Category: Foreign Affairs

MEXICO CITY, Jan 26 — President Donald J. Trump’s decision to build a wall along the southern border escalated into a diplomatic standoff on Thursday, with Mexico’s president publicly canceling a scheduled meeting at the White House and Mr. Trump firing back, accusing Mexico of burdening the United States with illegal immigrants, criminals and a trade deficit.

Mr. Trump’s push to fulfill his campaign pledge and build a border wall brought to a head months of simmering tensions, culminating in a remarkable back-and-forth between the two leaders.

By afternoon, Mr. Trump’s spokesman said the president would pay for the border wall by imposing a 20 percent tax on imports to the United States, which he said would raise billions of dollars.

The sparring began Thursday morning when the president of Mexico announced on Twitter that he was canceling his meeting with Mr. Trump next week, rejecting the visit after the new American leader ordered the border wall between the two nations.

Having called for dialogue in the face of Mr. Trump’s vows to build a wall during the American presidential campaign, President Enrique Peña Nieto ultimately bowed to public pressure in Mexico to respond more forcefully to his northern neighbor.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order to beef up the nation’s deportation force and start construction on a new wall along the border. Adding to the perceived insult was the timing of the order: It came on the first day of talks between top Mexican officials and their counterparts in Washington, and just days before the meeting between the two presidents.

Mr. Trump’s action was enough to prompt Mr. Peña Nieto to start discussing whether to scrap his plans to visit the White House, according to Mexican officials. In a video message delivered over Twitter on Wednesday night, Mr. Peña Nieto reiterated his commitment to protect the interests of Mexico and the Mexican people, and he chided the move in Washington to continue with the wall.

“I regret and condemn the United States’ decision to continue with the construction of a wall that, for years now, far from uniting us, divides us,” he said.

Then on Thursday morning, Mr. Trump fired back, warning that he might cancel the meeting himself if Mexico did not agree to pay for the wall.

Just before Mr. Trump fired off his Twitter post, the Mexican foreign minister and Mr. Trump’s Homeland Security secretary, John F. Kelly, were preparing to see each other for a scheduled 11:30 a.m. meeting.

According to a senior American official, the secretary had been briefed. The appropriate flags had been arranged by the protocol staff at the Department of Homeland Security. Then, just as American officials greeted the minister outside the department’s headquarters in Northwest Washington, the minister received word from Mexico that he was being pulled back, the official said. The meeting never happened.

By early afternoon, Mr. Trump said it was the United States that was being treated unfairly.

“We have agreed to cancel our planned meeting,” Mr. Trump said in a new conference Thursday afternoon. “Unless Mexico is going to treat the U.S. fairly, with respect, such a meeting would be fruitless, and I want to go a different route. We have no choice.”

In Mexico, Mr. Peña Nieto had little political room to maneuver. With Mr. Trump’s order to build the wall, the perceived insults Mexico had endured during the campaign had finally turned into action. Decades of friendly relations between the nations — on matters involving trade, security and migration — seemed to be unraveling.
Calls began to come in from across the political spectrum for Mr. Peña Nieto to cancel his visit, and to respond with greater fortitude to the perceived menace from President Trump. On Twitter, Mr. Trump’s action was referred to by politicians and historians as a “an offense to Mexico,” a “slap in the face” and a “monument to lies.”

Historians said that not since President Calvin Coolidge threatened to invade a “Soviet Mexico” had the United States so deeply antagonized the Mexican populace.

“It is an unprecedented moment for the bilateral relationship,” said Genaro Lozano, a professor at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. “In the 19th century, we fought a war with the U.S.; now we find ourselves in a low-intensity war, a commercial one over Nafta and an immigration war due to the measures he just announced.”

The nation’s stark divide was on full display in Washington Friday as Donald J. Trump became America’s 45th president amid joyous roars of support and eruptions of chaos throughout the city, including the removal of a half-dozen protesters who tried to disrupt the swearing-in ceremony.

Less than two miles from where Trump and former president Obama joined hundreds of other elected officials at the west front of the U.S. Capitol, anarchists armed with crowbars and hammers marched through the city’s streets, toppling over news boxes, smashing bus-stop glass, vandalizing businesses, spray-painting buildings and, in one case, bashing in the windows of a black limousine.

