WASHINGTON - The US Congress is poised to approve tough new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea this week after reaching a compromise deal, which the White House indicated Sunday it could support.
In mid-June, the Senate overwhelmingly passed tough sanctions on Moscow and Tehran, but the text stalled in the House of Representatives, until agreement was reached on Saturday.
The House is now set to vote Tuesday on a bill that targets Russia - for its alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election and its annexation of Crimea - as well as Iran and North Korea, for its recent ballistic missile tests.
Initially, Trump resisted the legislation, which would prevent him from unilaterally easing penalties against Moscow in the future - effectively placing him under Congress’s watch. But faced with near-total consensus among Republican and Democratic lawmakers, the White House blinked.
“We support where the legislation is now, and will continue to work with the House and Senate to put those tough sanctions in place on Russia until the situation in Ukraine is fully resolved,” new White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told ABC’s “This Week” news programme.
“The original piece of legislation was poorly written,” she added.
Her boss, communications director Anthony Scaramucci, said it was still up to Trump whether or not to sign the measure into law. “My guess is that he’s going to make that decision shortly,” Scaramucci told CNN, introducing a bit more doubt as to Trump’s intentions.
Even if Trump were to oppose the measure, Congress could overturn it with a two-thirds majority of both houses. “If he vetoes the bill, we will override his veto,” Democratic Senator Ben Cardin told Fox News Sunday.
Once the House approves the compromise bill, the Senate will vote again, likely before the summer recess begins in August.
In Europe, the unilateral move by the US Congress does not sit well. A spokeswoman for the European Commission said the draft legislation appeared to be “driven primarily by domestic considerations.”
“Sanctions are at their most effective when they are coordinated. Currently our sanctions regimes are coordinated,” she added, expressing concern that any new US measures could have “unintended consequences.”
House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy alluded to those concerns, saying the text, which has not yet been made public, would “help bolster the energy security of our European allies by maintaining their access to key energy resources outside of Russia.”
WHITE HOUSE ON EDGE AS MUELLER QUIETLY PURSUES RUSSIA PROBE
For two months, Robert Mueller - the lanky, 72-year-old independent prosecutor investigating the Russia scandal - has worked in virtual silence in a nondescript government office building in downtown Washington. But even without saying a word, the former FBI director and no-nonsense prosecutor has deeply unnerved the occupants of the White House just eight blocks away, especially President Trump, over where his probe is going.
Mueller has built a team of more than a dozen tough-as-nails investigators, including one expert in flipping mafia witnesses, a money laundering specialist who chased down a corrupt billionaire, and one of the country’s most experienced Supreme Court litigators.
Since May, they have been quietly interviewing witnesses and collecting documents to establish whether there are links between top aides from Trump’s campaign, members of his family, and possibly the president himself and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
After dismissing the probe for months as “ridiculous” and “fake news,” Trump laid bare his concerns this week, lashing out at the Justice Department, from his hand-picked Attorney General Jeff Sessions on down the line, over the probe.
He took special aim at Mueller, making clear he intends to try to undercut and discredit the man who could bring down his presidency - and possibly eventually remove him.
In an interview with The New York Times, Trump complained that one day after he interviewed Mueller to replace fired FBI chief James Comey, Mueller instead went and took the job of investigating the Russia scandal.
“The next day, he is appointed special counsel. I said, what the hell is this all about? Talk about conflicts?” Trump said. “I have done nothing wrong. A special counsel should never have been appointed in this case.”
Any prosecutor taking on the presidency has to shoulder an immense amount of political pressure, said Randall Samborn, an attorney who took part in a probe that targeted political heavyweight vice president Dick Cheney in the 2000s.
But if anyone should be able to handle that, Samborn said, it would be Mueller.
Mueller, a former Marine wounded in fighting in Vietnam, is also a veteran of tough prosecutions, including taking on former Panama president Manuel Noriega and mafia don John Gotti.
He took the helm of the FBI one week before the September 11, 2001 attacks. In the following years, he turned it into a potent counter-terrorism agency.
And in a now-legendary defence of rule of law, he and Comey faced down president George W. Bush in 2004 over a secret, illegal domestic surveillance programme.
Risking being fired, they forced Bush to adjust his plans.
It’s the kind of fortitude that has garnered Mueller praise from both Democrats and Republicans for years. “I don’t think there’s a legitimate concern about Bob Mueller,” said Ken Starr, whose 1990s investigation of Bill Clinton very nearly forced him from the White House.
“Mueller is a pillar of Washington’s legal and political communities, which heavily overlap,” said former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy in the conservative National Review.
Since May, Mueller’s team of hard-nosed and deeply experienced federal prosecutors, FBI investigators, spy-chasers and money-path followers have been talking to witnesses and amassing files, the only hints of their work coming from requests they send to their targets.
The investigation appears to have spread beyond the issue of collusion with Russia.
According to reports, Mueller is looking into Trump’s past real estate business and his tax returns, possible money laundering by campaign aides, perjury and obstruction of justice, and other possible crimes.
The investigation - as well as parallel probes by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees — have extended beyond campaign aides to Trump’s inner circle, including son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Clearly off balance, the White House has recruited its own brigade of attorneys with expertise in constitutional law, criminal defense, and cold-blooded media counter-attack.
They have accused Mueller’s team of being biased toward Trump’s election opponent Hillary Clinton, and have assailed the breadth of the investigation.
Media reports say Trump’s legal team has studied the possibility of him issuing pardons to protect those in Mueller’s crosshairs.
In a Saturday morning tweet, Trump boasted of a US president’s “complete power to pardon.” Analysts say Team Trump is laying the groundwork for removing Mueller.
AFP