Trump news: President blocks action on gun control weeks after deadly mass shootings, as Fox News poll suggests he will lose in 2020
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump has angrily denied reports he made a promise to a mystery foreign leader during a phone call from the Oval Office that so troubled one US intelligence official they felt compelled to file a whistleblower complaint about it, predictably dismissing the story and asking: “Is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate?”
The precise nature of the pledge is currently unknown, according to The Washington Post, but, despite the matter being deemed of “urgent concern”, the president’s acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire has so far refused to pass it on to House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, even after a subpoena was issued.
With a new Fox News poll finding him lagging behind the 2020 Democratic front-runners, Mr Trump returns from California where he visited his US-Mexico border wall on Wednesday, hailing the construction project with characteristic bluster as a “world-class security system”.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump asked a federal court to block an effort by New York prosecutors to obtain his tax returns as part of a criminal investigation, opening another front in the president’s efforts to keep his financial information private.
The president’s attorneys filed a lawsuit against Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr, who recently subpoenaed the president’s accounting firm for eight years of his state and federal returns as part of an investigation into payments made to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Mr Trump.
They called the subpoena a “bad faith effort to harass” Mr Trump and said Mr Vance, a Democrat, had overstepped his constitutional authority.
“Virtually ‘all legal commenters agree’ that a sitting President of the United States is not ‘subject to the criminal process’ while he is in office,” Mr Trump’s lawyers wrote.
“Yet a county prosecutor in New York, for what appears to be the first time in our nation’s history, is attempting to do just that,” they added.
The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, asks US District Judge Victor Marrero to declare the subpoena unenforceable until Mr Trump leaves office.
The president’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said the lawsuit is intended “to address the significant constitutional issues at stake in this case.”
A spokesman for Mr Vance said his office had received the lawsuit “and will respond as appropriate in court.” Mr Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, declined to comment.
Additional reporting by AP. Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
Look at the state of this toadying from Lindsey Graham. He would have said exactly the same thing if Trump had appointed Popeye the Sailor Man.
Fox and Friends have been mocking pop star Taylor Swift's interest in politics but in so doing blamed Obama for standing by during Russia's incursion into Georgia, which actually happened in August 2008 on Bush's watch.
For Indy Voices, Benjamin Zinevich says Washington's obsession with civility should not be allowed to quell the fire and fury of Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail.
Some HR news from the White House.
Veep Mike Pence has hired one Katie Waldman as his new press secretary, recruiting her from Arizona senator Martha McSally.
Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, she is the girlfriend of Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration brainiac Stephen Miller.
The Pentagon has warned of dire consequences if the $3.6bn (£2.8bn) Trump siphoned off from military construction projects to pay for the border wall is not replaced by Congress, The Washington Post reports.
The paper cites Defence Department budget requests warning of hazardous living conditions for troops and their families, unsafe schools and buildings being erected that do not meet current military health and safety standards.
The requests detail dilapidated Second World War-era warehouses with “leaking asbestos panel roof systems,” a drone pilot training facility at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico with sinkholes and a bat infestation, explosives being stored in sub-standard buildings and a mould-infested middle school in Kentucky. In one particularly striking case, the Air Force warned that it cannot afford to replace a parking ramp at a facility in New Orleans that abuts a public highway, meaning munitions-loaded aircraft expose locals to an “unacceptable risk” of being affected by an explosive accident.
Trump was able to comandeer the funds and bypass Congress by declaring the illegal immingration "crisis" at the southwestern border a national emergency back in February but the move was strongly opposed by House and Senate Democrats and Republicans, forcing him to veto their objections.
“We see across the country - communities, military bases and people in the military - saying, ‘Taking away this money hurts us,’” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said earlier this week. “All the Democrats are asking for is to protect the troops from having their resources robbed for a border wall - resources that Congress said should go to the military.”
“It shocks me that, as commander-in-chief, he now insists that it’s got to be our troops, our military families and our nation’s security that have to be sacrificed for his foolishness,” added Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's largely forgotten 2016 running mate.
Remember when Mexico was going to pay for all of this?
A few more highlights from Trump on Fox.
"Championship mountain climbers" is a beauty.
Trump has been quiet all day but here's the angry rebuttal we've been expecting.
Trump's latest angry denial is being met with the scepticism you would expect.
Trump has just filed a lawsuit against Manhattan's district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr after New York City prosecutors subpoenaed the president’s tax returns while probing his financial dealings, according to a new report.
Here's Chris Riotta's breaking story.
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