US ethics office urges White House to discipline Trump advisor

The United States Office of Government Ethics on Tuesday urged the White House to discipline presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway for advertising on television the clothing brand belonging to President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump.

"There is strong reason to believe that Ms. Conway has violated the Standards of Conduct and that disciplinary action is warranted," the director of the organization, Walter Shaub, wrote in a letter to the White House.

Two weeks ago, luxury department store chain Nordstrom withdrew Ivanka's line of clothing from its stores over a drop in sales in recent months, a move interpreted by the president as a personal attack.

During an interview with Fox News, Conway gave a "free commercial" for the Ivanka Trump brand, according the advisor herself.

"Go buy Ivanka's stuff. It's a wonderful line. I own some of it," Conway said.

Conway's comments substantially sparked a controversy in the country, and the chairman of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Republican Jason Chaffetz, and the highest-ranking Democrat of the body, Elijah Cummings, have requested the OGE review the case.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Conway was "counseled" following her statements to Fox News, but no concrete measures have been enforced.

Source: EFE

Kremlin says it wants apology from Fox News over Putin comments

The Kremlin said on Monday it wanted an apology from Fox News over what it said were "unacceptable" comments one of the channel's presenters made about Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview with U.S. counterpart Donald Trump.

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly described Putin as "a killer" in the interview with Trump as he tried to press the U.S. president to explain more fully why he respected his Russian counterpart. O'Reilly did not say who he thought Putin had killed.

"We consider such words from the Fox TV company to be unacceptable and insulting, and honestly speaking, we would prefer to get an apology from such a respected TV company," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call.

Fox News and O'Reilly did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Trump's views on Putin are closely scrutinized in the United States where U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Moscow of having sponsored computer hacking to help Trump win office, and critics say he is too complimentary about the Russian leader.

Trump, when commenting on the allegations against Putin in the same interview, questioned how "innocent" the United States itself was, saying it had made a lot of its own mistakes. That irritated some Congressional Republicans who said there was no comparison between how Russian and U.S. politicians behaved.

Putin, in his 17th year of dominating the Russian political landscape, is accused by some Kremlin critics of ordering the killing of opponents. Putin and the Kremlin have repeatedly rejected those allegations as politically-motivated and false.

Trump, who has said he wants to try to mend battered U.S.-Russia ties and hopes he can get along with Putin, was asked a question about some of those allegations by Fox Business before he won the White House.

In January last year, after a British judge ruled that Putin had "probably" authorized the murder of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London, Trump said he saw no evidence the Russian president was guilty.

"First of all, he says he didn't do it. Many people say it wasn't him. So who knows who did it?" Trump said.

Source: Reuters