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.

Loser Democrat Cartoons

California high-speed rail project’s estimated cost rises to $79B, report says

Critics of California’s plan to link the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas by high-speed rail have cited the estimated cost of the project – and now that cost is projected to increase by about $2 billion, according to a report.
The state’s High-Speed Rail Authority now estimates that the plan will cost about $79 billion – with the price of the Central Valley segment already under construction rising from $10.6 billion to $12.4 billion, Bloomberg reported.
The revised cost estimates were attributed to changes in the scope of the project and planning for contingencies, the report said.
In February, President Trump blasted the project’s leaders for “having spent and wasted many billions of dollars.” He added that the federal government planned to recoup federal dollars spent on the project.
“Whole project is a “green” disaster!” Trump wrote.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has frequently clashed with Trump, expressed his own reservations about the plan in February, announcing his preference to focus only on the Central Valley portion in the short term, saying the full project “would cost too much and take too long,” Bloomberg reported.
In March, the head of the state’s rail authority fired back against Trump’s effort to block more federal dollars from going to the California project.
At that point, the Federal Railroad Administration had given California $2.5 billion to construct a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco link, with another $929 million pledged. But federal authorities – and the president – claimed the terms of the federal grant had not been met and threatened to withhold any future payments while demanding repayment for the funds already doled out to California.
The project, long championed by Newsom's predecessor, Jerry Brown, is years behind schedule with the latest estimate for completion set for 2033.
Trump and Newsom have also clashed over federal funding to help California recover from deadly wildfires. Trump has blamed the wildfires on a lack of “proper Forest Management”  – and again has threatened to reconsider federal funding.
Fox News’ Andrew O’Reilly and Lukas Mikelionis contributed to this story.

Mike Huckabee says Dems have 'got nothing' on Barr, were 'rude and disrespectful'

Democrats have "got nothing” in trying to discredit Attorney General William Barr on the Mueller report, former Republican presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Wednesday.
“They are like people who show up at the barbecue restaurant at closing time and all the meat is gone," Huckabee said on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle."
"So, what they are left to do is just lick the bones, gnaw on them a little bit and suck the barbecue sauce out of the bottle. They have nothing else to do,” Huckabee told host Laura Ingraham.
Barr testified Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he addressed his decision not to pursue an obstruction case against President Trump and the delay in the release of the redacted version of Mueller's report on his Russia investigation.
During the hearing, several Democrats called on Barr to resign, including Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. Harris is seeking her party's 2020 presidential nomination.
Huckabee described the Democrats' treatment of Barr as “rude and disrespectful.”
“And I think in a way, I almost felt sorry watching them. But then I didn't because [they were] so rude and disrespectful of the attorney general. And how he maintained his composure and didn't crawl across the table and go after a few of them as a testament to diplomacy, grace and being a gentleman,” Huckabee said.
Huckabee also reacted to a New York Times op-ed by former FBI Director James Comey.
In a piece titled “How Trump Co-Opts Leaders Like Bill Barr,” Comey wrote, “Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites."
Huckabee disagreed with Comey and warned that the former FBI director may soon face troubles of his own.
“First of all, he’s dead wrong about Donald Trump. Donald Trump does not eat people's soul in small bites," Huckabee said. "He takes it in one great big chomp and it’s over and he’s done with it. It is one of the reasons he's president because he does know how to take on an adversary. Jim Comey has a lot of explaining to do."

