U.S. judge allows Hawaii to challenge Trump's new travel ban

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By Mica Rosenberg and Dan Levine

The state of Hawaii can sue over President Donald Trump's new executive order temporarily banning the entry of refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.

U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii said the state could revise its initial lawsuit, which had challenged Trump's original ban signed in January. The state is claiming the revised ban signed by the president on Monday violates the U.S. Constitution. It is the first legal challenge to the revised order.

The state of Hawaii will ask the court on Wednesday to put an emergency halt to Trump's new order, according to a court schedule signed by the judge. A hearing is set for March 15, a day before the new ban is to go into effect.

The government has said the president has wide authority to implement immigration policy and that the travel rules are necessary to protect against terrorist attacks.

Some legal experts have said court challenges will be more difficult now because changes to the order give exemptions to more people.

The revised travel order changed and replaced an original, more sweeping ban issued on Jan. 27 that caused chaos and protests at airports and was challenged in more than two dozen lawsuits around the country. A federal judge in Seattle put the first order on hold, in a decision upheld by an appeals court in San Francisco.

The new order is much more narrowly tailored. It keeps a 90-day ban on travel to the United States by citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, but excludes Iraq and applies the restriction only to new visa applicants. It also removed an indefinite ban on all refugees from Syria.

The order no longer covers legal residents or existing visa holders, and makes waivers possible for some business, diplomatic and other travelers.

Immigration advocates have said the new ban, like the original one, discriminates against Muslims.

But the first hurdle in a lawsuit is proving "standing" to sue, which means finding someone who has been harmed by the policy. With so many exemptions, legal experts have said it might be hard to find individuals that a court would rule have a right to sue.

STATE CLAIMS HARM

Hawaii claims its state universities would be harmed by the order because they would have trouble recruiting students and faculty. It also says the island state's economy would be hit by a decline in tourism. The court papers cite reports that travel to the United States "took a nosedive" after Trump's actions.

The state was joined by a new plaintiff named Ismail Elshikh, an American citizen from Egypt who is an Imam at the Muslim Association of Hawaii whose mother-in-law lives in Syria, according to the lawsuit.

"This second Executive Order is infected with the same legal problems as the first Order," the state said in court papers filed on Tuesday. The President's order "is subjecting a portion of Hawaii's population, including Dr. Elshikh, his family, and members of his Mosque, to discrimination and second-class treatment," Hawaii said.

The lawsuit says that Elshikh fears his mother-in-law will not be able to enter the country under the new order. "The family is devastated," the filing said.

One of the groups eligible for waivers under the new ban are those seeking to visit or live with a close relative and who would face hardship if denied entry.

Adam Lauridsen, a San Francisco attorney representing students challenging Trump's first order, said the waiver provisions in the new ban are similar to case-by-case exemptions allowed in the first ban. Earlier legal challenges were allowed to move forward despite those waivers, he said.

In support of its actions, the Trump administration has cited a section of law that says the president can suspend entry to the United States by "any class" of foreigners if he finds it would be "detrimental to the interests" of the country.

FCC Chair on Trump’s War on the Press: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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By KLINT FINLEY.

MEDIA OUTLETS CRITICAL of President Trump are used to being called “fake news.” But they have good reason to worry that the president will go beyond name-calling. He could try to use his power to retaliate against media companies that criticize him and reward those that praise him.

And, at least by the lights of a Senate hearing today, the officials tasked with protecting Americans’ access to the airwaves and the internet don’t seem eager to stand in his way.

During a two-and-a-half-hour meeting of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, senators grilled Federal Communications Commission members on net neutrality, privacy, and affordable internet access. But the most contentious moments came when the questions turned to media ownership.

“Do you agree with President Trump that the media is the enemy of the American people?” senator Tom Udall (D-NM) asked FCC chair Ajit Pai, referring to Trump’s tweet declaring the media just that.

“I don’t want to wade into the larger political debates,” Pai responded. Pressed for an answer, he said, “I believe that every American enjoys the First Amendment protections guaranteed by the constitution.”

