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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco (now), Sabrina Siddiqui in Washington and Joanna Walters in New York (earlier)

Acting attorney general falsely claims 'no family separation policy' under Trump - as it happened

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker appears before the US House judiciary committee.
Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker appears before the US House judiciary committee. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Summary

Another Friday, another crisis in Virginia politics.

We’re shutting things down on the west coast, but here’s your reminder of the major events of the day.

  • Acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker testified before the House judiciary committee. Whitaker claimed that he never discussed the Russia investigation with Trump; Democrats were unimpressed and threatened a subpoena.
  • A second allegation of sexual assault was leveled against Justin Fairfax, the lieutenant governor of Virginia. Fairfax denied the allegation and said he will not resign, despite immediate pressure to do so.
  • The White House ignored a Friday deadline to deliver a report to Congress about the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
  • Donald Trump went to the doctor and announced the location of his upcoming summit with Kim Jong Un.

Happy Friday!

In the latest dispatch from Friday night’s executive time, Trump has issued another tweet about North Korea.

The reference to North Korea becoming an economic “Rocket” is a tad confusing. It’s probably a riff off his own habit of referring to Kim Jong Un as “Little Rocket Man”. Or perhaps Trump is tired of misinformed people suggesting that North Korea is currently a slightly peppery green.

Trump says second North Korea summit will be in Hanoi

Donald Trump has just announced the location of the upcoming summit between the US and North Korea, and it’s Hanoi, Vietnam.

The date of the summit was already known.

Virginia delegate threatens impeachment if Fairfax won't resign

A Virginia lawmaker has now raised the prospect of impeachment if Lt Gov Justin Fairfax refuses to resign, according to CNN reporter Ryan Nobles.

Patrick Hope is a Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates, the commonwealth’s lower legislative body.

The constitution of Virginia lays out a process for impeachment of top state officials for “malfeasance in office, corruption, neglect of duty, or other high crime or misdemeanor”. Similarly to the federal process, the officials must be impeached by the House (of Delegates, in this case), and then tried by the Senate. A conviction requires a two-thirds vote by the Senate.

Last Friday, when Governor Ralph Northam was the Virginia politician who appeared most likely to be impeached, the Washington Post interviewed legal experts about the chances of removing him from office. They noted that the language in the constitution is not particularly clear when it comes to defining what is and is not an impeachable offense. The article also notes that no governor of Virginia has ever been removed from office due to impeachment.

The floodgates have opened on calls for Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax to step down. So far we’ve heard from three Democratic senators who also happen to be running for president, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren.

Of course, at this time last week, everyone and their junior senator was calling for Ralph Northam to step down, and he appears determined to ride out the storm of controversy around his medical school yearbook page, which includes a photo of a person in blackface next to a person wearing a Ku Klux Klan uniform.

According to the Associated Press, Northam told his senior staff today that he plans to stay in office.

Donald Trump has completed his annual trip to the doctor, and the early reviews are in: he’s alive!

A memo released by the president’s acting physician, Sean P Conley, states that Trump was examined by Conley and 11 other specialists for four hours at Walter Reed medical center. Though light on detail (the report is still being finalized), the memo asserts that Trump is “in very good health”.

Conley continued: “I anticipate he will remain so for the duration of his Presidency, and beyond.”

Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, is expected to announce a presidential run on Sunday. But two reports this week have cast something of a pall over the launch, with anonymous sources alleging that Klobuchar is an abusive boss.

On Wednesday, HuffPost reported that Klobuchar’s reputation as a boss had led at least three people to withdraw from consideration to run her campaign.

The HuffPost report describes Klobuchar’s as “habitually demeaning and prone to bursts of cruelty”, citing former staffers. The piece also acknowledged the complicated dynamics of reporting on female politicians. It noted that Klobuchar’s senate office has “consistently” high rates of staff turnover – an objective measure, though one whose causes are open to interpretation.

Today, BuzzFeed News published its own report on Klobuchar-as-boss, and the details are pretty ugly.

The BuzzFeed report is also based on anonymous interviews with former staff, but the outlet also reviewed emails from Klobuchar in which she “regularly berated employees, often in all capital letters, over minor mistakes, misunderstandings, and misplaced commas”.

