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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Adam Gabbatt in New York (now) and Ben Jacobs in Washington (earlier)

Mueller attacks Flynn's attempt to 'minimize seriousness' of offense – as it happened

Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.
Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, lied to the FBI. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Closing summary

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading and have a lovely weekend.

  • Scott Walker signed three bills into law designed to strip powers from his incoming replacement – a Democrat. The bills, which had been passed by the Republican state legislature, limit the power of the incoming governor and attorney general as well as to limit early voting in the state.
  • Robert Mueller rejected Michael Flynn’s claims that he was misled by the FBI. Earlier this week Flynn claimed he was tricked into lying to investigators, but Mueller said Trump’s former national security advisor had decided to lie to the FBI two weeks before doing so.
  • Chris Christie pulled out of the running to be Trump’s chief-of-staff. “I’ve told the president that now is not the right time for me or my family to undertake this serious assignment,” Christie said. The former New Jersey governor had reportedly been the front-runner.

We’ll be back on Monday with more live coverage. Until then, you can sign up for our new US morning briefing for a summary of the day’s top stories and must-reads.

Updated

Rep Adam Schiff, the next chairman of the House intelligence committee, is planning to dig into Trump’s personal finances, including scouring Deutsche Bank records, according to the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin:

“The American people have a right to know that their President is working on their behalf, not his family’s financial interests,” Schiff said. “Right now, I don’t think any of us can have the confidence that that’s the case.”

“We are going to be looking at the issue of possible money laundering by the Trump Organization, and Deutsche Bank is one obvious place to start,” Schiff told the New Yorker.

Updated

I’m sure he’s got other things to worry about, but deputy secretary of state John Sullivan should really consider buying some bigger clothes.

George Papadopoulos, former foreign policy aide to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and recently released convict, has confirmed he is running for Congress.

And, according to Papadopoulos, he will win.

Papadopoulos, who was released from prison last week, has suggested he may run in Orange County – an area swept by Democrats in the mid-term elections. He was the first Trump associate to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller and pleaded guilty to perjury last year.

The probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has cost just over $25m, according to a report released on Friday.

The Department of Justice report showed the cost of Mueller’s investigation up until the end of September. The report is here.

In June the Washington Post reported that the 17 trips Trump has taken to his Mar-a-Lago resort while president had cost $17m.

Mar-a-lago
Mar-a-lago: expensive. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

Trump spent a further five days at Mar-a-Lago over Thanksgiving and is due to spend 16 days there over Christmas and New Year.

Mueller dismisses Flynn attempt at leniency

Special counsel Robert Mueller has urged a federal judge to reject Michael Flynn’s attempts to “minimize the seriousness” of his crimes ahead of his sentencing.

In a sentencing memo earlier this week, Flynn’s lawyers claimed that FBI agents had misled the former national security adviser by not telling him how severe the penalty is for lying to the FBI. The lawyers said Flynn should be spared prison time as a result.

But on Friday Mueller told the judge that Flynn had “made his decision” to lie to investigators two weeks before his interview with the FBI, dismissing any suggestion Flynn had been exploited or tricked.

“The Court should reject the defendant’s attempt to minimize the seriousness of those false statements to the FBI,” Mueller said.

Flynn is due to be sentenced on Tuesday at 11am. Mueller’s team had recommended Flynn be given a sentence at “the low end” of the zero to six months guidance range.

Mueller’s full filing to the court is here.

Updated

Scott Walker has committed an “assault on democracy” by signing bills designed to limit the power of the incoming Democratic governor of Wisconsin, the Democratic Governors Association has said.

From the DGA’s communications director Jared Leopold:

By signing this shameful and undemocratic legislation, Governor Scott Walker is cementing his legacy of extreme partisanship and divisiveness. This power grab is an assault on democracy – and it will not stand up to legal scrutiny. This is nothing short of an attempt to overrule the will of the voters of Wisconsin.

In a democracy, you don’t get to change the rules just because you lost. Governor Walker has refused to come to terms with the simple fact that Wisconsin voted for change in November. We urge governors across the country to stand with us in condemning this affront to democracy and gubernatorial responsibility.

