Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's attorneys are arguing that special counsel Robert Mueller's team has not met the high threshold they believe is needed to interview a president in person, according to sources familiar with the ongoing deliberations.
Despite the fact that Trump himself has said he is "looking forward" and would "love to" meet with Mueller, he did say any interview would be "subject to my lawyers," who believe that Trump should not be required to do that.
Sources said this is an ongoing negotiation and the position by the President's lawyers is not a final stance.
While the White House has cooperated with Mueller's investigation by providing documents and voluntary witness testimony, the President's legal team argues that the President should not be treated like anyone else. Trump's attorneys would like Mueller's prosecutors to show that only the President can give them the information they require. The President's team, one source said, is consulting with the White House counsel's office and other outside legal experts given the implications of any decision about the President's testimony on the office of the President.
The discussions about presidential testimony are ongoing and professional, says one source. But it is now clear where the President's attorneys stand.
STATE OF THE UNIOM
https://claytoonz.com/2018/01/31/state-of-the-uniom/
With all that’s transpired over the past year, I’m surprised the State of the Union typo didn’t read “State of the Onion.”
What I’m going for with this cartoon is to show not just how surreal it is that Trump is president of the United States and addressing Congress, but how stupid it is. Within the last week alone he attacked a rapper through Twitter. How presidential.
His speech didn’t start off that bad for a 71-year-old man with a fourth grade reading level. It was the third-longest State of the Union ever, though it wasn’t because it contained a lot of words. Stupid people read very slowly. But, it can be considered a success because he stuck to the teleprompter, didn’t praise Nazis, and his teeth didn’t fall out. That’s a good day in Trumplandia.
Trump went for the cheap pops. America, troops, jobs, heroes, flag, blah, blah, blah. Every Republican was smiling except for Melania. I wonder why.
Trump bragged about the economy, jobs, and the stock market. He basically took credit for Obama’s accomplishments. Two things he did not mention was Carrier and Russian collusion. I wonder why.
Trump’s wolf whistle of the night was when he said, “My duty, and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber is to defend Americans, to protect their safety, their families, their communities and their right to the American dream, because Americans are dreamers too.” Do you know who loved that line? Richard Spencer and David Duke. They were highlighting it to their racist base. Spencer tweeted it out with a picture of a family that looked like they were from Norway.
But, it is funny he talks about protecting and defending America. He has ignored the attack on our democracy by Russia, their ongoing attack, their upcoming attack in the 2018 elections, and yesterday, he said he will not enact sanctions against Russia that Congress passed nearly unanimously. How’s that for protecting our nation? There has to be a pee tape behind this.
And then he did that thing he always does when he opens his mouth. He started lying.
He said wages were finally rising. Yes, they are rising, but not “finally.” They were rising under Obama and now, they’re rising at a slower pace. I wonder why.
He took credit for increased employment among blacks and Latinos without thanking Obama. He took credit for ISIS losing so much territory, which is a strategy started under Obama.
He boasted that because of the tax cut, Apple will invest $350 billion in America. The truth is, $275 billion of that was simply continuing the company’s past spending trends. The actual amount of new investment is around $37 billion.
He said the auto industry is now expanding and building plants in America. Toyota built a plant in Mississippi in 2011. Thanks to Obama, we still have an auto industry at all. Republicans, who complained about bailing about the auto industry and that it would be a disaster, are now taking credit for its growth.
He bragged about exporting industry, when in fact we import more than we export. He said coal jobs were coming back. If you work in the coal industry, you know that right now you’re probably not working in the coal industry.
He asked Congress for trillions to rebuild American infrastructure, rebuild the military, and build his stupid racist wall on the southern border. This, after he just signed a tax cut that will increase our debt.
Speaking of that tax cut, he claimed it is the biggest in U.S. history. It actually ranks as the 12th largest.
And then he got nasty. He used immigrant gangs to paint all immigrants as criminals, which isn’t the first time he’s done this (murderers and rapists). He claimed immigrants can bring in “virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.” That’s a lie. He is proposing to allow the Dreamers to stay if he can end the Visa Lottery system, “chain” migration, and build his stupid racist wall. Trump isn’t just trying to decrease illegal immigration (which has been going down for years), but legal immigration. His and Stephen Miller’s goal is to bring in fewer dark people from “shit hole countries” like Haiti and the entire African continent, and more white people from places like Norway, if we can somehow trick them into coming here (stop sending Stephen Miller out to talk on TV would be a start).
The part that bothered me the most, beyond all the stupidity and lies, was his cloaked, winked, and nudged allusion to firing the Special Prosecutor, the Deputy Attorney General, and perhaps more people in the State Department and FBI. Trump spoke of a proposal that will allow cabinet members (like the Attorney General) to remove government employees who “fail the American people.” Trump believes being caught committing treason and obstruction of justice will “fail the American people.”
I can think of one big orange government employee who is failing the American people.
DONALD TRUMP DEVOTED a large section of the end of his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to North Korea.
Anyone who was paying attention during George W. Bush’s State of the Union addresses in 2002 and 2003 would have found Trump’s statements frighteningly familiar: Trump used exactly the same justifications for war with North Korea as Bush had for war with Iraq when standing at the same podium.
To begin with, Trump claimed, the United States simply cannot accept a North Korea with weapons that could “threaten our homeland.” Moreover, the danger from Kim Jong Un is not just to America: His regime constitutes “a menace that threatens our world.”