The BuzzFeed report also includes this troubling anecdote:

She yelled, threw papers, and sometimes even hurled objects; one aide was accidentally hit with a flying binder, according to someone who saw it happen, though the staffer said the senator did not intend to hit anyone with the binder when she threw it.

“I cried. I cried, like, all the time,” said one former staffer.

In identical statements to BuzzFeed and HuffPost, Klobuchar’s campaign said:

Senator Klobuchar loves her staff — they are the reason she has gotten to where she is today. She has many staff who have been with her for years — including her Chief of Staff and her State Director, who have worked for her for 5 and 7 years respectively, as well as her political advisor Justin Buoen, who has worked for her for 14 years — and many who have gone on to do amazing things, from working in the Obama Administration (over 20 of them) to running for office to even serving as the Agriculture Commissioner for Minnesota. She is proud of them and the work they have done for Minnesota.

Fairfax denies sexual assault allegation, says he will not resign

Hello everyone, this is Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco signing on to guide you through the rest of Friday’s politics news.

It was only last Friday that Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, appeared poised to become the state’s second ever African American governor amid a tsunami of calls for Ralph Northam’s resignation.

Now, in the wake of a second allegation of sexual assault, Fairfax is himself being pushed to resign, notably by former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, who just tweeted that he finds the allegations against Fairfax “serious and credible”.

But it doesn’t appear that Fairfax will go quietly. In a statement shared by NPR reporter Sarah McCammon on Twitter, the lieutenant governor denies the allegation, demands an investigation, claims that he is the victim of “a vicious and coordinated smear campaign, and declares his intention to remain in office.

The statement reads:

I deny this latest unsubstantiated allegation. It is demonstrably false. I have never forced myself on anyone ever.

I demand a full investigation into these unsubstantiated and false allegations. Such an investigation will confirm my account because I am telling the truth.

I will clear my good name and I have nothing to hide. I have passed two full field background checks by the FBI and run for office in two highly contested elections with nothing like this raised before.

It is obvious that a vicious and coordinated smear campaign is being orchestrated against me.

I will not resign.

It is worth noting that, despite Fairfax’s characterization of the rape allegation as “unsubstantiated,” his accuser’s attorney said that they possess corroborating statements from former classmates and emails and Facebook messages in which she told friends about the attack.

Updated

Remember when Fridays used to be quiet? That was nice and quaint.

I’m handing over the keys of the blog to my trusted colleague on the West Coast, Julia Carrie Wong. She’ll take you through the remaining events of the day before you (hopefully) kick off your weekend!

But before I go, allow me to recap the main events of the day:

  • Matt Whitaker, Donald Trump’s controversial acting attorney general, testified before the House judiciary committee. In an explosive hearing led by the panel’s Democrats, Whitaker claimed he never discussed the Russia investigation with Trump, nor the prospect of being pardoned; he also declined to explicitly state that the special counsel probe was not a ‘witch hunt’. It all ended with Democrats threatening to subpoena Whitaker, having found his responses inadequate.

  • Jared Kushner is in hot water yet again following a report that Trump’s re-election campaign paid the legal fees of the firm that retains Kushner as a client. Drain the swamp, anyone?

  • A second woman has accused Justin Fairfax, Virginia’s lieutenant governor, of sexual assault, adding to the political tsunami that has hit the state’s top leaders. An attorney for the accuser, Meredith Watson, said in a letter that her client was raped by Fairfax while the two were students at Duke University in 2000.

  • The White House skipped a Friday deadline in which the president was supposed to deliver a report to Congress making a determination as to whether Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was directly involved in ordering the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This won’t sit well with lawmakers, who are mulling sanctions against the Saudi Kingdom.

Stay tuned for more news and adios from Sabrina!

Second accuser comes forward against Virginia lieutenant governor

Another woman has come forward to accuse Justin Fairfax, Virginia’s embattled lieutenant governor, of sexual assault.

An attorney for the woman, identified as Meredith Watson, released a statement alleging that Fairfax raped Watson in 2000 while they were both students at Duke University.