Later, Catherine Marie Cortez Masto (D-NV) pushed Pai for an answer. “It seems to me that if you’re an outspoken defender of the free press that should be a pretty easy question for you,” she said.

Pai punted again, saying that though he supports free speech but didn’t want to wade into the political debate.

Pai’s equivocations matter, because the FCC plays a pivotal role in determining what Americans see and hear. Regulators could try to block AT&T’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner, the parent company of frequent Trump punching bag CNN. Or they could loosen media ownership rules so that Sinclair Broadcasting–one of the Trump campaign’s preferred broadcasters–could acquire the Tribune Media Group, which Sinclair has reportedlyapproached about a merger. The White House could even try to pressure the FCC to selectively enforce its rules to hurt or favor certain companies—say, crack down on Comcast when MSNBC comes down on the president.

Pai said that the FCC probably won’t handle the AT&T/Time Warner merger because he doesn’t expect any FCC licenses to be transferred in the deal. But the agency still holds tremendous influence over many media companies. Pai gave a lawyerly response when asked if he would resist any attempt by the White House to use the FCC to intimidate news organizations.

“For any matter that is placed before me I will take a sober look at the facts that are based on the papers submitted by interested parties,” he said. “And I will render a decision based on the law and precedence that relate to those facts and make a determination based on what I and my colleagues believe is in the public interest.”

That answer may be technically correct, but morally it’s lacking. Pai doesn’t outright reject the idea of abuses of power, so long as those abuses of power fall in line with the law and his own interpretation of public interest. Upholding the law and the constitution should be table stakes for a federal appointee. Public servants should not have to think twice about standing up in defense of constitutional rights.

• AUTHOR: KLINT FINLEYKLINT FINLEY

Officials Knew of CIA's Security Breach, Which Led to "Vault 7" Leaks, in 2016

WikiLeaks revelations show bright side to government surveillance: they can't hack into encrypted messaging apps

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by

Nadia Prupis

Intelligence officials told Reuters on Wednesday that they were aware as early as 2016 that the CIA had a security breach that led to the watchdog group WikiLeaks exposing the agency's surveillance tools.

The anonymous officials also said the documents, released in perhaps WikiLeaks' biggest exposé yet, appeared to be authentic.

Reuters reports:

Investigators were focusing on CIA contractors as the likely source of passing materials to WikiLeaks, the officials said. The group published what it said were nearly 8,000 of pages of internal CIA discussions about hacking techniques used between 2013 and 2016.

The leak, dubbed "Vault 7," appears to reveal that the CIA is capable of exploiting weaknesses in people's smart devices—from their phones to their TVs—to listen in on them. Apple on Tuesday vowed to "rapidly address" any security holes used by the agency.

As the fallout from the revelations continues, journalist Trevor Timm pointed to the silver lining on Wednesday, writing in an op-ed for the Guardian that the leaks show encrypted-messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp withstood the CIA's hacking efforts.

Timm writes:

[What the] documents do purport to show is that the CIA has a host of exploits to attack the operating systems of popular mobile devices like iPhones and Androids—a deeply worrying prospect, to be sure—but to "defeat" secure messaging apps, government hackers essentially have to gain access to your phone itself before they can read your messages.

So if you're using an app like Signal, the content of those communications are at least still likely protected from their vast surveillance nets that otherwise indiscriminately capture billions text messages and emails per day.

"With countless users switching over to end-to-end communications in recent years, it means intelligence agencies like the CIA must target individuals one by one, which, in turn, means the cost for each surveillance target goes up, and forces them to prioritize a much smaller number of people," he writes.

Moreover, these leaks may help fuel more public debate over the surveillance powers of our government, Timm adds, "whether the Trump administration likes it or not."

"But in the mean time," he writes, "download Signal."

Oh, that traitorous WikiTrump

Nothing so trivial as the technical proof we’re all being spied upon can be allowed to threaten or add nuance to established narrative

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By PEPE ESCOBAR

The massive WikiLeaks Vault 7 release is an extremely important public service. It’s hard to find anyone not concerned by a secret CIA hacking program targeting virtually the whole planet – using malware capable of bypassing encryption protection on any device from iOS to Android, and from Windows to Samsung TVs.