Leaked Mueller letter leads to Barr grilling in hyperpartisan hearing

It was a leak clearly designed to make William Barr's day on Capitol Hill far more unpleasant.
The source or sources who showed The Washington Post a letter of complaint that Bob Mueller had written Barr created a media explosion that reverberated all day yesterday, when the attorney general had been slated to testify before a Senate committee. Even before he took the hot seat, some Democrats were calling on Barr to resign — which has virtually no chance of happening.
Once the Judiciary Committee hearing got underway, it was so utterly partisan that it seemed Republicans and Democrats were operating in parallel universes — and that tended to muffle the uproar over the once-secret Mueller letter.
Still, the letter hurts Barr's reputation, no question about it. The missive provides ammunition to the AG's critics, who say he acted like a Trump partisan in spinning and perhaps minimizing the Mueller report's findings.
But let's face it: the special counsel's letter would have been far more damaging had it emerged before the report was made public, when the debate over Barr's conduct was at its peak. Now that we've all had the 448-page report for a couple of weeks, this has the feel of relitigating a process question that's been overtaken by events.
"The letter and a subsequent phone call between the two men reveal the degree to which the longtime colleagues and friends disagreed as they handled the legally and politically fraught task of investigating the president," the Post says.
The paper quotes the Mueller note as dissing Barr's famous four-page summary before the report was out:
"The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office's work and conclusions. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations."
Mueller asked that his own executive summaries be quickly released, but Barr declined.
One reason the leaked letter landed with considerable force is that we never hear Mueller express opinions in his own voice, rather than in legal filings or the rare statements from his office. He is the offstage presence, the opposite of a grandstander, even with the report having been made published. The public will finally hear Mueller speak in House testimony this month, according to an agreement announced yesterday.
But clearly one of his allies — whether it was with Mueller's acquiescence or not, we don't know — wanted to turn up the heat before Barr's testimony.
The GOP side, led by Lindsey Graham, mainly wanted to talk about Hillary Clinton's emails and Trump-sliming emails from the FBI's Peter Strzok and Lisa Page (complete with an F-word that the senator read on live television). The Democratic side, led by Dianne Feinstein, read damaging passages from the report and pressed Barr about his disagreements with Mueller and why he didn't see many of the findings as obstruction of justice.
What was most noteworthy was Barr admitting he was surprised when Mueller declined to reach a conclusion on obstruction allegations and saying he could not get a clear explanation while meeting with him. The implication was that Mueller, given his independence, should have made the call, and instead made the report what Barr called "my baby."
The attorney general insisted that Mueller "was very clear with me that he was not suggesting that we had misrepresented his report." In a shot at the media, Barr said Mueller told him that "the press reporting had been inaccurate and that the press was reading too much into it."
Oddly enough, Barr also said Mueller declined his offer to review the four-page summary in advance.
Feinstein pressed the AG about the finding that Trump told his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to have Mueller fired, and that McGahn refused and threatened to resign.
This was not an attempt to obstruct the probe, Barr said, because "there is a distinction between saying to someone, 'Go fire him, go fire Mueller,' and saying, 'Have him removed based on conflict.'" But there was no obstruction, Barr said, because "presumably" someone else would have been named to replace Mueller. (McGahn regarded the conflict questions as "silly.")
Things turned absurdly partisan when Sen. Mazie Hirono demanded that Barr resign, saying he had sacrificed his "once-decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the Oval Office." Graham shot back, "Listen, you slandered this man!" And the three presidential candidates on the panel — Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker — all got their licks in. Harris and Booker also demanded the AG's resignation.
In the end, the spat between Barr and Mueller will be a historical footnote. But it provides more fodder for the Democrats and Trump's media critics to try to keep the investigation alive.

Clinton 'imagines' scenario where 2020 Dem hopeful asks China to get Trump's tax returns

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday criticized the Mueller Report and imagined a scenario where a Democratic presidential hopeful called on China to "get" President Trump's tax returns.
The eyebrow-raising theory came during an interview on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show." The conversation was largely dedicated to Maddow and Clinton comparing problems they found with Attorney General Bill Barr's hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier in the day.
Clinton ripped Senate Republicans for not passing bipartisan legislation that was meant to take action against foreign interference in elections in the future "under orders from the White House." The two-time presidential candidate-- in an apparent effort to show the preposterousness of it all-- then offered a hypothetical situation where a Democrat running in 2020 blatantly makes an appeal to a foreign country to help with the election.
"Imagine, Rachel, that you had one of the Democratic nominees for 2020 on your show and that person said, 'You know, the only other adversary of ours who's anywhere near as good as the Russians is China. So why should Russia have all the fun? And since Russia is clearly backing Republicans, why don't we ask China to back us?... And not only that, China, if you're listening, why don't you get Trump's tax returns. I'm sure our media would richly reward you," she theorized.
Clinton said-- according to the Mueller report-- that it would not be a conspiracy because it is done openly. She theorized that the IRS offices would be bombarded with cyber attacks and a new Wikileaks would emerge that could release the information.
"Nothing wrong with that," Clinton sarcastically said.