“At this time, Ms. Watson is reluctantly coming forward out of a strong sense of civic duty and her belief that those seeking or serving in public office should be of the highest character,” Watson’s attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, said.

“She has no interest in becoming a media personality or reliving the trauma that has greatly affected her life. Similarly, she is not seeking any financial damages.”

Smith added that Watson’s legal team was in possession of emails and Facebook messages in which she had shared her account of the rape with friends, in addition to corroborating statements from former classmates.

Fairfax has faced pressure to resign after Dr. Vanessa Tyson, a professor of politics, accused him of sexually assaulting her at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Fairfax has denied the allegations against him.

Updated

One of our readers rightly points out that the political crisis in Virginia is not unique to Democrats, even if their top leaders have been at its center.

The top Republican in the state Senate is also facing controversy over racist photographs and slurs uncovered from a college yearbook at the time he was its editor.

From the NYTimes:

The senator, Thomas K. Norment Jr., who is the majority leader, was the managing editor of the 1968 Virginia Military Institute yearbook, which included slurs and images of students in blackface. Mr. Norment called the use of blackface “abhorrent” while pointing out that he did not take or appear in any of the photographs.

What a mess indeed.

Democrats threaten Whitaker with subpoena

The Matthew Whitaker hearing has come to a close with the same bang that kicked it off.

Jerrold Nadler, the House judiciary chairman, told the acting AG his testimony was “at best inconsistent” and “not credible”

“You owe us answers,” Nadler told Whitaker as he wrapped up the hearing.

“I fully intend to call you back,” he added, “under subpoena if necessary”.

This is only just the beginning. Buckle up, friends!

Taking a little breather from the Whitaker hearing to drop in on the very complex political situation in Virginia.

You might recall the state’s Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, is refusing calls to resign amid a controversy over blackface; then his attorney general also admitted to wearing blackface, and the lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, was accused of sexual assault.

Yeah, it’s a lot...

In any case, here’s the latest from the AP:

The political crisis in Virginia threatens to turn a state that has trended Democratic back into a battleground, a development that could complicate the party’s effort to defeat President Donald Trump next year.

Three of the state’s top Democrats are engulfed in a scandal that has shaken the state government. Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring have admitted wearing blackface as young men in the 1980s. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, meanwhile, has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2004, an allegation he denies.

The men are resisting calls for their resignation.

Virginia’s increasingly diverse and urban population has fueled Democratic victories for a decade. But Democrats are anxious that the dizzying developments could suddenly halt their progress. The prospect of losing Virginia’s 13 electoral votes would spread Democrats thin as they try to win back upper Midwest states that voted for Trump while making a push in GOP-leaning states like Georgia and Arizona.

“This doesn’t change the blue direction of the state long-term, but this certainly complicates things for Democrats in the immediate future,” said Virginia native Carolyn Fiddler, a top operative at the DailyKos website, a force in liberal politics nationally.”

All around a bad situation from Democrats, that doesn’t appear to be getting any better. And dare we ask if it could get any worse...

Whitaker falsely claims 'no family separation policy' under Trump

Well, Matt Whitaker just claimed there was “no family separation policy” under the Trump administration.

Except that there was, and the Trump administration enforced it as part of a bid to deter asylum-seekers from showing up at the US-Mexico border. They even referred to it as the “zero-tolerance policy” (emphasis mine).

In any case, when asked at the hearing by Representative Pramila Jaypal if he understood the magnitude of separating children from their parents, Whitaker replied: “Congresswoman, I appreciate your passion for this issue.”

The acting AG also confirmed that the Justice Department was not tracking when a child was separated from his or her parents after crossing the border. The US government has acknowledged it does not know how many migrant children were separated from their parents at the border.

Updated

White House ignoring congressional deadline on Khashoggi

Donald Trump appears to be thwarting a deadline set by Congress requiring that the White House send a report to US lawmakers determining whether Saudi Arabia’s crown prince is personally responsible for the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The White House was due to deliver the report on Friday under a congressionally mandated deadline. Trump has in the past cast doubt on whether Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the execution of Khashoggi last October.

According to a New York Times report published Thursday, US and foreign officials with direct knowledge of intelligence reports said bin Salman told a top aide he would use “a bullet” on Khashoggi one year before the journalist was killed.