In a series of tweets, Edward Snowden confirmed the CIA program and said code names in the documents are real; that they could only be known by a “cleared insider;” the FBI and CIA knew all about the digital loopholes, but kept them open to spy; and that the leaks provided the “first public evidence” that the US government secretly paid to keep US software unsafe.

If that’s not serious enough, WikiLeaks alleges that “the CIA has lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal;” several hundred million lines of code — more than what is used to run Facebook.

Someone among the former US government hackers and contractors ended up leaking portions of the CIA archive (Snowden II?). WikiLeaks also stressed how the CIA had created, in effect, its “own NSA” – maximum unaccountability included.

Even though millions already knew – without the technical details – that they were being spied upon by their iPhone or their 4K Samsung, the Vault 7 revelations are far more relevant – and practical – to the average citizen than the 24/7 hysteria fingering President Trump as a Putin puppet. Intel sources are volunteering the – still unexplored – Vault 7 treasure trove is more crucial than what Snowden himself revealed.

And still, vast corporate media sectors embedded with the neocon/neoliberal galaxy are spinning that Vault 7 benefits Trump by changing the subject from alleged Russian hacking interference in the US elections and possible Obama administration-ordered hacks of Team Trump’s communications.

So, if anyone hasn’t got the message, the song remains the same.
WikiLeaks + Snowden + Russia + Trump = the bad guys. CIA deploying its own NSA around the world = the good guys. After all, CIA spokesman Jonathan Liu duly issued a non-denial denial.
Loony mainstream factions are even advancing that “the Russians” leaked the CIA info to WikiLeaks, thus fueling more suspicion that Russia will interfere in upcoming French and German elections.

May I have an Orwellian iPhone, please?

As we’re mired deep in an Orwellian total screen environment, already conceptualized by Baudrillard in the go-go 1980s, nothing so trivial as the technical proof we’re all being spied upon could alter the (im)balance. The US is already ravaged by a vicious sociopolitical war – and no “threat” to established narratives allows for nuance.

The implication is that, as it stands, there won’t be a US-Russia reset anytime soon – despite hosting invitations from Iceland, Finland or Slovenia; the neocon/neoliberal galaxy nestled in powerful deep state factions will do their best to deny it.

It hardly matters that Trump absolutely does not want war: his entire domestic US economy remix could not possibly allow it. The Pentagon now is essentially an extended special ops unit: it cannot possibly fight a land war (Iran? North Korea? Ukraine?)

Russia, on the other hand, would be ready for war if needs be. The S-500 missile defense system is being deployed: some analysts (not the Ministry of Defense) are sure it’s already protecting the whole Russian landmass. China, by 2021, will have more than 1,000 very mobile warheads, or hidden in those submarines lounging in Hainan. By that time, both Iran and Pakistan will be deep into a strategic defense network with Russia-China, via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, shielded with their own S-400 and S-500 systems.

Putin is not playing chess. He’s playing Go — and if we look at the board, reality is indeed painful.

Moscow is all but deciding the practical future of Syria, in Astana. Russia virtually wrote the Minsk II agreements, routinely broken by Kiev. Crimea as part of Russia is a fait accompli. Novorossiya for all practical purposes is already a totally autonomous region, with the economy working in rubles. Erdogan owes his imminent regime change in reverse – a presidential sultanate? – to Putin, as Russia warned him about the military coup hours in advance, according to several Russian media sources. Moscow protected Iran’s energy industry during the hardcore OPEC negotiations. Putin all but designed the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Beijing has managed to convince Moscow that One Belt, One Road and the Eurasia Economic Union should be connected, merged and tackled as a win-win Eurasia integration process. If Russia eventually loses economic preeminence across the Central Asian “stans,” it maintains its paramount military/security status.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov never ceases to stress that “our relations with China are at their best level ever in our two countries’ history.”

