Trump news: President absent at Elijah Cummings funeral as his old calendar puts him at place of alleged sexual assault
Another wild day of news surrounding the White House
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Your support makes all the difference.The US Justice Department’s investigation into the origins of FBI special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election hacking in 2016, instigated by Donald Trump’s attorney general William Barr and widely seen as a retaliatory measure to explore “deep state” liberal bias, is now “a criminal inquiry”, according to reports.
The president finds himself under renewed pressure as lawyers for Summer Zervos, a former candidate on his reality show The Apprentice who has accused Mr Trump of sexual assault, say their client has evidence to corroborate her claim that he attacked her in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2007.
The calendar records, filed in Ms Zervos’ defamation lawsuit, show Mr Trump was scheduled to be at the Beverly Hills Hotel in California on 21 December, 2007, in the timeframe when she claims Mr Trump made unwanted advances at that hotel.
She said he kissed and groped her, despite her objections, at what she thought would be a professional dinner, and then invited her to meet him at his nearby golf course the next morning. The calendar records show he was scheduled there the morning after his arrival at the hotel.
Mr Trump’s calendar doesn’t include anything about a meeting with Ms Zervos. But her lawyer, Mariann Wang, wrote that the documents “strongly corroborate” Ms Zervos’ account — and indicate that Mr Trump was lying in a 2016 statement that said he “never met her at a hotel.”
Mr Trump's lawyer Marc Kasowitz said on Thursday that Ms Zervos’ claims are “entirely meritless and not corroborated by any documents.”
Ms Zervos, a California restaurateur who was on The Apprentice in 2006, was among more than a dozen women who came forward during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign with allegations of sexual misconduct. Both she and Mr Trump are Republicans.
He called the women “liars” trying to harm him with “100 percent fabricated” stories, and he retweeted a message specifically calling Ms Zervos’ claims “a hoax.” He also issued a statement denying her allegations, including the denial of meeting her at a hotel.
Ms Zervos had approached lawyers in 2011 and sent Fox News an August 2015 email about her allegation, according to the filing.
“Trump Hit On Me,” read the email’s subject line. Sent two months into Mr Trump’s presidential campaign, the message said he “invited me to a hotel room under the guise of working for him. He had a different agenda.”
Ms Zervos is seeking a retraction, an apology and damages.
In her lawsuit, Ms Zervos said Mr Trump also kissed her unexpectedly at his office in Trump Tower in December of 2007, before the alleged California encounter.
Thursday’s court filing doesn’t include any calendar items related to that alleged encounter, but it does include emails from that autumn between Ms Zervos and Mr Trump’s secretary where they discuss a potential lunch date in New York.
Meanwhile, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway is also in trouble after threatening a Washington Examiner reporter who asked her about her husband, a frequent critic of President Trump, prompting the journalist in question to publish a transcript of their phone call.
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our live blog to load
Chris Riotta has the latest on the Democratic response to the Justice Department's criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia probe.
“Rudy Giuliani is a good man” Donald Trump said to reporters before departing the White House before attacking Joe Biden and his family over the former vice president’s son and his international business dealings.
“Here’s the other problem, you’re with CNN, and you’re fake news,” Donald Trump said while speaking to a reporter before departing from the White House.
He’s now attacking the press and the “do nothing Democrats,” saying the Republicans should “take over the House by big numbers” because of the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry against him.
"You can't run a free society if you have to hate everybody you disagree with," former President Bill Clinton says at Elijah Cummings' funeral. "He believed that you should treat people the way you want to be treated."
The White House press secretary has tweeted an announcement about Donald Trump's trip to South Carolina:
Here's my story on that awkward snubbing from yesterday's memorial services for Elijah Cummings:
Rudy Giuliani "looks for corruption everywhere he goes," Donald Trump says in a moment he somehow did not realise would make for great internet fodder -
House Democrats on Friday issued three more subpoenas as part of their impeachment inquiry, targeting top officials in the White House budget office and the US Department of State.
The subpoenas called on Office of Management and Budget and Acting Director Russell Vought and Associate Director for National Security Programs Michael Duffey, and Department of State Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl to testify as part of the probe, the three House committees leading the effort said.
Lawmakers said Mr Duffey must appear on 5 November, and Mr Vought and Mr Brechbuhl must appear on 6 November, the committees said in a statement.
Reuters
The US budget deficit hit $984 billion for the 2019 fiscal year, its highest level in seven years and a 26 per cent increase on last year's figure of $779 billion, the treasury has said. Forecasts by the Trump administration and the Congressional Budget Office predict it will hit $1 trillion in the current fiscal year.
The increase reflects lost revenue from Trump's 2017 tax cut as well as extra spending on the military, healthcare and social security in the budget.
The highest deficit was $1.4 trillion and came in 2009, when then president Barack Obama and Congress were trying to navigate the banking crisis and the resulting global recession with extra spending. It had come down to $585 billion by the time Obama left office in January, 2017.
White House adviser Kellyanne Conway has angrily hit back at claims she threatened a reporter in a seven-minute rant, telling journalists: "If I threaten someone, you'll know it."
The counsellor to the president denied that she had threatened to look into a reporter's personal life after she had berated her in a phone call for mentioning Ms Conway's husband's ongoing criticism of the president in a previous article.
In the phone call with reporter Caitlin Yilek of the conservative Washington Examiner earlier this week, Ms Conway said, "Listen, if you're going to cover my personal life, then we're welcome to do the same around here. If it has nothing to do with my job, which it doesn't, that's obvious, then we're either going to expect you to cover everybody's personal life or we're going to start covering them over here."
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