WASHINGTON — The White House indicated Sunday that President Trump would accept new legislation imposing sanctions on Russia and curtailing his authority to lift them on his own, a striking turnaround after a broad revolt in Congress by lawmakers of both parties who distrusted his friendly approach to Moscow.
Congressional leaders said Saturday that they had reached agreement on legislation intended to punish Russia for its interference in last year’s presidential election and its aggression toward its neighbors, despite objections raised by the administration that it would inappropriately infringe on the president’s ability to direct foreign policy.
The new White House press secretary said Sunday that adjustments made to the bill were enough to satisfy the president’s concerns.
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“The administration is supportive of being tough on Russia, particularly in putting these sanctions in place,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The original piece of legislation was poorly written, but we were able to work with the House and Senate.’’
Still, there seemed to be confusion among the president’s advisers.
Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director, said on another show that the president had not made up his mind about whether to sign the measure.
“You’ve got to ask President Trump that,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It’s my second or third day on the job. My guess is he’s going to make that decision shortly.”
Privately, White House officials said they saw no politically viable alternative to the president signing the bill and so Sanders seized on the changes made to the proposal.
While the changes made it somewhat more palatable to the White House, they mainly provided a face-saving way to back down from a confrontation it was sure to lose if the sanctions bill reached the floor of the House.
The Senate passed the original version of the bill, 97 to 2, and Republicans and Democrats expected a similarly overwhelming, veto-proof majority in the House if it came to a vote.
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Not only would a veto by Trump have presumably been overridden by Congress, but White House advisers conceded it would have been politically disastrous.
While other presidents might also have resisted legislation taking away their power to have the final say on sanctions, for Trump such a stance would be untenable given investigations into whether his team colluded with Russia during the election.
Administration officials said Trump supported the array of sanctions that have been imposed on Russia over the last three years since its annexation of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine. While he has talked of improving relations with Moscow, aides noted that he had done nothing in his first six months in office to lift the sanctions.
But aides prepared a plan in the early days of his administration to reverse some sanctions imposed by President Obama in his final weeks in office in retaliation for Russia’s meddling in the election.
The plan discussed by Trump’s aides was throttled after Republican congressional leaders publicly and privately warned against it.
The sanctions bill also includes stiff economic penalties against Iran and North Korea. The sanctions targeting Russia, however, have drawn the most attention due to Trump’s persistent push for warmer relations with President Vladimir Putin amid investigations into Russia’s interference in the campaign.
The stand-down on the sanctions fight came at the start of a week in which the president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner; and his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, are set to talk with congressional investigators behind closed doors.
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Kushner is to speak with the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday and the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. The aides are also expected to be asked for documents related to the investigation.
Scaramucci said the Russia investigations were a distraction.
“I worked intensely on that campaign, and I think that the Russian situation is completely overblown,” he said.
“I was falsely accused of things related to Russia. I know other people are being falsely accused of things related to Russia,’’ Scaramucci said. “And I’m confident that tomorrow when Jared Kushner speaks — and I’ll keep my fingers crossed in saying this to you — it’ll probably be the last time that he has to talk about Russia.”
Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, said Sunday that he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appear before the Judiciary Committee to answer questions about a Washington Post report that he may have discussed campaign-related matters with Russia's ambassador to Washington last year.
Franken said on CNN that he believes Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, also wants Sessions to testify on the matter.
The Post reported Friday that Ambassador Sergey Kislyak told his higher-ups in Moscow that he discussed the campaign and Russian policy priorities with Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, despite public assertions to the contrary by the embattled attorney general. Kislyak’s accounts of the conversations were intercepted by US intelligence agencies.
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‘‘What I do know is what I read, which is that I guess someone in Kislyak’s position can sometimes distort what he says when he is reporting back to build himself up,’’ Franken said. ‘‘I also saw in those reports that Kislyak isn’t that type. And it seems to me that since Attorney General Sessions hasn’t been terribly truthful regarding these things that it’s more likely that what Kislyak was saying was the case.’’
The Russian Embassy in Washington announced on Twitter that Kislyak’s tenure ended on Saturday. Kislyak’s successor has not been announced, although it is widely expected to be Anatoly Antonov, a deputy foreign minister and former deputy defense minister seen as a hard-liner regarding the United States.
Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned after lying about contacts with Kislyak.
Sessions, under questioning from Franken in his January confirmation hearing, denied meeting with any Russian officials during the campaign. But The Post later reported that Sessions, who served as a top foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, met with Kislyak at least twice last year.
The revelation prompted the attorney general to recuse himself from the FBI inquiry on Russian interference in the election and any ties between that government and the Trump operation.
Announcing the decision in March, Sessions said he had talked with Kislyak only in his capacity as a senator, not as a Trump surrogate.
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The Friday report came as Sessions faces new doubts about his standing with Trump, who in an interview last week expressed frustration with the attorney general’s decision to recuse himself and said he regretted naming him to his job.
Franken said he is unsure about when Sessions should be called back to testify and whether it should be before or after the committee hears closed-door testimony from Trump Jr. and Manafort.