Trump’s refusal to comply with the deadline could amplify frustration on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are eying sanctions that would punish those responsible for Khashoggi’s death and prohibit certain arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Whitaker was just asked about his recent comments that special counsel Robert Mueller will soon wrap up his investigation.

“Bob Mueller is gonna finish his investigation when he wants to finish his investigation,” the acting AG responded, noting his prior statement was simply his own view.

Whitaker also said he has “not been part of any conversations, of any pardons” with the president.

Speaking of another impending government shutdown, Donald Trump’s re-election campaign appears to be polling supporters on whether or not the president should declare a national emergency at the border.

An email distributed by the campaign asks: “Should President Trump declare a National Emergency to BUILD THE WALL?”

Respondents can record a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote, which as one can expect links to the Trump 2020 re-election website where you can also donate to his cause. Go figure!

It’s worth noting even some Republicans in Congress have warned Trump not to declare a national emergency, deeming it a power grab that could set a bad precedent for future presidents.

But as we’ve seen time and again, Trump isn’t necessarily one to listen to members of his own party -- or any party, really.

Is it just me, or is it rather odd to poll people in order to determine that something is an emergency?

Just going to put that out there.

It’s not too late to grab a bag of popcorn and tune into this Whitaker hearing, folks.

This exchange between Representative Hakeem Jeffries and the acting AG pretty much sums it up:

“Keep your hands off the Mueller investigation” seems like a quote we will hear again.

Congressional negotiators are working intensely behind closed doors to reach a deal that would avert another government shutdown on 15 February.

Funding for the US government is due to expire in a week, based on the short-term agreement that last month brought the longest shutdown in US history to a close.

The shutdown -- which was the third under Donald Trump’s watch -- was caused by the president’s insistence that Congress allocate $5.7b in funding toward a wall along the US-Mexico border.

Trump has not backed down from that demand as a bipartisan group of lawmakers has been in talks on Capitol Hill about a potential compromise.

It looks as though both sides might be willing to offer roughly $2b in border security for some kind of physical barrier.

So the key questions now are:

  1. Is the money enough for Trump and will he insist that the language refer to the barriers as a ‘wall’?
  2. Are Democrats willing to accept funding for any kind of barrier, or is that still seen as conceding on the wall they so vehemently oppose?

Time will tell.

According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump employed so many undocumented immigrants that an entire town in Costa Rica basically lived off his paychecks.

From the report:

The Washington Post spoke with 16 men and women from Costa Rica and other Latin American countries, including six in Santa Teresa de Cajon, who said they were employed at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster. All of them said they worked for Trump without legal status – and that their managers knew.

This hardly comes as a surprise – Trump has previously drawn scrutiny for employing undocumented immigrants at his properties, despite all his bellyaching over illegal immigration in the US. But it reinforces the extent to which Trump was willing to exploit the system for his own gain.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr, the president’s sons who are currently running the family’s organization, declined to comment on the Washington Post story. Nor did managers at the Bedminster golf course in question.

I’m just going to go out on a limb and ask: is it really that hard for one family to stay out of trouble?

Updated

JUST IN: Federal prosecutors are investigating whether the National Enquirer’s alleged threats against Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos violated a plea agreement between the tabloid’s publisher and the southern district of New York.

Federal prosecutors in the southern district of New York announced a cooperation agreement in December with American Media Company, Inc. (AMI), the publisher of the National Enquirer, pertaining to hush money paid to a woman who alleged to having an affair with Donald Trump.

As part of the deal, the National Enquirer admitted to having made the payment as part of a practice known as ‘catch-and-kill’, in which the tabloid purchased exclusive rights to the woman’s story but then refused to publish it. The woman in question, Karen McDougal, said she had an affair with Trump in 2006.

The National Enquirer could now stand to lose immunity over its handling of the Bezos situation. Under the plea deal, the tabloid was directed to refrain from any illegal activity for a period of three years.

You know what they say ... life comes at you fast.

Updated

Trump campaign paid legal fees for firm representing Jared Kushner

Donald Trump’s campaign has spent nearly $100,000 to pay legal bills to the firm representing Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser.

