Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
CNN and New York Times report disappearance of 2,700 pages of classified material that caused alarm in US intelligence circles
A 10in-thick binder containing nearly 3,000 pages of highly classified material related to the investigation of Russian election interference as well as links between Moscow and Donald Trump went missing in the final days of his presidency, CNN and the New York Timesreported.
CNN said the disappearance raised alarms in the American intelligence community because “some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed”.
‘You could almost feel the spittle coming off the paper,’ he writes
Donald Trump’s original draft statement justifying his firing of the former FBI director James Comey was “tinfoil helmet material”, according to a top prosecutor who worked for the special counsel Robert Mueller, and who in a new book calls the draft “excruciatingly juvenile, disorganized and brimming with spite, incoherent and narcissistic”.
Donald Trump is “compromised by the Russians”, a former member of Robert Mueller’s investigation insisted on Sunday, contending that the president is “incapable of placing the national interest ahead of his own”.
Trump’s commutation ‘does not have to be the end of the story’, Andrew Weissmann wrote in a New York Times column
Donald Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence for lying to Congress and other crimes discovered in the Russia investigation “does not have to be the end of the story”, the former Mueller team member Andrew Weissmann said on Tuesday, advocating that the self-confessed political dirty trickster be brought before a grand jury.
US special counsel defends his investigation into allegations of corruption during 2016 election
The former special counsel Robert Mueller made a rare move on Saturday to publicly defend his two-year investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election – and to castigate Donald Trump’s decision to commute Roger Stone’s prison sentence.
The grim news from Florida continues: The state reported 15,000 new cases on Sunday. That breaks not only the record for a state in the US in a single day but is also more new cases than any European country has reported in a single day during the pandemic. Only the US, Brazil and India have reported more new cases in a day than Florida did on Sunday.
The row over Goya Foods is spreading to some unlikely places. Last week, Goya Foods CEO Bob Unanue heaped praised on Donald Trump, saying: “We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder”.
There was backlash due to the fact that the head of an organization that describes itself as the largest Hispanic-owned food company in America praised a president who has introduced policies that have hurt Latinx people.
Aaron Zelinsky says prosecutors were under pressure to go easy on Stone because of his relationship with the president
A federal prosecutor who was part of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation told Congress on Wednesday Roger Stone, a close ally of Donald Trump, was given special treatment before sentencing because of his relationship with the US president.
Sessions protests loyalty to Trump despite fierce abuse
President endorses opponent in Alabama Senate election
Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions’ playground fight continued into Sunday. In an interview with Sinclair TV, Trump said Sessions had not been “mentally qualified” to be his first attorney general.
Donald Trump continued to fume over the Russia investigation on Sunday, more than a year after special counsel Robert Mueller filed his report without recommending charges against the president but only three days after the justice department said it would drop its case against Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.
Donald Trump is “strongly considering a full pardon” for Michael Flynn, his first national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his dealings with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office.
Flynn cut a deal as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.
The US official who overheard a key phone conversation between Eu ambassador Gordon Sondland and Donald Trump will testify publicly as part of the House impeachment inquiry, according to CNN.
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Democrats must be given access to testimony, judge rules
Committees subpoena Trump officials who refused to testify
A judge on Friday ordered the justice department to give the House unredacted portions of grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, handing a victory to Democrats who want the material for the impeachment investigation of Donald Trump.
More from Adam Schiff, who has continued to criticize Trump’s earlier exhortation for China to investigate Biden:
“Once again, having the president of the United States suggesting, urging, a foreign country to interfere in our presidential elections is an illustration that if this president has learned anything from the two years of the Mueller investigation is that he feels he can do anything with impunity.”
Trump suggests the “pharmaceutical” industry, and other industries, could be behind what he describes as a “hoax”.
I’m not sure which of the things Trump believes to be a hoax he is discussing, but it’s likely the Mueller investigation or the Ukraine scandal.
House judiciary chair says it could clear path to impeachment
Adam Shiff: ‘We are now in preliminary to a judicial proceeding’
Robert Mueller’s testimony to Congress “broke the lie” Donald Trump has been telling and potentially cleared the path to impeachment, House judiciary chair Jerrold Nadler said on Sunday.
The president is celebrating the supreme court’s decision to allow him to spend $2.5bn on the border wall:
Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!
This wall won't make anyone any more secure. It's a futile exercise to massage your ego, and advance your racist agenda.
We should be spending this $2.5bn of our tax payers money on housing for homeless people, mental health for veterans, and healthcare for those who are unwell.
The case is not about whether the challenged border barrier construction plan is wise or unwise. It is not about whether the plan is the right or wrong policy response to existing conditions at the southern border of the United States. Instead, this case presents strict legal questions regarding whether the proposed plan for funding border barrier construction exceeds the executive branch’s lawful authority.”
The case the Supreme Court ruled on began after the 35-day partial government shutdown that started in December of last year. Trump ended the shutdown in February after Congress gave him approximately $1.4 billion in border wall funding. But the amount was far less than the $5.7 billion he was seeking, and Trump then declared a national emergency to take cash from other government accounts to use to construct sections of wall.
The money Trump identified includes $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion in Defense Department money and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund.
The Supreme Court has said the Trump administration can spend $2.5bn in Pentagon funds on the border wall:
JUST IN: Supreme Court allows Trump administration to spend $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds on border wall pic.twitter.com/JVxFusMf41
NOW: In a divided decision, the Supreme Court rules the Trump administration can begin using some of the contested federal funds Trump redirected for border wall construction — the court granted the admin's request to stay a lower court injunction https://t.co/SSEU48JLNUpic.twitter.com/DPijozmm8B
Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan would have denied the stay and left in place the injunction blocking the admin from using the funds while the case went forward; Breyer would have let the govt finalize contracts, but also blocked construction during the litigation
Warren urged House to rise ‘above politics’ and launch proceedings against Trump while Biden said president ‘should be tried’
Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren urged the House of Representatives to rise “above politics” and launch impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump after the former special counsel Robert Mueller testified that his report on Russian election interference did not exonerate the president.
The candidates, speaking on Wednesday at the annual convention of the NAACP, the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, said Mueller’s testimony highlighted the urgency for brining articles of impeachment against a president whose bigotry while in office has harmed communities of color.
The former US special counsel Robert Mueller insisted on Wednesday that Donald Trump was not exonerated by his report into Russian interference in the 2016 US election and denied his investigation was a 'witch-hunt'. Mueller said the US president could be charged after he leaves office, but offered little new ammunition to boost the case for Trump's impeachment
Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said in a statement that Mueller’s testimony revealed the “troubling deficiencies of the special counsel’s investigation.”
“The testimony revealed that this probe was conducted by a small group of politically biased prosecutors who, as hard as they tried, were unable to establish either obstruction, conspiracy, or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia,” the president’s lawyer said. “The American people understand that this issue is over. They also understand that the case is closed.”
...who, as hard as they tried, were unable to establish either obstruction, conspiracy, or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. It is also clear that the Special Counsel conducted his two-year investigation unimpeded.
In highly anticipated testimony before the US Congress on Wednesday, the former special counsel Robert Mueller submitted to hours of questioning.
His testimony comes four months after he concluded the two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign’s ties to Moscow, the findings of which were detailed in a 448-page report released in April.
The eyes of America will be trained on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, as Robert Mueller testifies before two House committees about his report on Russian election interference, links between the Trump campaign and Moscow and potential obstruction of justice by the president.