U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the North Side Gymnasium in
Elkhart, Ind., Thursday, May 10, 2018, during a campaign rally. (AP
Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
President Trump said he’s looking for a bipartisan plan to address infrastructure in the U.S. In a tweet Saturday, the president said there’s “nothing easy about making an infrastructure plan.” He added, its especially hard to get the funds when the country is spending trillions of dollars in the Middle East. Republicans are currently looking for a way to fund the plan, which is expected to cost between $1 and $2 trillion. Senator Rand Paul has suggested withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and other combat zones to pay for the move.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders expressed disbelief on Saturday at the fact that Democrats pushed "socialism" while living under President Trump's growing economy. "It's
truly mind-boggling. I don't know why anyone would vote for a system
that they are literally watching crumble before their very eyes,"
Sanders said while appearing Saturday on "Watters' World." Her comment was an apparent reference to the developing political crisis and looming regime change in Venezuela, which has met with sky-high inflation, deteriorating humanitarian conditions and a political uprising. She
told host Jesse Watters that favoring socialism was particularly odd
given that this nation's capitalist system has worked "so well." "Under
this president, [the] American economy is booming, we're thriving, and
we're doing better than we've done in a long time," she added. She made those remarks just after the administration celebrated a positive jobs report which included 263,000 added jobs and the lowest unemployment rate since 1969.
President Trump’s post-Mueller-report victory lap includes new merchandise such as $30 “Collusion Delusion” T-shirts and “Witch Hunt!” mugs. Buyers are also snatching up white tees that reproduce Trump’s March
24, 1:42 p.m. tweet following Attorney General William Barr’s
announcement of his summary of Mueller’s findings: “Complete and
Total EXONERATION.” The “Witch Hunt!” and “No collusion” taglines also
come in decals ($9) and beverage coolers ($8). The shop.donaldjtrump.com site is authorized by Trump For President Inc. and the Republican National Committee. Sales surged on April 18, the day the redacted Mueller report was released, said campaign officials. “Our
Mueller-related merchandise has been doing exceptionally well. Our
supporters are even more energized,” said First Daughter-in-law Lara
Trump. Campaign
spokeswoman Erin Perrine said, “President Trump is a branding master
and all of the best ideas come from his messaging and tweets.” The
store’s best seller, by far, remains the $25 “Make America Great Again”
caps, which are closing in on their 1 millionth sale.
Tickets to the latest stop on Bill and Hillary Clinton’s speaking tour were going for as little as $20 on the secondary market as their 13-city adventure continued to struggle to find an audience. The
best seats in the house at Seattle’s WaMu Theater on Friday could be
had for $829, a steep 54% drop from the $1,785 that the former first
couple fetched when the tour was announced in early November. But organizers soon had to slash listed prices and even offer discount ducats through Groupon to boost sales. The official prices for Friday’s appearance ranged from $66.50 to $519, the Seattle Times reported. “I
really believe that we are in a crisis, a constitutional crisis,”
Hillary Clinton opined during the 90-minute performance, presented as an
interview of her and her husband by actor Bradley Whitford. “This is a
test for our country.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
CNN’s Scott Jennings once again took liberals to the cleaners on the Abrego Garcia case, the ‘Maryland man...