Citing campaign finance records, ABC News reported that Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign made two payments to the firm, Winston & Strawn LLP, of $55,330 and $42,574.

According to ABC, the campaign expenditures were payments made to Abbe Lowell, Kushner’s attorney, for legal fees.

Kushner has primarily required legal counsel to deal with questioning stemming from the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the US election and potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Read the full ABC report here.

Hi! Sabrina Siddiqui back in action here...

A lot has happened today, and it’s only just lunchtime here on the East Coast!

Allow us to summarize the day’s events so far:

  • Trump’s acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, is partaking in a contentious hearing before the House judiciary committee on Capitol Hill. Whitaker has sparred with Democrats on the panel -- cutting them off at times in their questioning -- and claimed to have had not discussions with the president about overseeing the Russia investigation.
  • The National Enquirer says it will “thoroughly investigate” claims by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that he was the victim of an extortion plot. Bezos said Thursday the tabloid threatened to release nude photos of him if he did not issue a public statement absolving the Enquirer of allegations that its actions have been politically motivated.
  • White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said a woman assaulted her at a restaurant in October -- detailing an encounter in which the woman in question grabbed and shook Conway while yelling at her in front of her daughter. The woman is set to stand trial in March. Her lawyer disputes Conway’s account.
  • Ivanka Trump says she had minimal knowledge of discussions around a potential Trump Tower project in Moscow during the 2016 presidential election. In a rare interview, the president’s daughter also said she had “zero concern” that the Russia investigation would implicate her loved ones.
  • 2020 Watch: Senator Elizabeth Warren is set to formally launch her presidential campaign on Saturday in her home state of Massachusetts; her colleague, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, is expected to announce her own bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination on Sunday.

Whew! You get all that? Stay tuned for more.

Updated

And on Sunday, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar is expected to launch her bid for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election. If you think the official mention from her office that there will be hot cocoa, cookies and “warming stations” at the event in Minneapolis sounds a bit too cuddly, consider that the weather forecast is predicting a high of just 18F with a brisk north-easterly breeze and snow showers.

Klobuchar, 59, is the sixth prominent woman to wade into the primary contest, which features a record number of women vying for a major-party nomination.

Unlike some of her fellow senators, Klobuchar has kept a low profile in Washington. She is neither the progressive firebrand that is Warren nor has the vast social media following that transformed Cory Booker into a star.

Klobuchar is instead known a soft-spoken policymaker who has quietly built a network of supporters, in contrast with some of the Democratic contenders who have embraced confrontation with Trump head-on.

The Democratic party has been somewhat torn over whether candidates should try and match Trump’s bullying tactics or fall back upon Michelle Obama’s 2016 advice: “When they go low, we go high.”

Klobuchar suggested she would forge a middle ground, stating: “I don’t agree with, ‘When they go low, we go low,’ but I do agree that when they go low, we have to respond.”

Meanwhile, who can forget her extraordinary encounter with Brett Kavanaugh at the supreme court justice’s explosive confirmation hearings last September. In quizzing the nominee about his alchohol history and habits, Klobuchar asked Kavanaugh, essentially, if he’d ever been black-out drunk.

“I don’t know. Have you?” Kavanaugh retorted to a taken-aback Klobuchar.

It was weird, but it put her on people’s radar outside the Beltway.

Updated

Wait! Lest you think it’s all bald dudes all the time this morning, there’s a hot weekend coming up in chilly places. Elizabeth Warren is tomorrow expected officially to announce her candidacy for the White House. She won’t be doing it in Boston or Cambridge but in hard-bitten Lawrence, the mill town much closer to the New Hampshire border, which has certainly seen better days.

Here’s our Sabrina Siddiqui’s dispatch today from Warren’s backyard, as it were. In part, she writes:

In interviews throughout the Boston area, Warren’s former students and colleagues described her as a “pragmatic idealist” whose life’s work has centered on understanding and rooting out income inequality.

“She’s had a very consistent, coherent, intellectual ideological position,” said Barney Frank, a retired Massachusetts congressman who worked closely with Warren on financial reform.

“She can claim to have been there when this critique of economic inequality, and the systematic problems that exacerbate it, wasn’t fashionable.”

