Retired Vice Adm. Bob Harward and retired Gen. David Petraeus have dropped out of consideration
President Donald Trump won’t guarantee that his next national security adviser will have full control over staffing and process, a move that is shortening the list of people willing to take the job at a tumultuous moment for the new administration, people familiar with the matter said.
.. Retired Vice Adm. Bob Harward and retired Gen. David Petraeus have dropped out of consideration for the critical post
.. Both candidates have cited concerns about staffing and independence, the people said.
.. “It is dumb to demand Flynn’s people go. Why are you creating embarrassment?” said the official. “If you make that a precondition, you are not a loyal soldier and you don’t deserve the job.”
.. Mr. Petraeus, the former Central Intelligence Agency director and a retired four-star general, said on Friday that anyone considering the job should have control over personnel and gain a commitment from the White House to have a disciplined process for crafting security policy.
.. The White House was miffed by Mr. Petraeus’s demands to take control of policy. Administration officials want someone who is going to coordinate and limit conflicts with the agencies on the council, not try to take policy-making away from them or the president, said the officials briefed on the search.
.. An official briefed on the search said Mr. Petraeus is no longer being considered because the White House thought his demands were unreasonable.
Janet Yellen’s Uneasy New Role: Defending the Fed From Historic Political Pressure
Over two days, the Fed chairwoman spoke with five Republicans, some of whom she had never met privately since taking over at the central bank, according to her public calendar. She stuck to a script she had delivered many times, said a person familiar with the calls: The bill could allow politicians to interfere with Fed policy; academic studies show countries with independent central banks have lower inflation; the Fed is already audited.
Ms. Yellen didn’t persuade them. Though the Senate voted not to move forward with the bill—a relief for the Fed—only one of the chamber’s 54 Republicans voted in the Fed’s favor...The person leading the institution isn’t a politician—she’s a macroeconomist who spent most of her career at the Fed and in academia. Yet the task ahead of her, now that Donald Trump is president, might require a different set of skills. The new president thrust Ms. Yellen and the Fed onto the national political stage by criticizing them sharply during the campaign, and his election raised expectations that GOP bills to rein in the central bank could become law.The president has also said he would probably find a replacement when Ms. Yellen’s term is up in February 2018, which means he would likely nominate a successor by late summer, rendering her a lame duck...Ideas include requiring the Fed to establish a mathematical formula to guide interest-rate policy, limiting its emergency-lending powers and forcing the central bank to return billions of dollars banks paid to be members of the Fed system. The phenomenon is apparent outside the U.S., too, with central banks from Japan to the U.K. grappling with skepticism of their efforts to boost their economies...The financial crisis, however, battered the Fed’s credibility. Many lawmakers and some economists want more information about how the central bank operates and what it may do in the future...Though Mr. Trump hasn’t said whether he would support the measures, his campaign remarks—such as accusing Ms. Yellen of keeping rates low to help Democrats—suggest he has no qualms about criticizing Fed policy or its leadership, a departure from the recent tradition of presidents staying mum on such issues... Former Chairman Alan Greenspan, who scheduled his own breakfasts with members of Congress, had extensive relationships in Washington when he became chairman and often operated as a one-man congressional-relations shop.His successor, Ben Bernanke came from academia, but developed a rapport with members on both sides of the aisle during the crisis. Those relationships later helped him beat back legislative efforts to strip the Fed of its powers to supervise banks... She has met two dozen times with members of Congress since November 2015, either hosting them for breakfast or lunch in a private dining room at the Fed or shuttling to meetings on Capitol Hill, in addition to logging more than a dozen phone calls...More typical is what happened when Congress considered tapping the Fed to help pay for federal highway programs. Ms. Yellen warned it could set a dangerous precedent. Congress took even more money from the Fed than initially proposed, including $19.3 billion from its capital account.
Trump’s Talk About Muslims Led Acting Attorney General to Defy Ban
As Republicans seethed over President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration in early 2015, Senator Jeff Sessions sharply questioned Sally Q. Yates about whether she had the independent streak needed to be the Justice Department’s second in command.
.. “If the views the president wants to execute are unlawful, should the attorney general or the deputy attorney general say no?” Mr. Sessions asked during a confirmation hearing for Ms. Yates.
.. President Trump’s own words convinced her that his executive order on immigration was intended to single out Muslims, senior officials said. Hours after she refused to defend that order, Mr. Trump fired her.
.. The Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department had reviewed the order and signed off on its legality. But Ms. Yates and her staff lawyers believed that the department had to consider the intent of the order, which she said appeared intended to single out people based on religion.
“We have comments from the president about what this is supposed to do,” Ms Yates said in one meeting on Monday, according to two people involved in the discussions. She later added, “The intent was clear from the face of it.”
.. Mr. Trump had campaigned on a promise to single out Muslims for immigration restrictions. One of his advisers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, said in an interview that Mr. Trump wanted a Muslim ban but needed “the right way to do it legally.” Mr. Trump said in a later interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network that Christian refugees would be given priority for entry visas to the United States.
.. Ms. Yates considered resigning, the officials said, but concluded that doing so would leave the decision to whomever succeeded her, even if in a temporary capacity.
.. Mr. Sessions, an immigration hard-liner, argued that the Justice Department should have refused to support Mr. Obama’s executive action liberalizing immigration policy.
Ms. Yates promised that she would stand up to the president, if necessary.
.. Last year, Ms. Yates and Ms. Lynch earned the ire of Democrats — including many in the department — for not intervening and prohibiting the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, from sending a letter to Congress in the final days of the presidential campaign.
Justice Dept. Strongly Discouraged Comey on Move in Clinton Email Case
“There’s a longstanding policy of not doing anything that could influence an election,” said George J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general under President George Bush. “Those guidelines exist for a reason. Sometimes, that makes for hard decisions. But bypassing them has consequences.”
He added, “There’s a difference between being independent and flying solo.”
.. After hearing the Justice Department’s concerns, Mr. Comey concluded that the ramifications of not telling Congress promptly about the new emails far outweighed concerns about the department guidelines, one senior law enforcement official said.
Under Justice Department policy, restated each election cycle, politics should play no role in any investigative decisions. In Democratic and Republican administrations, Justice Department officials have interpreted that policy broadly, to cover any steps that might give even an impression of partisanship.