DONALD TRUMP
White House rejects House panel’s demands, says investigation amounts to ‘unauthorized do-over’ of Mueller probe
“Unfortunately, it appears that you have already decided to press ahead with a duplicative investigation,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote.
President Donald Trump leaves the White House on May 14, 2019.Carlos Barria / Reuters
May 15, 2019, 1:18 PM ET / Updated May 15, 2019, 3:22 PM ET
By Allan Smith
The White House told the House Judiciary Committee in a letter Wednesday that it will not comply with a broad range of the panel’s requests and called on it to “discontinue” its inquiry into President Donald Trump.
“Congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation, not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized ‘do-over’ of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote, citing special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report on his probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump sought to obstruct the investigation.
Cipollone wrote, however, that he was not exerting executive privilege, adding that he would consider more narrow requests from the committee if it can provide the legal support and legislative purpose for such requests.
“The appropriate course is for the Committee to discontinue the inquiry,” Cipollone wrote to the panel’s chairman, Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. “Unfortunately, it appears that you have already decided to press ahead with a duplicative investigation, including by issuing subpoenas, to replow the same ground the Special Counsel has already covered.”
In early March, Nadler requested information from 81 individuals or entities connected to the president as part of a broad investigation into whether Trump abused his power or acted corruptly. Cipollone wrote his letter in response to Nadler’s March letter requesting documents from the White House as part of that broad push.
Responding to the White House on Wednesday, Nadler told reporters that the claims in the letter were “outrageous,” “ridiculous,” “preposterous,” and “un-American,” and vowed that his panel would continue its investigations.
“Taking that position that a president cannot be indicted, they are saying only Congress can hold a president accountable, and now they’re saying that Congress can’t, which means nobody can, which means the president is above the law,” Nadler said. “And that is an un-American, frankly un-American claim.”
“I don’t know whether they’re trying to taunt us towards an impeachment or anything else," Nadler added. “All I know is that they have made a preposterous claim.”
Cipollone homed in on a rationale that the White House and Trump’s business have made elsewhere: that Congress cannot conduct such oversight of the president unless it has a specific legislative purpose.
In his letter, Cipollone wrote that “it appears that the committee’s inquiry is designed not to further a legitimate legislative purpose, but rather to conduct a pseudo law enforcement investigation on matters that were already the subject of the Special Counsel’s long-running investigation and are outside the constitutional authority of the legislative branch.”
“The only purpose for this duplication seems to be harassing and seeking to embarrass political opponents after an exhaustive two-year investigation by the Department of Justice did not reach the conclusion that some members of the Committee apparently would have preferred,” he continued. “That, of course, is not a permissible purpose for demanding confidential information from the Executive.”
Congress has broad oversight powers that have been affirmed by the Supreme Court. In McGrain v. Daugherty, the court ruled the “potential” for legislation to come about as a result of a congressional inquiry was sufficient rationale to launch one. And in Eastland v. United States Servicemen’s Fund, the court ruled, “To be a valid legislative inquiry there need be no predictable end result.”
According to the Congressional Research Service, Congress generally enjoys “extremely broad” power “to obtain information, including classified and/or confidential information.”
“While there is no express provision of the Constitution or specific statute authorizing the conduct of congressional oversight or investigations, the Supreme Court has firmly established that such power is essential to the legislative function as to be implied from the general vesting of legislative powers in Congress,” CRS wrote.
Despite that broad interpretation of legislative purpose, “its scope is not without limits,” the agency added. “Courts have held that a committee lacks legislative purpose if it appears to be conducting a legislative trial rather than an investigation to assist in performing its legislative function.”
And although “‘there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure,’ ‘so long as Congress acts in pursuance of its constitutional power, the Judiciary lacks authority to intervene on the basis of the motives which spurred the exercise of that power,’” CRS said.
A federal judge expressed skepticism at a hearing Tuesday about Trump’s efforts to block Congress from getting some of his financial records.
