In his interview with Fox News host Steve Hilton, President Donald Trumpcalled for an investigation into one of his 2020 rivals, Joe Biden, and the former vice president’s ties to China.
Granted, Trump didn’t bring up the prospect of investigation, he was egged on by Hilton. “Don’t you think that should be investigated?” the Fox News host asked. “That financial connection –the Chinese government putting billions of dollars into Biden’s family business.”
Trump’s answer: “1oo percent.”
“It’s a disgrace,” the president continued. “And then he says China’s not a competitor of ours. China is a massive competitor of ours. They want to take over the world.”
Hilton’s question appears based on a claim from Peter Schweizer — author of Clinton Cash — who wrote hat the firm of Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden “inked a $1 billion private equity deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China.”
On a somewhat related note, Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, recently floated plans to travel to Ukraine and convince the government to launch an investigation on the Biden family. Giuliani has dropped that idea last week, and yesterday, a Ukranian prosecutor said in an interview that his government has no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
Attorney General Bill Barr said during his confirmation hearings that he doesn’t personally believe Robert Mueller“would be involved in a witch hunt.” He has since said it’s understandable why President Donald Trump would express that frustration.
In his Fox News interview today, Barr was asked by Bill Hemmer if he agrees with the “witch hunt” label.
“He was saying he was innocent and that he was being falsely accused,” Barr said. “And if you’re falsely accused, you would think that something was a witch hunt.”
He said for two and a half years Trump’s been hammered for allegedly “conspiring with the Russians, and we now know that was simply false.”
Hemmer asked again if he’s comfortable with the “witch hunt” label personally. Barr said, “I use what words I use… but I think if I had been falsely accused I’d be comfortable saying it was a witch hunt.”
President Donald Trump wants you to believe that he had no way of knowing about former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s shady dealings with Russia before he made him his first national security adviser. In reality, the president is trying to rewrite history.
On Friday, Trump tweeted his lament that nobody warned him about Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who was dismissed from his job as director of national intelligence by then-President Barack Obama in 2014. After his dismissal, Flynn wasted little time cozying up to the Kremlin, and then spent 2016 as one of Trump’s key campaign surrogates.
“It now seems the General Flynn was under investigation long before was common knowledge,” Trump tweeted. “It would have been impossible for me to know this but, if that was the case, and with me being one of two people who would become president, why was I not told so that I could make a change?”
It now seems the General Flynn was under investigation long before was common knowledge. It would have been impossible for me to know this but, if that was the case, and with me being one of two people who would become president, why was I not told so that I could make a change?
But news reports indicate otherwise. CNN, citing former Obama administration officials, reported on May 17, 2017, that during a White House meeting days after Trump’s election, Obama told him that “given the importance of the [national security adviser] job, the president through there were better people for it, and that Flynn wasn’t up for the job.” But Trump proceeded with hiring Flynn anyway. Former New Jersey governor and longtime Trump confidant Chris Christie has also said he directly advised Trump against hiring Flynn.
“If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn into the White House, let alone give him a job,” Christie said in 2017.
Flynn soon illustrated why Obama and Christie had concerns about him. During the presidential transition period, he had phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in which he advised Kislyak not to respond to new sanctions the Obama administration placed on Russia for interfering (on Trump’s behalf) in the just-completed presidential election. Not only did Flynn undercut Obama’s foreign policy, but he then lied about it, telling FBI investigators during an interview conducted days after Trump’s inauguration that he and Kislyak did not in fact discuss sanctions.
Flynn’s lies to the FBI prompted officials to warn Trump once again about Flynn. On January 26, 2017, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates personally informed the White House that Flynn lied to the FBI about his calls with Kislyak, and therefore was at risk of being blackmailed by Russia. But instead of immediately taking action against Flynn, the Trump administration fired Yates three days later, after she refused to implement Trump’s executive order barring people from a number of Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the United States.
Flynn was finally fired on February 13, after it emerged that he had also misled Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of his phone calls with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition period. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in December 2017, agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller, and is still awaiting sentencing.
Trump, however, has repeatedly tried to blame the whole Flynn debacle on Obama.
General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration – but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that.
Beyond the explicit warnings from Obama and Christie, a number of red flags were raised about Flynn, beginning with his unusual paid trip to Moscow for an RT gala in December 2015 — an event in which he infamously sat directly next to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and continuing throughout 2016.
As the Guardian detailed in March 2017, both US and British intelligence officers were troubled about Flynn’s role in the Trump administration, given his dealings with Russia:
US intelligence officials had serious concerns about Michael Flynn’s appointment as the White House national security adviser because of his history of contacts with Moscow and his encounter with a woman who had trusted access to Russian spy agency records, the Guardian has learned.
US and British intelligence officers discussed Flynn’s “worrisome” behaviour well before his appointment last year by Donald Trump, multiple sources have said.
They raised concerns about Flynn’s ties to Russia and his perceived obsession with Iran. They were also anxious about his capacity for “linear thought” and some actions that were regarded as highly unusual for a three-star general.
