Is the Trump administration doing anything about an Iranian airline violating U.S. sanctions? The White House so far hasn’t commented on Mahan Air, which the Wall Street Journal reported Monday has been buying “U.S.-made jet engines and parts through Turkish front companies over the past several years,” including as recently as December 2017. That news came from a report published by the Bureau of Industry and Security, a division of the Department of Commerce.
“The U.S. says in the filing that a Turkish woman set up a series of shell companies to buy needed equipment from U.S. suppliers for Iran’s Mahan Air, helping the airline circumvent the longstanding sanctions and fueling suspicions about Iran within the Trump administration,” reports the Journal.
But those well-founded suspicions about Iran may come in conflict with the administration’s more forgiving stance toward Turkey. The Eurasian nation is technically a NATO ally, but under its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country has become more hostile toward the United States. Turkey’s alignment with Russia in the Middle East, too, cuts against American interests in the region.
But the White House failed to condemn a Turkish attack last month on Kurdish forces in northern Syria, citing “Turkey’s legitimate security concerns.” The administration, for the moment, seems more inclined to draw a distinction between Erdogan’s anti-Americanism and authoritarianism and the importance of the U.S.-Turkey alliance. Could that change with this evidence of the Turks midwifing Iran’s malfeasance? The White House has not yet responded to a request for comment.
President Trump announced on Tuesday he would direct the Justice Department to “propose regulations to ban all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns.” Speaking at a White House event honoring law enforcement officers, the president spoke alongside the attorney general, Jeff Sessions.
“I expect that these regulations will be finalized, Jeff, very soon,” Trump said. For months, the White House has said the president is considering ways to ban or limit these “bump stock” modifications. The shooter who killed dozens in Las Vegas last fall used these devices. An effort in Congress to ban the devices failed to materialize in the weeks after the Vegas shooting.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in her Tuesday briefing “the president supports not having the use of bump stocks” and said the DOJ had been in the midst of a proper regulatory review since late last year. In his official memorandum to the attorney general, Trump said that although he desires “swift and decisive action, I remain committed to the rule of law and to the procedures the law prescribes. Doing this the right way will ensure that the resulting regulation is workable and effective and leaves no loopholes for criminals to exploit.”
On the President’s Schedule—The White House will host on Wednesday what it’s calling a “listening session” with parents, teachers, and students from the Parkland, Florida, high school where a week before a gunman killed 17 during a shooting spree. Also attending will be “individuals who were impacted by past school shootings, including the Columbine and Sandy Hook tragedies,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday.
One More Thing—You should always listen to the Daily Standard podcast, with host Charlie Sykes, but Tuesday’s episode with my colleagues John McCormack and Jonathan V. Last is worth listening to for those interested in the gun issue. In particular, McCormack notes that the progressive hope for a new assault weapons ban is just a pipe dream until Democrats themselves come to a consensus on it. The last time the ban was up for a vote, 5 years ago, more than 10 Democrats voted against it. Listen to the whole podcast here.
Photo of the Day
Donald Trump awards the Public Safety Medal of Valor honor to Antigo police officer Andrew Hopfensperger during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on February 20, 2018. (Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Mark It Down— “Just last week, there was an incident that will be reported in the coming days, and another way that this president was tough on Russia.” —Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House press secretary, February 20, 2018.
Following special counsel Robert Mueller’s surprise indictment last week of 13 Russian nationals for conspiring to destabilize American elections, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday that President Trump had not denied that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.
“It’s very clear that Russia meddled in the election,” Sanders told reporters. “It’s also very clear that it didn’t have an impact on the election. And it’s also very clear that the Trump campaign didn’t collude with the Russians in any way for this process to take place.”
Sanders’ comments followed a weekend in which Trump tweeted several times about the indictment, which he said showed his campaign had not colluded with Russians. Trump also suggested that the FBI could have prevented last week’s school shooting in Florida if they had not been busy investigating members of his campaign.
Asked why the White House has not yet implemented sanctions against Russia that Congress passed last year, Sanders responded that “the countries have to violate something in order for those sanctions to go in place, and that hasn’t necessarily happened.”
Mueller Watch—The special counsel continued its work with another surprise development on Tuesday. Mueller’s team secured a plea bargain from London-based attorney Alex van der Zwaan for lying to the FBI about matters pertaining to Paul Manafort and Rick Gates’s alleged illegal foreign lobbying and money laundering. My colleague Andrew Egger reports:
Less than a week after Mitt Romney’s official announcement that he is running for retiring senator Orrin Hatch’s seat in Utah, it seems he and President Trump have buried the hatchet.
Trump extended an olive branch on Twitter Monday night, endorsing Romney as a “great Senator and worthy successor” to Hatch. Romney responded in kind, thanking Trump for his support and saying he hoped to earn “the support and endorsement of the people of Utah.”
The congeniality was a remarkable shift in tone from both men; Romney famously denounced then-candidate Trump as a “phony” and a “fraud” in 2016, while Trump mocked Romney as “one of the dumbest and worst candidates in the history of Republican politics.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last Friday President Trump should endorse Romney, calling him a “pretty formidable candidate.”
Song of the Day—“Matchbox” by the Kooks
