President Trump in a phone interview on “Hannity”
Thursday talked about a handful of Democratic contenders for the 2020
presidential election, disparaging some of them, including former Vice
President Joe Biden. "I
think we are calling him 'Sleepy Joe' 'cause I've known him for a
while. Is he a pretty sleepy guy. He won't be able to deal with
[Chinese] President Xi, I will tell you. That's a different level
of energy and, frankly, intelligence. So I sort refer to him as 'Sleepy
Joe.' A lot of people wanted me to change the word 'sleepy' to
something else that rhymes with it," Trump told host Sean Hannity. "I
thought it was too nasty. "He's not going to be able to do the job," Trump added. Biden officially announced his candidacy in a video Thursday morning, going directly after Trump. "If
we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever
and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I
cannot stand by and watch that happen," Biden says in the video. When asked about frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.,
Trump criticized his record, saying Sanders had "misguided energy" and
asserting that Sanders "talks a lot" but hasn't accomplished anything. The
president didn't seem to think too much of the rest of the field,
referring to former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas as "a fluke" and
mentioning the lack of attention the former media darling has received
recently. "He
is fading very fast, he is fading very, very fast. It looks like he
will be a thing of the past very soon. He was a hot item," Trump said. Trump
outright dismissed Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and South Bend, Ind.,
Mayor Pete Buttigieg, although he said he was "rooting" for Buttigieg. "I
don't see either of them. I think she has got a little bit of a nasty
wit but that might be it. And Mayor Pete is not going to make it. I
would hope he would. I'm rooting for him but he is not going to make
it," Trump said.
Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. deputy attorney general who supervised the Mueller investigation,
spoke publically on Thursday for the first time since the report was
released, taking a swipe at the Obama administration’s real-time
reaction to Russian hacking and its decision "not publicize the full
story" to the American people. Rosenstein, who was speaking in New
York at the Public Servants Dinner of the Armenian Bar
Association, defended his handling of the probe and criticized former
officials in the process. He called out former FBI Director James Comey
for alerting Congress about the investigation into Russian collusion at
the height of the 2016 presidential campaign. “The
FBI disclosed classified evidence about the investigation to ranking
legislators and their staffers,” he said. “Someone selectively leaked
details to the news media. The FBI director [Comey] announced at a
congressional hearing that there was a counterintelligence investigation
that might result in criminal charges. Then the former FBI director
alleged that the president pressured him to close the investigation, and
the president denied that the conversation occurred. "So that happened,” he joked. The
Obama administration has been criticized for its handling of the
Russian interference. Trump has blamed Obama for not acting quickly
enough to stem Russia’s influence during the campaign. In 2016, NBC News,
citing unnamed high-level officials, reported that the Obama
administration did not respond more forcefully because it did not want
to appear to be interfering with the election. One official told the
network at the time, "They thought [Hillary Clinton] was going to win,
so they were willing to kick the can down the road." A reporter for NPR
said the Obama administration debated how to handle the information and
decided that Obama should deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin
privately about the matter. The Rosenstein speech touched on a lot of topics. He
blasted “mercenary critics” who benefit financially by expressing
“passionate opinions about any topic, often with little or no
information. They do not just express disagreement. They launch ad
hominem attacks unrestricted by truth or morality. They make threats,
spread fake stories and even attack your relatives.” Rosenstein has maintained a tenuous relationship
with Trump. Congressional Republicans have also accused him of
withholding documents and not investigating aggressively enough what
they contend was political bias within the FBI. Former FBI General Counsel James Baker, in closed-door testimony
before congressional committees last October, provided detail about
internal discussions concerning Rosenstein's reported offer to wear a
wire to tape the president in the tumultuous days following James
Comey’s firing as FBI director in May 2017. Fox News has confirmed portions of the transcript to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees. "At
my confirmation hearing in March 2017, a Republican senator asked me to
make a commitment," he recalled. "He said: “You’re going to be in
charge of this [Russia] investigation. I want you to look me in the eye
and tell me that you’ll do it right, that you’ll take it to its
conclusion and you’ll report [your results] to the American people. "I
did pledge to do it right and take it to the appropriate conclusion. I
did not promise to report all results to the public, because grand jury
investigations are ex parte proceedings. It is not our job to render
conclusive factual findings. We just decide whether it is appropriate to
file criminal charges." Rosenstein is leaving his post in two
months. He had some fun with his speech and answered the question that
so many on social media were asking after watching him standing
stoically behind Attorney General William Barr during the lead-up to the
Mueller report release. “Last
week, the big topic of discussion was, ‘What were you thinking when you
stood behind Bill Barr at that press conference, with a deadpan
expression?’ The answer is: I was thinking, “My job is to stand here
with a deadpan expression.’" Fox News' Catherine Herridge and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey reportedly called Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Tuesday, the same day he met with President Trump at
the White House, to explain to her why Twitter didn’t take down a tweet
from the president that she said resulted in threats against her, the
Washington Post reported.
