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."
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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)
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)