The acts of violence prompted helmeted police to chase the protesters with batons, hose them with pepper spray and apparently toss flash bangs into their ranks. Three D.C. police officers were injured and nearly 100 activists were arrested as the sound of explosions and sirens filled the air – marking the most intense confrontations in a day that began with protesters shutting down at least a few security checkpoints.

The confrontations intensified during the afternoon as protesters hurled objects — including concrete bricks — at police in black riot gear, who fired back with more flash bangs and pepper spray. As helicopters swirled overhead and about two dozen booms echoed through downtown buildings, dozens of demonstrators fled, coughing uncontrollably and pouring milk in their eyes to wash out the stinging liquid. Traffic throughout the area was left gridlocked. An hour later, the abused limousine was set ablaze, spreading dark smoke throughout the area before firefighters extinguished the flames. The sound of more booms and sirens soon followed.

D.C. Interim Police Chief Peter Newsham told CNN that there were “maybe a couple of hundred” protesters involved in the violence, noting that the city was hosting “thousands of others who are peacefully demonstrating.”
Council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large) worried that the violent demonstrations would unfairly reinforce the image of the nation’s capital as a liberal bastion hostile to Trump and his supporters.

“Protesting is, in my opinion, your civil right. But I don’t want you coming in to my town and destroying my property,” Bonds said, suggesting that out-of-towners were at fault. “Go home and do it.”

Trump’s inauguration capped a campaign that galvanized millions of Americans who were eager to embrace a Washington outsider willing to say, or tweet, whatever is on his mind. The 70-year-old real estate mogul — who has never before held elected office — was jubilant Friday morning.

And legions of his supporters were on hand to embrace their new president.

As his parade began around 3:45, thousands of people standing along the route — some who had woken up before dawn to get there — endured an intermittent chilly rain to cheer for and wave banners at the New York real estate mogul.

“The president’s coming,” parade-goers near the start said to each other as they peered down Pennsylvania Avenue. They readied their cell phone cameras, fidgeting and arching their necks as the bass of brass instruments and drums came closer and closer.

Just before reaching his newly opened $212 million Trump International Hotel, the president and First Lady Melania Trump exited their armored limousine to wave toward the crowd.

But the time Trump reached the front of his hotel — where protesters had gathered across the street — he’d returned to the limo.

Beneath the gloomy lighting of a winter afternoon, few could tell which vehicle the president was in.

“Was that him?” asked a man from Tennessee at the western edge of the hotel, near 12th Street. Hardly anyone applauded as the president passed. An announcement came minutes later that Trump had reached Freedom Plaza.

“Worst parade ever,” said another man in a “Make America Great Again” hat. “I waited three hours for that?”

Up the street, 37-year-old Kelly Dolin had come from Waynesboro, Va., with his family to watch his 17-year-old son, who attends Fishburne Military School, march in the parade.

Dolin was surprised at the subdued mood of the crowds he had seen. “It wasn’t what I expected,” said Dolin, who voted for Hillary Clinton. “It seems like you’d hear more cheering.”

Earlier in the day, at least, Trump’s many supporters didn’t lack in enthusiasm.

Kathy Davis and a friend sat in yellow ponchos in a light rain west of the Capitol, awaiting a moment they’d long anticipated. Both evangelical Christians, they’d driven down together from upstate New York on Thursday.

“We have just known that Donald Trump was supposed to be president, ” said the 59-year-old. “When we saw the miracle happen on Election Day, I can’t tell you the feelings that rose up.”

One 68-year-old grandmother so adored Trump that she and her family drove 19 hours from Missouri to D.C. to watch him become commander in chief. Security had confiscated Marian Curry’s pepper spray and taser but let her keep a small folding chair because of her arthritic knees.

Curry insisted she’s neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but something about Trump drew her in.
“He woke me up,” she said.

Donna Lutz, a 71-year-old teacher from Florida, said she’d lost friends over her support for him.

“For the first time in my life, I have not been able to have an opinion,” said Lutz, dressed in a bright red coat, fuzzy red earmuffs and a button with Trump’s face. “I was very passionate, so now I get to see that my passions were shared.”
But her feelings certainly weren’t shared by everyone.

Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has angered and offended millions of Americans others, making him the most unpopular incoming president in at least four decades. Friday, Trump supporters and detractors came face to face on the National Mall, around the White House and throughout downtown D.C.

In one case, 10-year-old Josh Wheeler’s anti-abortion sign was thrown to the ground, driving him to tears.
Wheeler’s father, Todd, said a protester had pushed the boy and called him names, though another anti-Trump activists helped comfort Josh afterward.

“We’re disappointed in the police for letting them do that,” said Wheeler, whose family came to Washington for the inauguration from Indianapolis.

At John Marshall Park’s checkpoint, Black Lives Matter protesters — chanting “Shut it down” — did just that. Five men chained themselves together, preventing anyone from passing and forcing police officers to redirect attendees to other entrances.

“It feels great that we closed the checkpoint,” said 28-year-old Aaron Goggans, one of the organizers. “But we know this is just the beginning.”

At the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and 20th Street, a very different sort of demonstration was being held as the earthy scent of burning pot wafted, and reggae pumped from a sound system. A cry went up from the crowd of marijuana enthusiasts waiting for their free joints.

They were reacting to a herd of motorcycles roaring past, one bike flying a Trump campaign flag.

“What’s up Bikers for Trump? ” said the DJ. “Come for some free weed?”

Across the street stood five D.C. police officers, hands in their pockets.

As the newly inaugurated Trump signed paperwork on Capitol Hill, hundreds of protesters meandered up Massachusetts Avenue from Union Station, occasionally blocking both sides of the thoroughfare.

The march had taken on a carnival feel, with stilt walkers, large puppets, a brass band and a giant inflatable elephant adorned with the word “racism.”

“Immigrants are welcome here!” People chanted. “No hate! No fear!”

Trump supporters leaving the inauguration taunted the peaceful protesters, waving their ubiquitous red “Make America Great Again” hats.

Earlier, at 10th and E streets, protesters had blocked the entrance to a checkpoint.

A group of women tied themselves together with purple yarn and sat on the ground to prevent people from passing through.
“Hey, hey, ho, ho! Donald Trump has to go!” the group of about 100 mostly young protesters. “End white supremacy!”

Armed with signs, brass instruments and life-size wooden crosses, the assembly danced, blew whistles and sang peacefully along with a small marching band.

The protest continued until a large group of inauguration goers — many dressed in suits and dress clothes — tried to push through the human barricade. People starting falling to the ground and swearing until police officers helped create a lane for the attendees to pass through.

Throughout the city, other anti-Trump protests popped up.

At 14th and I streets NW, about 100 anti Trump marchers chanted, ‘Whose streets? Our streets!”
One man carried a bundle of American flags over his shoulder.

“It’s not enough to continue shouting into the echo chamber of social media,” said Clara Mystif, 31, a writer from Florida. “We’re here to actually put our bodies on the line in support of our friends who are going to be targeted by this regime.”

Law enforcement was prepared to contend with more than 60 demonstration groups that planned to gather in the District, including DisruptJ20, which drew thousands of participants. The activists’ website promised “a series of massive direct actions that will shut down the Inauguration ceremonies and any related celebrations.”

They set out to challenge a security plan that took months of planning and millions of dollars to execute. Among the obstacles facing agitators: Checkpoints, roadblocks, truck-barricaded streets, hundreds of Jersey barriers, miles of fencing and 28,000 security officials deployed across 100 square blocks in the heart of Washington.

On Friday, counter-demonstrators also arrived to support their new president — most notably, Bikers for Trump, a group that served as a vigilante security force at the Republican National Convention and expected 5,000 members in Washington.

The region’s normally packed Washington-bound Metro trains were mostly empty early Friday. In a yellow line car headed south, two groups of four wearing Trump gear — beanies saying “Trump America’s 45th president” and American flag scarves — sat ebulliently at the end.

One bearded man in a North Face vest and sweatpants, clearly new to Metro, propped his feet on a divider and later asked if he could smoke his cigarette. He hopped off his seat to record a selfie video with his friends.