Trump's tweet, posted April 12, showed a
clip of Omar at a CAIR event, saying “some people did something” about
the September 11 hijackers spliced with images of the Twin Towers
burning. Omar’s sound bite was a short clip from a speech she made about
CAIR’s response to Islamophobia after the attacks.
Omar
reportedly asked Dorsey during the call why the company didn’t
immediately remove the tweet. Dorsey said Trump hadn't violated
Twitter’s terms, however, he did admit Twitter needed to do a better job
in keeping harassing and hateful posts off the site, according to the
Washington Post.
Twitter confirmed the call in a statement to the Washington Post.
“During their conversation, [Dorsey] emphasized that death threats,
incitement to violence, and hateful conduct are not allowed on Twitter,”
it read in part. The statement also said the company has stayed in
contact with Omar’s office.
Omar’s “some people did something” comment sparked its own controversy last month with some suggesting she was minimizing the tragedy that killed nearly 3,000 people.
President Trump told Fox News' "Hannity"
in a wide-ranging interview Thursday night that Attorney General Bill
Barr is handling the "incredible" and "big" new revelations that
Ukrainian actors apparently leaked damaging information about then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort to help Hillary Clinton's campaign. Last
month, Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko opened a probe into
the so-called "black ledger" files that led to Manafort's abrupt
departure from the Trump campaign. The investigation commenced after
an unearthed audio recording showed that a senior Ukrainian
anticorruption official apparently admitted to leaking Manafort's
financial information in 2016 -- including his ties to pro-Russian actors in Ukraine -- to benefit Clinton. Ukrainian law enforcement officials said earlier this month they have a slew of evidence of collusion and wrongdoing by Democrats,
and that they have been trying to share this information with U.S.
officials in the Justice Department. A Ukrainian court recently ruled
that the Manafort leak amounted to illegal interference in the U.S.
election. Asked by host Sean Hannity whether Americans need to see
the results of Ukraine's ongoing investigation into whether officials
in that country worked with the Clinton team, Trump replied, "I think we
do."
The leak of damaging financial information on former Trump
campaign chair Paul Manafort's links to pro-Russia actors in Ukraine led
to his departure from the Trump team. Now, it's the subject of a
Ukrainian probe into possible Clinton collusion.
(AP)
"I would imagine [Barr] would want
to see this. ... I would certainly defer to the attorney general, and
we'll see what he says about it," Trump said. "He calls 'em straight." Trump continued: "It sounds like big stuff, very interesting with Ukraine. I just spoke with the new president a while ago, and congratulated him. ... But that sounds like big, big stuff, and I'm not surprised." With those remarks, Trump echoed his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who wrote on Twitter on Wednesday: "Keep your eye on Ukraine."
A 2017 investigation by Politico
found that Ukrainian officials not only publicly sought to undermine
Trump by questioning his fitness for office, but also worked behind the
scenes to secure a Clinton victory.
Among other initiatives, Politico found, the Ukrainian government worked
with a DNC consultant to conduct opposition research against Trump,
including going after Manafort for Russian ties, helping lead to his
resignation.
"Really, it's a coup. It's spying." — President Trump
The
messages indicated they discussed using briefings to the Trump team
after the 2016 election to identify people they could "develop for
potential relationships," track lines of questioning and "assess"
changes in "demeanor" – language one GOP lawmaker called “more evidence”
of irregular conduct in the original Russia probe.
"They were trying to infiltrate the administration," Trump told host
Sean Hannity. "Really, it's a coup. It's spying. It's hard to believe in
this country we would have had that."
Trump continued: "I
think it's far bigger than Watergate, I think it's possibly the biggest
scandal in political history in this country, maybe beyond political." Trump
summed up the development as "very disconcerting" and emphasized that
Strzok and Page used their government-issued phones not only to exchange
numerous anti-Trump text messages but also to hide their extramarital
affair from their spouses.