Add to it a geo-economic gambit; hints of key factions of European business elites getting ready to hitch themselves to China’s growing – slowly but surely – monetary/financial clout, linked to Beijing’s imperative of preventing a collapse of global supply chains. Xi Jinping’s “inclusive globalization,” announced in Davos, sounds more and more like a reality in the making.

In contrast to reality, where China-Russia expand their strategies without exceptionalist illusions, 24/7 neocon/neoliberal hysteria offers a constant barrage of childish, pathetic eruptions. As the self-delusion school of foreign policy refuses to admit Moscow will not sell out China and Iran for a deal with Washington, the last refuge of the scoundrels is cognitive dissonance; fear of Russia incited to cold war 2.0 heights.

So, relax, global citizen; the CIA is benign and benevolent, even when they’re watching you. You have nothing to fear but fear itself – and its name is Russia.

China grants preliminary approval to 38 new Trump trademarks

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By ERIKA KINETZ

SHANGHAI (AP) — China has granted preliminary approval for 38 new Trump trademarks, a move that offers a potential business foothold for President Donald Trump's family company and protects his name in a country notorious for counterfeiters.

The trademarks cover everything from hotels and golf clubs to bodyguard and concierge services, public documents show.

Trump's lawyers in China applied for the marks in April 2016, as Trump railed against China at campaign rallies, accusing it of currency manipulation and stealing U.S. jobs. Critics maintain that Trump's swelling portfolio of China trademarks raises the possibility of conflicts of interest.

China's Trademark Office published the provisional approvals on Feb. 27 and Monday .

If no one objects, they will be formally registered after 90 days. All but three are in the president's own name. China already registered one trademark to the president, for Trump-branded construction services on Feb. 14, the result of a 10-year legal battle that turned in Trump's favor after he declared his candidacy.

Ethics lawyers across the political spectrum say that if Trump receives any special treatment in securing trademark rights, it would violate the U.S. Constitution, which bans public servants from accepting anything of value from foreign governments unless approved by Congress. Concerns about potential conflicts of interest are particularly sharp in China, where the courts and bureaucracy are designed to reflect the will of the ruling Communist Party.

Trump Organization chief legal officer Alan Garten said the company has been enforcing its intellectual property rights for more than a decade in China and began registering trademarks relating to its core real estate brand years before Trump announced his presidential run.

"The latest registrations are a natural result of those longstanding, diligent efforts and any suggestion to the contrary demonstrates a complete disregard of the facts as well as a lack of understanding of international trademark law," he said in an email.

China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce, which oversees the Trademark Office, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Dan Plane, a director at Simone IP Services, a Hong Kong intellectual property consultancy, said he had never seen so many applications approved so expeditiously.

Plane said he would be "very, very surprised" if officials from the ruling Communist Party were not monitoring Trump's intellectual property interests. "This is just way over your average trademark examiner's pay grade," he said.

The marks include branded spa and massage services, golf clubs, hotels, insurance, finance and real estate companies, restaurants, bars, and a trademark class that covers bodyguards, social escorts, and concierge services.

It's not clear whether any Trump-branded businesses will materialize in China. Garten did not elaborate on how the trademarks would be used, but said the company did not apply for a trademark for social escort services.

Garten said in an email to the AP that part of the application included concierge and security related services associated with the operation of a hotel or restaurant, but not "escort services," a legal trademark classification.

Those hotel-related services fall into the same trademark class as escort services, which were included in the Chinese government's preliminary approval of the mark. The filing lists "escort service," ''body guard," and "social escort," among others.

Many companies register trademarks in China only to prevent others from using their name inappropriately.

Janet Satterthwaite, a global trademark attorney and partner at Potomac Law Group in Washington, says nothing about Trump seeking and receiving trademarks in China raises any immediate red flags.

"Especially in China, you absolutely need to register defensively so that people do not exploit your name for commercial gain," she said. She that that while the marks are moving faster than in her own experience, "it does not look like China did anything extraordinary here."

