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White House Lawyer: Mueller report written like law school paper, very political

The White House is taking issue with political statements made in the special counsel’s report, which have been used by the left to smear the president and his associates.
White House lawyer Emmet Flood outlined his concerns in a letter to Attorney General William Barr last month, which was made public on Thursday. The letter zeroes in on a line found in Volume II of the report in which Mueller’s teams said the evidence prevented them from “conclusively determining no criminal conduct occurred.”
Flood argued this was not the job of the special counsel, which is a concern echoed by the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
“It also does not exonerate him, prosecutors never say that, that’s kind of close to an improper statement,” said Giuliani.

The Mueller report is pictured. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Flood said prosecutors are not in “the business of establishing innocence” or of “exonerating investigated persons” because the American justice system already presumes innocence.
Flood explained the danger of applying this standard nationwide, which would force any accused person to prove beyond a shadow of doubt their own innocence. He said the job of prosecutors is to fully investigate a situation then decide if it merits recommending charges.
To this end, Flood believes the special counsel fell short because it did not reach a conclusive decision on obstruction. He questioned whether this was deliberately done to give Congress a sort of “road map” to take action against the president as they openly discuss impeachment.
Despite the unfairness with which Democrats have treated President Trump over the last two-years, Flood explained how he has remained as transparent as possible. That’s because much of the information Mueller’s team got their hands on is classified as “privileged material,” meaning it could have been withheld with an executive order.
After laying out his case to Barr, Flood explained the purpose of his letter is to make sure this investigation does not set a precedent for future proceedings.

New tent cities in Texas designed to expand shelter for illegal immigrants

FILE – Migrants walk along a highway as a caravan of several hundred people sets off from San Pedro Sula, Honduras in hopes of reaching the distant United States. (AP Photo/Delmer Martinez, File)

Just across the southern border in Texas, the U.S. government built two large tents in the hopes of providing some additional shelter to the overwhelming number of migrants crossing the border. Officials said they are having a hard time coping with the lack of space for migrants, which has led those crossing the border to sleep on the floors of Border Patrol stations or in military-style tents.
The tents, located in El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley, are each designed to hold 500 people with bathrooms, recreation areas and sleeping quarters.
In a recent statement, officials said the tents were built “to support efforts to process, care for, and transfer the unprecedented number of families and unaccompanied children crossing the border illegally each day.”
The tents are slated to be in use for at least the next four-months, and come with a price tag. The government estimates it will cost around $37 million to operate the facilities.
El Paso has reportedly become the center of the Central American migrant crisis, with thousands flocking to the border each day.

“These installations are for 500 people. It’s not going to solve the problem we’re seeing, which is the large number of apprehensions that we have seen in this sector since October last year. This will help us to process a little bit better.”

— Ramiro Cordero, Border Patrol agent

On Tuesday, Border Patrol agents reported arresting around 1,100 migrants in the El Paso sector. Additionally, Border Patrol said it closed down drug enforcement checkpoints around El Paso. Officials said the checkpoints are now being used to process illegal immigrants. The agency said the checkpoints can be reopened if the flow of migrants slows down.

Comey defends FBI's investigation in response to NYT 'spying' report

Former FBI Director James Comey on Friday defended the bureau actions alleged a day earlier that an informant portrayed a research assistant in order to investigate a Trump foreign policy adviser in 2016.
In a lengthy interview with a Los Angeles radio station, Charles Feldman mentioned the New York Times report and asked Comey about Trump supporters' reaction to it.
“Already some Trump supporters are saying, 'Aha! You see? We are right! The president is right!" Feldman said to Comey. "The FBI and the … so-called deep state, they were spying on an American presidential campaign -- and this story is proof of that.’”
Comey hesitated at first to respond to the KNX 1070 AM host before justifying the FBI’s actions.
“Really? What would you have the FBI do? We discover in the middle of June of 2016 that the Russians were engaged in a massive effort to mess with this democracy to interfere in the election. We're focused on that and at the end of July we learn that a Trump campaign adviser -- two months earlier, before any of this was public -- had talked to a Russian representative about the fact that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton and wanted to arrange to share it with the Trump campaign,” Comey said.