"They were going hog wild to find
something about the administration, which obviously wasn't there," Trump
charged, referring to Strzok and Page as "two beauties," "lovers," and
"sick, sick people" who are "like children, when you look at them."
"They're trying to infiltrate the White House, long after the election,"
Trump said. "This is a disgrace. Hopefully the attorney general will do
what's right, and I believe he will. ... It's possibly the greatest
scandal in the history of this country."
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok is seated to testify
before the the House Committees on the Judiciary and Oversight and
Government Reform during a hearing on "Oversight of FBI and DOJ Actions
Surrounding the 2016 Election," on Capitol Hill, Thursday, July 12,
2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
As for his widely mocked tweet that the Obama
intelligence community had wiretapped Trump Tower -- which was followed
months later by the revelation that the FBI had, in fact, monitored one
of his former aides -- Trump said his remarks were the product of a
"little bit of a hunch” and a “little bit of wisdom." Trump
additionally voiced little confidence in Robert Mueller, saying the
special counsel was perhaps "best friends" with former FBI Director
James Comey -- whose termination led to Mueller's appointment. Trump also faulted Mueller for, in his view, needlessly wrecking the careers of many members of his team. Trump
asserted he had "turned down" Mueller to head the FBI, and that Mueller
was "conflicted" not only "because of the fact that Comey and him are
best friends," but also because Trump "had a nasty business transaction"
with Mueller.
Without taking questions from reporters about the Mueller report,
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk to board Marine
One for the short trip to Joint Base Andrews then on to his estate in
Palm Beach, Fla., at the White House in Washington, Thursday, April 18,
2019. (Associated Press)
That was an apparent reference to an episode, referenced in Mueller's
report, in which Mueller sought a refund -- apparently unsuccessfully --
from Trump after withdrawing from membership in his golf club. But
Trump said it was a "very good" sign that the New York Times
acknowledged in a recent article that there were credibility problems in
the discredited dossier that the FBI used to justify surveilling one of
his campaign aides. The Times finally joined a chorus of
publications that have long cast doubt on the dossier's veracity,
writing that the document "financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and
the Democratic National Committee" was "likely to face new, possibly
harsh scrutiny from multiple inquiries." The article noted that
British ex-spy Christopher Steele relied in part on Russian sources and
that, ironically, the document could have been part of a "Russian
disinformation" effort to smear Trump even as Moscow was going after
Clinton. The
article, Trump said, suggested that dossier skepticism, once panned as
denialism, has entered the mainstream -- now that Mueller's report
found "some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared to be
false, and others were impossible to prove." As he did in his previous interview on "Hannity," Trump
vowed to declassify and release not only the documents related to the
surveillance warrants to surveil his campaign, and even more. "Everything's going to be declassified, and more," Trump said. "It'll all be declassified."
"Everything's going to be declassified, and more. It'll all be declassified." — President Trump
Responding to the entrance of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race,
Trump emphasized the economic growth and health care successes for
veterans under his administration, who "don't have to die waiting in
line" anymore. Biden attracted mockery on Thursday for insisting that he told former President Barack Obama not to endorse his run. "I've known Joe over the years. He's not the brightest lightbulb in the group," Trump said. "But he has a name they know."