Trump has been a change from Obama even at the culinary level.

The New York Times reports on how Trump has not involved himself in DC’s restaurant scene in a jarring contrast to his predecessor.

With the question of whether outgoing Congresswoman Martha McSally will be appointed to the Senate once held by John McCain after losing her own Senate this year, McCain’s family is chiming in.

His son-in-law, Ben Domenech tweeted some pointed criticism of McSally that was then retweeted by his wife, Meghan McCain.

Utah Republican Orrin Hatch walked about statements he made about Donald Trump earlier this week where he dismissed criminal allegations against the President.

“I regret speaking imprudently. I don’t believe the President broke the law, but one of the core principles of our country is that no one is above the law. That means anyone who does break the law should face appropriate consequences.

Chris Christie, who announced he would not be White House chief of staff earlier today, apparently has a score settling memoir coming out next month.

ProPublica reports that the Trump Inaugural Committee spent money at the Trump hotel in Washington. This raises serious legal questions.

During the planning, Ivanka Trump, the president-elect’s eldest daughter and a senior executive with the Trump Organization, was involved in negotiating the price the hotel charged the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee for venue rentals. A top inaugural planner emailed Ivanka and others at the company to “express my concern” that the hotel was overcharging for its event spaces, worrying of what would happen “when this is audited.”

If the Trump hotel charged more than the going rate for the venues, it could violate tax law. The inaugural committee’s payments to the Trump Organization and Ivanka Trump’s role have not been previously reported or disclosed in public filings.

Andrew Stiles at the Washington Free Beacon has some quirky ideas for the next chief of staff.

Stiles was one of the writers to envision a Trump inauguration in 2015.

In ex-chief of staff news, Reince Priebus is joining the Navy.

Priebus, with lobbying from Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, appears to be on course to become a naval reserve officer.

Priebus’s press secretary Sean Spicer, has long been a naval reserve officer.

Losing Senate candidate and potential 2020 presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke doesn’t know if he’s progressive.

Congressional Republicans will be short one vote in any funding fight.

Walter Jones, an iconoclastic Republican from North Carolina, will not be returning to Washington for the rest of the year for health reasons.

Trump 'in no hurry' on North Korea

President Donald Trump has just tweeted about U.S. relations with North Korea where he says “we are in no hurry” to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and deal with Kim Jong Un’s rogue regime.

NBC News just reported that North Korea continues to flout international sanctions.

Updated

Scott Walker to sign all three lame-duck bills in Wisconsin

Outgoing Wisconsin governor Scott Walker just announced he will sign all of the legislation passed by the Republican state legislature to limit the power of the incoming governor and attorney general as well as to limit early voting in the state.

Democrats have decried the move as a power grab and have threatened litigation.

Updated

Fresh out of jail, George Papadopoulos has told the Daily Telegraph that he is considering a congressional run in Orange County, California. The longtime Republican bastion was swept by Democrats in the 2018 midterms.

Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is sitting on $164,000 after raising millions of dollars for doomed presidential campaign recounts. However, she’s not using any of it to pay the $53,000 in outstanding fines levied against her campaign by the Federal Election Commission.

Dave Levinthal at the Center for Public Integrity reports:

The oldest Stein fine is from February 2015, the most recent from November, according to FEC records. Two are five-figure penalties: a $14,587 fine from November 2017 and an $11,162 fine from October 2018, both past the FEC’s 40-day payment deadline. (Stein’s 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns have paid off nine separate fines totaling about $30,000.)

Asked about their scofflaw status, the Stein campaign basically said it’s racking up fines faster than it can manage to deal with them.

“The campaign typically considers these kinds of items collectively, which can cause delay while awaiting the documentation from more recent penalties,” Stein spokesman David Schwab said. “Given our limited staff and operations under these kinds of activity, it can further delay the process while staff is tasked with other responsibilities.”

The Weekly Standard is requiring employees to sign a strict nondisclosure agreement to receive any severance.

