Trump news : White House denies Kushner security clearance files as Democrats threaten 'next steps'

A little more on that damaging New Yorker piece yesterday, which alleges Fox News knew about the Stormy Daniels "hush-money" payment during the 2016 election but suppressed reporter Diane Falzone's story with the words: "Good reporting kiddo. But Rupert [Murdoch] wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go."

And here's Molly Jong-Fast on her experiences at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland this weekend, an event she says amounts to "listening to a smouldering ash heap of Trumpian shills who constitute what is left of the Republican Party".

President Trump's new attorney-general, William Barr, has said he will not recuse himself from overseeing the special counsel's Russia probe after consulting with senior ethics officials, the Justice Department has said. 

Mr Barr, recently sworn-in to replace Jeff Sessions, was advised against recusal from Robert Mueller's FBI investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Donald Trump's presidential campaign, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said. 

"Consistent with that advice, General Barr has decided not to recuse," Ms Kupec said in a statement. 

During his confirmation hearing in January, Mr Barr sought to assuage concerns that he might disrupt or upend the Mueller investigation as it reaches its final stages. 

Some Democrats had raised those concerns, citing a memo Mr Barr had sent to Justice Department and White House lawyers in which he criticised Mr Mueller's probe for the way it was presumably looking into whether President Trump had obstructed justice. 

Mr Barr downplayed the memo during his confirmation hearing, saying it was narrowly focused and shouldn't be read that he has prejudged the investigation. He vowed during the hearing to consult with ethics officials about whether he should recuse himself, but told senators the decision would ultimately be his to make under Justice Department guidelines.

Former FBI director James Comey, whose firing is among the things being investigated by the special counsel's office, said in an op-ed in The Washington Post on Monday that "providing detailed information about a completed investigation of intense public interest has long been a part of Justice Department practice." 

"Every American should want a Justice Department guided first and always by the public interest," Mr Comey wrote. "Sometimes transparency is not a hard call." 

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has said he is hopeful Washington will send a delegation to North Korea in the coming weeks, after denuclearisation talks between President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Vietnam last week ended with no agreement.

The leaders' second summit in Hanoi collapsed without any agreement or immediate plan for a third summit, with Mr Trump suggesting his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen's testimony before the House Oversight Committee had been a distraction.

"I am hopeful, although I have no commitment yet, that we will be back at it, that I'll have a team in Pyongyang in the next couple weeks," Mr Pompeo told the Iowa Farm Bureau.

"I'm continuing to work to find those places where there's a shared interest."

Also on the international front, a bipartisan group of politicians have accused Donald Trump of failing to take “meaningful action” on China's repressive policies towards the Uighur Muslim people of Xinjiang province.

Here's Jon Sharman.

The president again served McDonald's Big Macs to a team of elite athletes at the White House last night.

This time the North Dakota State Bison, celebrating their seventh national title in eight years, were the lucky recipients.

The Clemson Tigers were subjected to the same ordeal in January, when the choice of meal was attributed to the record-breaking government shutdown. This time?

"We could have had chefs, we could have, but we got fast food because you know what, I know you people very well," Mr Trump said.

One name missing from the House Judiciary Committee's round-up of the usual suspects is that of Ivanka Trump.

But chairman Jerrold Nadler has told Erin Burnett on CNN's OutFront she could "quite conceivably" be hearing from his team as her brothers and husband have.

"I’m not going to answer why any particular person is or isn’t on it. We think that anybody on it has information of use to the committee in establishing things," he said.

"She’s not on the initial list. That’s all we can say."

He added that there are going to be more document requests and that "there may or may not be more people."

Magnificently-mustachioed former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb has broken ranks to tell ABC News's podcast The Investigation he considers FBI special counsel Robert Mueller "an American hero".

“Even though he came from an, arguably, privileged background, he has a backbone of steel. He walked into a firefight in Vietnam to pull out one of his injured colleagues and was appropriately honored for that. I've known him for 30 years as a prosecutor and a friend. And I think the world of Bob Mueller. He is a very deliberate guy. But he's also a class act. And a very justice-oriented person.”

"I don't feel the investigation is a witch hunt," he added, saying he believes Mr Mueller, "has already revealed the bulk of the findings that the investigation will produce through the sentencing memos and 'speaking indictments' issued against a group of 34 defendants that include Russian hackers and the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort".

But Mr Cobb  warned the president to buckle his seatbelt for a bumpy ride in Congress: "All these people are hell bent on issuing a lot of subpoenas to get to the administration and perpetuate this investigation." 

House speaker Nancy Pelosi is in Texas this morning and had some tough, even Churchillian words for reporters on the border wall and the president's national emergency declaration.

"We'll fight him in the Congress, we'll fight him in the courts and we'll fight him in the court of public opinion... What he's doing is wrong and the Republicans know it," she told CNN.

Meanwhile Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has given his forecast of the Democrats' disapproval resolution, which will soon face the Senate after being voted through the House. The prognosis is not good for Mr T.

"I think what is clear in the Senate is that there will be enough votes to pass the resolution of disapproval, which will then be vetoed by the president, and then in all likelihood the veto will be upheld in the House," Mr McConnell said.

Those remarks were put to Ms Pelosi, who said: "Hopefully the president won't veto it... Or maybe he'll just withdraw it, as some of his Republican... the Republican senators are asking him to do because they know that it undermines the Constitution of the United States.”

"[He is] asking us to ignore the oath of office that we take to protect and defend the Constitution by this declaration," she said.