Committee asks White House for Flynn details
Compiled from news services
WASHINGTON—The Senate Homeland Security Committee has asked the Trump administration to explain how it vetted retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn before offering him the job of national security adviser.
In a letter to Office of Management and Budget chief Michael Mulvaney, members of the committee ask whether Mr. Flynn had been subjected to the kind of polygraph tests that are routine for security clearance applications and whether he had told the White House that he’d received money from Russia’s state-owned RT broadcaster.
To date, the White House has not responded to the request, which was sent to Mr. Mulvaney March 1.
Secret Service budget
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Secret Service requested $60 million in additional funding for the next year, offering the most precise estimate yet of the escalating costs for travel and protection resulting from the unusually complicated lifestyle of the Trump family, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
Nearly half of the additional money, $26.8 million, would pay to protect President Donald Trump’s family and private home in New York’s Trump Tower, while $33 million would be spent on travel costs incurred by “the president, vice president and other visiting heads of state.”
The documents, part of the Secret Service’s request for the fiscal 2018 budget, reflect the costly surprise facing Secret Service agents tasked with guarding the president’s large and far-flung family, accommodating their travel schedules and fortifying the Manhattan penthouse where first lady Melania Trump and her son, Barron, live.
Mr. Trump has spent most of his weekends since inauguration at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and his sons have traveled the world to promote Trump properties with Secret Service agents in tow. The documents did not show how the new budget requests compare to the funding needs for past presidents, and such figures are not public information.
Acosta questioned
WASHINGTON—Labor secretary nominee Alexander Acosta refrained on Wednesday from backing key Obamaera rules that have been in limbo since the election.
Mr. Acosta, 48, would not say during his confirmation hearing whether he supported rules that would expand eligibility for overtime pay or restrict the advice given to retirement savers, citing orders from President Donald Trump to review and scale back regulations.
The nominee also faced questions about some of the most trying moments in his career, including his handling of political hiring that went on under his watch at the Justice Department and a controversial plea deal he cut with wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Pulse survivors sue
ORLANDO — Survivors of the Pulse nightclub attack filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the gunman’s wife as well as his former employer, arguing that the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history could have been prevented had they acted.
The lawsuit argues that despite Omar Mateen’s history of violent threats and comments about terrorism, the 29year-old was still able to carry out the massacre at the Orlando club last year because of negligence on the part of the security firm where he worked and because of assistance from his wife.