Interview – JAMES CARAFANO – director of Foreign Policy Studies for Heritage Foundation and leading expert in national security – discussed Iran and the Russia probe.
- IRAN: Trump to announce that he’ll ‘decertify’ Iran nuclear deal, kicking issue to Congress. (Washington Post) – President Trump is expected to announce next week that he will “decertify” the international nuclear deal with Iran, saying it is not in the national interest of the United States and kicking the issue to a reluctant Congress, people briefed on the White House strategy said Thursday.
- RUSSIA: “Three investigations is just way too many”: Trump loyalists lose patience with congressional Russia probes. (Politico) — Loyalists of President Donald Trump are losing patience with Republican leaders over the wide-ranging Russia probes creeping into his inner circle, saying House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have allowed the investigations to hobble the White House for months. “Three investigations is just way too many,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.). “Some of them need to step back and wait until we see what evidence is educed.”
- News per CNN: Robert Mueller has interviewed Christopher Steele who put together the Trump dossier. Washington (CNN)Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators met this past summer with the former British spy whose dossier on alleged Russian efforts to aid the Trump campaign spawned months of investigations that have hobbled the Trump administration, according to two people familiar with the matter. Information from Christopher Steele, a former MI-6 officer, could help investigators determine whether contacts between people associated with the Trump campaign and suspected Russian operatives broke any laws. CNN has learned that the FBI and the US intelligence community last year took the Steele dossier more seriously than the agencies have publicly acknowledged. James Clapper, then the director of national intelligence, said in a January 2017 statement that the intelligence community had “not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable.”