But Warren’s official entry into the race has differed sharply from when she captured widespread liberal enthusiasm in her unlikely bid for the Senate seven years ago.

The two-term senator will join a crowded Democratic primary field with no clear frontrunner – and several contenders jockeying to claim the progressive mantle that she aspires to grasp. She has also found herself contending with a lingering controversy for previously identifying as Native American over the course of nearly two decades.

Back from the rock to the hard place, Whitaker’s just been admonished.

And you know it’s big when it’s GIANT. Tweeting, bigly:

Oh, hang on, we should just cover this, sorry for the delay.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, just pressed Matt Whitaker in the hearing on Capitol Hill about whether, as a private citizen prior to being appointed acting AG, he shared his private opinions about Robert Mueller’s investigation with Donald Trump, the president’s family, senior White House figures such as John Kelly or close allies such as Rudy Giuliani.

Whitaker rambled pompously, scrutinizing the House committee over his glasses, and was accused of filibustering, before finally answering: “No I did not.”

If you wondered what happened to Ronny Jackson, Trump’s former physician who gave the president an uncannily glowing report about his health last year and then departed under cloud, he has resurfaced.

Trump has now made Jackson his assistant and chief medical adviser.

Saturday’s announcement by the White House follows Trump’s decision to re-nominate Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson for a second star due to inaction by the previous Congress.

Jackson’s original nomination was put on hold last year after Trump nominated him to head the Veterans Affairs department.

The navy doctor withdrew following allegations of professional misconduct, which the Pentagon continues to investigate. Jackson has denied any wrongdoing.

The AP further writes that Trump is to be put through a round of medical tests at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, that will determine his weight, cholesterol, blood pressure and other health factors.

Little more than a year ago, Trump’s doctor declared him to be in “excellent health.” But the president was directed to try to lose 10 to 15 pounds (4.5 to 6.8 kg) by eating better and starting to exercise. Aides said he now eats more fish than he used to but still enjoys steaks, well done with ketchup on the side, and fried potatoes prepared by the chefs at the White House and at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Trump also has long had a well-documented fondness for fast food.

Trump has admitted that he has not hewn closely to his diet plan. Nor has he been known to enter the White House gym for a workout.

“The president received a diet and exercise plan last year after his annual physical, but the president admits he has not followed it religiously,” said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley.

At last year’s physical, Trump weighed 239 pounds (108 kg) at last year’s physical. His resting heart rate was 68 beats per minute (bpm), his blood pressure was 122/74, and his total cholesterol was 223 (HDL 67, LDL 143).

In last year’s exam, a stress test found above-average exercise capacity and a cognitive assessment was normal.

Trump daily takes a 10 mg dose of Crestor to lower cholesterol, 81 mg of aspirin for cardiac health, and 1 mg of Propecia for prevention of male pattern hair loss.

Updated

You have to wonder if there’s an uneasy feeling in the pit of the president’s stomach this morning. The federal government is one week from shutting down again, his controversial pick as acting AG, Whitaker, is on the grill on Capitol Hill and, you know, Mueller and federal prosecutors in New York are skating in ever tighter circles towards the Trump clan.

But, more importantly, he’s off to the doctor in just over an hour and he hasn’t been eating his greens or taking to the jogging trails, even between extensive bouts of “executive time” (which our David Smith examines more fully here.)

“The president received a diet and exercise plan last year after his annual physical, but the president admits he has not followed it religiously,” said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley, according to the Associated Press. The word “religiously” feels like a cover-your-behind after thought.

Trump, 72, will attend his annual physical exam at 12.45PM

In news closely related to all the other aspects and characters in this hot tangle, the Guardian has an exclusive (aka sneak peek) this morning on the forthcoming book by former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.

Our Jon Swaine writes that McCabe claims that the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, privately complained that he was ordered by Donald Trump to write the notorious memo justifying the firing of the FBI director James Comey.

McCabe states that Rosenstein, who has publicly defended the memo, lamented that the president had directed him to rationalize Comey’s dismissal, which is now the subject of inquiries into whether Trump obstructed justice.

