Trump Tried To Reverse Russian Sanctions, Stopped By Former Obama Officials
Donald Trump Secretly Tried To Reverse Russian Sanctions As Soon As He Took Office.
At the beginning of his presidency, Donald Trump attempted to reverse U.S. sanctions against Russia but was ultimately stopped by former Obama administration officials.
According to a bombshell new report by Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News, though it was unknown to the public at the time, “top Trump administration officials, almost as soon as they took office” began the process of reversing sanctions.
The Trump White House “tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow.”
State Department officials were so alarmed by Trump’s actions that they began an intense lobbying effort of Congressional leaders asking them to pass legislation to block the Trump administration from easing sanctions.
“Please, my God, can’t you stop this?”
Isikoff reports that at least two former Obama-era State Department officials Dan Fried and Tom Malinowski fielded panicked calls from their former coworkers still at the State Department imploring them to help do something to stop Trump from easing sanctions against Russia. Malinowski and Fried both contacted congressional leaders lobbying them to block Trump from reversing the sanctions without congressional approval.
The effort to lobby congressional leaders began to gain traction. As Isikoff notes, “On Feb. 7, Cardin and Sen. Lindsay Graham introduced bipartisan legislation to bar the administration from granting sanctions relief without first submitting a proposal to do so for congressional review.”
Senator Graham released a statement at the time saying, “Russia has done nothing to be rewarded with sanctions relief.”
“We would lose all credibility in the eyes of our allies in Europe and around the world,” added Cardin in his own statement.
Isikoff also reports that “the proposed bill lost some of its urgency six days later when Flynn resigned as White House national security adviser following disclosures he had discussed political sanctions relief with Kislyak during the transition and misrepresented those talks to Vice President Mike Pence. After that, ‘it didn’t take too long for it to become clear that if they lifted sanctions, there would be a political firestorm,’ Malinowski said.”
Here is a key segment from the Yahoo News report:
“There was serious consideration by the White House to unilaterally rescind the sanctions,” said Dan Fried, a veteran State Department official who served as chief U.S. coordinator for sanctions policy until he retired in late February. He said in the first few weeks of the administration, he received several “panicky” calls from U.S. government officials who told him they had been directed to develop a sanctions-lifting package and imploring him, “Please, my God, can’t you stop this?”
Fried said he grew so concerned that he contacted Capitol Hill allies — including Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., the ranking minority member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — to urge them to move quickly to pass legislation that would “codify” the sanctions in place, making it difficult for President Trump to remove them.
Tom Malinowski, who had just stepped down as President Obama’s assistant secretary of state for human rights, told Yahoo News he too joined the effort to lobby Congress after learning from former colleagues that the administration was developing a plan to lift sanctions — and possibly arrange a summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — as part of an effort to achieve a “grand bargain” with Moscow. “It would have been a win-win for Moscow,” said Malinowski, who only days before he left office announced his own round of sanctions against senior Russian officials for human rights abuses under a law known as the Magnitsky Act.
You can read the full Yahoo News report here.