Amit Mehta, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, told Trump lawyer William Consovoy that he would have trouble ruling that Congress did not have the constitutional authority to obtain Trump’s taxes due to a lack of explicit legislative purpose because of prior Supreme Court rulings.
In a conference call with reporters Wednesday after Cipollone sent his letter, a senior administration official said Nadler should “rethink this oversight or investigation,” accusing him of “brushing aside the conclusions of the Department of Justice, and doing so in favor of political theater.”
Democrats argued that Mueller’s report made clear that it was up to Congress to further any inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice; Mueller wrote in his report that he neither concluded Trump had committed a crime nor exonerated him of having done so.
The senior administration official said Nadler “has to do a better job of setting out a legitimate legislative purpose for what” he’s doing," and called on him to make clear “some type of public law he intends to introduce” alongside his committee’s investigation.
When asked, the official said Trump was not “above the law.”
“But he also is not below the law,” the official said. “He has rights and privileges as the rest of us do.”
And as president, the official said, Trump “has a couple more rights that the rest of us don’t have.”
Allan Smith
Allan Smith is a political reporter for NBC News.
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Trump’s wealth in the spotlight with new disclosure forms
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 10:33 AM EDT, Thu May 16, 2019
article video
CNN Special Report “The Trump Family Business,” hosted by Erin Burnett, will air Friday, May 17 at 9 p.m. ET.
Washington(CNN) America is about to get a tantalizing look into the hidden fortune on which Donald Trump made his name but is at the root of some of the most mysterious unresolved questions about his presidency.
The expected release of the President’s latest financial disclosure forms on Thursday will trigger a now annual controversy about Trump’s wealth, including the question of whether he is adding to it while in office.
The former real estate baron anchored his political appeal on his multi-billion dollar pile, claiming it showed he had the kind of ruthless deal maker’s instincts that insulated him from political pressure and enabled him to thumb his nose at elites.
“I am smarter than they are, I am richer than they are,” Trump said at a rally in 2018, showing how he uses money as a barometer of his own success and as a badge of honor to wield against an establishment that has never really accepted him.
But Trump’s largesse has also been a liability as a politician. He goes to extreme lengths to keep his financial affairs private. He won’t release his tax returns like his predecessors and is even suing a congressional committee that is trying to muscle his business records away from his accounting firm.
Mounting questions about his money have tarnished Trump’s legend, including a recent New York Times report that suggested the supposed business genius lost more cash than any other American over a 10-year period in the 1980s and 1990s. The report said he lost more than $1 billion in the decade.
Is the presidency costing Trump?
There are also signs that Trump’s controversial presidency could be eating into his bottom line.
On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that Trump’s Doral golf resort in Florida was in steep decline. His Trump Tower landmark in Manhattan also seems to be a fading asset.
Earlier this year, it became clear that new development deals have slowed badly at the Trump Organization since the President was elected. The company has also shelved plans for two hotel licensing concepts. Trump’s son Eric blamed politics for the sluggish business prospects.
Trump’s refusal to fully divest himself of his business in office has prompted unwelcome questions about potential conflicts of interests involving foreign investors.
The documents to be released on Thursday are unlikely to fully light up Trump’s labyrinthine financial affairs.
But they will offer a picture of Trump’s income last year – potentially in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In last year’s disclosure form, the President reported income of $450 million.
They will detail other income from assets including properties, retirement accounts, book royalties and investments.
More controversially, the forms will also likely reveal a glimpse of Trump’s liabilities.
In 2017, for instance he declared $311 million in mortgages and loans. The actual number could actually be higher due to technicalities in reporting requirements.
Or is Trump enriching himself?
The documents are likely to revive the debate over whether the President is in effect using the symbolism of the presidency to enrich himself and his sprawling business operation.
Trump reported last year that his private Florida resort brought in revenue of $25 million in 2017.
The club doubled its membership fee after he took office and critics claim his repeated visits – offering guests a chance to rub shoulders with the President – boost business.
Similarly, Trump’s opponents will seize on his disclosure to assess the impact of his presence on Trump International Hotel in Washington, a few blocks from the White House.
