Trump news: President accused of 'abuse of power' as he hits back against John Kelly in furious tweets

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Elizabeth Warren attacks 'authoritarian' Trump over Roger Stone as he refuses to rule out pardoning political trickster

Donald Trump has been accused of spearheading a “descent into authoritarianism” by 2020 Democratic contender Elizabeth Warren after admitting he asked his attorney general William Barr to intervene in the sentencing of Republican political trickster Roger Stone and refusing to rule out pardoning him.

  After firing off a tweet on Monday morning calling prosecutors' plans to seek a nine-year sentence for Stone "a horrible and very unfair situation" and a "miscarriage of justice," Justice Department leaders subsequently announced they would seek a softer sentence. What followed was the resignation of all four prosecutors making the case against the Man with the Richard Nixon Back Tattoo - convicted of witness tampering and lying to federal investigators - and a gushing tsunami of outrage by Democrats.

The former Apprentice host was asked by reporters on Wednesday whether he has decided on pardoning Stone, who was convicted on charges of lying to Congress and impeding a federal investigation.

"I don't want to say yet," Trump answered, again calling Stone's conviction and sentencing "a disgrace."

"They treated Roger Stone very badly," he told reporters. "No one even knows what he did... They ought to apologise to him."

Responding on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 last night, Warren commented: “I have to say, I know everybody wants to talk about the horse race [the Democratic primary results from New Hampshire] but the thing that is really getting to me right now is what’s going on over at the Justice Department.

“The whole notion that we have people in our Justice Department resigning because of Donald Trump’s inappropriate influence, and the attorney general overturning a sentencing of Donald Trump’s cronies, right in front of our eyes we are watching a descent into authoritarianism.”

The American Bar Association's president Judy Perry Martinez agreed with Warren and released the following statement criticising Trump yesterday, saying her organisation "steadfastly supports judicial independence and the sound exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Public officials who personally attack judges or prosecutors can create a perception that the system is serving a political or other purpose rather than the fair administration of justice.”

Even South Carolina GOP senator Lindsey Graham has the jitters on this one:

But a key Trump ally on Fox News, Tucker Carlson, has been using his platform to egg on the president to override the rule of law and excuse Stone.

Here's John T Bennett in Washington.

William Barr to testify before House Judiciary Committee

Barr has agreed to appear before congressional investigators next month to explain himself after Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler wrote to him to express concern over his politicisation of the Justice Department at the president’s behest since taking office. “He’s an enabler,” commented Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer. “That’s a kind word.”

Nadler released a letter to Barr on Wednesday "to confirm your agreement to testify" on 31 March. In the letter, Nadler and committee Democrats write that they have concerns that Barr has misused the criminal justice system for political purposes.

"In your tenure as attorney general, you have engaged in a pattern of conduct in legal matters relating to the president that raises significant concerns for this committee," Nadler and the Democrats wrote.

The Justice Department confirmed Barr would testify. His appearance will be the first before the House Judiciary panel since he became attorney general a year ago, and since he declined an invitation to testify about special counsel Robert Mueller's report after it was released.

In addition to interventions in the Stone case, they said they will also ask Barr about his department's announcement that it is taking information that Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani is gathering in Ukraine about the president's Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son. The House voted in December to impeach Trump because of his pressure on Ukraine to investigate Democrats; the GOP-led Senate acquitted him this month.

"In the past week alone, you have taken steps that raise grave questions about your leadership," the Democrats wrote.

After the department indicated it would overrule the prosecutors, Trump tweeted congratulations to Barr "for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have been brought," suggesting the prosecutors had gone rogue.

The department insisted the decision to undo the sentencing recommendation was made on Monday night, before Trump began tweeting about it, and that prosecutors had not spoken to the White House about it.

Despite Graham's comment yesterday, the Senate has shown less interest in grilling Barr on the Stone episode, defending the department's decision to reduce the sentence and saying they didn't expect to call him specifically to discuss it.

Here's Chris Riotta on some further Republican criticism of Trump and Barr, this time from George W Bush's former press secretary Ari Fleischer.

What White House officials say about Trump and Roger Stone

Here's more from John T Bennett on what the administration is really up to here.

Trump asked what he's learned from impeachment: 'That the Democrats are crooked'

Republican senator Susan Collins justified her cowardly decision to acquit the president at his impeachment trial last week by blithely insisting Trump had learned his lesson from the Ukraine scandal and was unlikely to try and abuse his position to cheat an election again.

