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Donald Trump
A newly released transcript of James Baker’s testimony suggests there were widespread concerns inside the FBI that President Donald Trump had attempted to obstruct the bureau’s investigation into his campaign’s links to Russians. | Olivier Douliery/Abaca/Sipa USA/AP Images
WHITE HOUSE
Newly released testimony: Former top FBI lawyer says agency concerned Trump obstructed justice
By KYLE CHENEY 04/09/2019 03:17 PM EDT
James Baker, the former top lawyer of the FBI, told lawmakers last fall that there were widespread concerns inside the FBI that President Donald Trump had attempted to obstruct the bureau’s investigation into his campaign’s links to Russians, according to a newly released transcript of Baker’s testimony.
Under questioning in 2018 from a Democratic committee lawyer, Baker described numerous officials who were distressed that the president may have obstructed justice when he fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. Baker said he had personal concerns and that they were shared by not just top FBI brass but within other divisions and at the Justice Department as well.
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“The leadership of the FBI, so the acting director … The heads of the national security apparatus, the national security folks within the FBI, the people that were aware of the underlying investigation and who had been focused on it,” Baker said, running through a list of officials he said were worried that the president may have fired Comey to hinder the Russia investigation.
Baker said other FBI executives informed him that Justice Department officials raised concerns about obstruction by Trump as well.
His comments, some of which have been revealed in press reports in recent months, were included in a 152-page transcript of Baker’s testimony to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees in October 2018, when Republicans led an investigation into the handling of the FBI’s Russia probe. The transcript was released Tuesday by the panel’s top Republican, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), who has been incrementally entering testimony from last year’s investigation into the congressional record.
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CONGRESS
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By KYLE CHENEY and ANDREW DESIDERIO
Baker’s comments take on added significance in light of the impending release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Mueller inherited the FBI’s Russia probe and the obstruction probe that began after Comey’s firing. In a four-page memo, Attorney General William Barr indicated that Mueller reached no traditional conclusion on the obstruction probe, prompting an outcry from congressional Democrats who demanded more details.
Barr said Tuesday he intends to release a redacted version of Mueller’s findings within a week.
In the transcript of his testimony, Baker added that he was briefed on conversations between former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe — who assumed leadership of the FBI after Comey’s firing — and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about whether Rosenstein could wear a wire to gather evidence in an obstruction probe. Though officials close to Rosenstein have called his suggestion a joke, Baker told lawmakers that he had a far different impression.
“This was not a joking sort of time. This was pretty dark,” Baker said.
Baker, who said he didn’t personally meet with Rosenstein but had been informed of his comments by McCabe, described an environment in which Rosenstein was upset that Trump had used his memo criticizing Comey’s leadership of the FBI as a pretense for firing him.
“In the context of those conversations at some point in time I thought it was — my understanding was it was the deputy attorney general who came up with the idea of wearing a wire into a conversation with the president and that my understanding from my conversations with at least with Andy and/or Lisa was that they took it as a serious statement, that it was a serious thing to think about," Baker said.
Baker also recounted, from a discussion he was briefed on by McCabe, that Rosenstein told McCabe two members of Trump’s cabinet had endorsed the notion of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.
“[M]y understanding was that there was a conversation in which it was said, I believe by the [deputy Attorney General], that there were — that there were two members of the cabinet who were willing to go down this road already,” Baker told lawmakers.
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WHITE HOUSE
Mnuchin: White House lawyers spoke with Treasury Dept. about request for Trump tax returns
The Treasury secretary told a House subcommittee that he had not personally spoken to Trump or to anyone at the White House about the request.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies before a House Appropriations subcommittee during a hearing on President Trump’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2020, on April 9, 2019.Patrick Semansky / AP
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April 9, 2019, 12:23 PM ET
By Adam Edelman
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin acknowledged Tuesday that the agency’s lawyers have been in contact with the White House about an official congressional request for six years of President Donald Trump’s tax returns.
Mnuchin, however, said that he had not personally spoken to Trump or to anyone at the White House about the request.
During testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee, Mnuchin revealed that his agency’s legal department had held “informational” discussions with the White House Office of General Counsel about the congressional request for the president’s tax returns, even before the demand was submitted.
“Our legal department has had conversations prior to receiving the letter with the White House General Counsel,” he said.
“They have not briefed me as to the contents of that communication, I believe that was purely informational,” he added.
Last week, House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., formally requested six years of Trump’s personal and business tax filings from the IRS under a statute that allows him to demand an individual’s tax returns.
Mnuchin said Tuesday that his department had received the request and that “it is our intent to follow the law.”
Later Tuesday, during a second round of testimony before the Financial Services Committee, he was asked by the panel’s chair, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., if he’d comply with congressional requests for the Trump returns even if it meant he could be fired by the president for doing so.
“As I said before, we will follow the law," he said. “I’m not afraid of being fired at all.”
If the Treasury Department denies Neal’s request, that could set off a legal battle to obtain them.
Trump and other White House officials have indicated that the request is likely to be denied.
Trump told reporters last week that he was “under audit” and would not be releasing the returns — an explanation he has used repeatedly since the 2016 election cycle. Being under audit does not preclude Trump from making his tax information public.
And in a letter Friday to the Treasury Department, Trump’s attorney, William Consovoy, called on the IRS to reject Neal’s request, saying it “would be a gross abuse of power” that could lead to a political tit-for-tat.
Then, on Sunday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told “Fox News Sunday” that Democrats will “never” be able to obtain Trump’s tax filings.
Trump is the only major presidential candidate of either party since the early 1970s not to release his tax returns, and Democrats have pushed for him to release his tax documents since the 2016 campaign.
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WHITE HOUSE
Trump’s Incompetence Is Creating a Stephen Miller Hail Mary
The president put Kirstjen Nielsen in an impossible position, then fired her when she failed to break the law. Can Miller, who orchestrated her downfall, survive his rise to power?
T.A. FRANK
APRIL 9, 2019 5:39 PM
By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
Leaving the Trump White House on happy terms is like dying a peaceful death in the wild—possible but exceptional. Lingering torment is the norm. Erstwhile Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who has been dismissed, was already out of favor a year ago, and Donald Trumphad for months been signaling his intention to replace her. He was angry Nielsen didn’t seem to be coming up with inventive work-arounds for the law (like breaking it), and last October he spent about half an hour berating her during a Cabinet meeting.
It’s all very Trumpy. If a job on the farm calls for a border collie, you don’t buy a dachshund. If the church needs a priest, you don’t hire an atheist. But Trump does. He hires people who don’t share his agenda and then gets furious at them for being what they are. Kirstjen Nielsen had minimal management experience didn’t share his worldview. Nor was she prepared to block every border violator from claiming asylum, a response that would have meant ordering an entire bureaucracy to ignore the law. Her executive-branch work had been for the administration of George W. Bush, and any hawkishness on the border was dutiful rather than heartfelt. This wasn’t her fault.
Trump likes to blame others for his incompetence. One can read claims that he was angry to discover that an omnibus spending bill he had signed included minimal wall funding, as if Trump didn’t know that when he signed it. When Trump proposed impossible or impractical policies for addressing a wave of asylum-seeking migrants, like shutting down the border altogether, Nielsen had the unhappy job of explaining the law to him. To be sure, a more dynamic and hard-line leader than Nielsen might have thought of creative alternative ways to stem the flow, but it took someone as bumbling as Trump to pass the buck to D.H.S., like a team that provides no defense and then yells at the goalie when the other side scores.
The border crossings are a genuine mess that Congress has helped to create. They involve arcane laws and regulations such as the “Flores settlement” and the “credible fear” test. But the bottom line is that if you cross the U.S. border with a child in tow and request asylum, you get to enter the country and stay indefinitely. (That’s provided you’re not Canadian or Mexican, because of aforementioned arcane laws.) This has caused a rate of influx that, if D.H.S. is to be believed, is approaching a million people per year. It has also incentivized people to bring children on dangerous journeys overseen by organized crime in Mexico.