"What should the FBI do when it gets that information? It should investigate to figure out whether any Americans are hooked up with this massive interference effort. And that's what we did."
— James Comey, former FBI director

According to the Times report, an informant working for U.S. intelligence posed as a Cambridge University research assistant in September 2016 to try to probe George Papadopoulos, then a Trump foreign policy adviser, on the campaign's possible ties to Russia.
Papadopoulos told Fox News on Thursday that the informant tried to "seduce" him as part of the "bizarre" episode.
The Times report cited individuals familiar with the Justice Department's ongoing Inspector General (IG) review of the intelligence community's actions in the run-up to Donald Trump's election as president.
Attorney General William Barr received harsh partisan blowback for suggesting that "spying did occur" during the presidential race, but doubled down during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
Comey said the FBI was just doing its job.
“What should the FBI do when it gets that information? It should investigate to figure out whether any Americans are hooked up with this massive interference effort. And that's what we did.” Comey said.
The fired director told Republicans who were outraged by the report to “breathe into a paper bag,” saying the FBI used “limited tools” to find the truth.
"There's no way you would do other than what we did, which is use limited tools to try to understand, 'Is this true?' And that's what the investigation was about,” Comey said.

"A foreign adversary intervened in America to damage our democracy. ... So, they will be back again, they will work to re-elect Donald Trump."
— James Comey, former FBI director

Comey argued that Republicans would be outraged if the FBI did not react if a similar situation had emerged involving former President Barack Obama and Iran during the 2012 election.
The former FBI head also warned that the Russians would again work to re-elect President Trump, saying their initial actions were "an act of war" and criticized the president for "refusing to accept that."
"A foreign adversary intervened in America to damage our democracy to hurt one of our two candidates for president and to help the other. That's an act of war. And they not only did it, they exceeded their wildest expectations because look at where we are as a country now, how we are at each other's throats. So, they will be back again, they will work to re-elect Donald Trump," Comey said.
Fox News' Gregg Re and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Joe Biden's son invested in Chinese app that spies on Muslims, as US condemns China over 'concentration camps'

An investment fund backed by Hunter Biden, son of 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden, invested in a surveillance system used to spy on Muslims in China, a new report claims.
The former vice president has been facing scrutiny over his son’s business dealings in Ukraine and other countries, with reports focusing on Hunter Biden’s role in the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
The company employed the younger Biden as a board member as the U.S. and the Obama administration were mulling a course of action amid Russia's invasion in Eastern Ukraine. Biden also apparently threatened the Ukrainian president to fire a prosecutor who happens to have been investigating corruption of Burisma.

Dec. 4, 2013: Vice President Joe Biden, left, waves as he walks out of Air Force Two with his granddaughter Finnegan Biden and son Hunter Biden at the airport in Beijing. (Associated Press)

But Hunter’s investments go farther to the east, drawing scrutiny over his involvement in China amid a controversy over his father’s dismissive comments on the campaign trail about the potential threats China poses to the U.S.
According to the Intercept, Hunter’s investment company in China, known as Bohai Harvest RST, invested in Face++, a mobile phone app built by the Chinese government to introduce a mass surveillance state and spy on its citizens.
The application has been used to spy on Muslims in China’s western province of Xinjiang, where an estimated 1 million Muslims are held in “re-education” camps, providing authorities access to data that shows personal information such as their religious activity, blood type and usage of utilities.
The U.S. government on Friday criticized China’s mass detention of Muslims.
“The (Chinese) Communist Party is using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps,” Randall Schriver, who leads Asia policy at the U.S. Defense Department, said during a briefing, according to Reuters. He added that the number of detained Muslims could be “closer to 3 million citizens.”

“The (Chinese) Communist Party is using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps.”
— State Department's Randall Schriver

The company also consists of a network of other funds that make other investments, making Hunter Biden an influential businessman in China, according to the outlet, which somewhat explains Bohai Harvest’s dependence on an international subsidiary of the state-owned Bank of China to finance its investments.
The revelation comes as Biden caught flak on the campaign trail after expressing lack of concern over China as a global competitor to the U.S. and mocked those taking the Chinese threat seriously at a rally on Wednesday.
“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man!” Biden exclaimed. “The fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the East -- I mean in the West. They can't figure out how they're going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. They're not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they're not competition for us.”
Reacting to those remarks, President Trump said Biden was among many politicians who were  “naïve” regarding China.
“For somebody to be so naive, and say China's not a problem – if Biden actually said that, that's a very dumb statement,” Trump said.

