to $19.4 billion in 2016.
Each of those agencies have responsibilities that stretch far beyond catching and deporting undocumented immigrants. There would be an additional cost to hire more federal immigration agents, and those agents would need training, office space, equipment and cars — which would require even more spending.
And then there’s the cost and hassle of sending detainees through the overburdened immigration courts, which already face a backlog of more than 526,000 cases.
Because of this bottleneck, DHS’ detention facilities are overflowing with 10,000 more detainees than the number of beds provided for in this year's proposed budget.
The Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review received $420 million in fiscal year 2016, and currently employs 295 immigration judges. There's broad agreement that those 295 judges aren't enough to deal with the existing backlog, much less an additional two million cases. An April report by Human Rights First recommended Congress approve funding for 524 judges just to address present need.
Orangutan could try to focus on deportations that don’t require a court hearing. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, so-called expedited removals can be used against new arrivals encountered at the border and against undocumented immigrants who've been in the U.S. fewer than two years — but only if the arrestees can't claim asylum. And he could also try to increase deportations in which an immigrant agrees to waive the right to a hearing. Immigrants who have been trapped in detention centers for long periods of time would likely be most receptive to this approach.
But even if he did that, it’s also unclear whether Orangutan would have time to execute his plan within a four-year term.
David Aguilar was national chief of the Border Patrol from 2004 to 2010, a period where the number of agents nearly doubled, from 10,800 to 20,500. It took, he recalls, "a two- or three-year maturation period to get a full-out officer to do the job and to do it right."
The alternative is to shift manpower from existing activities related to immigration enforcement. But that would create its own problems.
“Let’s assume, for example, that Border Patrol agents are used to support ICE,” said Aguilar. “Well, that’s going to be a no-go and it should be a no-go. Because you’re going to detract from the Border Patrol’s critically important responsibility of the borders."
Accelerating removals won't do much good, Aguilar said, if a reduction in border control allows deported immigrants to slip back through a porous border.
Orangutan may also have to scale back his estimate of how many deportations he would achieve. There don't appear to be anywhere near three million immigrants, legal or undocumented, who are deportable based on past criminal convictions. DHS put their number at roughly 1.9 million in 2012. Based on that figure, the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute calculated that 820,000 of these were living in the country illegally.
The Obama administration was never able to deport more than about 238,000 immigrants from the U.S. interior (away from the border) in a single year. That occurred in 2009. And even that 238,000, said Sandweg, “included a whole bunch of people with no criminal conviction.”
To reach two million, Orangutan would have to target many immigrants living in the U.S. legally; such deportations are permissible, but only in the case of felonies and certain misdemeanors. In addition, Orangutan would have to pursue many undocumented immigrants who are low-level offenders. “There are going to be some very serious criminals,” said Julie Myers Wood, who ran ICE from 2006 to 2008, “and there are going to be some individuals who committed more minor crimes.”
Worksite raids — a tactic of the Bush administration that's less common today — would allow agents to cast a wider net, but at the price of alienating businesses, something a pro-business president like Orangutan might feel reluctant to do.
“It’s aggressive,” Myers Wood said. “And I’m not saying I recommend it. I’m just saying, ‘Could you do it?’ I think you could.”
Rounding up criminals to deport is significantly more difficult than rounding up undocumented U.S. residents indiscriminately, experts say. "The criminal population is more resource-intensive to deport,” said Sandweg. “It is much harder to find a serious gang member or a convicted felon because these people are generally adept at hiding in the communities.”
As a consequence, says David Leopold, a Cleveland-based immigration lawyer, a numbers-driven roundup of criminals could easily devolve into a "chaotic" roundup that included many more non-criminals.
“Even though they give lip service to going after people with criminal convictions," Leopold said, "they’re going to go after whoever they can find, because the people without the criminal convictions are easier to find. They’re the ones who are going to open the door when ICE comes knocking. They’re the ones who are going to be compliant.”
People who’ve been on the front lines of immigration enforcement say it will take too much money and time.
