Trump news: President faces fresh corruption allegations, as senior Republican condemns ‘carefully staged’ Barr criticism

Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.

Trump threatens to stop security officials listening in to calls, compares impeachment to 'dark days' of Nixon

Donald Trump has compared his suffering during the impeachment process to the “dark days” of Richard Nixon’​s tenure in the White House in the 1970s and threatened to end the practice of having security officials listen in on his calls with foreign leaders.

"When you call a foreign leader, people listen. I may end the practice entirely, I may end it entirely," the president said during a podcast interview with Fox pundit Geraldo Rivera, evidentally still in venegeful mood after an anonymous CIA whistleblower reported his attempt to extort a political favour out of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky during his "perfect" call with Kiev last summer.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and White House staffers listened in on the offending call with Zelensky - in which he said the release of $391m (£392m) in military aid to Ukraine was conditional and depeneded on his counterpart opening a spurious anti-corruption investigation into 2020 rival Joe Biden.

As is standard practice in any administration, the staffers, working in the secure, soundproof Situation Room in the West Wing basement, chronicled the conversation. US National Security Council personnel then prepared a memorandum about the call, which serves as an official record.

Larry Pfeiffer, a 30-year US intelligence veteran who managed the Situation Room during the Obama years, told the AP that by stopping this practice, "the president only shoots himself in the foot... And one can only surmise that the president therefore has something to hide from his own staff and bureaucracy."

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, said that the president has the power to limit access to his conversations - but added this is a "bad idea".

"The president requires the expertise and advice of his senior officials, and they require access to these calls in order to do their job," he said. "Secrecy here becomes self-defeating."

On the Watergate comparison, Trump told Rivera: "Well, it's a terrible thing and, you know, I think of Nixon more than anybody else and what that dark period was in our country and the whole thing with the tapes and the horror show... It was dark and went on for a long time, and I watched it."

He said he often passes portraits of past presidents which hang in the White House: "The portrait of Richard Nixon - I don't know. It's a little bit of a different feeling than I get from looking at the other portraits of presidents."

"I got impeached for no reason whatsoever - totally partisan."

So Republican senators Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins and Joni Ernst - do you still think he's learned his lesson?

Here's Andy Gregory on another revelation from the president - that he did send his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to Eastern Europe in search of dirt back home.

'Are they mean to people?': President's obsessions with badgers revealed

​A new book on Trump -​ Sinking in the Swamp: How Trump's Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington by Daily Beast reporters Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng - offers the bizarre detail that the president nurtures an obsession with badgers, regularly plaguing his first chief of staff Reince Preibus with questions about the animals and their characteristics.

Oliver O'Connell gets to the bottom of this one.

William Barr labelled 'deep state' after criticising Trump's tweets in 'carefully staged' move

Trump has meanwhile been hit by an unexpected rebuke from his attorney general over the Roger Stone case, with William Barr telling ABC News yesterday that he will not be “bullied” and that the president’s tweeting about an active case (in a bid to see the Republican trickster's sentence drastically reduced) makes it difficult for him to do his job.

Trump's aides have been trying to get him to cut out the impulsive, reactionary tweeting ever since he took office, without success, but Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell gave his (rather limp) endorsement to Barr's comments last night, saying the president "should listen to his advice".

Trump's close friend Lou Dobbs meanwhile wasted little time in lashing out at the attorney general, absurdly accusing him of being a "deep state" agitator (overlooking the fact that Trump himself brought the veteran in himself a year ago to serve as his "sword and shield" in fending off the Mueller report).

But - and this is a big one - ex-Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele warns the gesture was carried out with the full knowledge of the White House and was “carefully staged” to appease Justice Department prosecutors disgruntled over the intervention in the Stone case.

You know Steele is right because otherwise Trump would have lashed out angrily at Barr given that he is unable to tolerate criticism of even the mildest form.

Instead, he said in his interview with Rivera yesterday that his "life would've been a lot easier" had he hired Barr in 2017 instead of picking Jeff Sessions for attorney general, only for the former Alabama senator to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

Here's Andrew Naughtie on Barr.

President slams John Kelly, saying he 'misses the action and just can't keep his mouth shut'

A case in point about Trump's modus operandi is his furious reaction to the news that his former chief of staff John Kelly disparaged him during a talk at Drew University in New Jersey earlier this week.

Kelly defended impeachment witness Lt Col Alex Vindman and offered some fairly forthright views on the president's immigration policies and cosying up to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un in remarks reported by The Atlantic.

This was Trump's response yesterday afternoon:

John T Bennett has this report.

Trump mocks CNN's Chris Cuomo, pitches 'new quid pro quo' ahead of meeting with host's NY governor brother

The president also launched into a spectacularly childish assault on Michael Bloomberg on Twitter yesterday before turning his attention to an upcoming meeting with New York's governor Andrew Cuomo, mocking his CNN brother as "Fredo" (a slur alluding to John Cazale's Judas figure in The Godfather) and apparently proposing a new quid pro quo - easing travel regulations for New Yorkers in exchange for Cuomo dropping the state's investigations into him.

Conrad Duncan has more.

Hope Hicks returns to White House as Jared Kushner aide

Trump's former communications director Hope Hicks left the White House after telling a House committee she sometimes told "white lies" on Donald Trump's behalf. Despite that admission, she'll soon be returning to his staff.

Here's John T Bennett on a new round of palace intrigue about the former Apprentice host's ever-changing roster of staffers and Cabinet officials.

Bernie Sanders enjoys major poll boosts as Elizabeth Warren told 'endorse him already'

Over at the Democratic race for the nomination to take on Trump, Bernie Sanders is on track to win thanks to a groundswell of independent support, according to a new poll.

The Ipsos Mori/Reuters survey was released amid calls for fellow progressive Elizabeth Warren to drop out.

How does it feel?

Here's Vincent Wood with the full story.

Senate Republicans defy president by voting to limit his powers to wage war against Iran

The upper chamber yesterday passed a bill authored by Democrat Tim Kaine reining in Trump over the Iran conflct, with eight Republicans joining the Democratic cause to defy the president.

GOP senators Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were eamong the rebels this time but where was their courage last week?

Trump State of the Union guests 'never benefitted from policies he used them to boast about'

Alex Woodward says two people Trump invited to his State of the Union address last week have little to do with the policies that he brought them there to amplify.

A Philadelphia fourth grader was surprised with a scholarship after the president highlighted his administration's attempts to rescue students "trapped in failing government schools" with $5bn (£3.8bn) in federal tax credits for contributions to scholarship programmes. But Janiyah Davis already attends a sought-after tuition-free charter school and previously attended an exclusive private school.

The president also invited a formerly homeless veteran to tout the success of a programme that provides tax breaks to companies hiring in poor neighbourhoods. But Tony Rankins doesn't work at a site taking advantage of the breaks and never has done.