Spring Chang, a founding partner at Chang Tsi & Partners, a Beijing law firm that has represented the Trump Organization, declined to comment specifically on Trump's trademarks. But she said she advises clients to take out marks defensively, even in categories or subcategories of goods and services they may not aim to develop.

"I don't see any special treatment to the cases of my clients so far," she added. "I think they're very fair and the examination standard is very equal for every applicant."

But ethics experts — and Democrats — say a government's discretion to approve trademarks could turn into an opportunity to exercise leverage over the U.S. president.

Richard Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, said the volume of new approvals raised red flags.

"A routine trademark, patent or copyright from a foreign government is likely not an unconstitutional emolument, but with so many trademarks being granted over such a short time period, the question arises as to whether there is an accommodation in at least some of them," he said.

Painter and Norman Eisen, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer for President Barack Obama, are involved in a lawsuit alleging that Trump's foreign business ties violate the U.S. Constitution. Trump has dismissed the lawsuit as "totally without merit."

Three of the new China trademarks are for Scion, a hotel brand Trump's sons are looking to expand in the U.S. Unlike almost all of Trump's China trademarks, they are registered in the name of a Delaware company called DTTM Operations LLC, rather than Donald J. Trump himself. The Trump Organization has transferred ownership of dozens of trademarks from the president to DTTM Operations LLC since its incorporation in January 2016.

Trump has said he assigned all his business interests to a trust overseen by one of his sons, Donald Trump Jr., and a longtime Trump Organization executive, Allen Weisselberg. However, Trump retains the ability to revoke the trust at any time and as the sole beneficiary stands to benefit financially from it.

Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland said the Chinese trademarks stand as a prime example of how Trump's refusal to divest from his businesses as previous presidents have done raises ethical questions.

"They're trying to curry favor with the president," he said.

6 Reasons Why Trump Is Too Weak to Save American Jobs

Rexnord of Indiana is moving to Mexico and firing all of its 300 workers.

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By Les Leopold

Donald J. Trump believes he can bully and bribe companies into keeping jobs in America. Shortly after his election, he "persuaded" Carrier, an Indianapolis division of United Technologies, to refrain from exporting 700 jobs to Mexico. Meanwhile, Rexnord, a maker of bearings and ball bearings also in Indianapolis, announced its decision to move 300 jobs to Monterrey, Mexico. Trump, of course, expected that after a tweet or two, Rexnord, a tiny company, would quickly capitulate. Not happening. 

The most powerful man in the world is getting a rude awakening about corporate power. Rexnord is thumbing its nose at the president by actually moving every one of those jobs...and the bully-in-chief can't stop them. Why is that?

1. Trump is trumped by financial strip-mining.

Rexnord is moving for obvious reasons: The new Mexican workers will make $3 an hour while the Indianapolis workers make $25 an hour. But the real motivation for moving stems from Wall Street's favorite pastime—stripping a company of its wealth through stock buybacks.

To please demanding financiers, Rexnord, in 2015, agreed to buy back $300 million of its own stock. By going into the market to buy its own shares, the price of the stock rises, thereby enriching these hedge fund investors virtually overnight. (Nineteen hedge funds hold about $200 million in Rexnord stock.) The stocks rise because 1) the act of buying large amounts of them in the open market bids up their price; and 2) the company's total earnings are now spread over fewer shares.

The move to Mexico isn't just about profits; it's about financing the stock buybacks. 

2. Trump's deregulation agenda empowers the financial strip-miners.

From the New Deal until 1982, stock buybacks were virtually outlawed. They were considered a dangerous form of stock manipulation—a leading cause of the 1929 Wall Street crash.

During the Reagan administration, stock buybacks were legalized and financial strip-mining took off with a vengeance. Trump's deregulatory mantra means stock buybacks will continue unabated as will the pressure to move jobs to low-wage areas.

3. Trump ignores (or is clueless) about the massive extent of financial strip-mining.

In 1980, a mere 2 percent of corporate profits went to stock buybacks. By the crash of 2007-'08, more than 75 percent of ALL corporate profits went to buy back the companies' own shares. Our entire economy is being financially strip-mined by such stock manipulation. (Unfortunately, Trump does not have the attention span to read William Lazonick's excellent analysis, "Profits Without Prosperity.")

