Trump news: Kamala Harris leads calls for Barr to quit for interfering in sentencing of president's friend
Justice Department employees join push for attorney general's resignation after Roger Stone sentencing fallout
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Donald Trump returned to Washington on Sunday night after opening the Daytona 500 NASCAR race in Florida to attend the wedding of his senior aide Stephen Miller, held at the president’s own Trump International Hotel in DC in disregard of ongoing concerns about violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause.
More than 2,000 former Justice Department employees have meanwhile called for his attorney general, William Barr, to step down after it became clear he had intervened to push for a more lenient prison sentence for Republican political operative and Trump ally Roger Stone.
The call follows a letter signed by nine US senators — including presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — demanding his resignation. California Senator Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor who grilled the attorney general following the Mueller investigation, also renewed her call for Mr Barr to step down.
An open letter signed by a growing list of former staffers at the Justice Department said they "stand for the proposition that political interference in the conduct of a criminal prosecution is anathema to the Department's core mission and to its sacred obligation to ensure equal justice under the law".
"And yet, President Trump and Attorney General Barr have openly and repeatedly flouted this fundamental principle", the post says. "Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies."
Donald Trump celebrity president: A decade in two halves
Show all 29Donald Ayer, the former deputy US Attorney General under George HW Bush, eviscerated Mr Barr's legal doctrine in a stunning column for The Atlantic, saying that "Bill Barr's America is not a place that anyone, including Trump voters, should want to go. It is a banana republic where all are subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen."
Meanwhile, the president has remained largely offline on Presidents' Day (other than to celebrate his presidency) while his rival Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor running for the Democratic presidential nomination, is criticised for his past statements on women and stop and frisk. The president's advisor Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox News to slam the candidate while defending the president for similar statements and behaviours.
The president has otherwise been belatedly defending his US-Mexico border wall after footage went viral of a section of it being blown down in strong winds two weeks ago, with Mr Trump now insisting this was the fault of wet concrete and not shoddy workmanship or cheap materials.
Follow live coverage as it happened:
President nurtured 'obsession' with killing Osama bin Laden's son, wanted 'name recognition' victory over al-Qaeda
Trump wanted to prioritise the killing of Osama bin Laden's son, Hamza bin Laden, ahead of other high-priority targets presented to him by his top intelligence officials during his first two years in office, according to an NBC News report published on Sunday.
"He would say, 'I've never heard of any of these people. What about Hamza bin Laden?'" one former official told NBC, with another Pentagon hawk saying it was “the only name he knew.”
The president was apparently more interested in assassinating the terrorist leader's son than the current al-Qaeda chief, Ayman al-Zawahri, they said. Bin Laden Jr was finally killed in an airstrike in 2018 but Al-Zawahri remains alive.
"Despite intelligence assessments showing the greater dangers posed by Zawahiri… and the unlikelihood Hamza was in the immediate line of succession, the president thought differently," ex-CIA officer Douglas London wrote in an analysis piece for Just Security. "He regularly demanded updates on Hamza and insisted we accelerate our efforts to go after him."
London says Trump had an "obsession" with Hamza bin Laden and wanted a "name recognition" victory over the Islamist terror group in the Middle East.
Bill de Blasio backs Bernie over Bloomberg
This spat clearly isn't going away any time soon.
Here's New York's mayor going after his predecessor for his attack on the online Bernie Bros.
Kamala Harris: 'Barr needs to go'
The California senator and former presidential candidate has renewed her call for the Attorney General to step down over the handling of Roger Stone's sentencing. Her tweet follows a call from nine senators, including presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, as well as an open letter from 1,100 former Justice Department employees demanding William Barr resign.
Former Bush official calls Barr 'un-American' in demand for AG's resignation
Donald Ayer, the former deputy US Attorney General under George HW Bush, eviscerates Bill Barr's legal doctrine in a stunning column for The Atlantic:
"Bill Barr’s America is not a place that anyone, including Trump voters, should want to go. It is a banana republic where all are subject to the whims of a dictatorial president and his henchmen. To prevent that, we need a public uprising demanding that Bill Barr resign immediately, or failing that, be impeached."
Lev Parnas could face new charges from federal prosecutors
Rudy Giuliani's associate Lev Parnas, who was indicted for campaign finance violations, could face fresh charges following a probe of his company Fraud Guarantee.
CNN reports that investigators are determining whether Parnas and other people involved with the company had duped investors about the its value and how they intended to use the money they received.
The investigation keeps the feds close to Mr Giuliani, who was paid $500,000 by the company around the time that Mr Parnas and Igor Fruman had worked with the president's attorney over his campaign to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
Kellyanne Conway: Bloomberg's sexist comments 'far worse' than Trump's
Asked whether the president will be able to "make an issue" of Mr Bloomberg's history of sexist comments recently outlined in a Washington Post story about the litany of harassment allegations made against the billionaire former New York mayor, Kellyanne Conway said "you don't have to wait for an election to be offended".
"The comments he's made about women, the lawsuits -- that is all fair game", she said.
Given the president's own rape allegations, lawsuits and complaints about his behaviour with women, Ms Conway said: "Please, first of all, I've been working by his side for four years. He's the best boss I've ever had."
Donald Trump's second travel ban, which restricts entry into the United States by individuals from six countries and kicks in on Friday, is built on assessments from intelligence agencies the president has attacked and sometimes ignored since taking office.
The administration's second entry prohibition adds Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and Myanmar to its first travel ban, which singles out individuals from five majority Muslim countries. It also restricts individuals hailing from Tanzania and Sudan from getting green cards via the visa lottery program that Mr Trump has panned.
The Independent's John T Bennett reports:
Pelosi: Any candidate running against Trump would be better than him
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells CNN that any of the candidates running against Donald Trump "would be a better president" than the one in the White House.
The party "must be unified" in his defeat, she said, though she can't even "envision a situation where he would be reelected".
She also accused the president of using the House of Representatives a "backdrop for a reality TV show" for his State of the Union, a claim she's repeated in the days following his remarks
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