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Trump nominates attorney with Armenian roots to Justice Dept. post

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Armenian roots to Justice

Armenian roots to Justice

US President Donald Trump proposed the candidacy of Patrick Hovakimian to serve as a member of the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, Department of Justice.

The candidacy will be considered by the Senate. If the candidacy is approved, he will become a member of the Commission until September 30, 2020.

Patrick Hovakimian serves as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, where he investigates and prosecutes public corruption and white-collar crime. Previously, he practiced law with the international law firm of Latham & Watkins LLP, and clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. He holds a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School, where he studied as a Truman Scholar and was a member of the Stanford Law Review.

Will Trump Tell the Truth About the Armenian Genocide?

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He recognized the reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Such daring is needed again. Armenian Genocide

By Robert M Morgenthau

As Hitler launched his invasion of Poland in 1939, he instructed his commanders “to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women and children of Polish derivation and language.” He assured his staff the world would raise little objection: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

That was a reference to the systematic destruction of the Armenian population by the Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915. World powers had offered little resistance to the slaughter as it occurred. Later, Turkey’s insistent denials made it the “forgotten genocide.”

Turkey, ostensibly an American ally, still refuses to confront its history. The US government also has failed to give the annihilation of the Armenians its due. American administrations have bowed to Turkish pressure and failed to affirm consistently a simple fact: The slaughter of the Armenians was not a mere misfortune of history but a systematic genocide.

Such reticence wasn’t necessarily surprising, given diplomats’ cautious and equivocating nature. But President Trump, in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, seems to be signaling a new age. In 1995, Congress enacted legislation directing the State Department to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US Embassy there. Candidates Bill Clinton and George W Bush promised to move the embassy, and Barack Obama said in 2008 that “Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel.” Once elected president, all three reneged on their pledges. Now, at last, America’s Jerusalem policy is consistent with its principles and with historical fact.

That makes me optimistic that America may similarly acknowledge the historical truth of the Armenian genocide. The facts are compelling. For millennia, Armenians lived in the shadow of Mount Ararat, in what is now eastern Turkey. For much of its history, this Christian minority lived in peace with its Muslim neighbors. But as the Ottoman Empire began to disintegrate in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Armenians became targets of oppression. As World War I loomed, the Turks saw the opportunity to settle their “Armenian question.”

First they arrested and executed community leaders and intellectuals. Then they drove the remaining civilians out of their homes in long “death marches” to the Syrian desert. As many as 1.5 million Armenians were murdered.

For me, this chronicle is not confined to history books. My paternal grandfather, Henry Morgenthau, was President Wilson’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire as the horror began to unfold. He quickly understood that this was slaughter on a scale the modern world had never seen. He protested to Turkish leaders, who replied that the Armenians were not American citizens and thus none of the ambassador’s concern. Besides, they said, Ambassador Morgenthau was Jewish, and the Armenians were Christian.

The Turks even threatened to pressure Washington to recall him. My grandfather’s reply was eloquent: “I could think of no greater honor than to be recalled because I, a Jew, have done everything in my power to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Christians.”

The Turks refused to relent, and my grandfather turned to his own government. He sent Washington a diplomatic cable reading: “A campaign of race extermination is in progress.” The State Department, then preoccupied with World War I, responded with indifference. Ultimately my grandfather decided to appeal to the world’s conscience through a series of speeches.

Eventually a massive aid campaign helped resettle the scattered survivors. But the genocide had exacted an unfathomable toll on the Armenian people—and on my grandfather’s spirits. He returned to the US determined to spend his days helping the survivors, sometimes appearing at Ellis Island as “Uncle Henry” to sponsor refugees who had no one to meet them. And he did something else. He taught his children and his grandchildren the history he had witnessed. The lesson he drew was clear: When principle succumbs to expediency, the inevitable result is tragedy.

That prophecy was realized when Hitler invaded Poland, emboldened by the world’s amnesia about the Armenians. It is high time for America to emerge from that amnesia.

Every April, the president issues a proclamation recognizing the atrocity that was inflicted on the Armenian people. But bowing to Turkish pressure, that proclamation has never contained the word “genocide.” That must change.