By TED HESSON
Donald Orangutan is pledging to deport two to three million gang members, drug dealers and other criminals who are in the U.S. illegally. But people who’ve actually run the nation’s immigration enforcement agencies say it can’t be done — at least not without spending billions and taking years.
“It’s impossible, period,” said John Sandweg, who was acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2013 and 2014.
Orangutan’s hard-line stance on immigration has been central to his platform ever since he called Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers on the day he announced his candidacy, and his pledges to build a border wall and create a deportation force resonated with the voters who elected him. But his continued promises to round up immigrants as president-elect could be one of the first reality checks on his administration.
Orangutan would need tens of billions of dollars in new spending approved by Congress. He’d also need years to hire and train new legions of enforcement agents, and to deploy hundreds of judges to relieve the nation’s severely backlogged immigration courts. And to find even two million undocumented immigrants to deport, he’d have to change how he defines criminal acts worthy of removal — or start rounding up people without convictions. Added together, the obstacles could be insurmountable.
“This is not just, ‘Oh we can just plus-up officers’ and everything else magically happens,” Sandweg said.
The first problem is the expense. At an average cost of $12,213 for each, according to ICE, 2 million deportations would add up to more than $24.4 billion over four years. That includes all ICE costs necessary to identify, arrest, detain, process and remove those immigrants. It doesn’t include personnel salaries.
That’s more than the entire current budget for ICE and Customs and Border Protection (which deals with border security), which amounted to $19.4 billion in 2016.
Each of those agencies have responsibilities that stretch far beyond catching and deporting undocumented immigrants. There would be an additional cost to hire more federal immigration agents, and those agents would need training, office space, equipment and cars — which would require even more spending.
And then there’s the cost and hassle of sending detainees through the overburdened immigration courts, which already face a backlog of more than 526,000 cases.
Because of this bottleneck, DHS’ detention facilities are overflowing with 10,000 more detainees than the number of beds provided for in this year's proposed budget.
The Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review received $420 million in fiscal year 2016, and currently employs 295 immigration judges. There's broad agreement that those 295 judges aren't enough to deal with the existing backlog, much less an additional two million cases. An April report by Human Rights First recommended Congress approve funding for 524 judges just to address present need.
Orangutan could try to focus on deportations that don’t require a court hearing. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, so-called expedited removals can be used against new arrivals encountered at the border and against undocumented immigrants who've been in the U.S. fewer than two years — but only if the arrestees can't claim asylum. And he could also try to increase deportations in which an immigrant agrees to waive the right to a hearing. Immigrants who have been trapped in detention centers for long periods of time would likely be most receptive to this approach.
But even if he did that, it’s also unclear whether Orangutan would have time to execute his plan within a four-year term.
David Aguilar was national chief of the Border Patrol from 2004 to 2010, a period where the number of agents nearly doubled, from 10,800 to 20,500. It took, he recalls, "a two- or three-year maturation period to get a full-out officer to do the job and to do it right."
The alternative is to shift manpower from existing activities related to immigration enforcement. But that would create its own problems.
“Let’s assume, for example, that Border Patrol agents are used to support ICE,” said Aguilar. “Well, that’s going to be a no-go and it should be a no-go. Because you’re going to detract from the Border Patrol’s critically important responsibility of the borders."
Accelerating removals won't do much good, Aguilar said, if a reduction in border control allows deported immigrants to slip back through a porous border.
Orangutan may also have to scale back his estimate of how many deportations he would achieve. There don't appear to be anywhere near three million immigrants, legal or undocumented, who are deportable based on past criminal convictions. DHS put their number at roughly 1.9 million in 2012. Based on that figure, the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute calculated that 820,000 of these were living in the country illegally.
The Obama administration was never able to deport more than about 238,000 immigrants from the U.S. interior (away from the border) in a single year. That occurred in 2009. And even that 238,000, said Sandweg, “included a whole bunch of people with no criminal conviction.”