Rosenstein made his remarks in a private meeting at the justice department on 12 May 2017, according to McCabe’s memoir, which also accuses Trump of operating like a criminal mob boss and of unleashing a “strain of insanity” in American public life.

Per the Guardian’s scoop, McCabe recalls Rosenstein being “glassy-eyed”, visibly upset and sounding emotional after coming to believe the White House was using him as a scapegoat for Comey’s dismissal.

“He said it wasn’t his idea. The president had ordered him to write the memo justifying the firing,” McCabe writes.

Rosenstein said he was having trouble sleeping, McCabe writes. “There’s no one here that I can trust,” he is quoted as saying.

The book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, is due on sale later this month.

Former and, one could add, formidable federal prosecutor and Stanford law lecturer Elizabeth de la Vega’s tweet is to the point: “My question for Whitaker: “Last week, you volunteered that the Special Counsel investigation was wrapping up. What was your basis for saying that?”

Some wits are asking on social meeja who should play Whitaker on Saturday Night Live. Answers on a postcard, please to @joannawalters13 or @GuardianUS. Kate McKinnon’s Jeff Sessions is hard to beat.

Mr @waltshaub goes on to say: The heroes of the story, as @RepJerryNadler said this morning, are the DOJ CAREER ETHICS OFFICIALS who, knowing the history of POTUS and his congressional allies for going after people who stand up for the rule of law, told Whitaker to recuse. Please retweet this to honor them.

The former director of the Office for Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, who announced his resignation in July, 2017, and lobbed grenades at Donald Trump as he marched out the door, is tweeting about Matt Whitaker at the House hearing this morning. He mentions the most significant development of the hearing so far, that Whitaker claims he has not told the president “or senior White House officials” anything about Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation.

Economist and NYT columnist Paul Krugman generously tweets a link to the Washington Post and comments: “I never expected to see Jeff Bezos emerge as a hero of democracy.”

The Wall Street Journal now reports that the National Enquirer publisher says it acted lawfully and will conduct an internal probe after Jeff Bezos claimed that it attempted to blackmail him.

In case you missed it, Jeff Bezos came forward on Thursday with explosive allegations on Thursday that the National Enquirer threatened to publish nude photos of him -- unless the Amazon CEO stated publicly that the tabloid’s work was not politically motivated.

You can catch up on the whole story here, which raised eyebrows not in the last because American Media Inc., the National Enquirer’s publisher, is run by David Pecker, a close ally of Donald Trump’s.

Reminder: Pecker is the same guy who quashed the account of Karen McDougal, a woman who alleged to having an affair with Trump, by buying the rights to her story and then refusing to publish it in a practice known as ‘catch-and-kill’.

Anyway, if you’re trying to figure out what the heck is going on, much like the rest of us, don’t ask the White House.

Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman, told reporters on Friday he “wasn’t sure” if Trump was aware of the Bezos/Enquirer drama.

He also said the White House had no plans to get involved in an issue “between Jeff Bezos and a tabloid magazine”.

Worth noting, of course, that Trump has a long-running feud with Bezos and has repeatedly attacked the executive and Washington Post owner on Twitter.

Updated

Kellyanne Conway says angry woman assaulted her

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has said she was grabbed and shaken by a woman while at a restaurant with her teenager daughter last year.

Conway detailed the alleged assault in an interview with CNN on Friday, stating she was approached at a Mexican restaurant in the DC suburbs in October by a woman who was “screaming her head off”.

“Somebody was grabbing me from behind, grabbing my arms, and was shaking me to the point where I felt maybe somebody was hugging me,” Conway said.

“She was out of control. I don’t even know how to explain her to you. She was just, her whole face was terror and anger. She was right here, and my daughter was right there. She ought to pay for that.”

Conway said she dialed 911 at the time of the incident. A 63-year old woman by the name of Mary Elizabeth Inabinett was charged in November with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct.

A lawyer for Inabinett, who is due to stand trial in March, disputed Conway’s account and said his client was expressing her “first amendment right”. She plans to plead not guilty.

Read more here.

As Matt Whitaker’s testimony on Capitol Hill begins, the House judiciary committee chairman, Jerrold Nadler, issued a sharp warning to the acting attorney general that regardless of his answers, the panel would seek out the truth.