 

I do not underestimate the concerns of those who say the wrath of Turkey may work against US interests—as I do not dismiss those who say moving the embassy to Jerusalem may complicate peace negotiations. But a just and lasting world order cannot be built on falsehoods and equivocations. Let President Trump demonstrate that commitment once more by declaring the truth of the Armenian genocide. This would send clear message to the thugs in power around the world: Your criminal acts will not go unnoticed.

Breaking News: Trump to back pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers

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President Donald Trump said he will support a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, according to a telephone briefing by the White House for Republican congressional staff members.

In exchange for relief for DACA recipients, the White House proposal calls for a $25 billion “trust fund” for a border wall, an end to family reunification, which conservatives call “chain migration,” and an end to the diversity visa lottery. Immigration activists blasted the plan for ending family reunification, and vowed to oppose it in Congress. “We are going to fight this tooth and nail,” said Frank Sharry, founder of America’s Voice, an immigration rights group.

Donald Trump warns Turkey over Syria invasion: White House

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The US president has told his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to rein in the offensive on Syria’s Kurdish enclave of Afrin, the White House says. Concerns the NATO allies may be brought into conflict are rising.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has again been urged to “de-escalate” his military assault on Afrin, a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria.

Following similar calls from other world leaders, US President Donald Trump spoke by phone to his Turkish counterpart on Wednesday, and called on the Ankara government to “limit its military action and avoid civilian casualties,” according to a White House statement.

Anti-American rhetoric

Trump also warned Erdogan about “the destructive and false” anti-American rhetoric which he said was emanating from Turkey, as the two NATO allies find themselves at odds over territory close to the Turkish border which is controlled by the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Washington relies on the YPG, the major force within the alliance of Syrian Democratic Forces, to fight the “Islamic State” (IS) militant group in Syria.

Erdogan meanwhile accuses the YPG of being allied to a three-decade Kurdish insurgency in southern Turkey.

Together with aligned Syrian rebel fighters, Turkey began an air and ground operation in Syria’s Afrin district on Saturday to root out what Ankara says are Kurdish “terrorists” who are threatening security in the country.

The offensive has opened a new front in Syria’s multi-sided, seven-year war and complicated US efforts in Syria.

Amid rising tensions, Trump urged Turkey to “exercise caution and to avoid any actions that might risk conflict between Turkish and American forces.”

Erdogan urged Trump to halt Washington’s weapons support to the Kurdish militia, according to the White House.

Erdogan vows to press on

In separate comments, The Turkish leader wowed to extend the military operation to Manbij, a separate Kurdish-held enclave some 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Afrin, where some US forces are positioned alongside the SDF.

Kurdish leaders meanwhile have demanded that Washington rein in Turkey, and vowed to resist its cross-border operation.

Shervan Derwish, a spokesman for the Manbij Military Council, said his forces are on “full alert” in case Turkey moves on the city.

“We are in constant contact with coalition forces, who are conducting patrols on the front lines and aerial patrols — their troops are still in Manbij,” Derwish told the German news agency dpa by phone.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said in its latest death toll report that some 125 people were killed over the last five days in the Afrin region, among them Turkish-backed Syrian rebels.

Strong resistance

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that the advancing Turkish troops are facing stiff resistance in Afrin, while the SOHR reported Turkish airstrikes had been witnessed in nearly 20 villages.

On Wednesday evening, rockets fired from Syria killed two people and wounded 11 more in the Turkish border province of Kilis.

mm/se (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)

Turkish lobbyist Michael Flynn kept his FBI interview concealed from White House, Trump

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President Donald Trump was unaware that Flynn, then his national security adviser, had spoken with the FBI until two days after the Jan. 24, 2017, interview took place, according to two people familiar with the matter. The first senior official to learn about Flynn’s interview with the FBI was White House counsel Don McGahn, who was told about it by then-acting attorney general Sally Yates.

Two people said Flynn did not include his own personal lawyer, speaking with federal agents alone. “No one knew that any of this was happening,” said another senior White House official. That meeting, a year ago today, would set off an unparalleled sequence of events that has involved the cooperation of many of the president’s top law and intelligence officials — including CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Yates — with the special counsel’s investigation.

