Washington, Apr 22 (AP/UNB) — The Trump administration on Monday told five nations — Japan, South Korea, Turkey, China and India — that they will no longer be exempt from U.S. sanctions if they continue to import oil from Iran.

President Donald Trump has decided not to reissue the waivers when they expire on May 2, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said. The Trump administration, which has engaged in maximum pressure campaign against Tehran, had been giving nations time to wean themselves off of Iranian oil, but has decided that waivers will no longer be issued.

"The goal remains simply: To deprive the outlaw regime of the funds that it has used to destabilize the Middle East for decades and incentivize Iran to behave like a normal country," Pompeo said, adding that before sanctions went into effect, Iran was generating more than $50 billion a year.

"Our goal has been to get countries to cease importing Iranian oil entirely," he said.

He said the U.S. had granted extra time to countries to find other supplies. "We will no longer be granting any exemptions," he said.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, applauded the end of oil waivers for Iran.

"This decision will deprive the ayatollahs of billions of dollars that they would have spent undermining the security of the United States and our allies, building up Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs and financing global terrorism," he said.

The administration had granted eight oil sanctions waivers when it re-imposed sanctions on Iran after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. They were granted in part to give those countries more time to find alternate energy sources but also to prevent a shock to global oil markets from the sudden removal of Iranian crude.

U.S. officials now say they do not expect any significant reduction in the supply of oil given production increases by other countries, including the U.S. itself and Saudi Arabia.

Since November, three of the eight — Italy, Greece and Taiwan — have stopped importing oil from Iran. The other five, however, have not, and have lobbied for their waivers to be extended.

NATO ally Turkey has made perhaps the most public case for an extension, with senior officials telling their U.S. counterparts that Iranian oil is critical to meeting their country's energy needs. They have also made the case that as a neighbor of Iran, Turkey cannot be expected to completely close its economy to Iranian goods.

Washington, Apr 22 (AP/UNB) — The Trump administration is poised to tell five nations, including allies Japan, South Korea and Turkey, that they will no longer be exempt from U.S. sanctions if they continue to import oil from Iran, officials said Sunday.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to announce on Monday that the administration will not renew sanctions waivers for the five countries when they expire on May 2, three U.S. officials said. The others are China and India.

It was not immediately clear if any of the five would be given additional time to wind down their purchases or if they would be subject to U.S. sanctions on May 3 if they do not immediately halt imports of Iranian oil.

The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of Pompeo's announcement.

The decision not to extend the waivers, which was first reported by The Washington Post, was finalized on Friday by President Donald Trump, according to the officials. They said it is intended to further ramp up pressure on Iran by strangling the revenue it gets from oil exports.

The administration granted eight oil sanctions waivers when it re-imposed sanctions on Iran after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. They were granted in part to give those countries more time to find alternate energy sources but also to prevent a shock to global oil markets from the sudden removal of Iranian crude.

U.S. officials now say they do not expect any significant reduction in the supply of oil given production increases by other countries, including the U.S. itself and Saudi Arabia.

Since November, three of the eight — Italy, Greece and Taiwan — have stopped importing oil from Iran. The other five, however, have not, and have lobbied for their waivers to be extended.

NATO ally Turkey has made perhaps the most public case for an extension, with senior officials telling their U.S. counterparts that Iranian oil is critical to meeting their country's energy needs. They have also made the case that as a neighbor of Iran, Turkey cannot be expected to completely close its economy to Iranian goods.

 

New York, Apr 20 (AP/UNB) — President Donald Trump and his team love to deride unfavorable stories as "fake news," but it's clear from Robert Mueller's report that the special counsel isn't buying it.

While there are a few exceptions, Mueller's investigation repeatedly supports news reporting that was done on the Russia probe over the last two years and details several instances where the president and his team sought to mislead the public.

"The media looks a lot stronger today than it did before the release of this report," Kyle Pope, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, said Friday.

Trump's supporters believe that Mueller's determination that there was not enough evidence to show that the president or his team worked with the Russians to influence the 2016 election delegitimizes the attention given to the story.

Fox News Channel's Laura Ingraham message to the news media: "You owe us an apology."

But the news stories were, for the great part, accurate.

For instance, Mueller's report shows The New York Times and The Washington Post were correct when they reported in January 2018 that Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to make sure Mueller was fired, and that McGahn decided to resign rather than carry that out. When the Times first reported the story, Trump described it as "fake news, folks, fake news."