Deranged Democrat Cartoons

Pompeo: Omar's Venezuela comments 'disgusting'

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo didn't hold back Thursday when reacting to Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar's comments insinuating the U.S. was partly to blame for the political crisis in Venezuela, calling her comments "ignorant" and "disgusting."
"So, the nicest thing I can say is it is unbelievable ignorance. It's just factually wrong," Pompeo said on the "Ingraham Angle."
The freshman Democratic congresswoman has been critical of the U.S.'s role in Venezuela.
“A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela and we have sort of set the stage for where we are arriving today,” Omar told "Democracy Now!" “This particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States."
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó's called for public employees to stage strikes to put pressure on embattled President Nicolas Maduro but streets remained calm after two days of clashing.
Pompeo blamed Venezuela's current problems on socialism.
"The problems in Venezuela have been years in the making.  It's been a socialist regime, first with Chavez now with Maduro. The destruction of a wealthy nation. A nation with more oil reserves than any other country in the world," Pompeo said.
The Secretary of State emphasized his displeasure with Omar's comments and brought up that she sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"For a member of congress, who frankly, one who sits on an important national committee, making a statement blaming America first in this way, it's not only ignorant, it's disgusting," Pompeo said.
Fox News' Greg Norman contributed to this report.

Trump calls on parties to ‘come together’ after ‘costly & time consuming investigations’

In a pair of Twitter messages late Thursday night, President Trump called for Republicans and Democrats to “get back to business” after what he described as two years of “each party trying their best to make the other party look as bad as possible.”
The president also issued a to-do list for Congress for the second half of his term, with items including immigration reform, investment in infrastructure and working to lower prices on prescription drugs.
“The Mueller Report strongly stated that there was No Collusion with Russia (of course) and, in fact, they were rebuffed … at every turn in attempts to gain access,” the president wrote.
“But now Republicans and Democrats must come together for the good of the American people. No more costly & time consuming investigations. Lets do Immigration (Border), Infrastructure, much lower drug prices & much more - and do it now!”
The messages came soon after a Fox News interview with President Trump -- conducted by Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge – aired on “Fox News @ Night.”
During that interview, Trump claimed that his administration provided “total transparency” during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and other probes, and that it was now time for the country to move on.
“They shouldn’t be looking anymore,” Trump told Herridge, referring to congressional Democrats. “It’s done.”
But House Democrats were angered Thursday when Attorney General William Barr failed to show up to testify before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the Mueller findings.
“The very system of government of the United States, the system of limited power, the system of not having a president as a dictator is very much at stake,” committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said at Thursday’s hearing.
But it seems that Trump is looking past partisan bickering and working toward accomplishments he can point to with his 2020 re-election campaign looming ahead.
Just two days earlier, the president met at the White House with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and reportedly worked out a $2 trillion infrastructure plan. It was a far cry from the contentious meeting among the same group just four months ago – which led to a record-setting partial shutdown of the federal government.
On Tuesday, the White House said Trump plans a similar meeting with leading Democrats soon to discuss drug prices, Reuters reported.
Several drugmakers froze prices last year following criticism from the president, but price hikes resumed this year, according to the report.
In late April, the president and first lady Melania Trump attended the Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit in Atlanta, where the president spoke of his administration’s efforts to combat the opioid epidemic and stop the flow of drugs arriving through the U.S.-Mexico border.
Also in April, special White House adviser Jared Kushner disclosed that he was preparing a merit-based immigration plan for the president that would favor immigrants with high-level job skills over those who already have family members in the U.S.
Earlier Thursday, Trump tweeted the results of a Rasmussen poll that showed his job approval rating at 51 percent among the public.