Read more on this story at NBCNews.com

Trump has open the gate-of-the-hell on American retires

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By Wally Sarkeesian

Trump has open the gate-of-the-hell on American retires he unleashed the healthcare insurance companies like Kaiser Permanente to quadruple the prices of every medical service from doctor visit to simple CT Scan in 2017 $75.00 now 2018 $215.00 by time Trump 4 year Term finish a good portion of the retires will end up in the street.

Erdoğan slams Israel as a ‘terrorist state’ and “oppressive, occupation state.”

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Dec. 10 described Israel as a “terrorist state.”

Speaking at a ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) congress in the Central Anatolian province of Sivas, Erdoğan blasted the Israeli police’s “disproportionate” force against Palestinian protesters and said Israel is an “oppressive, occupation state.”

His words came after U.S. President Donald Trump on Dec. 6 officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, in a move that reversed decades of U.S. policy of remaining neutral on the holy city.

The decision triggered demonstrations in the Palestinian territories and across the Muslim world.

Two Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip earlier on Dec. 9, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

TRUMP MOVE TO JERUSALEM?

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Trump is poised to make good Wednesday on a 2016 campaign promise that could add fuel to Middle East tensions: Formally declare his belief that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, and order the U.S. Embassy to be moved there from its current location in Tel Aviv.

The embassy change won’t come overnight. “We don’t just put a plaque on the door and open a mission,” said a White House official on Tuesday night.

We’ll have the latest on this on our Essential Washington news feed throughout the day.

Erdogan says Jerusalem ‘red line’, could cut Turkey-Israel ties

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The status of Jerusalem is a “red line” for Turks and could even prompt Turkey to cut ties with Israel, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Tuesday, as US President Donald Trump mulled whether to recognise the city as the Israeli capital.

Erdogan said Turkey, which currently holds the chairmanship of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), would immediately call a summit meeting of the pan-Islamic group if Trump went ahead with the move.

“Mr Trump! Jerusalem is a red line for Muslims,” Erdogan said in a raucous televised speech to his ruling party that was greeted with chants and applause.

Erdogan said that if such a move was made to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he would summon a summit of the OIC in Istanbul within five to 10 days “and we would set the entire Islamic world in motion”.

As for Turkey, Erdogan said Ankara would “follow this struggle to the very last moment with determination and we could even go right up to cutting our diplomatic relations with Israel.”

Last year, Turkey and Israel ended a rift triggered by Israel’s deadly storming in 2010 of a Gaza-bound ship that left 10 Turkish activists dead and led to a downgrading of diplomatic ties.

The two sides have since stepped up cooperation in particular in energy but Erdogan, who regards himself a champion of the Palestinian cause, is still often bitterly critical of Israeli policy.

The United States is a strong supporter of a strong relationship between Turkey, the key Muslim member of NATO, and Israel, which is Washington’s main ally in the Middle East.

Erdogan’s comments came after the White House said Trump would miss a deadline to decide on shifting the embassy from Tel Aviv, after a frantic 48 hours of public warnings from allies and private phonecalls between world leaders.

The Trump administration is welcoming the Turkish prime minister when he deserves a cold shoulder

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Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim arrives in Washington, late Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017.

by Michael Rubin,

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim is in town supposedly to re-set U.S.-Turkish relations, which have fallen to new lows. His efforts, however, are dead on arrival.

First, Yildirim is an irrelevant figure. He is to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan what Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is to Russian leader Vladimir Putin — that is, a hapless figurehead with no real power. In Turkey, Erdogan makes all major decisions and, increasingly, Turkish officials treat Erdogan’s son Bilal and his tax-avoiding, Islamic State-supporting son-in-law Berat Albayrak as de facto prime ministers, bestowing more honor and ceremony upon them than upon Yildirim.

