A resource for journalists and for shutting down your crazy uncle.
On Monday, President Donald Trump retweeted a ‘hit list’ from Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative self-styled watchdog group.
Fitton tweeted a list out with Democrats name who believed have abused President Donald Trump.
People on the list included Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton.
Today President Donald Trump has been sharing a number of clips from Fox News and Fox Business segments on the Mueller report.
The main Fox News account may have stopped tweeting since November as of now, but the president’s Twitter feed today has featured plenty of Fox content.
Trump shared clips of Mark Levin, Steve Hilton, Byron York, Lou Dobbs, and Gregg Jarrett talking about the Mueller report and the fallout from the past few days:
[Mediaite]
President Trump on Monday questioned why Robert Mueller and his team did not speak with “the people who were closest” to him and his campaign, even though Mueller interviewed several former aides and the president did not agree to sit with the special counsel.
“Isn’t it amazing that the people who were closest to me, by far, and knew the Campaign better than anyone, were never even called to testify before Mueller,” Trump tweeted. “The reason is that the 18 Angry Democrats knew they would all say ‘NO COLLUSION’ and only very good things!”The special counsel spoke to several White House staffers, including a number of people who worked on the 2016 campaign, as part of his nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. A redacted version of Mueller’s final report was released last week.
In it, the special counsel said the probe did not establish that Trump colluded with the Russian government. Mueller neither exonerated nor implicated Trump on obstruction of justice, but detailed 10 episodes that investigators reviewed for the charge.
Among those who cooperated with the special counsel, according to the report, were White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former White House counsel Don McGahn, all of whom worked on the campaign in some capacity. Campaign aides Hope Hicks, Corey Lewandowski and Steve Bannon also cooperated.
Tweets from the president since the report’s release suggest he is not happy with news coverage, some of it fueled by notes taken by McGahn and others who provided their paperwork to Mueller’s team.
Trump pushed back earlier Monday against the idea that his aides routinely went against his directives, as laid out in multiple instances in the Mueller report, telling reporters that “nobody disobeys my orders.”
Trump added that he was “not even a little bit” worried about the specter of impeachment.
Trump did not sit for an in-person interview with Mueller and instead provided written answers to the special counsel’s questions.
The president wrote on more than 30 occasions that he did not recall, remember or have independent memories of key events throughout the Russia investigation, leading Mueller’s team to deem his written responses to questions “inadequate.”
Mueller said he considered issuing a subpoena for Trump to sit for an interview, but ultimately decided against it because it would have resulted in a drawn out legal fight.
Trump and his allies declared victory in the wake of Mueller’s report becoming public, touting that it cleared the president of wrongdoing. However, the president has remained fixated on the special counsel in recent days, attacking his team’s credibility and jabbing at the former aides who provided notes to investigators.
[The Hill]
President Trump on Monday said “nobody disobeys” his orders after special counsel Robert Mueller wrote in his report that Trump attempted to influence the Russia investigation but was unsuccessful because his aides didn’t follow his demands.
“Nobody disobeys my orders,” Trump told reporters outside of the White House at Monday’s Easter Egg Roll.
A redacted version Mueller’s report, which was released Thursday, detailed several cases in which Trump potentially obstructed justice.
But Mueller wrote that Trump’s efforts “were mostly unsuccessful” in influencing the probe because those around him “declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”
“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests,” the report reads.
In one instance, Trump in 2017 ordered then-White House counsel Don McGahn to remove Mueller. McGahn refused, according to the report, which states that he decided “that he would resign rather than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre.”
President Donald Trump falsely claimed on Twitter today that he can’t be impeached because “there were no crimes by me” outlined in Robert Mueller‘s report.
“Only high crimes and misdemeanors can lead to impeachment,” Trump tweeted. “There were no crimes by me (No Collusion, No Obstruction), so you can’t impeach. It was the Democrats that committed the crimes, not your Republican President! Tables are finally turning on the Witch Hunt!”
The charge “high crimes” in the Constitution is a reference to misconduct that can only be committed by a person in a top level of authority because of the oath they took when assuming power; it does not necessarily refer to breaking the law.
Additionally, while Mueller’s long-awaited report cleared Trump of criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin, federal prosecutors in Southern District of New York have suggested Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in the hush money payments that resulted in felony convictions.
As for the report’s actual commentary on possible criminal charges against Trump, Mueller’s team noted that they could not exonerate him on obstruction.
“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” the report states. “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.”
[Mediaite]
President Trump and the Trump Organization filed suit against House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings in federal court on Monday in an attempt to block Cummings’ subpoena of Trump’s longtime accountant, Mazars USA LLP.
The big picture: Cummings wrote last week that the subpoena — for all of Trump’s financial records — is a result of testimony from Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who claimed that the president “altered the estimated value of his assets and liabilities on financial statements.”
President Donald Trump seems to think that impeachment is out of the question because he is a Republican and it is the Democrats who committed the crimes.
On Easter Sunday, Trump wrote on Twitter: “How do you impeach a Republican President for a crime that was committed by the Democrats? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
It is unclear what exactly prompted his tweet, but impeachment has been a topicwidely talked about on cable news this weekend as some Democrats renew their call for impeachment.
In addition, Laurence Tribe published an op-ed on Sunday in USA Todayclaiming the “time has come” for the sitting president to be impeached.
The Mueller probe — and how much it has been unfair to him — also seems to be on Trump’s mind this holiday.
Earlier on Easter Sunday, the president took time out of his day to blame the “other side” and complain he had to go through the “worst and most corrupt political Witch Hunt in the history of the United States.”
[Mediaite]
President Donald Trump botched his initial statement about the deadly bombings in Sri Lanka on Sunday morning, tweeting that the death toll was in the hundreds of millions.
“Heartfelt condolences from the people of the United States to the people of Sri Lanka on the horrible terrorist attacks on churches and hotels that have killed at least 138 million people and badly injured 600 more. We stand ready to help!” Trump wrote in a tweet that was left up for at least 20 minutes before he corrected the number to 138, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter.
Before noticing the error and taking the tweet down, Trump then tweeted to wish the country a “Happy Easter.”
Trump’s condolences come in the wake of a brutal series of bombings at luxury hotels and churches in Sri Lankan cities of Colombo, Negombo, and Batticaloa on Easter Sunday. The latest reported death count estimated that 207 people had been killed in the blasts.
Police have made a handful of arrests, according to CNN, but no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
President Donald Trump plugged the Fox News Saturday line-up over the holiday weekend, touting the evening programming as a “good night of television.”
The president started by telling folks to tune into Mark Levin‘s show, which featured an hour-long conversation with Byron York vigorously defending Trump and making it abundantly clear collusion did not take place.
[Mediaite]
President Trump, reiterating his firm belief that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation had been a political and unsuccessful witch hunt, tweeted out the New York Post’s front page and its bold, declarative headline: “TRUMP CLEAN.”
The page showed Trump smiling alongside the phrases, “No crimes committed,” and “Dem hoax destroyed.”
[Fox News]