Chris Christie declines chief of staff role

Chris Christie has bowed out from the chief of staff hunt. In a statement he has asked to be withdrawn from consideration.

Updated

A top lawyer at the Department of Interior made sexist remarks on the Internet several years ago.

The Hill reports that James Voyles wrote like that the NFL should not allow “power tripping woman with a case of PMS” to be a referee in the league. He apologized when contacted for comment about the remarks.

Updated

In an interview with MSNBC, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar just said that she is “considering” a presidential bid.

Another potential chief of staff candidate, David Bossie, just walked into the West Wing with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. The two have written two pro-Trump books together.

CNN has a new national poll of Democratic 2020 presidential candidates. Polls this early tend to just measure name ID. However, the most noteworthy aspect is the drop in support since October for both Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.

Updated

Bloomberg reports that Chris Christie is currently the top candidate to be the next White House chief of staff. However, these things always have a way of changing rapidly.

Elizabeth Warren gave the commencement speech today at Morgan State University, a historically black college in Baltimore.

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana and a potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, has weighed on the closing of the Weekly Standard.

The first 2020 presidential poll in Iowa is being released tomorrow.

The White House canceled the traditional Christmas party for reporters.

However, in lieu of shrimp cocktail, egg nog and other fancy hors d’oeuvres, reporters are still having a party today in the basement of the White House press area.

It seems the President of the United States has just showed up to work today.

The Trump administration has been uninterested so far in taking control of Voice of America, the government funded broadcaster available across the globe.

However, they may change as the Los Angeles Times reports:

After a six-month stall, the Senate could give a hearing early in the new year to Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, Michael Pack, an ally and former filmmaking collaborator of the president’s past strategist and provocateur, Stephen K. Bannon.

And Trump recently tweeted that “something has to be done” to counter the international influence of CNN, his media nemesis, “including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!”

On one side of the emerging fight are Trump allies, led by Bannon, who are eager to shed some of the Voice of America’s hard-won independence and use the service more overtly to further Trump’s “America first” agenda.

“VOA is a rotten fish from top to bottom,” Bannon, the former leader of the conservative Breitbart news site, said in an interview. “It’s now totally controlled by the deep-state apparatus.”

Bill Kristol, one of the founders of the Weekly Standard, tweets an elegy to the magazine.

Alice Lloyd at the magazine also wrote a lovely piece about “Last Lines” that was published this morning.

Julián Castro is still playing coy about a presidential bid but his brother isn’t.

Updated

The owners of the Weekly Standard are apparently not treating its staffers with kid gloves as they close down the venerable publication only days before Christmas.

Trump to make chief of staff announcement 'imminently'

In discussing the intrigue about the next White House chief of staff, spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters this morning that Trump is “expected to make an announcement imminently.”

“The president said yesterday he has about five names in the hopper. We expect him to make an announcement pretty quickly. ... Obviously, if the president and the chief of staff make another deal and extend it, they can do that. It’s their prerogative to do so. Right now, currently, John Kelly is expected to leave at the first of the year. The president is also expected to make an announcement imminently. I’m not going to tell you who that’s going to be and I definitely don’t have any tips for you.”

Updated

The Weekly Standard is shutting down

The conservative magazine which has long been a thoughtful outlet on the right is reportedly shutting down. The magazine was founded in 1995. Its last issue came out today with a cover story on Nikki Haley by Michael Warren.

Updated

Reporters in Washington DC are hanging around a courtroom where a sealed grand jury is hearing arguments in a case that may be related to the Mueller investigation. All information about the case is sealed.

Hogan Gidley also told reporters that John Kelly’s tenure as chief of staff might be extended and that Trump is currently looking at five people for the job.

White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley attacked the media’s coverage of Michael Cohen as giving “credence” to a convicted felon while speaking with reporters just now.

Former senator and vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman has been hired by a Chinese telecom company, ZTE.

ZTE has long been the subject of warnings that its equipment is used for espionage by the Chinese government and it was almost banned from doing business in the United States earlier this year as a result.