4. Trump doesn't dare challenge how CEOs are paid.

Not only do hedge funds profit from financial strip-mining, they are aided and abetted by corporate executives who often derive more than 90 percent of their pay from stock incentives. As a result, CEOs run their companies with only one goal in mind—raise the price of the stock.

With those incentives in place, Rexnord executives could care less about Trump's tweets. They are moving to Mexico to fund the stock buybacks that enrich the value of their own stock incentives.

5. Trump's administration is loaded with Goldman Sachs strip-miners.

Trump's economic advisors, nearly all produced by Wall Street, could care less about Rexnord moving to Mexico. After all, they grew fabulously rich by financing such moves, pressing companies for stock buybacks and profiting from trade deals. Rexnord knows that Trump's economic team has no interest at all in limiting the stock buyback scam. 

6. Trump can bully immigrants but not Wall Street.

It is frightening to see Trump unleash ICE on powerless immigrants, but bend over backward to placate financial elites. A bully attacks the weak and cowers before the powerful.

To repeat, stock buybacks are how Wall Street makes money in a hurry—money that is squeezed out of the workforce by shifting jobs to lower-wage areas. Wall Street will not tolerate any interference in the way it strip-mines companies. And Trump knows it.

Working people will soon know it as well. The Rexnord workers once believed Trump would come to their rescue, especially after he supposedly saved 700 jobs at Carrier just up the road. He didn't and they no longer do.

Millions more voted for Trump because they believed he would save their jobs from a similar fate. But as financial strip-mining continues unabated, these workers will learn that President Trump is not president of Wall Street. Their jobs will be sacrificed on the altar of stock buybacks. You can't tweet away financial strip-mining.

Neither Donald Trump, nor even Bernie Sanders, can stop financial strip-mining on their own. It's a powerful process that has been in motion for nearly 40 years. To reverse the runaway inequality it creates will require nothing short of a dedicated mass movement, the likes of which we haven't seen for more than a generation.

As historian Michael Merrill points out, there have been four great struggles in American history:

1. The struggle against royal power which was replaced by the power of a new constitutional democracy.
2. The battle against slave power which through a civil war was replaced by power of free labor.
3. The battle against corporate power which was tamed by government regulation and union/worker power on the job.
4. The fourth great battle is happening right now: It's the battle against financial power, with the outcome very much in doubt.

These previous victories, always partial with battles still ongoing, were not the result of spontaneous uprisings. They required vision, leadership, education, organization, and mass involvement. Each required a sustained effort over many decades.

Today we need to relearn the art of building mass movements like those created by the abolitionists, the Populists, the labor movement, and the civil rights movement.

To make any progress at all against financial power, we must come out of our issue silos and join together in a common movement. We need to recognize that the financial strip-mining of our society negatively impacts nearly every issue we care about. We need to recognize that the battle against financial power and the runaway inequality it creates, links us together.

Is such a mass effort emerging right now as tens of thousands of people take to the streets and come together in town hall meetings all over the country? Perhaps. But only if these disparate resistance efforts coalesce into a powerful unified movement to take back our country from the power of finance. We have no choice but to try.

Authorities looked into Manafort protégé

An associate of an ex-Trump campaign chairman is suspected of connections to Russian intelligence.

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By KENNETH P. VOGEL and DAVID STERN

U.S. and Ukrainian authorities have expressed interest in the activities of a Kiev-based operative with suspected ties to Russian intelligence who consulted regularly with Paul Manafort last year while Manafort was running Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

 The operative, Konstantin Kilimnik, came under scrutiny from officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Department partly because of at least two trips he took to the U.S. during the presidential campaign, according to three international political operatives familiar with the agencies’ interest in Kilimnik.