If Trump really cared about this problem, he could have prioritized plugging the loopholes and hiring enough immigration judges to process the asylum claims in weeks rather than years. He did, after all, have Republican majorities in the House and Senate for two years. When it came to pushing Congress for legislation, though, Trump synced up with the establishment Republicans and pushed for tax cuts and the torpedoing of Obamacare, either in order to be protected from Democrats as investigations were brewing or else to make things easy for himself with the home team. Nothing on the border got fixed.
To be sure, Trump wouldn’t be the first president who didn’t care about policy details or hated studying up on anything. But being ignorant of specifics means that you must hire very, very well, because you are putting yourself at the mercy of advisers and personnel when it comes to making decisions and trusting them to share your aims. Trump can’t be bothered to look for those people, either.
Today, with Congress in Democratic hands and Trump in a dangerous spot with his base, Trump seems to have decided D.H.S. needs a full-scale purge, and Nielsen is just the start. But the likeliest result is greater disorder. It is reported that White House adviser Stephen Miller is pushing for the ouster of the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Lee Cissna,whom immigration hawks consider to be a champion of the cause. Since Miller, unlike his boss, understands policy, this is surprising, but Miller may just be playing the role of henchman, spooked by the all the ghosts of colleagues once at his side. There seems to be minimal strategy at work.
There’s also talk of bringing in an “immigration czar,” and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a hard-liner on border enforcement, is said to be under consideration for the post. But policy isn’t always personnel. The law is still the law. That’s why the job of czar or D.H.S. chief is designed to make a failure of anyone who takes it, no matter what they think about immigration. Asylum law is one thing, and what Donald Trump wants is another. You’ll be flayed either for failing to apply the rules or for failing to break them. It’s amazing Nielsen lasted a year.
None of this is great for 2020. Much of the middle is put off by Trump’s erratic behavior and feckless ranting. He has also vowed once more to repeal the Affordable Care Act, handing Democrats the issue of health care, where they have the upper hand. (He must be grateful to Democrats for their willingness to self-combust in identitarian war, scaring off undecided voters.) So he needs his base, much of it is already disaffected over his handling of the border, with close to zero wall construction, and he can’t afford to let it down further.
Being a developer in a big city makes you understand how unimportant rules are for anyone but the little guy, but Trump overestimates the transferability of the rule. Just last week, according to CNN, Trump was telling border agents in Calexico, California, that they should ignore judicial orders on migrants. “Sorry, judge, I can’t do it,” Trump suggested as a message to the court. “We don’t have the room.” But the people in charge told the agents to ignore the president, not the law. Crafty politicians subvert institutions; they don’t nuke them. Once again, Trump’s very crassness is a barrier to his desires. It’s not the best consolation, but it’s not the worst, either.
DONALD TRUMP
GOP worried over Trump’s shakeup at Homeland Security
Some Republican lawmakers are concerned about a “void” in leadership at the agency, while the president denied he’s “cleaning house.”

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the Oval Office on April 9, 2019.Evan Vucci / AP
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April 9, 2019, 3:43 PM ET / Updated April 9, 2019, 8:10 PM ET
By Dareh Gregorian and Frank Thorp V
President Donald Trump is getting hit with blowback from his own party for his shake-up of the leadership at the Department of Homeland Security.
After the departures of the heads of Homeland Security and the Secret Service, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, urged Trump not to dump Lee Francis Cissna, the head of Citizenship and Immigration Services, who is also rumored to be on the chopping block.
And Grassley criticized the influence of White House adviser and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller, noting that Miller’s controversial reforms have not been effective. “I don’t see a lot of accomplishments,” Grassley said Tuesday.
The powerful senior Republican said he spoke to acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney but would only know if Trump heard the message if Cissna and others “don’t get fired.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., expressed sympathy for ousted Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen, who was pressured to resign Sunday. He said she and Trump agreed to go their separate ways, and “then her colleagues on the White House staff, or at least some colleagues named ‘anonymous source,’ they cut her to pieces.”
“They opened her up like a soft peanut,” Kennedy said. “Secretary Nielsen deserved better from her colleagues, when her colleagues for whatever reason decided to gut her like a fish that was a disservice to Secretary Nielsen, to the people of America, and to the President.”
