Trump news: Judge to rule on whether accountants must release president's financial records, as trade war with China escalates
Follow along below from our coverage of Washington, as it happened
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
A federal judge has cast doubt that US courts would intervene to limit Congress's ability to investigate Donald Trump saying that it would be highly unusual for such an intervention, as the first case over House Democrats' subpoenas for evidence was heard on Tuesday.
Judge Amit Mehta with the US District Court for the District of Columbia was in charge of that Tuesday hearing, which concerned whether House Democrats can obtain financial records held by an accounting firm representing the president. In their arguments, the case quickly centred around the American government's separation of powers.
“Am I right there isn't a single Supreme Court case or appellate case since 1880 that has found a congressional subpoena overstepped its bounds?” Mr Mehta, who will not issue a ruling until next week, asked Mr Trump's lawyer during questioning. “I agree there are outer limits, but it's not clear to me what they are.”
The court battle over those financial documents came as other controversies in Washington continued to smoulder. Before those arguments were heard, it was reported the Trump administration planned to have Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents round up and arrest thousands of Central American migrant families in cities across the US last month, as a brutal show of force before it was blocked by ex-Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and former ICE director Ron Vitiello.
Mr Trump also oversaw an escalating trade war with China on Tuesday, after the president imposed further tariffs on billions of dollars in Chinese imports.
The Democrat challengers to Trump in 2020
Show all 25On the 2020 campaign trail, a new poll has meanwhile put both of the leading Democratic presidential challengers, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, ahead of Trump in hypothetical 2020 matchups, with either man projected to beat him by an eight percent margin at the ballot box.
Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
This is interesting. The Kremlin is embarrassing Trump by denying his claim he would meet with Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the upcoming G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
Trump said on Monday he would meet Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping at the G20.
"We have noted the statement," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call, saying such statements had been made before, but that there had been no talks about such a meeting let alone an agreement about one.
Peskov noted that the last planned meeting between Putin and Trump had been cancelled at Washington's initiative.
Worried there weren't enough Democrats running for president in 2020? Never fear.
Montana governor Steve Bullock becomes at least the 23rd to step forward. I'm genuinely losing count here.
Adam Schiff, Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, appeared on ABC's This Week on Sunday to tell George Stephanopoulos that fining Trump administration officials for stonewalling Congress over subpoenas and deadlines might be the answer to stopping the tactic.
The idea appears to have spooked White House aides, who would rather abandon the president's protections than face hefty financial penalties.
Here's Tom Embury-Dennis with more.
At a meeting of President Trump’s top national security aides last Thursday, acting defence secretary Patrick Shanahan (now nominated for the job full-time) presented an updated military plan that envisioned sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack US forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons.
The revisions were ordered by hard-liners led by John Bolton, Trump’s hawkish national security adviser, who previously pushed for conflict with Tehran under George W Bush. The similarities with the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 were there for all to see and ominous indeed.
“We’ll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake,” the president said on Monday.
Secretary of state Mike Pompeo is meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin this week and will discuss growing tensions in the Middle East.
The intrepid Clark Mindock is following one of the most prominent Democratic 2020 challengers, Elizabeth Warren, in Pennsylvania as she seeks to pick up votes from pack leader Joe Biden in his own backyard.
Here's his report from Philadelphia.
President Trump appears to have succeeded in reviving his disingenuous antisemitism attack on the Democrats by going after Rashida Tlaib after the Michigan congresswoman made some undeniably very ill-advised remarks about Israel.
"There’s, you know, there’s a kind of a calming feeling, I always tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors - Palestinians - who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence, in many ways, had been wiped out," Tlaib said on Yahoo News’s Skullduggery podcast.
"I mean, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time," she continued before saying she loves "the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that [safe haven], in many ways."
Never a man to miss a political opportunity, the president was quick to capitalise:
After being severely criticised by other leading Republicans, Tlaib responded:
Now Ilhan Omar has come to her colleague's aid by attacking Republican rival Liz Cheney:
Here's a reminder of how the whole mess started from Chris Riotta.
A federal court will today, for the first time, step into the intensifying clash between the US House of Representatives and President Trump, who is stonewalling multiple probes led by House Democrats of himself and his businesses.
US district judge Amit Mehta in Washington will hear oral arguments on whether Mazars, Trump's long-time accounting firm, must comply with a House Oversight Committee subpoena seeking financial records for Trump and his company.
In an aggressive response to congressional oversight, Trump is refusing to cooperate with any of the probes. Their targets range from his tax returns and policy decisions to his Washington hotel and his children's security clearances.
The House Oversight Committee claims sweeping investigative power and says it needs Trump's financial records to examine whether he has conflicts of interest or broke the law by not disentangling himself from his business holdings as previous presidents did.
Lawyers for Trump and the Trump Organization, his company, last month filed a lawsuit to block the committee's subpoena, saying it exceeded Congress' constitutional limits.
Trump's lawyers argued that Congress is on a quest to "turn up something that Democrats can use as a political tool against the president now and in the 2020 election".
On Monday, the president's attorneys objected to Mehta's plan to fast-track the lawsuit by holding a trial on Tuesday, saying that would deny Trump a "full and fair" hearing.
Either way, Mehta will likely issue a written decision at a later date, although he may indicate on Tuesday how he intends to rule. Whatever the outcome, his ruling will almost certainly be appealed to a higher court.
Mehta was appointed in 2014 by Barack Obama, who was investigated almost non-stop by Republicans in Congress during his two terms in office.
Mazars has avoided taking sides in the dispute and said it will "comply with all legal obligations."
Trump's challenge of the Mazars subpoena was his first effort to quash the multiple House inquiries. He has also sued over subpoenas for his financial records sent to Deutsche Bank and Capital One.
Some legal experts have said Trump's lawsuits are unlikely to succeed. They said Congress has broad power to issue subpoenas, so long as documents requested can help it legislate, and that courts are reluctant to second-guess its motivations.
Some Democratic Party leaders have argued that Trump's stonewalling represents a "constitutional crisis" and could force them to begin impeachment proceedings to remove him from office, even though such an effort would likely fail in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Here's an update on how the markets are responding to the ongoing US-China trade tensions.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies