Trump news: White House 'is in fast competition' with Nixon administration on obstruction, Watergate accuser says
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump is facing a renewed onslaught from House Democrats, who will begin picking over the Mueller report‘s obstruction of justice evidence on Monday as the party continues to weigh up launching impeachment proceedings against the president.
The House will stage a vote on whether to hold attorney general William Barr and ex-White House adviser Don McGahn in contempt of Congress on Tuesday after the pair ignored congressional subpoenas. Meanwhile, the House Intelligence Committee will review the ramifications of 2016 Russian election hacking for national security on Wednesday.
With those actions in mind, the House Judiciary Committee heard from former Watergate witness John Dean, and former US attorneys, who repeatedly told Congress that they believe that Mr Trump had attempted to obstruct justice. If he were anyone other than the president, they said, he would have been charged with the crime.
Mr Dean, during his prepared remarks, said that the Mueller report is very similar to a "Watergate Road Map", meaning it could help the panel as it investigates Mr Trump for obstruction or collusion.
He continued to say that Mr McGahn, should he not testify before Congress, would be perpetuating a "cover up" for the president.
"I sincerely hope that Mr McGahn will voluntarily appear and testify," he said. "His silence is perpetuating an ongoing cover-up, and while his testimony will create a few political enemies, based on almost 50 years of experience I can assure him he will make far more real friends."
Mr Trump had blasted Mr Dean, and Republicans on the committee likewise questioned why he should be trusted to give testimony, since he had pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice related to the Watergate scandal in the 1970s.
The president has also threatened China with further tariffs during a phone interview with CNBC, saying the Asian nation will ultimately make a deal “because they have to”, while also warning the tech giants of Silicon Valley he could take action against them over the “discrimination” he believes he and other prominent conservatives have been subjected to.
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Interviewed about his new book on Trump on CNN's Reliable Sources, the network's chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta offered this assessment of the president's mental health.
"I tell folks, I'm not a psychiatrist," he said. "I can't assess the president's mental state, but I will tell you is my sense of it, covering him for a pretty long period of time now, is that he's more crazy like a fox."
Acosta was asked the question by host Brian Selter in response to Washington lawyer George Conway's frequent attacks on his wife's employer.
Trump is resuming his attack on The NYT, asking for a retraction and accusing the newspaper of "sick journalism" over yesterday's story that his Mexico deal was actually agreed ages ago.
This is the front page he's so annoyed about.
The NYT offered this response on Sunday.
The president's trade war with China resulted in "anaemic job growth" in May, with manufacturing and construction companies hardest hit.
The US economy added 75,000 jobs last month, a significant pullback from 224,000 jobs added in April, the Labour Department reported on Friday. The slow growth was the biggest red flag yet that the economy is under strain.
The unemployment rate remained at a five-decade low of 3.6 per cent, but wage growth disappointed, another sign of fading momentum.
White House officials have barred a State Department intelligence staffer from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change could be "possibly catastrophic".
The effort to edit - and ultimately suppress - the written testimony of senior analyst Rod Schoonover of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research comes as the Trump administration is debating how best to challenge the idea that the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet and could pose serious risks unless the world makes deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade.
The Trump administration has denied requests from its American embassies around the world to be allowed to fly the rainbow Pride flag from their flagpoles in honour of the LGBT+ community this month.
You can still buy "LGBTQ for Trump" t-shirts, however, discounted to $24 (£18.95) from $30 (£23). So that's all right then.
Cadre, a real estate company part-owned by Jared Kushner, the president's senior adviser and son-in-law, has received $90m (£71m) from unknown offshore investors since 2017, The Guardian reports this morning.
Cash has been flowing to Cadre through a vehicle run by Goldman Sachs in the Cayman Islands while Kushner works for the US as an international envoy, according to corporate filings and interviews.
Kushner has retained a stake in the firm since joining the administration, while selling other assets - raising conflict of interest concerns. His holding is now valued at up to $50m (£39.5m), according to his own financial disclosure documents.
Here's the latest on the Democratic 2020 challengers, 19 of whom visited Iowa over the weekend.
Front-runner Joe Biden was not among them - he was away at his granddaughter's high school graduation - but a CNN/Des Moines Register poll still puts him ahead of the pack on 24 percent, with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg all close on 16 percent, 15 percent and 14 percent respectively.
The Hill quotes a number of anonymous Democrats critical of House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler's handling of the investigation into President Trump. They argue he should have warned the administration of the consequences of its stonewall earlier and taken a harder line in penalising those who failed to comply with subpoenas.
"If Republicans don't comply with something, we should be ready to... slap them on the wrist right away. Not wait days and days and days and then figure out what we want to do," said one.
The Mueller report has been a "big missed opportunity and any of the other chairmen would have played it differently. Yes, they are in an impossible situation, which is why they need more finesse than hammer," said another.
"You can’t come at it head on. You have to be creative on how to get the information."
Best of all, a third put it this way: "You need a pirate. Nadler is just a sailor."
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