“It’s the best day in America,” he beamed.

The man swiveled the camera to show the rest of the crowd.

“Washington sucks,” he bellowed, before turning the camera off.

“I said ‘Grab them by the p—y,’ 17 times yesterday,” he joked later, referring to Trump’s vulgar comments on the set of Access Hollywood in 2005. He casually repeated the phrase several times, until his female companion shushed him.

“Today’s a huge day,” he said as the train approached their stop.

“Yuuuuge!” his friend responded.

Meanwhile, just before 9:30 a.m., the outgoing president left the Oval Office for the final time.

As Obama did, reporters asked, “Feeling nostalgic?”

Obama responded, “Of course.”

Another reporter shouted, “Any words for the American people?”

The 44th president of the United States answered, “Thank you.”

Despite Trump’s reputation as a showman, the celebration in honor of the former “Apprentice” star was smaller than the one in 2009 for the nation’s first African American leader.

Trump’s 3 p.m. parade is expected to last just 90 minutes. Obama’s took more than four hours. Trump is expected to appear at three official balls. Obama attended 10. Just 450 bus permits had been sought for Friday. About seven times that many – more than 3,000 – registered eight years ago.

Though Trump suggested “record numbers” of people would attend Friday’s festivities, at least one longstanding ball had to cancel due to a lack of interest, and others have struggled to sell tickets. Compared to past celebrations, far fewer notable celebrities and musicians are attending or performing, and a number of the city’s great halls haven’t been rented.

Trump’s hotel has frequently been targeted by protesters in recent months. An extra layer of high metal fencing appeared outside its front doors this week, and staff have carefully monitored everyone coming and going.

Washington’s lack of enthusiasm for Trump’s arrival may be due in part to the adversarial relationship he’s long had with the fiercely liberal capital, a place he described as a “swamp” that needs draining.

Just 4 percent of D.C.’s residents voted for the new occupant of the city’s most hallowed quarters: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Canada’s prime minister is in hot water for taking a tropical vacation on the Aga Khan’s private island in the Bahamas.
Justin Trudeau and his family were guests of the billionaire spiritual leader over New Year’s.

The federal ethics commissioner is reviewing Mr Trudeau’s trip to see if it warrants an official investigation.
Mr Trudeau said he is “more than happy” to answer any questions the commissioner has.

News of his winter getaway was first revealed by the National Post, after days of speculation over where the prime minister and his family were on holiday.

Prince Shah Karim Al Hussaini Aga Khan is a longtime family friend of the Trudeaus.

Mr Trudeau was also accompanied by Liberal MP Seamus O’Reagan and Liberal Party President Anna Gainey, and their respective partners.

The Prime Ministers Office (PMO) told the Toronto Star the information was kept secret to protect the families’ privacy.
Mr Trudeau has since gone on the record about the vacation, and admitted to also using the Aga Khan’s private helicopter.

“As was the case with previous Prime Ministers, when travelling for personal reasons, Mr. Trudeau, his family, and any guests travelling with him reimburse an equivalent economy airfare,” Trudeau spokesperson Cameron Ahmad told the BBC.
At a press conference on Friday morning, Mr Trudeau seemed visibly uncomfortable answering questions related to his trip.

“This was our personal family vacation and the questions you’re asking, I allow you to reflect on them,” he said.
On Monday, Conservative leadership candidate Andrew Scheer wrote a letter to Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson to ask that she look into whether Mr Trudeau’s visit violated conflict of interest rules regarding gifts.

The helicopter ride may also have broken rules introduced by Mr Trudeau’s own government that forbid ministers and parliamentary secretaries from accepting sponsored travel on private aircraft unless they get prior permission from the ethics commissioner first.

Commissioner Dawson has said she has begun a preliminary review of Mr Trudeau’s vacation to see if it warrants an investigation.

The Aga Khan Foundation is a registered lobbyist and has received hundreds of millions from the federal government over the past several decades, from both the Liberal and Conservative parties.

 In 2015, the government gave the foundation a five-year $55m (£34m, $42m US) grant to develop health services in Afghanistan
 In 2005, the government contributed $30m (£19m, $23m US) to help build the foundation’s headquarters in Ottawa.
 In 2009, then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave his royal highness honorary citizenship

Who is the Aga Khan?