He added that he thinks the backstabbing — Trump adviser Stephen Miller reportedly told Trump Nielsen was too weak for the job — “makes it doubly difficult to try and find somebody to replace her.”
“Secretary Nielsen is not responsible for the wall not being built, she can’t build the wall by herself. It’s not Secretary Nielsen’s fault that we haven’t fixed the asylum laws,” he said.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, noted she was involved in the creation of the DHS more than a decade ago and knows “these are vital positions.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R.-S.C., told reporters at the Capitol that the White House should be focusing on working with Congress to fix immigration laws, and should send over the legislative changes they’re looking for.
“It doesn’t matter who he puts in. There’s only so much they can do,” Graham said.
The White House announced Monday that Secret Service Director Randolph Alles was leaving. Trump also withdrew the nomination of Ronald Vitiello to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week.
Acting deputy Homeland Secretary Claire Grady was in line to become acting Homeland Secretary, but offered her resignation Tuesday night, Nielsen said in a tweet. Trump had said he wanted Kevin McAleenan, who was commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, to be acting DHS head.
The Secret Service, ICE and CBP are a part of Homeland Security, and Trump is reportedly considering more changes as well.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., told NBC News on Monday he’s concerned about the “void” at DHS.
“We are dealing with a humanitarian and security crisis at the border because Congress has failed to act,” Johnson said. “In addition to congressional dysfunction, I am concerned with a growing leadership void within the department tasked with addressing some of the most significant problems facing the nation.”
VIEW THIS GRAPHIC ON NBCNEWS.COM
Grassley told The Washington Post on Monday he was “very, very concerned” over the possible purge that is set to happen at DHS. But when asked about his worry on camera, Grassley was more reserved saying he was just concerned over former staffers of his who have been dismissed.
The senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, said Trump is to blame for the problems at the border.
The president “cannot keep changing personnel, changing strategy, tweeting your way through a problem as serious” as immigration, Schumer said.
“What he’s done by these constant firings, the constant change of policy, is simply created chaos at the border. Nobody knows what the policy will be from day to day and week to week and month to month,” Schumer said. “This erratic, nasty style of governing is not solving any problems.”
The president on Tuesday denied that he was “cleaning house” at DHS and blamed Democrats for the immigration problems.
“I never said I’m cleaning house. I don’t know who came up with that expression,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We’re fighting the bad laws, the bad things coming out of Congress” and an asylum situation that’s “ridiculous.”
Warner Bros. Taking Legal Action After Trump Campaign Video Uses ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Score
Erin Nyren
April 9, 2019 8:23PM PDT
Warner Brothers Pictures will file a copyright infringement suit against the White House, the studio has confirmed, after President Donald Trump used music from “The Dark Knight Rises’” score for his latest 2020 campaign video.
“The use of Warner Bros.’ score from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ in the campaign video was unauthorized,” a Warner Brothers spokesperson said in a statement. “We are working through the appropriate legal channels to have it removed.”
The suit will petition for Trump to remove the video from Twitter, where he shared it in a tweet Tuesday. The two-minute video not only utilizes Hans Zimmer’s “Why Do We Fall?” from the 2012 threequel, but also shares the font used for the film’s title cards.
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they call you a racist. Donald J. Trump. Your vote. Proved them all wrong. Trump: The Great Victory. 2020,” declares the video, using the “Dark Knight Rises” font.
The video also attempts to compare Trump’s rise to power with the apparent poor performances of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as Hollywood personalities who have been critical of the president like Amy Schumer and Rosie O’Donnell.
Trump has used pop culture references to promote himself in the past, such as his “Game of Thrones”-style poster bearing the legend “Sanctions Are Coming” — a play on the series’ “Winter Is Coming” catchphrase.
“We were not aware of this messaging and would prefer our trademark not be misappropriated for political purposes,” HBO said in a statement at the time, as well as tweeting “How do you say trademark misuse in Dothraki?” from its official Twitter account.
The White House also used a blockbuster-style during Trump’s first meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
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