Trump news: President sides with 'great one' Boris Johnson, after attacking Puerto Rico mayor as Storm Dorian approaches
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump has launched a fresh attack on “corrupt” Puerto Rico and the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, as Storm Dorian bears down on the island, also raging on Twitter against Fox News and joining in the mockery of New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who was driven from social media after objecting to being called a “bedbug”.
The president is also facing questions after allegedly promising officials he would pardon them if they found themselves having to break laws in order to get his US-Mexico border wall completed in time for the 2020 election, according to a Washington Post report.
Deutsche Bank has meanwhile revealed it has Mr Trump's tax returns, with one source suggesting the lender also has possession of loan documents to Mr Trump co-signed by Russian billionaires known to be close to Vladimir Putin, according to NBC News' Lawrence O'Donnell.
The bank said in court papers it has the returns in question in response to a subpoena sent this year, in which Congress asked the bank for a host of documents related to the president and his family.
Mr Trump has long declined to release his tax returns and wants to block two House committees from getting the records, calling their document requests unlawful.
A federal appeals court ordered Deutsche Bank to say whether or not Mr Trump’s tax returns were in its possession after an attorney for the bank refused to answer that question during a hearing last week.
The bank, in its court filing Tuesday, blacked out the name of the person or people whose tax records it had, citing privacy rules. It said it also has tax records “related to parties not named in the subpoenas but who may constitute ‘immediate family’” of individuals named in the document request.
Messages were left with a Deutsche Bank attorney seeking comment on the filing.
Deutsche Bank has lent Mr Trump’s real estate company millions of dollars over the years. Lawmakers have said they are seeking the banking records as they investigate possible “foreign influence in the US political process.”
Mr Trump and three of his children sued to stop the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees from getting the records on the grounds that the requests were overly broad and unconstitutional.
The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals indicated last week it would take a hard look at the legality of the subpoenas.
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Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
Donald Trump has told officials in his administration he will pardon them if they have to break laws to get his US-Mexico border wall completed in time for the 2020 election, according to The Washington Post.
“Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,” the president allegedly told aides after they expressed concern about carrying out his orders to fast-track the project to build hundreds of miles of new partition by seizing private land through eminent domain, ignoring environmental regulations and pushing through billion-dollar contracts with construction firms.
Trump has repeatedly promised to complete 500 miles of fencing by the time voters go to the polls in November 2020, stirring chants of "Finish the Wall!" at his political rallies as he pushes for tighter border controls.
But the US Army Corps of Engineers has completed just about 60 miles of "replacement" barrier during the first 30 months of Trump's presidency, all of it in areas that previously had border infrastructure.
One of the administration officials who spoke to The Post, who did so on condition of anonymity, insisted the president had been joking when he made the pardon remark but that hardly inspires confidence somehow.
Deutsche Bank has meanwhile revealed it has tax returns relevant to a subpoena issued by House Democrats investigating the president, with one source suggesting the lender also has possession of loan documents to Trump co-signed by Russian billionaires known to be close to Vladimir Putin.
The House Financial Services and House Intelligence committees subpoenaed Deutsche in April to provide financial records belonging to the president and his children Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump.
The bank's filing, in the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, revealed it has the tax returns it would need to hand over if it complied with the subpoenas, which the Trumps are seeking to block, suing the committee on the grounds that the requests were overly broad and unconstitutional.
It is not clear whose returns Deutsche has as names were redacted but the bank has lent Trump's real estate company millions of dollars over the years.
House committee members say they are seeking the banking records as they investigate possible "foreign influence in the US political process."
The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals indicated last week it would take a hard look at the legality of the subpoenas and is considering an appeal from a lower court's decision this year to allow the subpoenas to proceed.
US district judge Edgardo Ramos said in that case that Trump and his companies are "highly unlikely" to succeed in challenging them, meaning things could be about to get dicy for the ever-embattled president.
Here's our report.
As Storm Dorian approaches Puerto Rico, President Trump has declared an emergency while repeating his false claim the island already cost the US $92bn (£75bn) in aid when it was blasted by Hurricane Maria in 2017, the actual amount granted by Congress being closer to $42bn (£34bn), with only some $14bn (£11.5bn) of that spent so far.
"Just so you understand, we gave Puerto Rico $91 billion for the hurricane," Trump last told reporters at the White House in May (what's $1bn here or there?), apparently seeking to fudge the issue by confusing the actual amount with a government estimate of how much Puerto Rico might need in recovery money over 20 years, according to ABC.
San Juan mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz - who memorably feuded with Trump last time around - told CNN: "The president continues to express lies because the truth really does not suit him.
"As you said, it's not $92bn, it is close to $42bn. It's close to between $12.6bn and $14bn dollars that have come to Puerto Rico and still, things have not worked appropriately."
She added: "It seems like some people have learned the lessons of the past or are willing to say that they didn't do right by us the first time and they are trying to do their best. That is not the case with the president of the United States.
