Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news.

TRUMP-RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

“I did not collude with Russia, nor do I know of anyone else on the campaign who did so.” White House senior adviser Jared Kushner spoke to reporters outside the White House following his closed-door interview with the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, with his private meeting with the House Intelligence Committee due to take place today.…   continue »

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THE TRUMP-RUSSIA CONNECTION

The list of attendees at a Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaigners and Russians grows, Trump and Putin meet a second time, and Mueller’s investigation expands to finances as Trump expresses his discontent.…   continue »

[Update] On Thursday, news outlets reported that President Donald Trump has been consulting with his lawyers about granting pardons in the Russia investigation, including a potential self-pardon. Those bombshell reports came after one of Trump’s personal lawyers, Jay Sekulow, refused to rule out the possibility that the president would pardon his associates, or even himself, in the Russia investigation.…   continue »

Russia’s election interference began well before the general election. It started during the GOP primaries and clearly in support of Donald Trump over his GOP opponents. Thanks to investigative reporting by the New York Times, we now know, at the very least, the Trump campaign was open to support from the Russian government by early June 2016 when senior campaign members met with Russians purporting to have information from the Kremlin that would harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, discussed timing for implementing Russian support, and failed to report any of this to U.S.…   continue »

The Trump campaign in 2016 was signaling to Russia that it would be happy to have the Putin regime’s help.  President Trump, as a candidate, famously called for Russia’s assistance. Later, when pressed, he repeatedly refused to clearly acknowledge its interference or condemn it.…   continue »

In June 2017, Foreign Affairs published a piece entitled “Will Economic Globalization End? Foreign Affairs Asks the Experts.” In it, the editors explained that they had decided to ask a “broad pool of experts” for their take and so, as with previous surveys, they approached “dozens of authorities,” some with deep specialized expertise relevant to the question at hand, together with a few leading generalists in the field.…   continue »

An important foreign military partner in our armed conflict against al-Qaida in Yemen—the United Arab Emirates—has faced a series of allegations that it is engaged in systematic torture of detainees in different parts of that country. The US government and individual US officials may be implicated in these abuses under domestic and international law, as Steve Vladeck explained in an analysis for Just Security.…   continue »

Remember that giant pile of manila folders?

They were stacked high at Donald Trump’s press conference on Jan. 11. While no one was allowed to take a closer look at them, the unlabeled folders were said to contain the documents that Trump had signed in order to hand over control of his business to his two sons, Don Jr.…   continue »

House investigators have scheduled an interview with the Trump campaign digital director to question him about any campaign coordination with Russian-financed Internet advertising. Amid all the intense attention to obstruction of justice issues, this is a timely reminder of the central question of Trump campaign collusion with Russian interference in the election.…   continue »

The Moscow International Business Centre, also known as Moskva-City.

James Comey’s testimony has established that either President Donald Trump or the former FBI Director is lying, given the clear discrepancies in their versions of the conversations that transpired during their meetings together.…   continue »