Asked by a reporter whether this was the case during a Q&A with his Ecuadorian counterpart Lenin Moreno yesterday, Trump answered thusly:

Collins was dishing out more insight into the man's mind on Capitol Hill yesterday, declaring: "I think the president was angered by impeachment and that is reflected in the personnel choices he made."

That one at least has the ring of truth to it.

Ex-chief of staff John Kelly unloads on Trump over Vindman, Putin, Kim and immigration

The president's former minder has largely maintained a dignified silence since leaving the administration in 2017 but finally let rip during a 75-minute speech at Drew University in Morristown, New Jersey, on Wednesday night.

General Kelly stood up for Lt Col Alexander Vindman, ousted from the Pentagon on Friday as vengeance for sounding the alarm against Trump's Ukraine plot to his superiors and then testifying against the president to the House impeachment inquiry last November.

"He did exactly what we teach them to do from cradle to grave," Kelly told his audience. "We teach them: Don’t follow an illegal order. And if you’re ever given one, you’ll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order, and then tell your boss.”

The former chief of staff also attacked Trump for cosying up to Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, denied the president's frequent assertion that the American press is "the enemy of the people", defended migrants and said the US-Mexico border wall he was once tasked with getting built was unnecessary.

Welcome to the resistance, sir.

Hillary Clinton labels Trump a 'tyrant' over post-acquittal retribution tour

Fresh from calling her former foe a "failed-state fascist" yesterday, Hillary Clinton has ramped up her criticism of the president's lashing out and score-settling in the week since his impeachment win in the Senate.

This New York Daily News cartoon sending up Barr's fealty to Trump also deserves a wider audience.

Trump yet again haunted by old tweet

As we know with President Trump, there is ALWAYS a tweet from the past to undermine whatever his current position on a given issue is.

This week's crisis is no exception.

(Twitter)

Georgia Republican Doug Collins raced out to debunk the comparison on Fox but, quite frankly, failed to convince. 

Rush Limbaugh: 'America's still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage'

Presidential Medal of Freedom recepient and conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh is getting grief online for the above comment made on his nationally syndicated radio show about 2020 rising star Pete Buttigieg.

Assessing the Democratic field following the New Hampshire primary, Limbaugh's remarks in full were as follows:

“You’ve got Fauxcahontas [Elizabeth Warren] way back there in the background barely out of the tepee bringing up the tail end. Biden’s gone. So you’re faced with a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who’s not even a Democrat [Bernie Sanders] and a gay guy, 37 years old, loves kissing his husband on debate stages.

"Can you see Trump have fun with that? And Amy Klobuchar. So you are, whoever the grand poobahs in the Democrat Party are, you’re looking at your options today, and you’re asking, 'OK, can we win with Klobuchar? We don’t want to put Klobuchar up there because she doesn’t have a prayer.

"Then they’re sitting there, and they’re looking at Mayor Pete, a 37-year-old gay guy, mayor of South Bend, loves to kiss his husband on the debate stage. And they’re saying, 'OK, how’s this gonna look, a 37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband onstage next to Mr Man Donald Trump? What’s gonna happen there?'

“They gotta be looking at that. They’ve gotta be saying that despite all the great progress and despite all the great 'wokeness' and despite all the great ground that’s been covered, America’s still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president. They have to be saying this, don’t they?"

While Limbaugh's homophobic inflections here are repellent, one fears he is unlikely to be alone in holding this opinion among the broader American public.

For balance, Joe Biden had this to say on Limbaugh during Friday's Democratic debate.

Trump fights back against senators attempting to limit his powers on war with Iran

Eager to avoid losing an ounce of power, Trump issued a pair of tweets last night to pressure Senate Republicans from supporting a measure that would limit his authority to launch military operations against Iran.

A final vote is expected today on a measure pushed by Democrat Tim Kaine of Virginia that would require the president push any formal declaration of war against Tehran through both chambers of Congress.

"The resolution underscores that Congress has the sole power to declare war, as laid out in the Constitution," Kaine said in a statement. "The resolution will force a public debate and vote in Congress as intended by the framers of the Constitution to determine whether United States forces should be engaged in these hostilities."

John T Bennett has this report.