White House tries to avoid 'paralysis' amid investigation
With the president still overseas, senior aides are putting together a plan for how to keep going under the cloud of a special investigation.
By JOSH DAWSEY , ALEX ISENSTADT and ELIANA JOHNSON 05/25/2017 05:13 AM EDT
When a group of nearly a dozen state GOP chairs walked into the Oval Office last week, they expected to be inside for only a few minutes to say a brief hello and take pictures with President Donald Trump.
Instead, Trump spoke with them for nearly half an hour, inviting them to sit down on the couches. He wanted to know how his policies were playing among voters in their states and peppered them with questions. Among the concerns he brought up, according to several people familiar with the meeting: the Russia probe.
The expanding investigation, now under the control of special counsel Robert Mueller, has hung over Trump’s every move since its announcement a week ago. Chief strategist Steve Bannon and chief of staff Reince Priebus returned home early from Trump’s tour across the Middle East and Europe in part to help put an apparatus in place to keep the president’s agenda moving ahead. “They are back trying to get this under control,” said one person familiar with the internal dynamics of the White House. “Trump is not happy about all of this. Everyone knows it. They aren’t sitting around working on the budget all day.”
A White House spokeswoman said Bannon and Priebus returned to work on the president’s legislative agenda. But the pair have held high-level meetings and phone calls with a hope of securing outside lawyers and consultants to handle what they fear will be a months- or years-long slog, according to White House officials.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/25/russia-white-house-staff-238802
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