On his disclosure last year, Trump reported $75 million in income from the property, which has been at the center of conflict of interests concerns over the possibility that foreign governments can curry favor with the President by booking rooms.
Trump’s disclosures could also force him into revealing information about his private affairs he would rather keep secret.
Last year, he acknowledged for the first time that he repaid his former lawyer Michael Cohen more than $100,000 for expenses incurred during the 2016 presidential election.
The document did not explicitly state what the payments were for. But Trump’s lawyers had previously said that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 hush money payment he made to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
The Office of Government Ethics confirmed on Wednesday that Trump had filed the disclosure forms.
While the documents offer some details of Trump’s financial fortunes from year to year, they do not contain details of how much tax he has paid.
They also do not reveal in depth information about the sources of his wealth or identify customers for his real estate business, a fact that concerns ethics campaigners.
The President bucked tradition by refusing to release his tax returns as a candidate and after winning the White House.
He insists that he is under audit but his opponents charge he is worried about revealing advantageous tax arrangements, an assessment of his wealth that does not match his inflated claims, or is worried about declaring incriminating sources of income.
The release of the less comprehensive financial disclosure will likely be used by the White House to rebut claims he is not meeting minimum standards of transparency.
This year’s disclosure was filed with the President locked in showdown over his taxes with a Democratic-led committee in Congress that is seeking six years of returns.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin hinted on Wednesday that his department would not comply with a subpoena for the returns.
The comment escalated a confrontation with Democrats who will likely now have to go to court in an effort to force the turnover of the elusive documents.
This story has been updated.
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Presidents who gambled and lost.
The New York Times
Thursday, May 16, 2019
NYTimes.com/David-Leonhardt »
Op-Ed Columnist
Twenty-eight years ago this month, President George Bush took a break from his vacation in Kennebunkport, Maine, to deliver a big speech about China. Bush flew from his family’s compound on the Maine coast to his alma mater, Yale, and gave a graduation speech that doubled as a policy announcement.
It was 1991, only two years after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Some members of Congress were trying to persuade Bush to punish China’s human rights atrocities by refusing to renew its status as a “most favored” trading partner of the United States. But Bush said no.
He justified the decision with soaring language about the morality of engaging with China rather than punishing it. “It is wrong to isolate China if we hope to influence it,” he said.
That same view would guide the next three presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And their approach certainly had some benefits. Hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens have emerged from abject poverty.
But there have also been downsides. China has gotten away with cheating the international trading system, stealing intellectual property, blocking foreign countries from entering its market, heavily subsidizing Chinese companies, bullying other Asian countries and repressing its own citizens.
President Trump is now taking a more hawkish approach to China. I think his approach is clumsy, highly flawed and likely to fail. (My colleague Bret Stephens has a good explanation of why.) But unlike in so many other policy areas, Trump’s instincts are at least directionally correct. I hope that whoever succeeds him as president recognizes the problems not only with Trump’s strategy but also with that of his predecessors.
Back in 1991, Bush was making a bet — that treating China favorably would cause it to become a less repressive, more open society. “We want to advance the cause of freedom, not just snub nations that aren’t yet wholly free,” he said. He lost that bet.
Go deeper on China
On this week’s episode of “The Argument” podcast, Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and I debate the wisdom of Trump’s China policy. We also talk about a potential comeback for organized labor, and I tell a story about my experience in The New York Times’s union.
Elsewhere, on China: The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent and the Brookings Institution’s Thomas Wright both have advice for the Democratic presidential candidates. Sargent says Democrats should cast Trump’s tariffs on China as a failure of “unilateral America-First Trumpism.” He argues: “This isn’t a debate Democrats need to fear.”
Wright, in The Atlantic, advises Democrats to cast China as a threat to America’s economy, security and values. “Democrats need a powerful foreign-policy message that connects with domestic politics,” he writes. “Competing responsibly and effectively with China is the best one they have.”
Robert Rubin, a former Treasury secretary, and Kishore Mahbubani, a former Singaporean diplomat, both think there are better alternatives than confrontation. Mahbubani argues in Harper’s that the United States should match China’s investments in research and education, while limiting its rise through international organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank.
Rubin, in The Times earlier this year, wrote, “For the future of humanity, not to mention our immediate economic interests, our two countries must recognize our mutual self-interest in a constructive relationship.”
Trump’s failure to press China on human rights abuses against the country’s minority Muslim population is both a moral and strategic failure, says CNN’s Frida Ghitis: Highlighting those abuses would give Trump more leverage.
“China is now an adversary of the United States. A wise U.S. policy should treat it as one. But it should also do everything possible to keep it from becoming an enemy,” Bret Stephens writes, in the column I mentioned above. “How do we gradually deflect and deflate the ambitions of an immense rival power, without quite bursting them? That will be America’s central geopolitical challenge for years to come.”
A reversal? And acknowledgement of failure to gather popular support , in advance of re-election?
He declared to the joint chiefs of his opposition to start a war with Iran, and today, those o 'll surely rattle bible thumping supporters, somewhat:
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Trump supports Buttigieg campaigning with his husband: ‘It’s good’
REBECCA MORIN | USA TODAY | 24 minutes ago
President Donald Trump used an official government speech at a liquefied natural gas export facility to handicap his potential 2020 Democratic opponents and attack the Green New Deal proposal for aggressively cutting carbon emissions. (May 14)
AP, AP
President Donald Trump has repeatedly mocked South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, making fun of his name — “Boot-edge-edge” — and deriding the Rhodes Scholar as Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman.
But the president didn’t take an opportunity to insult the 2020 Democratic White House hopeful in a video clip released Thursday. Instead, he praised Buttigieg for campaigning with his husband, Chasten.
“I think it’s good,” Trump said.
During an interview with the president, Fox News host Steve Hilton commented how he thinks it’s great to see Buttigieg on stage with his husband as the couple normalizes same-sex marriage amidst the ever-present media spotlight of a presidential campaign.
“I think it’s absolutely fine," Trump replied. “I do.”
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Hilton noted that it’s “a sign of great progress in the country,” to which the president interrupted and said “I think it’s great.”
He added, however, that he believes some people in America will take issue with seeing the couple campaigning together.
“I think that’s something that perhaps some people will have a problem with,” he said, quickly adding, “I have no problem with it whatsoever.” The Fox News interview with Trump will air 9 p.m. ET on Sunday, an hour after Buttigieg has a live town hall on the network.
Buttigieg, who is one of 23 Democrats running for president, has repeatedly talked about being gay and has campaigned with his husband, which has sparked backlash from some conservative figures. Chasten Buttigieg, a former middle school teacher, is an avid social media user, who frequently posts on Twitter and Instagram about his life with his husband and on the campaign trail.
The Indiana Democrat over the past couple of weeks has also called out Vice President Mike Pence over his stance on LGBTQ issues. Pence, the former Indiana governor, during his tenure leading the state signed into law a “religious freedom” bill that critics said was a license to discriminate against gay people. But soon after he signed the measure he also signed an amendment intended to make it clear that businesses in the state could not discriminate against gays and lesbians.
Buttigieg, who has repeatedly touted his Episcopalian faith, last month called out Pence, saying that it was not his choice that he is gay.
More: Buttigieg blasts Trump Iran escalation: ‘This is not a game. This is not a show.’
More: Pete Buttigieg made $75K on his book deal, but owes much more in student loans, disclosure finds
Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg responds to anti-gay hecklers at a rally in Iowa.
USA TODAY
“If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade,” Buttigieg said during the LGBTQ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch in Washington. “And that’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. That if you got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me — your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”
In addition, Buttigieg has also questioned how a devout Christian like Pence “could allow himself to become the cheerleader of the porn star presidency.”
Since then, Pence has said that Buttigieg “knows better.” Earlier this week, the vice president also suggested he was holding back with regard to the 37-year-old politician.
“If he wins their party’s nomination, we’ll have a lot more to say about him,” Pence said of Buttigieg during an interview on Fox News
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Originally Published 13 hours ago
Updated 22 minutes ago
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