The Mueller report also showed that Trump directed a series of aides to ask McGahn to publicly deny the story, and ultimately asked himself, too. McGahn refused, saying the story was accurate, the report found.

In a July 2017 story, the Times reported that the president personally wrote a statement in which he falsely said that an election year meeting between some Russians and his son, Donald Jr., was about the adoption of Russian children, rather than about obtaining potentially damaging information on Hillary Clinton's campaign. Trump's counsel repeatedly responded that the president had no role in writing the statement, yet months later testified under oath to investigators that Trump had dictated it.

Mueller's report also backed up the newspaper's stories, which the administration denied at the time, that Trump demanded loyalty from then-FBI Director James Comey at a private dinner, and that Trump had asked Comey to end an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

"The Mueller report confirmed again and again that stories in The New York Times for the past two years were the opposite of 'fake news,'" said Elisabeth Bumiller, the paper's Washington bureau chief. "They were meticulously reported, carefully sourced and accurate stories that told readers what was really going on at the White House."

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported before Trump's inauguration that Flynn had talked to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions placed on Russia by the outgoing Obama administration. Mueller said that Trump put out word that he wanted Flynn to kill the story, and that Flynn ordered aide K.T. McFarland to deny it to the Post, "although she knew she was providing false information."

Others in the administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, also denied it. Flynn resigned when the truth became evident.

Trump repeatedly said during the 2016 campaign that he had no business dealings in Russia when, even as he uttered the words, his company was seeking to build a Trump Towers office building in Moscow. When Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, privately pointed out that the denial was untrue, the future president said "why mention it if it is not a deal?" the report said.

Mueller also determined that a statement by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders that Comey had been unpopular with rank-and-file members of his agency "was not founded on anything." Sanders said on ABC Friday that her statement was "a slip of the tongue."

Mueller, however, did shoot down a BuzzFeed News report that Trump had directed Cohen to lie to Congress about the timing of the Moscow project. Mueller said that while it appeared Trump knew Cohen was lying to Congress, "the evidence available to us does not establish that the president directed or aided Cohen's false testimony."

BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Ben Smith said the organization's sources, who were federal law enforcement officials, "interpreted the evidence Cohen presented as meaning that the president 'directed' Cohen to lie. We now know that Mueller did not."

Smith said BuzzFeed will continue to pursue the story through Freedom of Information requests and in court.

Mueller also contradicted a McClatchy news service story alleging that Cohen had traveled to Prague, in the Czech Republic, in summer 2016 to meet with Russians involved in the effort to influence the election. Mueller's report said that Cohen had not gone to Prague.

McClatchy attached an editor's note to its story reporting Mueller's conclusion but adding that his report "is silent on whether the investigators received evidence that Mr. Cohen's phone pinged in an area near Prague, as McClatchy reported."

CJR's Pope said so many of the stories surrounding Trump had been made foggy by denials and "fake news" claims over the past two years. He said he was surprised so much of Mueller's report backed up journalists, although it's too soon to tell whether the findings will influence two very divided political camps.

"I think it casts the coverage of him in a much different light," he said.

New York, Apr 19 (AP/UNB) — The National Enquirer is being sold to the former head of the airport newsstand company Hudson News following a rocky year in which the tabloid was accused of burying stories that could have hurt Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

Tabloid owner American Media said Thursday it plans to sell the supermarket weekly to James Cohen. Financial terms were not immediately disclosed for the deal, which included two other American Media tabloids, the Globe and the National Examiner.

American Media said last week that it wanted to get out of the tabloid business to focus on its other operations that include its teen brand and broadcast platforms.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan agreed last year not to prosecute American Media in exchange for the company's cooperation in a campaign finance investigation. That probe eventually led to a three-year prison term for Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen for campaign violations among other charges.

American Media admitted it had paid $150,000 to keep former Playboy model Karen McDougal quiet about an alleged affair with Trump to help his campaign. Trump has denied an affair.

The sale would end a longtime relationship between the National Enquirer and Trump. Under the aegis of American Media CEO David Pecker, the tabloid has for years buried potentially embarrassing stories about Trump and other favored celebrities by buying the rights to them and never publishing in a practice called "catch-and-kill."

The Associated Press reported last year that Pecker kept a safe in the Enquirer's office that held documents on buried stories, including those involving Trump.