One of America’s oldest Jewish organizations called Wednesday for U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., to be removed from congressional committees and from the Democratic Party. In
an editorial posted on its website, the Zionist Organization of
America, which dates to 1897, pointed to what it described as Tlaib’s
“anti-Israel record,” and accused the freshman congresswoman of associating with “terrorists, anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists.” “Rashida
Tlaib’s anti-Israel record was already well-known before she was
elected in last year’s midterm elections,” the ZOA article asserts. “She
calls Israel a ‘racist country’ on the basis of the lie that Israel
discriminates against those ‘darker skinned,’ supports the destruction
of Israel in favor of an Arab-dominated state (“It has to be one
state”), ‘absolutely’ backs withholding U.S. aid from Israel, and openly
supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which
is committed to international ostracism and weakening of Israel with a
view to its eventual elimination.” The
ZOA supports its assertions with links to news stories that quote the
42-year-old Palestinian-American lawmaker from Detroit. The same article
includes a list of people with whom Tlaib has been photographed, or
about whom Tlaib has posted social media messages, and includes
information about their alleged links to bombings or other crimes. “It
is perfectly clear that Rashida Tlaib is not in the smallest degree
ashamed, and has not the slightest inhibition about, being publicly
being associated with these anti-Semites, terrorists and glorifiers of
Jew-murderers," ZOA National President Morton A. Klein and Chairman Mark
Levenson said in a joint statement. “The
Democratic Party must do the only honorable thing," they continued,
"which is to expel her from the party and remove her from Congressional
committees." Since taking office in January, Tlaib has been a
lightning rod for criticism from Republicans as well as from members of
her own party. She quickly drew national attention just hours
after being sworn in, when she used a profanity in calling for the
impeachment of President Trump. “We’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the motherf---er,'” she told a crowd of supporters, referring to Trump. In March, Tlaib denounced anti-Semitism in an interview with the Detroit News. "I’m
always pushing back against it," Tlaib said of anti-Semitism. "But this
is going to continue happening because I’m Palestinian." She
claimed that an important distinction needed to be made between
anti-Semitism and her criticisms of the policies of Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "When I criticize Netanyahu’s
discrimination, inequality, human rights violations, saying you have to
do better and we have to look at real equality and even desegregating
certain communities," Tlaib told the News, "that, to me, does not make me charging toward the Jewish faith at all. And I'm very conscientious of that." In
April, Tlaib quickly came to the defense of another progressive
Democrat, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, after Omar referred to the
terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as “some people did something.” Tlaib claimed that critics had taken Omar’s words out of context. “My sister Ilhan Omar, what she was talking about, was uplifting people by supporting their civil liberties and civil rights,” Tlaib said in a television interview. “She has always, always condemned any strategy, especially of a person directly impacted by being a refugee herself.” More recently, Tlaib asked her supporters last week
to join her in a hunger strike in protest of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), arguing that the federal agency that enforces U.S.
immigration laws should be shut down.
The public is being denied access to about 2,000 boxes of records from Joe Biden’s Senate career -- information that spans more than three decades. The
University of Delaware, where the Biden archive is stored, says the
records might not be available until late 2019, possibly even later. The news comes as the former vice president is set to announce his candidacy for president on
Thursday morning, joining a crowded Democratic primary field where he’s
going to immediately stand out. The latest polls already put him on par
with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., another leading 2020 candidate. The
delay in access to Biden's records -- coinciding with new scrutiny he
is facing over behavior toward women -- results from the conditions of
his donation to the University of Delaware. “The Biden senatorial
papers are indeed still closed, pending completion of processing (still
underway) and as per our agreement with the donor, which is that the
papers would remain closed until the later date of 12/31/2019 or two
years after the donor retires [from] public service,” L. Rebecca Johnson
Melvin, head of the university library's archives department, told HuffPost.
“The
Biden senatorial papers are indeed still closed, pending completion of
processing (still underway) and as per our agreement with the donor,
which is that the papers would remain closed until the later date of
12/31/2019 or two years after the donor retires [from] public service.” — L. Rebecca Johnson Melvin, University of Delaware library official
She added that it remains to be seen whether the records will be released even after the December 2019 deadline. Biden
voluntarily donated the records to his former school back in 2011,
initially setting out the following condition for their release to the
public: “no sooner than two years after [Biden] retires from any public
office.” But an updated agreement with the university was somewhat
amended after he left office in 2017, reflecting Biden’s growing
political ambitions. The records will now be sealed until at least the
end of the year or even further, as the university library official
confirmed. The
library is reportedly holding about 1,850 boxes of archival records and
“extensive electronic records” from Biden’s time in the Senate.
The leak of damaging financial information on former Trump
campaign chair Paul Manafort's links to pro-Russia actors in Ukraine led
to his departure from the Trump team. Now, it's the subject of a
Ukrainian probe into possible Clinton collusion.
(AP)
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok is seated to testify
before the the House Committees on the Judiciary and Oversight and
Government Reform during a hearing on "Oversight of FBI and DOJ Actions
Surrounding the 2016 Election," on Capitol Hill, Thursday, July 12,
2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Without taking questions from reporters about the Mueller report,
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump walk to board Marine
One for the short trip to Joint Base Andrews then on to his estate in
Palm Beach, Fla., at the White House in Washington, Thursday, April 18,
2019. (Associated Press)
