Free Republic

The White House is ramping up an 11th-hour effort to build support for President Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, just days before she is scheduled to face a grilling from the Senate Intelligence Committee over her role in the agency’s controversial detention and interrogation program. For weeks, the CIA has led the charge on promoting now-deputy director Gina Haspel—a forward-leaning PR campaign that some critics have said is inappropriate for the clandestine agency. Only late last week did the White House stand up the kind of broad-based press campaign typical of other high-stakes nominations, issuing a swath of laudatory...

NEW YORK — Jonathan M. Winer, the Obama State Department official who acknowledged regularly interfacing with the author of the controversial, largely discredited 35-page anti-Trump dossier, served as senior vice president of a firm that did lobbying work for Tenex, the U.S. subsidiary of Rosatom, the Russian state corporation headquartered in Moscow. In 2010, Rosatom infamously purchased a controlling stake in Uranium One, the Canadian uranium mining company with operations in the U.S. The purchase was approved by the Obama administration in a decision that is currently being probed by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.