Trump news: President says 'I feel very bad' for Paul Manafort and launches emergency order to ground Boeing 737 MAX
The latest updates from Washington amid Paul Manafort's second sentencing hearing
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump denounced the “Witch Hunt Hoax” against him in a flurry of tweets on Wednesday, saying potential impeachment proceedings overlook “the minor fact I never did anything wrong” on the day his ex-campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was sentenced in a second federal hearing to 73 additional months in prison.
The president tweeted thanks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her opposition to impeachment, which she considers “too divisive”, and took aim at New York’s state’s governor Andrew Cuomo, new attorney-general Letitia James and her predecessor, Eric Schneiderman for issuing subpoenas related to his business dealings.
Manafort was last week given 47 months in jail by a court in Virginia after pleading guilty to bank and tax fraud and this time faces up to 10 years behind bars for conspiracy against the US and obstruction of justice.
On Wednesday, a federal judge sentenced Manafort to more than three and a half additional years in prison. That’s on top of the roughly four-year sentence he received in a separate case in Virginia last week.
The sentence followed a scathing assessment by the judge and a prosecutor of Manafort’s crimes. After Manafort was sentenced in federal court Wednesday, an indictment was unsealed in New York charging him with state crimes, including a residential mortgage fraud scheme.
Mr Trump said he feels “very badly” for his former campaign chairman following the sentencing.
“On a human basis, it’s a very sad thing," the president said.
Mr Trump also insisted he’s not currently considering a Manafort pardon, saying, “I have not even given it a thought as of this moment.”
The Manafort news arrived as Mr Trump was forced to announce an emergency order grounding a fleet of Boeing planes after a 737 MAX 8 plane was once again involved in a deadly crash.
Additional reporting by AP. Read The Independent's live coverage from Wednesday below:
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In case you missed it, George W Bush's former vice-president Dick Cheney yesterday took his successor Mike Pence to task over the Trump administration's approach to foreign policy.
Calling out the decision to remove troops from Syria and keep a distance from Nato, Mr Cheney reportedly said: "It's a lot more like Barack Obama than Ronald Reagan."
Here's Sarah Harvard.
A reminder of the comments made by House speaker Nancy Pelosi to which the president is referring.
Speaking to The Washington Post on Monday, she said: "I’m not for impeachment. This is news. I’m going to give you some news right now because I haven’t said this to any press person before", she said.
"But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this: Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it."
One man who thinks the president is headed for impeachment is David Bossie, a former deputy Trump campaign manager.
In fact he said precisely that on ABC's The Investigation podcast: "I see that's where these Democrats are headed... We are headed to impeachment."
Asked whether he thought the White House was prepared for a possible onslaught of investigations from House Democrats.
"I would say you're never ready enough... Do I think the White House is ready? From a staff standpoint - I would say no, today. Do I believe they are in the process of getting ready? Yes."
Now the president is hitting out at satire at his expense, not naming NBC's Saturday Night Live or late night hosts like Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers but presumably alluding to their constant jokes about him and his administration.
He's here referring to an interview former Tonight Show host Jay Leno gave to Al Roker on NBC in which he said he did not miss his old gig: "No, it’s different. I don’t miss it. You know, everything now is, if people don’t like your politics, they - everyone has to know your politics."
"I kind of used Johnny’s model. People couldn’t figure out. 'Well, you and your Republican friends' or 'Well, Mr Leno, you and your Democratic buddies.' And I would get hate mail from both sides equally," he said, referring to his celebrated predecessor Johnny Carson.
"But when people see you as one-sided, it just makes it tough," Mr Leno continued. "And plus, I did it when, you know, [Bill] Clinton was horny and [George W] Bush was dumb, and it was just a little easier.
"Now it’s all very serious. I’d just like to see a bit of civility come back to it, you know? People say, 'Oh, it must be easy to do jokes with Trump.' No, it’s actually harder because the punch line of the joke used to be 'That’s like the president with a porn star.' Well, now the president is with a porn star. Where do you go with that? How do you get more outrageous than that?"
Here come the rallying cries.
Hang on. Does America still need to be made great again or has he definitely already succeeded in that aim and is advocating consolidating the status quo? Which is it Don?
He's now taking his old enemies in California to task for halting death penalty executions.
Remember the state resoundingly snubbed him at the polls in 2016 and is leading a 16-state legal challenge against his national emergency declaration in support of his US-Mexico border wall.
Daughter-in-law Lara Trump, wife of Eric, has a handy tip for prospective 2020 presidential candidates: save it for 2024, you'll lose no matter what.
Here's Clark Mindock.
One man widely-tipped to ignore Lara Trump's advice is popular Texas Democrat Beto O'Rourke, who ran a close race for the Senate against the might of Ted Cruz in the Lone Star State back in November's midterms.
Mr O'Rourke, a native of El Paso, won national admiration for his outspoken campaign last autumn and is all set to "push the button" on a 2020 presidential run this week, according to insiders.
Now he's after the Obama-era Justice Department, calling it "corrupt".
This relates to the House Judiciary Committee releasing hundreds of pages of transcripts from last year's behind-closed-doors interview with ex-FBI attorney Lisa Page, which dwelt on whether the bureau had an “insurance policy” against then-candidate Donald Trump.
Ms Page was found to have exchanged anti-Trump text messages with the bureau's special agent Peter Strzok in December 2017 (with whom she was having an extramarital affair) by the department's inspector-general, Michael Horowitz, prompting Robert Mueller to remove Mr Strzok from the investigation.
The Judiciary Committee interviewed her at length in July 2018 on suspicions the "insurance policy" referred to in their exchanges meant the Russian probe.
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