Similarly, Bush had ruled out living with an Iraq armed with unconventional weapons that could be used against America. “Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein,” said Bush, “is not a strategy, and it is not an option.” And this was not just for our sake: A nation such as Iraq, he had proclaimed, was “the gravest danger facing America and the world.”
Riddle me this: If Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee have smoking gun evidence of a deep-state conspiracy that threatens American democracy itself, wouldn’t they be doing more than playing silly hashtag games, such as #ReleasetheMemo?
Hint: The answer is yes. If this were a serious undertaking, congressional investigators would be collaborating with the Department of Justice, FBI and relevant Senate committees to save America from the threat within. But we’re no longer dealing in the realm of facts and reason when it comes to grave matters of security and justice.
We are, at Donald Trump’s behest, fully engulfed in a narrative explicitly designed to impugn and destroy the credibility of the law enforcement agency tasked with investigating the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia during the 2016 election.
The memo in question is one written by the staff of Republican Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Devin Nunes—the same Nunes who recused himself from the Russia investigation last year amongst allegations that “he made unauthorized disclosures of classified information.” Now, Nunes is at it again. This time with a four-page classified memo that, if you believe what those who have read it say, shows an Obama-era FBI rife with corruption and engaging in eye-popping abuses of power.
The details of what the memo says have been kept private, because they are classified. But that hasn’t stopped Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill and beyond from crowing about the allegedly shocking memo since mid-January, demanding it be released to the public and spawning a viral hashtag, now used by everyone from Donald Trump Jr. to Sean Hannity and Julian Assange. After the House voted on Monday to do so, House Speaker Paul Ryan made a statement in favor of the decision. Now, the matter is in the president’s hands.
But really, at this point, it doesn’t really matter what the memo says. Prompted by Trump, his allies on Capitol Hill and in the Trump-affirming media universe, millions of Americans have been led to brainstorm all the various ways faceless bureaucrats embedded in the government could be working to undermine Trump.
Trey Gowdy also wrote the memo, which will prove that the top 2 FBI agents would do ANYTHING to protect Hillary and to STOP Trump from winning, and also that the Dems paid for the dossier!!!
The Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee refused to answer when a colleague asked him if he had coordinated his incendiary surveillance memo with the White House, The Daily Beast has learned.
During Monday’s contentious closed-door committee meeting, Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat, asked Nunes point-blank if his staffers had been talking with the White House as they compiled a four-page memo alleging FBI and Justice Department abuses over surveillance of President Trump’s allies in the Russia probe.
According to sources familiar with the exchange, Nunes made a few comments that didn’t answer the question before finally responding, “I’m not answering.”
Spokespeople for Nunes and for the White House did not immediately respond.
Hours before his first State of the Union, President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he wants to unite the country amid “tremendous divisiveness” and hopes he can do so without a traumatic event affecting Americans.
Trump spoke about creating a more united country during a lunch with a number of television news anchors. Trump said the United States has long been divided, including during the impeachment of former president Bill Clinton. Trump also said that Americans usually come together during times of suffering.
“I would love to be able to bring back our country into a great form of unity,” Trump said. “Without a major event where people pull together, that’s hard to do. But I would like to do it without that major event because usually that major event is not a good thing.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray has informed the White House of his opposition to releasing a controversial, classified GOP memo alleging bias at the FBI and Justice Department because it contains inaccurate information and paints a false narrative, according to a person familiar with the matter.
President Donald Trump was overheard Tuesday night telling a Republican lawmaker that he was “100 percent” planning to release the memo, which was written by staffers on the House Intelligence Committee and is aimed at raising questions about the validity of the investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, now led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller
The FBI isn’t included in the inter-agency review process led by the White House aimed at deciding whether -- and how much of -- the memo can be made public following a vote Monday by the House Intelligence panel to release it. Wray was allowed to read the memo on Sunday.
It’s unclear how thorough the White House review process will be. As Trump departed the House floor after delivering his State of the Union address, C-SPAN cameras captured Representative Jeff Duncan, a South Carolina Republican, asking the president to “release the memo.”
"Oh yeah, don’t worry, 100 percent," Trump replied, waving dismissively. "Can you imagine that? You’d be too angry."
Washington (CNN)In a break with longstanding tradition, Melania Trump opted to ride with the guests she invited to share her first lady's box during President Donald Trump's State of the Union address.
The motorcade ride, from the White House south lawn to the Capitol building, is just a handful of minutes, but for a first couple who has not been publicly seen together since New Year's Eve, the separate cars were another in a string of isolated movements from a very independent first lady.
Wearing a cream pantsuit by French design house Christian Dior, and a white silk blouse from Italian label Dolce & Gabbana, the first lady looked coincidentally very similar to the female Democratic congressional members who last year at Trump's address to the Joint Session of Congress protested Trump's policies by wearing white, the color of suffragettes.
The first lady's decision to hold her own White House reception for her 15 special guests invited to sit at the State of the Union, and their accompanying friends and family, was another example of Melania Trump's autonomy. Typically, the President's annual meet-and-greet with the guests in the Oval Office suffices for pre-speech pomp and circumstance, however, according to Grisham, the first lady felt the need to host a different event, one that offered more personal exposure to the honorees and a chance to recount their stories.
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