Scott Walker will either sign or veto legislation that will greatly weaken the power of incoming Democrat Tony Evers this afternoon.

Republican controlled state legislature passed legislature to take power away from Evers as well as to limit early voting and require the state to be a party to a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

Jon Kyl to resign from the Senate on 31 December

Jon Kyl, the appointed replacement for John McCain’s seat, will resign at the end of the year.

Kyl, a former three-term senator who retired in 2012, was appointed as a temporary placeholder by Republican governor Doug Ducey.

His brief tenure raised scrutiny because he has since become a lobbyist in Washington.

Ducey will appoint a replacement for Kyl who will serve until a special election is held in 2020 for the remainder of McCain’s term.

Updated

Jerome Corsi, one of the targets in Mueller’s investigation, raised $25,000 online for a cancer patient’s treatment with an Israeli doctor. However, there’s no evidence that the doctor exists and the owner of the doctor’s clinic is the patient.

There has already been speculation that Michael Cohen might testify before congressional Democrats next year before his prison term begins in order to have a “John Dean” moment.

This clip from his interview this morning with George Stephanopoulos points to that likelihood.

Jon Ossoff, the Democrat whose unsuccessful congressional special election sparked national progressive activism, may be mounting another run.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports Ossoff is holding events in the rural part of the state in advance of a potential 2020 bid for the Senate.

Ossoff recently wrote an op-ed in the Guardian as well.

Outgoing Illinois Republican governor Bruce Rauner tried an unusual strategy to defeat his Democrat opponent, JB Pritzker, in the midterms: getting taken off the ballot.

The Chicago Tribune reports that Rauner spent much of the past year seeking Republicans to replace him after Rauner almost lost his primary to an underfunded conservative.

A millionaire, Rauner alienated social conservatives by signing abortion rights legislation while serving as a vocal opponent of organized labor. He lost by 16% to Pritzker, the billionaire member of the clan that owns Hyatt hotels.

Updated

Politico has a tick-tock on how Nancy Pelosi locked down the votes to become House speaker in January.

It captures the politics of how she out maneuvered her critics to get the 218 votes required to be elected speaker.

Colorado representative Ed Perlmutter, a leader of a group of Democratic rebels trying to push Pelosi out of House leadership, had flown back to Washington to negotiate with her face-to-face. Pelosi had already flipped several critics and shown momentum in her bid to reclaim the gavel. Perlmutter’s group was under siege from Pelosi allies both in and outside the Capitol.

But Pelosi still didn’t have the votes to become speaker. And she was ready to make a dramatic overture to lock down support. During the meeting in her office on the second floor of the Capitol, Pelosi told Perlmutter she was open to term limits on her leadership.

It was the first time Pelosi had expressed a willingness to accept an end-date on her power after 16 years atop the Democratic Caucus. It proved to be the decisive moment in Pelosi’s weeks-long slog to ensure she would be the first lawmaker since the legendary Sam Rayburn in the 1950s to win the speaker’s gavel a second time.

Updated

As Trump’s chief of staff search continues, the Associated Press reports that he met with former New Jersey governor Chris Christie about the position on Thursday.

The hunt for John Kelly’s replacement has turned frantic after Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Nick Ayers, turned down the position at the beginning of the week.

Updated

Progressives in the Democratic party will have to face a clear choice in 2020 as both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are poised to run for the White House.

The New York Times reports that the two had a meeting Wednesday night in Warren’s DC condo to discuss the 2020 race.

Updated

The Weekly Standard, the prominent conservative magazine that has consistently challenged the Trump administration, has been threatened with being shut down by its owners.

An all-staff meeting is being held today at 10.30 where the magazine’s fate will be revealed.

Updated

Congress is already out of town for the weekend with the House not scheduled to return until 19 December.

The federal government is only fully funded through 21 December.

Updated

Opening summary

Good morning.

Michael Cohen told ABC News that Donald Trump knew paying hush money to women was wrong, Trump’s re-election campaign has hired a top RNC official to oversee their operations in Ohio and we are a week away from a partial government shutdown.

It’s Friday in American politics.

Updated

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