Whether James Cohen has any allegiances to Trump is not clear. While he was a registered Republican as late as 2017, according to Nexis records, he has given to both Republicans and Democrats. That included $17,300 in 2016 to an arm of the Democratic National Committee and $2,500 to the Republican National Committee in 2012.

News of the sale comes two months after Amazon chief Jeff Bezos publicly accused the National Enquirer of trying to blackmail him by threatening to publish explicit photos of him.

An American Media attorney denied the charge, but it threatened potentially big legal costs by upending American Media's non-prosecution agreement in the hush money case. The AP reported that federal prosecutors were looking into whether the publisher violated terms of the deal, which included a promise not to break any laws in the future.

The Bezos accusation comes at a difficult time for American Media. It has financed several recent acquisitions with borrowed money and has been struggling under a heavy debt load. American Media said the Cohen deal would help reduce the amount it needs to pay back, leaving it with $355 million in debt.

The Washington Post, which earlier reported the sale, said Cohen will pay $100 million in the deal.

Cohen's family had run a magazine and newspaper distributor for decades before his father branched into newsstand stores in 1980s, starting with a single one at LaGuardia Airport. Before he died in 2012, the father had opened more than 600 stores.

After the death, James Cohen's niece alleged her uncle had cheated her out of her inheritance. She lost the case.

The family sold a majority stake in the chain about a decade ago. The business is now owned by Dufry, an operator of duty-free stores in which James Cohen is a major shareholder.

Cohen still owns a magazine and newspaper distributor called Hudson News Distributors. In addition, he runs a real estate developer and a publishing company, which owns Gallerie, an art and design magazine.

Cohen has reportedly been involved in American Media deals before. The New York Times reports that, in 2011, Cohen invested in the company's American edition of OK!, a British tabloid.

Washington, Apr 19 (AP/UNB) — Public at last, special counsel Robert Mueller's report revealed to a waiting nation Thursday that President Donald Trump tried to seize control of the Russia probe and force Mueller's removal to stop him from investigating potential obstruction of justice by the president. Trump was largely thwarted by those around him who refused to go along.

Mueller laid out multiple episodes in which Trump directed others to influence or curtail the Russia investigation after the special counsel's appointment in May 2017. Those efforts "were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests," Mueller wrote.

After nearly two years, the two-volume, 448-page redacted report made for riveting reading.

In one particularly dramatic moment, Mueller reported that Trump was so agitated at the special counsel's appointment on May 17, 2017, that he slumped back in his chair and declared: "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I'm f---ed."

With that, Trump set out to save himself.

In June of that year, Mueller wrote, Trump directed White House Counsel Don McGahn to call Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the probe, and say that Mueller must be ousted because he had conflicts of interest. McGahn refused — deciding he would sooner resign than trigger a potential crisis akin to the Saturday Night Massacre of firings during the Watergate era.

Two days later, the president made another attempt to alter the course of the investigation, meeting with former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and dictating a message for him to relay to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The message: Sessions would publicly call the investigation "very unfair" to the president, declare Trump did nothing wrong and say Mueller should limit his probe to "investigating election meddling for future elections." The message was never delivered.

The report's bottom line largely tracked the findings revealed in Attorney General William Barr's four-page memo released a month ago — no collusion with Russia but no clear verdict on obstruction — but it added new layers of detail about Trump's efforts to thwart the investigation. Looking ahead, both sides were already using the findings to amplify well-rehearsed arguments about Trump's conduct, Republicans casting him as a victim of harassment and Democrats depicting the president as stepping far over the line to derail the investigation.

The Justice Department released its redacted version of the report about 90 minutes after Barr offered his own final assessment of the findings at a testy news conference. The nation, Congress and Trump's White House consumed it voraciously — online, via a compact disc delivered to legislators and in loose-leaf binders distributed to reporters.

The release represented a moment of closure nearly two years in the making but also the starting bell for a new round of partisan warfare.

A defiant Trump pronounced it "a good day" and tweeted "Game Over" in a typeface mimicking the "Game of Thrones" logo. By late afternoon, he was airborne for his Mar-a-Lago private club in Florida with wife Melania for the holiday weekend.

Top Republicans in Congress saw vindication, too.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said it was time to move on from Democrats' effort to "vilify a political opponent." The California lawmaker said the report failed to deliver the "imaginary evidence" incriminating Trump that Democrats had sought.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said Republicans should turn the tables and "investigate the liars who instigated this sham investigation."

