Trump news: US delays tariffs as president threatens long jail sentences for FBI 'spying' against his campaign

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

Donald Trump has hardly been shy about mocking the Democratic contenders to rival him for the presidency in 2020.

While much of his ire has been reserved for the front-runner Joe Biden, whom he has nicknamed "Sleepy Joe" and taunted with an alt-right meme after the candidate was forced to apologise over inappropriate touching allegations, he has repeatedly teased Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas" and Pete Buttigieg for his resemblance to Mad magazine mascot Alfred E Neuman.

Speaking to energy workers in Louisiana on Tuesday, the president said: "I'm looking at the competition. You sort of dream about competition like that, you know?"

He went on to sneer at Beto O'Rourke as "falling fast" after he was forced to restart his campaign and Bernie Sanders, who he said has "got a lot of energy. But it's energy to get rid of your jobs". 

Yesterday he turned his attention to the 23rd man to step forward: New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. In a scathing tweet and a follow-up video, the president called him the "worst mayor in the US" and said: "He is a JOKE, but if you like high taxes & crime, he's your man. NYC HATES HIM!"

Here's more on Mayor de Blasio's campaign launch from Samuel Osborne.

Trump appeared in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday to unveil a new immigration plan that favours younger, “totally brilliant”, highly-skilled workers who speak English.

“We want immigrants coming in. We cherish the open door,” the US president said, an astonishing about-turn after years of scaremongering about the threat of illegal immigrants and "bad hombres" from Central America bringing drugs, organised crime and sexual violence through Texas, the entire premise for his border wall and "zero-tolerance" approach to national security that has seen the children of asylum seekers separated from their parents and detained in cages under orders from Homeland Security.

Trump said his new system - masterminded by son-in-law Jared Kushner - would awards points for those with advanced degrees, job offers and other attributes and will make it “clear what standards we ask you to achieve”.

The plan, labelled "condescending" by House speaker Nancy Pelosi, does not address the millions of immigrants already living in the country illegally. They include hundreds of thousands of young "Dreamers" brought to the US as children, their plight a priority for Democrats.

It does, however, include a proposal to allow the American public to make donations to pay for the border wall, which the president regularly promised them Mexico would be paying for throughout his successful 2016 campaign.

That of course never happened, forcing Trump to suffer a record-breaking 35-day government shutdown, declare a national emergency to be able to reallocate funds to the project and then veto a motion of disapproval passed by both chambers of Congress opposing the decision. One GoFundMe campaign launched by war veteran Brian Kolfage has already raised more than $20m (£15.6m) to help out with the wall construction. 

Speaking of the border wall, Trump has reportedly complained to officials that his pet white elephant is "ugly" and wants it painted black and lined with spikes to intimidate and deter would-be illegal entrants.

"I see a red door and I want it painted black,

"No colours anymore I want them to turn black..."

Despite promising his supporters a concrete wall, what's actually being erected from "sea to shining sea" through the borderlands and wildlife reserves of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas is a barrier comprised of steel bollards.

The president wants those painted black to absorb the summer heat and make the metal fence too hot to be scale-able. But, as one administration official rightly observes: "Once you paint it, you always have to paint it." A costly and extremely arduous task for minimal result.

His micromanaging is reportedly causing consternation among the military engineers overseeing the project.

As tensions with Iran rumble on, Trump is reported to be seething in private about the perception his hawkish national security adviser, John Bolton, is dictating policy on Tehran and leading the US to the brink of a war the president says he “hopes” can be avoided.

According to CNN: "Trump is frustrated that Bolton has allowed the Iran situation to reach a point where it seems like armed conflict is a real possibility, but his frustrations with his national security adviser actually began earlier this spring over Venezuela, when a similar dynamic - Bolton and other aides openly hinting at military options - caused Trump to warn his team to tamp down the rhetoric."

Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday to deny Washington Post and New York Times reports suggesting there was "infighting" within his administration about how to handle Tehran after saber-rattling and heated rhetoric erupted this week over the Middle Eastern nation's defiance of tough economic sanctions and America increasing its military presence in the Persian Gulf.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was on bruising form when asked about the matter on Thursday: "The president is the ultimate decision maker and he's going to take all of the information and intelligence that is given to him and he will make the decision that he thinks is best to keep Americans safe. It's that simple. There's only one person that was elected to make those decisions and that was the president. He'll be the one that decides."

Trump is known for joking to other world leaders about Bolton's warmongering while secretary of state Mike Pompeo is said to roll his eyes whenever his mustachioed colleague is mentioned. 

Members of Trump's administration tried to influence his former national security adviser Michael Flynn's co-operation with FBI special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling, prosecutors said in a court filing made public on Thursday.    

The former US army general recounted multiple instances in which "he or his attorneys received communications from persons connected to the administration or Congress that could have affected both his willingness to co-operate and the completeness of that co-operation", according to the unsealed records.

The conversations are said to have taken place before and after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts during the presidential transition period in 2016 with the-then Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak.

Flynn is understood to have given Mueller a voicemail recording from a Trump attorney to his own saying: "If there's information that implicates the president, then we've got a national security issue... we need some kind of heads up."

He was dismissed after just 24 days as Trump's national security chief, the shortest tenure in the history of that office.

Trump made at least $434m (£340m) in 2018, impressive but down from $450 (£353m) in 2017, according to an annual financial disclosure from the White House on the president's income.

That includes $40.8m (£32m) in revenue from his Trump International Hotel in Washington and $22.7m (£17.7m) from Mar-a-Lago.

The disclosure - far less telling than his tax returns would be, hence the House Ways and Means Committee's determination to get hold of them - does reveal outstanding debt of $315m (£247m). Five of Trump's loans are listed as "over $50m", so vague as to make the actual total impossible to calculate.

Trump has broken with presidential precedent by maintaining an interest in his luxury real estate empire while in office, although the Trump Organization's day-to-day running is currently handled by his sons, Don Jr and Eric.

Interest in the president's financial concerns have escalated in recent weeks after the Democrats pursued Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin for Trump's 2013 to 2018 returns and The New York Times revealed he lost $1.17bn (£916m) between 1985 and 1994 at the height of his professional pomp. 

Trump continues to refuse to release his tax returns, also unprecedented since 1976, insisting he can't because he is "under audit", despite there being no legal basis for this preventing him from doing so.

Some other interesting takeaways from that disclosure include:

- Trump keeps as much as $50m (£39m) in a Capital One checking and savings account, generating as much as $1m (£783,000) in interest per annum

- First lady Melania Trump reported no source of income worth more than $201 (£157)

- Trump is still taking his Screen Actors Guild pension of $90,000 (£70,500)

House Ways and Means Committee chairman Richard Neal's latest deadline for Mnuchin to hand over those Trump tax returns passes today, incidentally, but no one is holding their breath expecting him to comply. 

Far-right Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has revealed he and Trump discussed the purchase of mid-range air defence missiles at their White House meeting on Monday with a view to propping up the now-spotty defence of critical infrastructure in Eastern Europe.

Orban also said he had asked Trump to help start production of natural gas under the Romanian section of the Black Sea in order to provide the only plausible alternative to Russian gas for the region. The Kremlin is known to use its monopoly over the local energy market to strong-arm its neighbours politically.