Even if Yildirim was capable and if Turkish bodyguards don’t beat up the attendees at his various events, the problem in bilateral U.S.-Turkish ties would still remain with Erdogan. Consider Erdogan’s anti-American diatribe last week:

It is our right to bust the terrorists wherever they are. Now! Lots of places in Syria and Iraq are safe havens for terrorists. We have to get rid of these terrorist threats for us, not within our country’s borders but out of our borders in their centers. We don’t have to get permission from someone [the U.S.]. If the sovereign country [Iraq] controlling Qandil and Sinjar will not solve the problems in those areas, we will eradicate those places.
In Syria, from our 911 kilometer border between Cizre to Yayladag, wherever there is a terrorist center, it is our natural right to bust them by conducting military operations from air and land.
I have no doubt! I have no doubt! I trust you! I believe in you!
My Brothers! We don’t care which countries are behind these organizations. No legal country will put its military organizations and servicemen together with terrorists. According to us, anybody with terrorists is a terrorist. [Here, Erdogan calls the U.S. a terrorist entity because of its partnership with the Islamic State-fighting Kurdish militias].
My Brothers! We have a proverb; “Without a proper plan everything depends on good luck.”
Our last word to those who thought they have amused us till today by mentioning about alliance, strategic partnership, and alliance relations, is we will eradicate all the terrorist camps in Iraq and Syria. Let the world know. We are resolute about to drain the terror swamps outside of our borders. We could immediately expand our successful operations in Jarabulus, Al-Bab, and Idlib to other areas.
If anyone [the United States] who has something to protect in those areas, should get his precautions from now on. No heart-breakings then! My brothers! I know! There will be objections from some Western countries. They say and do nothing when the members of terrorist organizations conducting meetings and protests where our citizens live. No offense to what we said! Our ancestors had strong personalities.

So, while Yildirim, a powerless figure, dines with Vice President Mike Pence, his boss threatens the U.S. and its soldiers supporting Islamic State mop-up operations in Iraq and Syria. While the U.S. seeks to stabilize and calm the region, Erdogan threatens to launch an invasion of Iraq and Syria which, frankly, the Turkish military may no longer be capable of winning.

Sure, Turkey has grievances — the U.S. refusal to extradite U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen and the ongoing money laundering, sanctions-busting case against Reza Zarrab — but Erdogan’s complaints on both are tenuous.

Erdogan can blame the July 2016 coup attempt on his former collaborator, but he has yet to supply evidence proving Gülen’s personal culpability. Undoubtedly, some members of Gulen’s movement were involved in the coup, but then again, so too were many secular Kemalists who had nothing to do with Gulen, as well as some figures uncomfortably close to Erdogan himself. This is where credible figures such as columnist Sedat Ergin, who reserves all blame on the Gulen movement, go wrong.

As for Zarrab, Erdogan’s concern increasingly seems to be that the case may lift the veil on Erdogan’s personal corruption. As for Turkey’s complaints that the U.S. has partnered with the Syrian Kurds who themselves are an off-shoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, guilty as charged. But it was Turkey’s actions — enabling foreign fighters to enter Syria and supplying and supporting Al Qaeda-affiliates and the Islamic State inside Syria — which necessitated the U.S. partnership with Syrian Kurdish militias in the first place.

The grievances the U.S. has with Turkey are far more substantive. Under Erdogan, Turkey has become a terror sponsor in all but name. Nor should Pence dignify any Turkish official with a meeting so long as Turkey continues to hold Americans hostage.

Indeed, the release of U.S. hostage Andrew Brunson and employees of the U.S. consulate in Istanbul should be pre-requisites to any meeting. That the Trump administration bestows honor on a representative of a regime that holds them makes Trump and Pence no different in their refusal to stand up for America than President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry who, for the sake of convenience, ignored Iran’s holding of U.S. hostage Bob Levinson.

It’s one thing to lament the decline of the U.S.-Turkish partnership; it’s quite another to humor the regime responsible for shattering it and sponsoring terrorism.

Yildirim never should have been invited to Washington. Even if he were sincere, he’s powerless. So long as Erdogan threatens American troops, supports terrorism, holds innocents hostage, and whips up anti-American incitement, Turkey’s leaders deserve nothing but a cold shoulder.

Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.