Trump blows up over newspaper's choice of page for story about former Obama lawyer

US president angry at story being put on page 16 of New York Times

Donald Trump has angrily criticised a newspaper over the page it chose to place a story about the indictment of a lawyer who served in Barack Obama's administration.

"President Obama’s top White House lawyer, Gregory B. Craig, was indicted yesterday on very serious charges," Mr Trump tweeted.

"This is a really big story, but the Fake News New York Times didn’t even put it on page one, rather page 16. @washingtonpost not much better, “tiny” page one. Corrupt News!"

Greg Craig was indicted on Thursday on charges of making false statements and concealing information in a federal foreign lobbying investigation.

The probe intersected with Robert Mueller's special counsel inquiry into links between Trump campaign officials and Russia.

Mr Craig was charged in a two-count indictment that accuses him of willfully concealing material facts from the Justice Department about work he performed for the Ukrainian government.

The 74-year-old criticised the "unprecedented and unjustified" prosecution and said he was confident a judge and jury would agree.

The outburst by the US president, who remains furious about the media's coverage of Mr Mueller's completed investigation, came amid a flurry of tweets in which he doubled down on his attempts to cast the as-yet-unseen Mueller report as a victory.

“I don’t need to know any more. We’re done, absolutely done, he (Mueller) tried the case. There’s NO COLLUSION," Mr Trump had earlier tweeted, quoting his ally senator Lindsey Graham, who had appeared on his favourite TV show Fox & Friends.

"No matter what we do or give to the Radical Left, it will never be enough!" the president added.

Mr Trump later quoted Doug Collins, another Republican in Congress, who accused Democrats of "trying everything else" because they "don't like the results of the Mueller report".

In fact, Mr Mueller's report has yet to be seen by Congress, which has instead been provided with a short summary by Mr Trump's attorney general, who said investigators did not find collusion, and did not conclude either way if the president obstructed justice.

"They should stop wasting time and money and get back to real legislating, especially on the Border!" added Mr Trump, who has repeatedly criticised Democrats for opposing his hardline immigration policies.

"Even the Democrats now say that our Southern Border is a Crisis and a National Emergency. Hopefully, we will not be getting any more BAD (outrageous) court decisions!"

Democrats in the House in fact blame Mr Trump for aggravating the situation at the southern border, which has in recent weeks seen a rise in people arriving attempting to claim asylum.

They say he has not used funds available to help deal with the surge and has exacerbated the problem with his attempts to crack down.