Trump, who promised during his campaign to thoroughly vet his appointees, ignored all the red flags and decided to make Flynn his national security adviser anyway. But instead of being accountable for that, he’s now again trying to shift blame.
Trump’s tweet comes amid new revelations that his lawyer tried to dissuade Flynn from cooperating with Mueller
Trump’s tweet comes the day after a federal judge unsealed records suggesting that months after Flynn’s firing, the White House took steps to discourage him from fully cooperating with investigators.
In the filing, members of Mueller’s team write that “[t]he defendant informed the government of multiple instances, both before and after his guilty plea, where either he or his attorneys received communications from persons connected to the Administration or Congress that could’ve affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation.”
The filing doesn’t contain additional information about which members of Congress were involved, but according to the Mueller report, Trump’s then-personal attorney — the Washington Post reports the attorney is John Dowd — left a voicemail for Flynn’s attorney in November 2017 and said, “[I]t wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve gone on to make a deal with … the government.”
Dowd went on to ask Flynn’s attorney for any information they might have had implicating the president, and also seemingly alluded to the possibility of a pardon.
“[I]f… there’s information that implicates the President, then we’ve got a national security issue [so] … we need some kind of heads-up. Just for the sake of protecting all our interests if we can …. [R]emember what we’ve always said about the President and his feelings toward Flynn and, that still remains,” the voicemail said.
The public should learn more about Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak and the voicemail Dowd left for Flynn’s lawyer soon. According to the Post, the judge ordered prosecutors to make public a transcript of both, and they will be posted on a court website by May 31.
While Mueller concluded that Dowd’s voicemail didn’t rise to the level of prosecutable obstruction of justice — he cited the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) guidance that a sitting president cannot be indicted — the new revelations suggest the White House was worried about Flynn might tell investigators, and was taking steps to dissuade him from spilling.
So now, ahead of what could end up being more damaging revelations about his relationship with Flynn, Trump is again trying to distance himself from his former national security adviser, and throwing Obama under the bus in the process.
During a speech to realtors on Friday, President Donald Trump swung at the “fake news” and called “bullshit” on stories about his administration that are based on anonymous sources.
Earlier Friday, the president railed on Twitter against “fraudulent and highly inaccurate coverage of Iran,” all while simultaneously saying it could be a good thing if causes Tehran to become confused. During a part of his speech in which he denied a conflict between him and his advisers on how to deal with Iran, Trump mocked media reports by remarking on how they rely on confidential sources.
“There is no source, the person doesn’t exist, the person’s not alive,” Trump said. “It’s bullshit.”
But Maggie Haberman of The New York Times wasted little time calling out the president:
We can ask the officials in his White House who asked to be quoted anonymously just two days ago how they feel about it. https://t.co/KSyGk2KIuF
President Donald Trump expressed frustrations against his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, for questioning the prospects of striking a deal with Democrats on an infrastructure plan, placing doubt on whether Mulvaney actually criticized the plan even though his comments were captured on camera.
In a newly released clip of a Fox News interview airing Sunday, Trump was asked whether he still wants to pursue a large infrastructure plan with Democrats even though Mulvaney threw cold water on the idea.
“Yeah, if Mick Mulvaney said that, then he has no right to say that. He tells me he didn’t say that and he didn’t mean it. He said it’s going to be hard to finance,” the President told “The Next Revolution” host Steve Hilton.
However, despite the President’s claim that Mulvaney hadn’t cast doubts on the plan, he did so on camera last month.
“Is this a real negotiation? I think it remains to be seen,” Mulvaney said at the Milken Institute in Beverly Hills referring to the infrastructure deal, adding, “I think there’s a much better chance of getting NAFTA passed than getting an infrastructure deal passed.”
The comment came as Democrats met with Trump and administration officials at the White House to discuss a potential infrastructure plan. Both parties suggested the meeting went well, but there hasn’t been much news on where the negotiations will go next.
Pressed further during the Fox News interview whether he’d still like to pursue an infrastructure plan with Democrats, Trump said he does want to move forward, but worried about raising taxes.
“I do, but I also think we’re being played by the Democrats a little bit,” he said.
“You know, I think what they want me to do is say, ‘well what we’ll do is raise taxes, and we’ll do this and this and this,’ and then they’ll have a news conference — see, Trump wants to raise taxes. So it’s a little bit of a game.”
President Trump on Friday asserted that his 2016 campaign had been “conclusively spied on” by the Obama administration while calling the charge akin to “treason” and demanding jail time for those behind it.
In a tweet, the president said “nothing like this has ever happened” while calling for prison sentences.
“A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!” he continued.
My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!
The president’s tweet comes days after Attorney General William Barrannounced the appointment of a U.S. attorney to review the decisions that led to the establishment of an investigation into Trump’s campaign and Russian election interference.
The attorney general infuriated many Democrats on Capitol Hill earlier this year when he asserted that “spying” on the Trump campaign had occurred in 2016, while declining to take a position on its legality. His choice of language has earned rebukes from former members of the Justice Department including former FBI chief James Comey.
Barr told The Wall Street Journaland Fox News in interviews published Friday that he had received insufficient answers from Justice Department personnel about the reasons why an investigation had been launched into the Trump campaign in the first place.
“Government power was used to spy on American citizens,” Barr told the Journal on Friday. “I can’t imagine any world where we wouldn’t take a look and make sure that was done properly.”
“I’ve been trying to get answers to the questions and I’ve found that a lot of the answers have been inadequate and some of the explanations I’ve gotten don’t hang together, in a sense I have more questions today than when I first started,” Barr added in his interview with Fox.
“People have to find out what the government was doing during that period. If we’re worried about foreign influence, for the very same reason we should be worried about whether government officials abuse their power and put their thumb on the scale.”
Attorney General William Barr has reportedly assigned a federal prosecutor in Connecticut to examine the origins of the investigation into Russia’s election interference and alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
The New York Times, citing two people familiar with the matter, reported on Monday night that John H. Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, had been tapped by Barr to look into the probe’s inception. The newspaper reported the inquiry is the third publicly known investigation focused on the FBI’s counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign.
Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz is reviewing how investigators used wiretap applications and informants as well as whether political bias motivated decisionmaking.
John W. Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, is also examining aspects of the investigation.
A spokesman for Durham’s office and the DOJ declined a request for comment from the Times. The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
Durham was nominated by Trump in 2017 and has served as a lawyer within the Justice Department for nearly 40 years, according to the Times. He has a history of performing special investigations.
Former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey assigned Durham to conduct a probe of the CIA in 2008 over the agency destroying videotapes that showed terrorism suspects being tortured.
Bloomberg News reported in April that Barr had formed a team to review the actions of the Justice Department and FBI leading up to the Russia investigation. He told Congress around that time that he was “reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted during the summer of 2016.”
He also testified before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that he believed “spying” took place.
“The question is whether it was adequately predicated and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that,” he said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said last week that he wouldn’t use “spying” to describe lawful investigative activities taken up by the FBI.
Durham’s new assignment comes just weeks after the Justice Department released special counsel Robert Mueller‘s report, which detailed the findings of his 22-month investigation into President Trump.
Mueller’s investigation did not uncover evidence to conclude that a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow took place. But the report noted that Mueller could not come to a conclusive determination with regard to whether the president obstructed justice.
President Donald Trump on Monday boasted about how successful his trade war with China has been — even though stock markets took an absolute beating on the news that China was about to slap tariffs on $60 billion of American goods.
While giving remarks to White House reporters on Monday, Trump bragged that his tariffs were making the United States richer, while a stock-market ticker showed that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was falling by more than 600 points.
“We’re taking in right now hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said of his tariffs on Chinese goods. “We’re taking in billions of dollars of tariffs, and those tariffs are going to be tremendously, if you look at what we’ve done thus far with China, we’ve never taken in ten cents until I got elected, now we’re taking in billions of billions.”
Trump also falsely credited the tariffs for economic growth in the first quarter of 2019, even though the majority of economists say the tariffs had nothing to do with strong GDP growth.
“This is a very positive step,” Trump said as the stock ticker continued showing a bloodbath in the markets. “I love the position we’re in.”
President Donald Trump told the press Monday that he doesn’t need to use foreign materials or information to attack an opponent in a campaign. He then followed his comment with a false declaration that he never has in the past.
Trump, per pool, says he won't use dirt/oppo from foreign countries in 2020: “Well, I never did use [it]." pic.twitter.com/5VmgzX82b0
During the 2016 campaign, Trump commented about or quoted Wikileaks 164 times and 141 of those were in the final month of the campaign. The site’s chief is now expected to be sent to the United States to stand trial for conspiring with Chelsea Manning to steal American documents and publish them online.
Trump only said he “would agree” to not using foreign information.
Trump blatantly lies & claims he "never did use" information stolen from a foreign adversary during 2016 campaign — he mentioned WikiLeaks about 5 times daily in Oct 2016 — while refusing to commit to not using information stolen by foreign adversaries during 2020 campaign. pic.twitter.com/akdvpfjTsy
President Donald Trump repeatedly claimed the federal government is taking in “tens of billions of dollars” in tariffs leveled on foreign goods, suggesting those taxes are being paid by foreign nations, when in reality they are being paid for by U.S. consumers.
The President also claimed that no president before him has ever leveled tariffs on foreign goods, which is tremendously false.
“We’ve never taken in ten cents [in tariffs] until I got elected,” Trump told reporters Monday from the Oval Office. That’s a lie.
Trump refuses to stop lying about tariffs, falsely claims the US is taking in "billions and billions from China" pic.twitter.com/Cl0iCehILJ
“I love the position we’re in,” Trump added, as the markets tumbled on news China may retaliate in Trump’s tariff war. The DOW has been down about 600 points much of the day, following rough days for markets Thursday and Friday last week.
The reality is tariffs were the main source of all Federal revenue from
1790 to 1914. At the end of the American Civil War in 1865 about 63% of
Federal income was generated by the excise taxes, which exceeded the
25.4% generated by tariffs. In 1915 during World War I tariffs generated
only 30.1% of revenues. Since 1935 tariff income has continued to be a
declining percentage of Federal tax income.