Trump tells Dems 'it's over,' says McGahn won't testify, hits Biden's 'very dumb statement' in Fox News interview

President Trump told Fox News in an exclusive wide-ranging interview Thursday evening that the White House has lost patience with congressional Democrats, and forcefully dismissed their efforts to subpoena former White House counsel Don McGahn and other administration officials to testify.
"They've testified for many hours, all of them. I would say, it's done," Trump told Fox News' Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge. "Nobody has ever done what I've done. I've given total transparency. It's never happened before like this. They shouldn't be looking anymore. It's done."
Attorney General Bill Barr made the right call in deciding not to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Trump said, following his testimony Wednesday in the Senate. House Democrats had insisted that committee counsel, rather than members of Congress, question Barr.
"It's not up to me, it’s up to him," Trump said, referring to Barr's decision not to show up. "And they were going to treat him differently than they’ve treated other people.  And of course we’ve been treated differently to start off with.  We’ve gone through so many investigations, everybody.  And it’s so ridiculous.  No obstruction, no nothing -- there’s been no nothing.  There’s been no collusion, there never was, they knew that from day one."
Trump added, in a shot at the total cost of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe: "Even my finances, it must have been looked at -- for $35 million, I assume they looked at my taxes, I assume Mueller looked at my financial statements. For $35 million, and having 20 people, 49 FBI agents, and all of the staff and all of the money they spent, I assume they looked at my taxes, which are fine -- except they are under audit, by the way."
The New York Times reported earlier Thursday that the FBI secretly deployed an informant to London in 2016 to gather information from then-Trump foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos, who told Fox News later that the informant posed as a researcher and tried to "seduce" him.
Former FBI Director James Comey, Trump told Herridge, "probably was one of the people leading the effort on spying" on his campaign. Trump said we “will find out pretty soon” the extent of Comey's involvement.

Former FBI director James Comey speaks during the Canada 2020 Conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 5, 2018. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)

"Comey leaked and he lied," Trump said. "He lied in front to Congress.  He was sworn testimony, classified information. He did a terrible job.  Everybody wanted him fired -- you now everybody; [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer, every Democrat almost, every Republican, almost -- probably 100 percent."
Trump has called the subpoena issued to McGahn by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., a "ridiculous" waste of time. The ex-White House lawyer sat for more than two dozen hours of interviews with Mueller and featured prominently in Mueller's report, and Trump has disputed the account in the report that he ordered McGahn to fire Mueller at one point.

"They shouldn't be looking anymore. It's done."
— President Trump

Trump additionally told Herridge he expected that key FBI documents that may shed light on the origins of the bureau's probe into his campaign could be declassified and released within a matter of weeks, or months at the latest.
"Yes, I’m going to be allowing declassification pretty soon," Trump said. "I didn’t want to do it originally because I wanted to wait, because I know what they -- you know I’ve seen the way they play.  They play very dirty.  So I decided to do it, and I’m going to be doing if very soon, far more than you would have even thought."
Trump previously told Fox News that his attorneys advised him not to declassify and release the full documents -- including surveillance warrant applications to monitor former Trump aide Carter Page and related materials -- while the Mueller probe was ongoing, for fear the administration would be accused of obstructing justice by doing so.
Asked about New York Attorney General Letitia James' ongoing efforts to investigate him on multiple fronts, Trump dismissed the probes as partisan stunts.

President Trump said his White House counsel, Don McGahn, will be departing in the fall after the Senate confirmation vote for Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

