House to add Russia sanctions with curbs on Trump’s power

Bloomberg

The US House is poised to vote on a bill to strengthen sanctions against Russia and prevent President Donald Trump from unilaterally lifting penalties, after the measure was delayed by procedural concerns and objections from energy companies.
The measure, which was altered to ensure that oil companies can work on certain joint projects overseas, would also impose new sanctions on Iran and North Korea. House leaders expect bipartisan support for the bill in the vote on Tuesday.
The White House has sent mixed messages about whether Trump would sign the legislation and has expressed concern over limiting the president’s power to ease sanctions on his own. Trump supports sanctions against the three countries but wants to make sure the US gets “good deals,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday.

Congressional Rebuke
The measure would then go back to the Senate, where members of both parties have spoken in favour of changes made to the legislation they passed last month, S. 722.
The Russia sanctions measure is a rare rebuke to Trump from congressional Republicans. They say they want to prevent the president from acting on his own to lift punishment from the previous administration for meddling in last year’s US election and for aggression in Ukraine. House and Senate committees and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are examining possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
As a bitter fight over health care consumes much of Washington, the sanctions bill is one of the few major legislative efforts uniting members of the fractured Republican Party, along with their Democratic colleagues.
“A nearly united Congress is poised to send President Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies,” said Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “And we need President Trump to help us deliver that message.”
The original bill from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee included only sanctions on Iran, modeled on previous executive orders, designed to punish entities that support terrorism, sell weapons to Iran, or help that country’s ballistic missile program. The bill would also authorize, but not require, sanctions on human-rights abusers.
The Russia sanctions were added in an amendment on the Senate floor. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, also introduced a provision to reaffirm US commitment to Article 5 of the NATO agreement, which requires members to defend other nations in the alliance.
House leaders flagged procedural concerns with the Senate bill, saying the Constitution requires legislation raising revenue to originate in the lower chamber. In resolving this issue, Republicans also limited the minority party’s power to introduce and fast-track a resolution to question administration action on Russia sanctions.
Meanwhile, energy companies stepped up their lobbying in opposition to a prohibition against working on international projects with even a small Russian stake. That rule was changed to apply only to ventures where sanctioned Russian entities have at least a 33 percent interest, which prevents Russian firms from buying into a fraction of a project to keep American competition away.

Kushner faces hostile questioning
Bloomberg

Democrats are likely to press the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, about his meeting with a Russian banker and his attempt to establish a back-channel with the Russian government during a closed-door interview before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.
It’s Kushner’s second appearance in as many days before congressional committees investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But his House interview has the potential to be quarrelsome, as elected members of the panel plan to ask questions themselves instead of leaving the interrogation to their staffs, as the Senate Intelligence Committee did on Monday.
Illinois Democrat Mike Quigley said he wants to press Kushner about his meeting during the presidential transition with the head of the Russian Vnesheconombank, Sergey Gorkov. The state-owned bank is under US sanctions and is a focus of US intelligence agencies’ scrutiny.
“Why would you meet with the head of the sanctioned Russian bank in the first place?” Quigley said. Kushner additionally has “a lot of explaining to do regarding his alleged conversation also with the Russian ambassador to develop a back-channel ability to communicate with the Kremlin.”