Kilimnik, a joint Russian-Ukrainian citizen who trained in the Russian army as a linguist, told operatives in Kiev and Washington that he met with Manafort during an April trip to the United States. And, after a late summer trip to the U.S., Kilimnik suggested that he had played a role in gutting a proposed amendment to the Republican Party platform that would have staked out a more adversarial stance towards Russia, according to a Kiev operative.

The FBI declined to comment on Kilimnik, while the State Department did not respond to a request for comment. It’s unclear if either agency launched any kind of official inquiry into Kilimnik, nor is it clear whether the interest from the U.S. authorities is ongoing.

The Ukrainian prosecutor general in August did launch a formal investigation into Kilimnik’s suspected ties to Russian intelligence, according to documents obtained by POLITICO. The prosecutor’s office subsequently told POLITICO that it has cleared Kilimnik, though the Ukrainian parliamentarian who requested the investigation questioned its thoroughness and suggested the agency was trying to avoid an investigation that could have had implications in the U.S. presidential race.

The revelations about the authorities' interest in Kilimnik come amid ongoing FBI and congressional investigations into Russia’s alleged meddling in the presidential race, as well as probes into ties between Russia and President Trump’s associates.

Trump, who has downplayed U.S. intelligence findings that Russia, in an effort to help his campaign, engineered cyberhacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, has blasted the investigations as a witch hunt. And on Saturday, Trump accused former President Barack Obama without evidence of ordering the tapping of the phones at Trump’s New York campaign headquarters.

Manafort summarily rejected questions about whether Kilimnik might be in league with Russian intelligence, declaring Kilimnik “pro-Ukraine,” and casting the inquiries into his associate as politically motivated “smears.”

Kilimnik declined to answer questions about any interest by authorities into his activities. Instead, he attributed scrutiny of him to “a heated political environment [that has] led to exaggerated and out of context reporting in the hope of establishing connections that, to the best of my knowledge, have not yet been proven.”

He added that “Ukraine and Ukrainians are being used as scapegoats in the U.S. political and media battles” — a dynamic that he said has been made “abundantly evident from how my own circumstantial relationships were misrepresented, exaggerated and overblown.”

The White House declined to respond to questions about Manafort’s relationship with Kilimnik, or whether there were any inquiries into it by U.S. authorities.

 But two international political consultants who work in Kiev said that U.S. authorities became increasingly interested in Kilimnik after he made a trip to the U.S. in April 2016. Several people said Kilimnik told them that he met with Manafort during that trip, which came as Manafort was guiding Trump’s campaign through the bitter Republican presidential primaries, and trying to distance himself from his work in Ukraine.

Kilimnik’s relationship with Manafort traces back to 2005. That’s when Manafort hired Kilimnik to work for him in Ukraine after Kilimnik was forced out of a position he held for about a decade in Moscow with the U.S.-based International Republican Institute amid suspicion over his ties to Russia.

Manafort and Kilimnik were part of a group that formed a private equity fund that used millions of dollars contributed by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to purchase a Ukrainian cable and internet company. And they did work on behalf of the businesses owned by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.. 

Their work in Ukraine became political when Akhmetov began funding the political comeback of the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. With Manafort’s help, Yanukovych was elected prime minister in 2006 and president in 2010 as the leader of the Russia-aligned Party of Regions. Multiple sources said the party paid millions of dollars a year to Manafort’s firm, for which Kilimnik eventually came to run the Kiev office.

 Manafort stressed that his work in Ukraine was intended to steer Yanukovych towards more pro-Western policies and more engagement with the European Union policies. And Kilimnik told POLITICO that “one thing that was grossly underreported to date is the effort that Paul Manafort undertook to help Ukrainian leaders defend Ukraine’s interests and move the country towards [a European Union] Free Trade Agreement.”

Yet Yanukovych in 2013 backed away from a commitment to that agreement, and fled Ukraine for Russia under the protection of Russian President Vladimir Putin amid widespread protests over government corruption.

 Manafort and Kilimnik started working for a Russia-aligned party that arose from the ashes of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, operatives close to Kilimnik and Manafort told POLITICO. The new party, Opposition Bloc, stopped paying Manafort’s company, and the effort to collect unpaid invoices was part of the reason Manafort and Kilimnik remained in contact during the presidential race, the operatives said.