But Democrats cried foul over Barr's preemptive press conference and said the report revealed troubling details about Trump's conduct in the White House.

In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer wrote that "one thing is clear: Attorney General Barr presented a conclusion that the president did not obstruct justice while Mueller's report appears to undercut that finding."

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler added that the report "outlines disturbing evidence that President Trump engaged in obstruction of justice and other misconduct." He sent a letter to the Justice Department requesting that Mueller himself testify before his panel "no later than May 23" and said he'd be issuing a subpoena for the full special counsel report and the underlying materials.

Signaling battles ahead, Nadler earlier called the investigation "incredibly thorough" work that would preserve evidence for future probes.

Barr said he wouldn't object to Mueller testifying.

Trump himself was never questioned in person, but the report's appendix includes 12 pages of his written responses to queries from Mueller's team.

Mueller deemed Trump's written answers — rife with iterations of "I don't recall" — to be "inadequate." He considered issuing a subpoena to force the president to appear in person but decided against it after weighing the likelihood of a long legal battle.

In his written answers, Trump said his comment during a 2016 political rally asking Russian hackers to help find emails scrubbed from Hillary Clinton's private server was made "in jest and sarcastically" and said he did not recall being told during the campaign of any Russian effort to infiltrate or hack computer systems.

But Mueller said that within five hours of Trump's comment, Russian military intelligence officers were targeting email accounts connected to Clinton's office.

Mueller evaluated nearly a dozen episodes for possible obstruction of justice, and said he could not conclusively determine that Trump had committed criminal obstruction. The episodes included Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, the president's directive to subordinates to have Mueller fired and efforts to encourage witnesses not to cooperate.

Sessions was so affected by Trump's frequent criticism of him for recusing himself from the investigation that he kept a resignation letter "with him in his pocket every time he went to the White House," Mueller said.

The president's lawyers have said Trump's conduct fell within his constitutional powers, but Mueller's team deemed the episodes deserving of scrutiny for potential criminal acts.

As for the question of whether the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, Mueller wrote that the campaign "expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts."

But Mueller said investigators concluded, "While the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges."

Workers at a Russian troll farm contacted Trump's campaign, claiming to be political activists for conservative grassroots organizations, and asked for signs and other campaign materials to use at rallies. While volunteers provided some of those materials — and set aside a number of signs — investigators don't believe any Trump campaign officials knew the requests were coming from foreign nationals, Mueller wrote.

Mueller wrote that investigators "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, stressed that Mueller didn't think the president's obligations to run the executive branch entitled him to absolute immunity from prosecution. But to find that the president obstructed justice, he said, Mueller would have needed much clearer evidence that the president acted solely with "corrupt intent."

"The evidence was sort of muddled," Blackman said, adding that the president's actions had multiple motivations.

The report laid out some of Mueller's reasoning for drawing no conclusion on the question of obstruction.

Mueller wrote that he would have exonerated Trump if he could, but he wasn't able to do that given the evidence he uncovered. And he said the Justice Department's standing opinion that a sitting president couldn't be indicted meant he also couldn't recommend Trump be criminally charged, even in secret.

Trump's written responses addressed no questions about obstruction of justice, as was part of an agreement with Trump's legal team.

He told Mueller he had "no recollection" of learning in advance about the much-scrutinized Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and a Russian lawyer. He also said he had no recollection of knowledge about emails setting up the meeting that promised dirt on Clinton's Democratic campaign.

He broadly denied knowing of any foreign government trying to help his campaign, including the Russian government. He said he was aware of some reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made "complimentary statements" about him.

It wasn't just Trump under the microscope. But Mueller wrote that he believed prosecutors would be unlikely to meet the burden of proof to show that Donald Trump Jr. and other participants in the Trump Tower meeting "had general knowledge that their conduct was unlawful." Nor did Mueller's probe develop evidence that they knew that foreign contributions to campaigns were illegal or other particulars of federal law.

Barr's contention that the report contained only "limited redactions" applied more to the obstruction of justice section than its look at Russian election meddling. Overall, about 40 percent of the pages contained at least something that was blocked out, mostly to protect ongoing investigations. Barr had said that he would redact grand jury information and material related to investigations, privacy and intelligence.