Trump officials at odds over bill

Messages differ about sanctions

WASHINGTON — White House officials on Sunday offered conflicting statements on whether President Donald Trump supports new legislation to punish Russia for its meddling in the 2016 presidential election and its aggression toward Ukraine.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said on ABC’s This Week that despite opposing Congress’ initial attempt to impose sanctions on Russia, the White House supports the Russia sanctions bill that congressional leaders announced Saturday.

“The administration is supportive of being tough on Russia, particularly in putting these sanctions in place,” Sanders said. “The original piece of legislation was poorly written, but we were able to work with the House and Senate, and the administration is happy with the ability to do that and make those changes that were necessary, and we support where the legislation is now.”

She continued: “We will continue working with the

House and Senate to put those tough sanctions in place on Russia until the situation in Ukraine is fully resolved.”

But either Sanders got out ahead of Trump or Anthony Scaramucci, the White House’s new communications director, didn’t have the most up-to-date information.

Asked the same question almost simultaneously on CNN’s State of the Union, Scaramucci said he didn’t know how the president felt about the new sanctions bill.

“You’ve got to ask President Trump that,” he said. “It’s my second or third day on the job. My guess is that he’s going to make that decision shortly.”

Contradicting Sanders, who said the White House did support the legislation, Scaramucci added, “He hasn’t made the decision yet to sign that bill one way or the other.”

Sanders, appointed to her post on Friday after the resignation of Sean Spicer, stopped short of confirming that Trump will sign the bill as written, and Scaramucci said on CBS’s Face the Nation that “I don’t know the answer to whether the president will sign it.”

The conflicting views may reflect nothing more than Scaramucci’s still getting up to speed in his new role, as he suggested. Privately, White House officials said they saw no politically viable alternative to the president signing the bill.

In reality, while the changes made the measure somewhat more palatable to the White House, they mainly provided a way to back down from a confrontation it was sure to lose if the sanctions bill reached the floor of the House. The Senate passed the original version of the bill, 972, and Republicans and Democrats expected a similarly overwhelming, veto-proof majority in the House if it came to a vote.

Not only would a veto by Trump have presumably been overridden by Congress, but White House advisers conceded it would have been politically disastrous. While other presidents might also have resisted legislation taking away their power to have the final say on sanctions, for Trump such a stance would be untenable given investigations into whether his team colluded with Russia during the election.

If the president were to veto the bill, “we will override his veto,” Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Fox News Sunday.

On the same show, Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota predicted that “in the end, the administration will come to the conclusion that an overwhelming majority of Congress has” that Russia should face sanctions for meddling in the 2016 election.

The apparent agreement to fix procedural concerns, add sanctions against North Korea, and modify provisions that would restrict the participation of U.S. energy companies in some international projects, clears the way for a House vote next week. The White House had argued earlier that it needs flexibility to adjust economic sanctions against Moscow.

A version of the bill released by House Republican leaders includes changes sought since the Senate passed legislation in June that would prohibit U.S. businesses from working on or supporting energy projects that include any participation by Russian companies, even outside Russia’s borders.

The new version would also set a threshold for Russian involvement, applying that restriction to projects where sanctioned Russian entities have at least a 33 percent interest.

A separate procedural impasse would be resolved by allowing leaders from both the majority and minority parties in the Senate or House to force their respective chamber to consider an objection to White House action on sanctions. The original bill allowed any member of Congress in either chamber to force consideration of sanctions waivers. Senators can still introduce resolutions, with leadership approval.

The revised legislation was “the product of intense negotiations,” Cardin said in an emailed statement on Saturday. With the changes, “a nearly united Congress is poised to send President [Vladimir] Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies, and we need President Trump to help us deliver that message,” he said.

The legislation comes after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia sought to influence the American presidential election last year. Congressional committees and the FBI are examining the Russian interference and whether there was any collusion with Trump’s campaign.

The measure gained urgency as evidence emerged in recent weeks that members of Trump’s family and inner circle were in touch with Russians during last year’s campaign. White House officials were on Capitol Hill earlier this month asking lawmakers to reconsider the Russia provisions that the Senate added to an Iran sanctions bill and passed 98-2.

Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said Trump has been unwilling to respond seriously to Russia’s belligerence, “leaving Congress with the urgent responsibility to hold Vladimir Putin accountable.”

The new version also will include sanctions against North Korea, modeled after language that passed the House 419-1 in May and hasn’t been taken up by the Senate. The bill has been placed on a list of measures to be considered on the House floor Tuesday using a fast-track process passage that requires support of two-thirds of all House members voting. If the House passes the modified sanctions package, the Senate will hold another vote on the legislation that would now punish North Korea, Iran and Russia.

Trump would then be faced with signing legislation that takes away his power to act unilaterally on sanctions. If the president vetoes a law proposed in part to punish Russia for its documented interference in the 2016 U.S. election, he risks the appearance of doing a favor for Moscow.

White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters declined to comment on the sanctions bill.

“North Korea, Iran and Russia have in different ways all threatened their neighbors and actively sought to undermine American interests,” according to a joint statement by California Republicans Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, and Ed Royce of California, the Foreign Affairs Committee chairman. The bill the House will vote, they said, “will now exclusively focus on these nations and hold them accountable for their dangerous actions.”

The No. 2 House Democrat, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said the agreement “will hold Russia and Iran accountable for their destabilizing actions around the world” while making provisions “more workable” and ensuring that both Republicans and Democrats are able to act as a check on administration action on sanctions.

But House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California signaled concern that the changes might delay the legislation. ”While we support the tougher sanctions on North Korea, which the House has already passed, I am concerned that adding them to this bill instead of stand-alone legislation will cause further procedural delays in the Senate,” Pelosi said in an emailed statement.

“It is essential that the addition of North Korea to this package does not prevent Congress from immediately enacting Russia sanctions legislation and sending it to the president’s desk before the August recess,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi’s statement reflected some continued dissatisfaction with negotiations, including the latitude the agreement would give House members to quickly force a vote on an administration’s sanctions action.

The modified version represents a modest victory for oil companies, manufacturers and oilfield service firms that had argued the earlier, Senate-passed bill could jeopardize projects around the globe — even those that weaken Russia’s ability to use its own natural gas as a political weapon. They had warned that under the Senate measure, Russia would be empowered to elbow U.S. companies out of energy projects globally simply by making small investments in them.

The 33 percent threshold that would be established under the compromise legislation likely is high enough to avoid disruptions at the Shah Deniz project in Azerbaijan, a chief alternative to Russia-sourced natural gas for Turkey. That project could have been swept up by the Senate-passed bill because Russia’s Lukoil owns a 10 percent share in an ongoing expansion, even though BP Plc is the lead operator.

If the president were to veto the bill, “we will override his veto,” Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Fox News Sunday.