But Kilimnik last month also told RadioFreeEurope that “every couple months” during the campaign he “was briefing [Manafort] on Ukraine,” though he subsequently clarified his comments, adding that he wasn’t formally advising Manafort.

 Manafort told POLITICO that he called Kilimnik to discuss what he called the “the smear campaign against me coming out of Ukraine” — a reference to the publication by Ukrainian investigators and the media of ledgers appearing to show $12.7 million in cash earmarked for him by the Party of Regions. (Manafort has said he never received the cash and has questioned the authenticity of the ledgers, as have some Ukrainian officials).

During their conversations last year, Manafort said he and Kilimnik also discussed an array of subjects related to the presidential campaign, including the hacking of the DNC’s emails, though Manafort stressed that at the time of the conversations, neither he nor other Trump campaign officials knew that Russia was involved in the hacking.

 When Kilimnik traveled to the U.S. in late summer, he drew the attention of U.S. authorities, according to a Washington consultant with ties to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

And when Kilimnik returned to Ukraine after that trip, he suggested to Kiev political operatives that he played a role in a move by Trump’s representatives to dilute a proposed amendment to the GOP platform calling for the U.S. to provide “lethal defensive weapons” for Ukraine to defend itself against Russian incursion.

 “He led me to believe that he was involved in the platform fight, but not necessarily through Paul,” said a Kiev-based operative who travels in the same circles as Kilimnik. The operative added that Kilimnik could have been “just bullshitting like political consultants do.”

A Trump campaign adviser familiar with the platform debate said he was not aware of Kilimnik playing any role in the proceedings and, in fact, hadn’t even met Kilimnik.

In Kiev, Kilimnik continued representing Opposition Bloc in meetings with international diplomats, according to several people in the international business and diplomat communities in Ukraine’s capital. Kilimnik is regarded there and in some U.S. foreign policy circles as a trustworthy liaison to the party and to an influential oligarch who is helping to fund it. 

 Several people who’ve worked with Kilimnik told POLITICO he was not particularly ideological and never betrayed either a strong bias towards or against the Kremlin as it grew increasingly hostile towards Ukraine under Putin.

But after a POLITICO expose in August revealed Kilimnik’s suspected ties to Russian intelligence, and other media followed the story, Volodymyr Ariev, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, formally requested that the country’s prosecutor general investigate Kilimnik.

 “This person, from his biographical details, could be connected to Russian special services, and could possess valuable information about the criminal activities of … former members of the Party of Regions and the government at the time of Yanukovych, who are being investigated by the general prosecutor,” Ariev wrote in a letter to the general prosecutor.

The prosecutor’s office, which is obligated to investigate any inquiry from a member of parliament, for years has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation into government spending under Yanukovych. And, even before Ariev’s letter, it had questioned at least one person about the work of Kilimnik, Manafort and their associates on behalf of Yanukovych, according to a political operative in Kiev briefed on the inquiry.

 Ariev’s letter was dated August 19 — a day after POLITICO’s expose, and the same day as a Financial Times follow-up that Ariev cited in his letter. Later that same day, the general prosecutor’s office responded with a letter of its own, writing Ariev that his requested inquiry related to Kilimnik and Manafort’s company, Davis Manafort International LLC, “has been considered.”

The letter indicated that the Kilimnik matter “has been combined” with the “criminal proceeding” into government spending under Yanukovych. But the press office for the prosecutor on Tuesday told POLITICO that “Kilimnik is not being processed now as a witness, suspect or accused.”

Ariev told POLITICO “This is one of the shortest answers I've received from the general prosecutor's office. I think the reason is that the government did not want to be involved in the U.S. elections.”

Nonetheless, the mounting scrutiny of Manafort’s work in Ukraine, and alleged cash payments from the Party of Regions, forced him to resign from the Trump campaign the same day that the prosecutor general’s office responded to Ariev.