Trump news - live: President erupts over report his businesses lost $1bn, as Congress votes to hold Barr in contempt
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump lost $1.17bn (£897m) from real estate ventures between 1985 and 1994 and paid no income tax for eight years, according to The New York Times, reporting after the newspaper got hold of copies of his tax returns for the period.
The president predictably branded the story, ”A highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!”, the news coming at a time when his treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin was already under fire for refusing to release his boss’s tax returns for 2013 to 2018, setting up what promises to be a protracted legal battle with Democrats.
This latest act of stonewalling from the White House comes as the House Judiciary Committee moved to hold attorney general William Barr in contempt over the Mueller report.
The vote capped a day of ever-deepening dispute between congressional Democrats and the president, who for the first time invoked the principle of executive privilege, claiming the right to block lawmakers from the full report.
Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York declared the action by Mr Trump’s Justice Department a clear new sign of the president’s “blanket defiance” of Congress’ constitutional rights to conduct oversight.
“We did not relish doing this, but we have no choice,” Nadler said after the vote.
The White House’s blockade, he said, “is an attack on the ability of the American people to know what the executive branch is doing.” He said, “This cannot be.”
But Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said it was disappointing that members of Congress “have chosen to engage in such inappropriate political theatrics.”
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for the live blog to load
The White House immediately tweeted the following statement after Wednesday’s vote: “The American people see through Chairman Nadler’s desperate ploy to distract from the President’s historically successful agenda and our booming economy. Neither the White House nor Attorney General Barr will comply with Chairman Nadler’s unlawful and reckless demands.”
Moments after the House voted to hold Mr Barr in contempt, the Justice Department sent a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler saying the “president has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials.”
The vote arrived after more than 700 former federal prosecutors signed a public letter saying Mr Trump would face criminal charges over obstruction of justice for the evidence outlined in the special counsel’s report, were he not the president. Current Justice Department guidelines state a sitting president cannot face criminal charges.
Mr Barr sought to clear Mr Trump of any wrongdoing after the special counsel concluded its report, immediately releasing a four-page summary seemingly claiming the president was not involved in any misconduct. That was shortly disproven after the Justice Department released a redacted version of the report that outlined at least 10 possible cases of obstruction of justice on the part of the president.
Donald Trump’s family was an “influence” that frequently needed to be “dealt with” as top White House officials constructed policy, the president’s former chief of staff has revealed.
John Kelly discussed his attempts to create a more orderly system in Mr Trump’s turbulent White House in an interview with Bloomberg Television's The David Rubenstein Show released Tuesday, saying he was forced to remove some “very disruptive” officials “to staff a president the way I think a president should be staffed.”
Without mentioning the president’s daughter or son-in-law by name, Mr Kelly singled out Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner by saying members of Mr Trump’s family serving in the White House were “an influence that has to be dealt with,” before noting he was not referring to the first lady.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has described Mr Nadler holding the vote as a "blatant abuse of power."
"Faced with Chairman Nadler's blatant abuse of power, and at the Attorney General's request, the President has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege," Ms Sanders said Wednesday.
The White House has now closed its Cabinet meeting to the press shortly after Congress moved to hold Donald Trump's attorney general in contempt:
House Judiciary Committee members are railing against Donald Trump’s decision to invoke executive privilege over the full Mueller report:
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is discussing the House Judiciary Committee's decision to move to hold William Barr in contempt of Congress, saying Chairman Jerrold Nadler "should be embarrassed by his behaviour" -
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