Read the key part of Nadler’s opening statement here:

“Your failure to respond fully to our questions here today in no way limits the ability of this committee to get the answers in the long run – even if you are a private citizen when we finally learn the truth. And although I am willing to work with the department to obtain this information, I will not allow that process to drag out for weeks and months. The time for this administration to postpone accountability is over.

“We have laid all of the groundwork for this hearing out in the open. We have given you months to prepare. We have publicly documented every request we have made to you. We have provided our Republican colleagues with a meaningful opportunity to weigh in on the process. We have nothing to hide from you. We hope you have nothing to hide from us.”

Tough crowd, amirite?

Updated

A look at the front page of the Detroit Free Press memorializing John Dingell, the legendary US congressman who passed away on Thursday.

Detroit Free Press honors John Dingell
Detroit Free Press front page honoring the late Rep. John Dingell Photograph: Detroit Free Press

Dingell, who died at age 92, was the longest-serving member of Congress in US history.

His political career stretched nearly six decades representing a southeastern district of Michigan in the House of Representatives, spanning the administration of Dwight Eisenhower to that of Barack Obama.

Ivanka Trump has 'zero concern' about Mueller

Ivanka Trump has said she knew “almost nothing” about the prospective Trump Tower project in Moscow that her father was pursuing during 2016 presidential election.

“We were an active business,” Trump said during an interview that aired Friday on ABC’s Good Morning America, while adding her knowledge of the project amounted to “literally almost nothing”.

“There was never a binding contract. I never talked to the – with a third party outside of the organization about it,” Trump, who serves as a White House adviser, said.

“It was one of – I mean, we could have had 40 or 50 deals like that, that were floating around, that somebody was looking at. Nobody visited it to see if it was worth our time. So this was not exactly like an advanced project.”

Trump’s comments mark her first public statement on the matter since it was revealed that discussions to build a potential Trump Tower in Moscow continued well into the campaign, despite the president’s insistence he had no business dealings in Russia.

Donald Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, has admitted to lying to Congress about the timeline of the project and the extent of relevant conversations with the Russians during the campaign.

Asked if she was concerned any of her loved ones would be implicated in the special counsel’s Russia investigation, Trump said: “I’m not. I’m really not.”

“There’s nothing there, yet it’s created weeks and weeks and months of headlines,” she said. “So no, I have zero concern.”

Trump also downplayed the significance of doing business in Moscow, stating: “We’re not talking about Iran. It was Russia.”

The Mueller investigation has brought charges against 37 individuals and companies, including several former Trump campaign officials.

Updated

Matt Whitaker to testify before House committee

Donald Trump’s acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, will testify before the House judiciary committee on Friday following a dispute between the panel’s Democrats that left his appearance in doubt.

Whitaker will be the first Trump cabinet official to be brought before a House committee led by Democrats, who are eager to ask the controversial acting attorney gneral about his views on the special counsel investigation and his interactions with the president.

Whitaker’s appointment to replace Jeff Sessions, who was fired in November, was decried by some legal experts as unconstitutional. Democrats also sounded the alarm over Whitaker’s refusal to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, given his prior criticism of the special counsel led by Robert Mueller.

Whitaker’s appearance comes after he threatened not to testify absent written assurances from the panel’s chairman that he would not be subpoenaed before or during the hearing. Representative Jerrold Nadler, the judiciary committee’s chairman, responded by stating he did not see a reason for a subpoena if Whitaker answered questions from the panel’s members.

Whitaker’s testimony comes as the Senate is prepared to confirm William Barr as the next attorney general.

Good morning everyone and happy Friday! (Fri-yay.) Sabrina Siddiqui here, taking you through the events of what promises to be another action-packed day.

All eyes are on Donald Trump’s acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, who is poised to testify before the Democratic-led House judiciary committee.

There’s also a rare interview from Ivanka Trump, in which the president’s daughter says she has “zero concern” about Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia (little does she know...!) and an ongoing controversy in Virginia’s statewide leadership over race and sexual assault.

Oh, and Congress has one more week to pass a funding bill to avert yet another government shutdown.

Sound like a lot? That’s because it is.

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