The Trump log

The Senate intelligence committee is sending formal requests to more than a dozen organisations, agencies and individuals asking them to preserve all materials related to a probe the panel is conducting on Russian hacking in the 2016 election and related issues. Committee members received a classified briefing from FBI Director James Comey. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is pursuing at least three separate probes relating to alleged Russian hacking of the US presidential elections. The FBI’s Pittsburgh field office is trying to identify the people behind breaches of the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems. The bureau’s San Francisco office is trying to identify the people who called themselves “Guccifer 2” and posted emails stolen from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s account. FBI counterintelligence agents based in Washington are pursuing leads from informants and foreign communications intercepts. This counterintelligence inquiry includes but is not limited to examination of financial transactions by Russian individuals and companies who are believed to have links to Trump associates. The transactions under scrutiny involve investments by Russians in overseas entities that appear to have been undertaken through middlemen and front companies. Vice-President Mike Pence yesterday sought to reassure Europeans of Washington’s robust commitment to transatlantic defense, even as Europe searched for clarity in the contradictory statements coming from the new US Administration. Pence told a sceptical audience at the Munich Security Conference that Europeans should rest assured that Washington’s fundamental foreign policy direction was not changing. “Today, tomorrow and every day hence, be confident that the United States is now and will always be your greatest ally,” Pence said in his speech, which was met with only a smattering of applause. “Be assured: President Trump and the American people are fully devoted to our transatlantic union.” The lack of mention of the European Union, whose unravelling Donald Trump has praised, unsettled European leaders. Trump plans to speak today with at least four candidates to be his next national security adviser. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that the candidates include John Bolton, a former United Nations ambassador; Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster; Lieutenant General Robert Caslen, the superintendent of the US Military Academy at West Point; and retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who is now serving in an acting capacity. Spicer added that former CIA director David Petraeus is out of the running. Trump’s first choice of a replacement — retired Navy Vice Admiral Robert Harward — turned him down. The red carpet was laid out for Trump’s sons, Eric and Don jnr, at a plush event that brought out Dubai’s business elite and government officials to toast the launch of the Trump International Golf Club. It was the first opening of a Trump-branded property since the President’s inauguration, illuminating how much his business interests are thriving despite concerns over potential conflicts of interests that could open the presidency up to foreign influence. While he has given control of his global empire to his children, Trump has not divested his ownership, which means he will benefit from any commercial success of the golf resort.