Trump news latest updates: President picks fight with attorney general Jeff Sessions after Michael Cohen's guilty plea
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Donald Trump's day of disaster is rapidly becoming one of the worst weeks of his presidency.
The White House is insisting the president has done nothing wrong in connection with the legal woes of his former personal attorney and says the leader is not the subject of criminal charges.
Mr Trump has accused Michael Cohen of lying under pressure of prosecution and says the hush money paid to two women who allege sexual encounters with the him years ago is not a campaign violation because the money did not come from campaign funds.
Instead, Mr Trump claimed he personally had made the payments, in an apparent effort to stem the crisis.
That argument stands in contrast to Mr Cohen's guilty plea to campaign finance violations that he says he carried out in coordination with Mr Trump.
Mr Cohen says he used shell companies to make payments for silencing former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election.
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"What's come out of Manafort? No collusion. What's come out of Michael Cohen? No collusion."
Trump is talking about how bad he feels that both of the men had to suffer morning raids on their house.
Trump didn't say he was going to pardon Paul Manafort. But he didn't say he wouldn't, either.
Fox & Friends say they'll be showing some more of the interview in half an hour.
In the meantime, they'll be hitting all of the other talking points that are being used to distract from the current crisis in the White House, they say.
There's some confusion about that Manafort line. Julie Davis, a White House reporter for the New York Times, notes on Twitter:
"Ainsley Earhardt, who said last night on Hannity that Trump had told her in their interview that he was considering pardoning Manafort, this AM notes he never did say this, before airing clip in which Trump does not answer her direct question about it"
This morning Earhardt said that he didn't say he would, and wouldn't say he was going to; that much seems accurate.
Fox & Friends is discussing the decision to give a posthumous Medal of Honour to Tech. Sgt. John Chapman, which Trump gave out at the height of the current crisis during a White House ceremony yesterday.
Donald Trump might need his lawyer right now. So where is he? Somewhere both very surprising – and incredibly fitting.
Rudy Giuliani has been pictured on a golf trip to Scotland while the US president faces mounting legal and political threats.
He was photographed with a group of US tourists near the Old Course in St Andrews, Fife, on Wednesday evening.
It comes as Mr Trump accused his former lawyer Michael Cohen of lying under pressure of prosecution with allegations that the president had orchestrated a campaign cover-up to buy the silence of two women who claimed he had affairs with them.
Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to eight charges, including campaign finance violations that he said he carried out in co-ordination with Mr Trump.
Mr Trump tweeted to accuse Cohen of making up "stories in order to get a 'deal"' from federal prosecutors.
Mr Giuliani, the president's personal counsel, came under criticism earlier this week after claiming "truth isn't truth" in a US TV interview.
He later tweeted: "My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology, but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic 'he said, she said' puzzle. Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth, other times it doesn't."
One important line of defence for Trump – and one that he repeated in the Fox & Friends interview – is a claim that Cohen's crimes had nothing to do with the president or his campaign, and that he offered the stories about Trump as a way of getting off.
He's also looked to use the interview to distance himself from Cohen. He said the lawyer, who worked for him for a decade, was just a "part-time attorney" who had many other clients.
"It's called flipping and it almost should be illegal," Trump said. "In all fairness to him, most people are going to do that."
Trump has said that it would be a disaster if he were impeached – because the market would "crash".
“If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash," he said. "I think everybody would be very poor."
He also says he shouldn't be impeached because he's done a "great job".
Here's a little more detail on Trump's suggestion that it should be illegal for people facing prosecution to cooperate with the government in exchange for a reduced sentence, made during the Fox & Friends interview.
Trump is reacting to the guilty plea entered by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to a range of charges.
Trump — in an interview with "Fox & Friends" — is accusing Cohen of implicating him to get a better deal with prosecutors. Trump says Cohen "makes a better deal when he uses me."
Trump claims people who decide to cooperate with the government "make up stories" and "just make up lies"
Here's what the president says: "It's called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal." He says "it's not a fair thing."
President Donald Trump says he believes the economy would tank if he were to be impeached.
Trump was asked in an interview with "Fox & Friends" if he believes Democrats will launch impeachment proceedings if they win the House this fall, as many suspect.
He says, "If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor."
Trump says Americans would see economic "numbers that you wouldn't believe in reverse."
But Trump is also expressing doubt that that would ever happen.
He says, "I don't know how you can impeach somebody who's done a great job."
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