"Can you imagine someone campaigning -- she doesn't know anything about me, and she's campaigning on that fact," Trump said of the Democrat. "They've gone through everything -- my taxes, my financial statements, which are phenomenal. And I'm so clean. Think of it -- after two and a half years, and all of that money spent, nothing. Very few people could have sustained that."
White House contenders Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, Trump told Herridge, remain his most likely opponents in 2020.
"I'd be very happy if it were Biden, Sleepy Joe. I think he did a bad job. ... I just don't think he'd be a very good candidate. I mean, we'll see what happens. I wish him well, I'd like him to get it. I'd be happy with Bernie. I personally think it's between those two. I don't see anybody else, but could be. You never know."
Biden expressed his lack of concern over China as a global competitor to the U.S. at a rally on Wednesday, prompting a grim response from Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.
"China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man!" Biden exclaimed. "The fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the East -- I mean in the West. They can't figure out how they're going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. They're not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they're not competition for us."
Reacting to those remarks, Trump said Biden was among many politicians "naive" over China. "For somebody to be so naive, and say China's not a problem -- if Biden actually said that, that's a very dumb statement."
Biden has faced scrutiny over his past comments and actions in Ukraine, including bragging on video that he pressured the country to fire its top prosecutor, who happened to be leading a corruption investigation of a natural gas company that employed his son Hunter Biden.
"I'm hearing it's a major scandal," Trump said, after urging Biden to explain the situation. "They even have him on tape, talking about the prosecutor -- and I've seen that tape. They have to solve that problem."
And, as protesters and military forces clashed in Venezuela, Trump again indicated his strong support for opposition leader Juan Guaido.
"He's a brave guy, and what's happening in Venezuela is sad," Trump said, although he refused to draw a specific red line for military intervention.
"There's always a tipping point," Trump said, when pressed on what it would take for the U.S. military to become involved. "Certainly, I'd rather not do that."
Separately, Trump said China "took advantage of us on trade like nobody in history has ever taken advantage of anyone," but revealed that an agreement amid the country's ongoing trade war with the U.S. could be imminent.
"Well, we are very close to a deal with China," Trump said. "But it’s a question of whether or not I want to make it.  I mean we’re going to make either a real deal, or we’re not going to make a deal at all. And if we don’t make a deal we’re going to tariff China, and that’ll be fine.  We’ll -- frankly we’ll make a lot of money."
Asked about the possibility of a June summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, Trump was optimistic: "I think we can probably do that.  Yes, I do.  I think we can do that.  Yes."

Kimberly Strassel: AG Barr gets attacked because his probe endangers powerful people

The only thing uglier than an angry Washington is a fearful Washington. And fear is what’s driving this week’s blitzkrieg of Attorney General William Barr.
Mr. Barr tolerantly sat through hours of Democratic insults at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday. His reward for his patience was to be labeled, in the space of a news cycle, a lawbreaking, dishonest, obstructing hack. Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly accused Mr. Barr of lying to Congress, which, she added, is “considered a crime.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said he will move to hold Mr. Barr in contempt unless the attorney general acquiesces to the unprecedented demand that he submit to cross-examination by committee staff attorneys. James Comey, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, lamented that Donald Trump had “eaten” Mr. Barr’s “soul.” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren demands the attorney general resign. California Rep. Eric Swalwell wants him impeached.
These attacks aren’t about special counsel Robert Mueller, his report or even the surreal debate over Mr. Barr’s first letter describing the report. The attorney general delivered the transparency Democrats demanded: He quickly released a lightly redacted report, which portrayed the president in a negative light. What do Democrats have to object to?
Some of this is frustration. Democrats foolishly invested two years of political capital in the idea that Mr. Mueller would prove President Trump had colluded with Russia, and Mr. Mueller left them empty-handed. Some of it is personal. Democrats resent that Mr. Barr won’t cower or apologize for doing his job. Some is bitterness that Mr. Barr is performing like a real attorney general, making the call against obstruction-of-justice charges rather than sitting back and letting Democrats have their fun with Mr. Mueller’s obstruction innuendo.
But most of it is likely fear. Mr. Barr made real news in that Senate hearing, and while the press didn’t notice, Democrats did. The attorney general said he’d already assigned people at the Justice Department to assist his investigation of the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. He said his review would be far-reaching – that he was obtaining details from congressional investigations, from the ongoing probe by the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, and even from Mr. Mueller’s work. Mr. Barr said the investigation wouldn’t focus only on the fall 2016 justifications for secret surveillance warrants against Trump team members but would go back months earlier.
He also said he’d focus on the infamous “dossier” concocted by opposition-research firm Fusion GPS and British former spy Christopher Steele, on which the FBI relied so heavily in its probe. Mr. Barr acknowledged his concern that the dossier itself could be Russian disinformation, a possibility he described as not “entirely speculative.” He also revealed that the department has “multiple criminal leak investigations under way” into the disclosure of classified details about the Trump-Russia investigation.