"So get out of the way, President Trump, and let the people that can do the job get the job done."
Here's more on Trump's apparent annoyance that Puerto Rico keeps suffering natural disasters from Conrad Duncan.
Also on Twitter, the president has mocked the "Three Stooges" proposing to challenge him to a Republican primary: former congressmen Mark Sanford and Joe Walsh and ex-Massachusetts governor Bill Weld.
He also joined in the teasing of New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who wrote an angry email to George Washington University professor David Karpf yesterday after he called him a "bedbug" (alluding to yesterday's stories that the Times newsroom and Trump's own Miami hotel had suffered infestations of the same), an exchange that subsequently went viral and saw Stephens quit Twitter.
The president has otherwise been preoccupied with old beefs, from Axios claiming he wanted to nuke tropical storms at sea to the "Corrupt and Fake News Media" misrepresenting him at the G7 and Elizabeth Warren having bigger crowd size energy than him.
He was also busy promoting Fox News host Jeanine Pirro's new book (in another casual abuse of the powers of his office) and obsessing over that approval rating poll from Zogby, once dismissed as the "worst pollster in the world".
Trump also continued his tiresome attack on the Federal Reserve yesterday - following his total meltdown on Friday afternoon over interest rates - saying the US central bank "loves watching our manufacturers struggle with their exports", which is total nonsense.
One man who has had enough of all of this is William Dudley, former president of the Fed's New York regional bank, who has written an editorial for Bloomberg Opinion arguing the institution should stop enabling Trump.
"This manufactured disaster-in-the-making presents the Federal Reserve with a dilemma: Should it mitigate the damage by providing offsetting stimulus, or refuse to play along?" Dudley wrote, alluding to the prospect of a recession.
"Trump's re-election," he continues, "arguably presents a threat to the US and global economy, to the Fed's independence and its ability to achieve its employment and inflation objectives. If the goal of monetary policy is to achieve the best long-term economic outcome, then Fed officials should consider how their decisions will affect the political outcome in 2020."
Dudley said any rate cuts intended to offset the damage done by Trump's trade war with China should not be considered: "What if the Fed's accommodation encourages the president to escalate the trade war further, increasing the risk of a recession?
"The central bank's efforts to cushion the blow might not be merely ineffectual. They might actually make things worse."
The piece forced the Fed to issue a statement insisting its duty is to remain apolitical. Chairman Jerome Powell must have the patience of a saint.
More on the border, where the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has announced plans to divert $271m (£222m) from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Disaster Relief Fund, Customs and Border Protection, the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration to boost its anti-immigration efforts.
Of that, $116m (£95m) will go towards adult beds for detention centes and $155m (£127m) to boost the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) programme AKA Remain in Mexico.
The news has not gone down well with House Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee chairwoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, who has written to acting DHS secretary Kevin McAleenan:
Secretary of defence Mark Esper has meanwhile approved an additional 20 miles of 30-foot high barriers for the southern border, a section of wall that is being paid for by a previously repurposed $2.5bn (£2bn) in Pentagon funds.
That money has been had been shifted from various programmes, including personnel and recruiting, Minuteman III and air launch cruise missiles, E-3 aircraft upgrades and the Afghan security forces training fund, according to CNN.
Remember how Trump said he was "an environmentalist" at the G7?
Yeah, you remember. It was just after he skipped out on that vital meeting of world leaders on how to go about stopping climate change.
The man who said in the same press conference he doesn't believe in wasting American wealth "on dreams, on windmills" and previously claimed turbines cause cancer is now moving to lift logging restrictions on Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the country’s largest national woodland, according to The Washington Post.
Under orders from his boss, agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue will seek to roll back the Clinton administration's Roadless Rule, which prohibts “road construction, road reconstruction, and timber harvesting on 58.5m acres of inventoried roadless areas on National Forest System lands.”
The plan to open up the 16.7m acres of woodland to the axes was apparently cooked up between Trump and the state's Republican governor Mike Dunleavy when they met briefly at at the Elmendorf Air Force Base in late June.
If all of that weren't grotty and unpleasant enough for one morning, here's Kellyanne Conway singing Taylor Swift.
In putting on this distressing exhibition, the president's adviser conveninently overlooked the pop star having called out the administration over its silence on the Equality Act petition for LGBT+ rights at the MTV Video Music Awards a matter of hours earlier.
Lowenna Waters has more, for all you masochists out there.
Trump’s approval rating has sunk in every 2020 battleground state, showing major vulnerabilities for the incumbent president a little over a year from election day.
That’s according to Morning Consult’s tracking poll, which found Trump’s popularity slipping in 17 of the states that are expected to be competitive next year.
His approval rating remains above water in just two of those states - with a two per cent net positive rating in Georgia and six per cent in Texas.
Here's Clark Mindock's report.
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