Prince Karim Aga Khan is the 49th hereditary Imam of the Ismaili Muslims. They trace his lineage directly to the Prophet Muhammad.

He lives in France, has a British passport, graduated from Harvard University and is among the top 15 of the world’s wealthiest royals, according to Forbes magazine. The say he has an estimated wealth of $1bn (£640m) in 2008.
A close family friend of the Trudeaus, he was an honourary pallbearer at the funeral of Mr Trudeau’s father, Pierre.

WASHINGTON, Jan 12 — Seven months ago, a respected former British spy named Christopher Steele won a contract to build a file on Donald J. Trump’s ties to Russia. Last week, the explosive details — unsubstantiated accounts of frolics with prostitutes, real estate deals that were intended as bribes and coordination with Russian intelligence of the hacking of Democrats — were summarized for Mr. Trump in an appendix to a top-secret intelligence report.

The consequences have been incalculable and will play out long past Inauguration Day. Word of the summary, which was also given to President Obama and congressional leaders, leaked to CNN Tuesday, and the rest of the media followed with sensational reports.

Mr. Trump denounced the unproven claims Wednesday as a fabrication, a Nazi-style smear concocted by “sick people.” It has further undermined his relationship with the intelligence agencies and cast a shadow over the new administration.

Late Wednesday night, after speaking with Mr. Trump, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, issued a statement decrying leaks about the matter and saying of Mr. Steele’s dossier that the intelligence agencies have “not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable.” Mr. Clapper suggested that intelligence officials had nonetheless shared it to give policy makers “the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.”

Parts of the story remain out of reach — most critically the basic question of how much, if anything, in the dossier is true. But it is possible to piece together a rough narrative of what led to the current crisis, including lingering questions about the ties binding Mr. Trump and his team to Russia. The episode also offers a glimpse of the hidden side of presidential campaigns, involving private sleuths-for-hire looking for the worst they can find about the next American leader.

The story began in September 2015, when a wealthy Republican donor who strongly opposed Mr. Trump put up the money to hire a Washington research firm run by former journalists, Fusion GPS, to compile a dossier about the real estate magnate’s past scandals and weaknesses, according to a person familiar with the effort. The person described the opposition research work on condition of anonymity, citing the volatile nature of the story and the likelihood of future legal disputes. The identity of the donor is unclear.

Fusion GPS, headed by a former Wall Street Journal journalist known for his dogged reporting, Glenn Simpson, most often works for business clients. But in presidential elections, the firm is sometimes hired by candidates, party organizations or donors to do political “oppo” work — shorthand for opposition research — on the side.

It is routine work and ordinarily involves creating a big, searchable database of public information: past news reports, documents from lawsuits and other relevant data. For months, Fusion GPS gathered the documents and put together the files from Mr. Trump’s past in business and entertainment, a rich target.

After Mr. Trump emerged as the presumptive nominee in the spring, the Republican interest in financing the effort ended. But Democratic supporters of Hillary Clinton were very interested, and Fusion GPS kept doing the same deep dives, but on behalf of new clients.

In June, the tenor of the effort suddenly changed. The Washington Post reported that the Democratic National Committee had been hacked, apparently by Russian government agents, and a mysterious figure calling himself “Guccifer 2.0” began to publish the stolen documents online.

Mr. Simpson hired Mr. Steele, a former British intelligence officer with whom he had worked before. Mr. Steele, in his early 50s, had served undercover in Moscow in the early 1990s and later was the top expert on Russia at the London headquarters of Britain’s spy service, MI6. When he stepped down in 2009, he started his own commercial intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence.

The former journalist and the former spy, according to people who know them, had similarly dark views of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a former K.G.B. officer, and the varied tactics he and his intelligence operatives used to smear, blackmail or bribe their targets.

As a former spy who had carried out espionage inside Russia, Mr. Steele was in no position to travel to Moscow to study Mr. Trump’s connections there. Instead, he hired native Russian speakers to call informants inside Russia and made surreptitious contact with his own connections in the country as well.

