Trump attempts to shift focus to white South African farmers before posting furious 1.10am tweet, as pressure grows on president

US leader rages amid convictions of two former associates

Donald Trump has announced his administration will investigate the killing of white South African farmers, in an apparent attempt to deflect from the deepening legal crisis surrounding the US president.

Hours later, Mr Trump angrily denied collusion with Russia in an unusually late-night all caps tweet. “NO COLLUSION - RIGGED WITCH HUNT!” he wrote at 1.10am on Thursday morning.

The tweets come amid blanket media coverage the president appears increasingly unable to contain, over crimes committed by people formally in Mr Trump’s inner circle.

On Wednesday, it was revealed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, would refuse any pardon from the president after he pleaded guilty to a number of charges, including one count of a campaign finance violation, a crime potentially implicating his former boss.

The plea came within moments of Paul Manafort, Mr Trump’s former campaign manager, being found guilty on eight counts of bank and tax fraud.

Mr Cohen in particular appears to pose a threat to Mr Trump's presidency. Lanny Davis, who was employed as Mr Cohen's lawyer last month, branded the president a "criminal" and said his client had "information" that would interest Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible ties between the Trump administration and Russia.

Mr Trump’s decision to investigate issues surrounding white farmers in South Africa appeared to be inspired by a segment on Fox News’s prime time show Tucker Carlson Tonight.

“I have asked Secretary of State [Mike Pompeo] to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers,” he wrote on Twitter.

Alongside the announcement, he posted a quote from the channel alleging the South African government was “now seizing land from white farmers”. Mr Trump tagged Mr Carlson in his tweet.

South Africa's government on Thursday rejected Mr Trump's tweet as a "narrow perception" that divides the nation.

"South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past," it said in a post on an official Twitter account.

Land expropriation in South Africa has been taken up by a number of right-wing figures in recent months, including far-right commentator Katie Hopkins and Australia’s hardline home affairs minister James Dutton.

All major political parties in South Africa have said they agree reform is needed in a country where 72% of the land is in the hands of white people, according to the Land Audit Report, despite just 8% of the population being white.

Earlier this week, South African president Cyril Remaphosa suggested the country would become unstable if the state failed to speed up land reform.

“If we do not address it‚ it is going to cause instability in our country. If there is any risk‚ it will be around the land issue‚" Mr Ramaphosa told an audience at an agribusiness conference.

“Many of you as farmers would like access to land. It is necessary that we should do this to give access to those among us that want to work the land‚ so that we can heal this festering wound of the past. The only way to heal that wound is to give land to our people.”

Though there are no official figures for the past year, the most recent police statistics suggests 74 people were murdered on farms in the year to March 2017, including people of all races.

According to statistics compiled by AgriSA, one of the country’s biggest farmers’ organisations, murders of farmers was at a 20-year low in 2017-18, with 47 killed. This compares to a peak of 153 who died in 1998.