Trump news: Pelosi says Barr committed ‘crimes’ as house votes to force president to keep US in Paris climate agreement
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Your support makes all the difference.Attorney general William Barr has refused to show up for planned testimony before the House Judiciary Committee after enduring a grilling by Democratic senators on Wednesday, who questioned his handling of the Mueller report and called for his resignation.
On Thursday, Democrats in the House blasted Mr Barr for skipping the hearing, and accused the executive branch of subverting constitutional checks and balances by undermining Congress.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the challenge we face is that the president of the United States wants desperately to prevent Congress, a co-equal branch of government, from providing any check whatsoever to even his most reckless decisions,” said chairman Jerrold Nadler, addressing an empty chair as colleague Steve Cohen chewed on a bucket of fried chicken, a stunt to imply Mr Barr was a coward for failing to attend.
Democrats accused Mr Barr on Wednesday of acting as Donald Trump’s human shield by declining to pursue obstruction of justice charges against the president. And, those same Democats called for the attorney general's resignation after the existence of a letter written to him by Robert Mueller appeared to suggest he had lied to Congress during a previous appearance on 10 April.
That drama playing out in Washington came as unrest in Venezuela has persisted, with the United States supporting regime change.
In response to the US position, representative Ilhan Omar claimed that US use of sanctions to force regime change has led to strife in Central America. Ms Omar went as far as to say that US foreign policy in Central America has exacerbated the immigration problem at the US southern border.
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Another development yesterday was US secretary of state Mike Pompeo saying Washington would be prepared to intervene militarily to resolve the political crisis in Venezuela as President Trump warned Cuba not to stand by Nicolas Maduro.
Russia responded ominously to Pompeo by warning American intervention in Caracas would be met with "the gravest consequences".
Here's Andrew Buncombe's report.
President Trump has invited fellow anti-immigration populist Viktor Orban of Hungary to the White House on 13 May.
The far-right prime minister will jet in to discuss energy security, defence cooperation, bilateral relations and regional security, according to his foreign minister Peter Szijjarto.
Here's Adam Forrest's report.
Back to the Mueller report.
Southern snake oil salesman Lindsey Graham may insist "It's over!" and that there's no need for Robert Mueller himself to appear before his Senate Judiciary Committee but Graham's House counterpart Jerry Nadler disagrees.
The FBI special counsel will at last speak for himself on Capitol Hill later this month at a date TBC.
The spotlight turned on Mueller late on Tuesday night when The Washington Post reported the existence of a letter Mueller had written to Barr on 27 March, expressing his unhappiness at the characterisation of his report - concluding 22 months of exhaustive investigation - arising as a result of Barr's executive summary, published three days earlier.
It threatened to undermine “full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations”, he wrote.
That letter leaked yesterday.
Barr went on to say this about Mueller's feelings in his Senate hearing yesterday:
Which directly contradicts what he told Congress on 10 April:
Here's Chris Stevenson's report on the quiet man everybody wants to hear from.
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace bit the hand that feeds him yesterday, stressing the significance of the Mueller report and the special counsel's 27 March letter to Barr in defiance of attempts by colleagues to brush the significance of the matter under the carpet.
Here's what the network is peddling this morning.
James Comey, the ex-FBI director whose firing by Trump on 9 May 2017 brought this all down upon us, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times yesterday in which he warned that "accomplished people lacking inner strength" like Bill Barr and the outgoing Rod Rosenstein are being co-opted by the president and ending up entangled in his "web of alternative reality".
He praises the principle of men like former secretary of defence James Mattis who resigned in December "to avoid the damage, because Mr Trump eats your soul in small bites".
Trump has resumed his busy schedule of retweeting, going after Barr's critics and Joe Biden once again with this from The New York Times on a possible conflict of interest scandal.
He clearly fears "Sleepy Joe" or wouldn't pursue him so doggedly.
Trump's pick for the board of the Federal Reserve, Stephen Moore, was already in hot water after misogynistic remarks he made about women in basketball re-emerged.
Only attractive women should be allowed to referee games, Moore suggested in the pages of conservative magazine National Review in the 2000s, a story picked up by CNN.
One wonders what the championship-winning players of the Baylor Lady Bears, who reluctantly dined on junk food at the White House earlier this week, might think about that.
Now it appears Moore has been under-paying alimony to his ex-wife Alison after the couple divorced in 2011, according to The Guardian.
The economist owes her tens of thousands of dollars, routinely handing over $12,000 (£9,200) instead of $20,000 (£15,000).
He reportedly continued to do so even after being found to be in contempt of court in Virginia in 2012, at which point he owed $300,000 (£230,000) and was under threat of losing his house in Falls Church.
Richard Blumenthal is resuming his attack on Barr on CNN's New Day.
Here's a word from arguably the real hero of yesterday.
Donald Trump was lured into retweeting this account yesterday with false praise, only for the user to change their handle and profile pic to something less than flattering to the president.
It was some time before his team noticed.
Kamala Harris makes a wonderful face here and wisely sidesteps one of the queasiest analogies ever heard from MSNBC's Chris Matthews on executive privilege.
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