To reach two million, Orangutan would have to target many immigrants living in the U.S. legally; such deportations are permissible, but only in the case of felonies and certain misdemeanors. In addition, Orangutan would have to pursue many undocumented immigrants who are low-level offenders. “There are going to be some very serious criminals,” said Julie Myers Wood, who ran ICE from 2006 to 2008, “and there are going to be some individuals who committed more minor crimes.”
Worksite raids — a tactic of the Bush administration that's less common today — would allow agents to cast a wider net, but at the price of alienating businesses, something a pro-business president like Orangutan might feel reluctant to do.
“It’s aggressive,” Myers Wood said. “And I’m not saying I recommend it. I’m just saying, ‘Could you do it?’ I think you could.”
Rounding up criminals to deport is significantly more difficult than rounding up undocumented U.S. residents indiscriminately, experts say. "The criminal population is more resource-intensive to deport,” said Sandweg. “It is much harder to find a serious gang member or a convicted felon because these people are generally adept at hiding in the communities.”
As a consequence, says David Leopold, a Cleveland-based immigration lawyer, a numbers-driven roundup of criminals could easily devolve into a "chaotic" roundup that included many more non-criminals.
“Even though they give lip service to going after people with criminal convictions," Leopold said, "they’re going to go after whoever they can find, because the people without the criminal convictions are easier to find. They’re the ones who are going to open the door when ICE comes knocking. They’re the ones who are going to be compliant.”
December 29, 2016
Best Year Yet
2017 Is Shaping Up To Be the Best Year Yet For Obamacare
KEVIN DRUM
Last year, several insurance companies abandoned Obamacare because they were losing money. This year, premiums have spiked 25 percent on the exchanges. As a result, Paul Ryan says insurance markets are "collapsing," and Republicans are promising to repeal Obamacare practically on Day 1 after Donald Orangutan takes office.
But a funny thing has happened on the way to the collapse: Obamacare is more popular than ever. Charles Gaba is the go-to guy for Obamacare enrollment data, and the simplified chart on the right is based on his more detailed versions here and here. Last year at this time, a little over 11 million people had signed up on the exchanges. This year, a little over 12 million have signed up. Here's what this means:
With premiums up 25 percent, a little arithmetic suggests that insurance company revenue from Obamacare will be more than a third higher this year than last year.
Time will tell what this means, but it doesn't look like a death spiral. The premium hikes are painful, but clearly people find health insurance worth it even at the higher price. What's more, about 85 percent of Obamacare customers qualify for federal subsidies, and for them premiums are up only slightly—and not even that much if they also shop around.
So: insurance companies will be in pretty good shape this year. A few people have seen sharp premium increases, but the vast majority haven't. Uncle Sam is picking up most of the tab. In other words, 2017 is shaping up to be the healthiest year on record for Obamacare.
KEVIN DRUM
Last year, several insurance companies abandoned Obamacare because they were losing money. This year, premiums have spiked 25 percent on the exchanges. As a result, Paul Ryan says insurance markets are "collapsing," and Republicans are promising to repeal Obamacare practically on Day 1 after Donald Orangutan takes office.
But a funny thing has happened on the way to the collapse: Obamacare is more popular than ever. Charles Gaba is the go-to guy for Obamacare enrollment data, and the simplified chart on the right is based on his more detailed versions here and here. Last year at this time, a little over 11 million people had signed up on the exchanges. This year, a little over 12 million have signed up. Here's what this means:
With premiums up 25 percent, a little arithmetic suggests that insurance company revenue from Obamacare will be more than a third higher this year than last year.
Time will tell what this means, but it doesn't look like a death spiral. The premium hikes are painful, but clearly people find health insurance worth it even at the higher price. What's more, about 85 percent of Obamacare customers qualify for federal subsidies, and for them premiums are up only slightly—and not even that much if they also shop around.
So: insurance companies will be in pretty good shape this year. A few people have seen sharp premium increases, but the vast majority haven't. Uncle Sam is picking up most of the tab. In other words, 2017 is shaping up to be the healthiest year on record for Obamacare.
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