Mr. Steele wrote up his findings in a series of memos, each a few pages long, that he began to deliver to Fusion GPS in June and continued at least until December. By then, the election was over, and neither Mr. Steele nor Mr. Simpson was being paid by a client, but they did not stop what they believed to be very important work. (Mr. Simpson declined to comment for this article, and Mr. Steele did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)
The memos described two different Russian operations. The first was a yearslong effort to find a way to influence Mr. Trump, perhaps because he had contacts with Russian oligarchs whom Mr. Putin wanted to keep track of.

According to Mr. Steele’s memos, it used an array of familiar tactics: the gathering of “kompromat,” compromising material such as alleged tapes of Mr. Trump with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel, and proposals for business deals attractive to Mr. Trump.

The goal would probably never have been to make Mr. Trump a knowing agent of Russia, but to make him a source who might provide information to friendly Russian contacts. But if Mr. Putin and his agents wanted to entangle Mr. Trump using business deals, they did not do it very successfully. Mr. Trump has said he has no major properties there, though one of his sons said at a real estate conference in 2008 that “a lot of money” was “pouring in from Russia.”

The second Russian operation described was recent: a series of contacts with Mr. Trump’s representatives during the campaign, in part to discuss the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta. According to Mr. Steele’s sources, it involved, among other things, a late-summer meeting in Prague between Michael Cohen, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, and Oleg Solodukhin, a Russian official who works for Rossotrudnichestvo, an organization that promotes Russia’s interests abroad.

By all accounts, Mr. Steele has an excellent reputation with American and British intelligence colleagues and had done work for the F.B.I. on the investigation of bribery at FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. Colleagues say he was acutely aware of the danger he and his associates were being fed Russian disinformation. Russian intelligence had mounted a complex hacking operation to damage Mrs. Clinton, and a similar operation against Mr. Trump was possible.

But much of what he was told, and passed on to Fusion GPS, was very difficult to check. And some of the claims that can be checked seem problematic. Mr. Cohen, for instance, said on Twitter on Tuesday night that he has never been in Prague; Mr. Solodukhin, his purported Russian contact, denied in a telephone interview that he had ever met Mr. Cohen or anyone associated with Mr. Trump. The president-elect on Wednesday citednews reports that a different Michael Cohen with no Trump ties may have visited Prague and that the two Cohens might have been mixed up in Mr. Steele’s reports.

But word of a dossier had begun to spread through political circles. Rick Wilson, a Republican political operative who was working for a super PAC supporting Marco Rubio, said he heard about it in July, when an investigative reporter for a major news network called him to ask what he knew.

By early fall, some of Mr. Steele’s memos had been given to the F.B.I., which was already investigating Mr. Trump’s Russian ties, and to journalists. An MI6 official, whose job does not permit him to be quoted by name, said that in late summer or early fall, Mr. Steele also passed the reports he had prepared on Mr. Trump and Russia to British intelligence. Mr. Steele was concerned about what he was hearing about Mr. Trump, and he thought that the information should not be solely in the hands of people looking to win a political contest.
After the election, the memos, still being supplemented by his inquiries, became one of Washington’s worst-kept secrets, as reporters — including from The New York Times — scrambled to confirm or disprove them.

Word also reached Capitol Hill. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, heard about the dossier and obtained a copy in December from David J. Kramer, a former top State Department official who works for the McCain Institute at Arizona State University. Mr. McCain passed the information to James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director.
Remarkably for Washington, many reporters for competing news organizations had the salacious and damning memos, but they did not leak, because their contents could not be confirmed. (Mother Jones magazine was an exception, publishing a story on Oct. 31 that described the dossier, its origin and significance, while omitting the titillating details.) That changed only this week, after the heads of the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency added a summary of the memos, along with information gathered from other intelligence sources, to their report on the Russian cyberattack on the election.

Now, after the most contentious of elections, Americans are divided and confused about what to believe about the incoming president. And there is no prospect soon for full clarity on the veracity of the claims made against him.
“It is a remarkable moment in history,” said Mr. Wilson, the Florida political operative. “What world did I wake up in?”

Jonathan Martin, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.