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The Guardian - US
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Gabrielle Canon in Oakland (now) and Amanda Holpuch and Adam Gabbatt (earlier)

Russian troll farm was shut down by US military on day of midterms – as it happened

Voters cast their ballots in the midterm elections on 6 November 2018 in Brooklyn, New York.
Voters cast their ballots in the midterm elections on 6 November 2018 in Brooklyn, New York. Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images

Tuesday evening summary

If you are just joining us, here’s what’s been happening in politics Tuesday evening:

  • The Republican representative Matt Gaetz appeared to threaten Michael Cohen in a tweet, the day before Trump’s former lawyer is slated to testify against the president for his alleged involvement in criminal conduct during his campaign. Both Republicans and Democrats condemned the tweet from Gaetz, calling it witness tampering.
  • Joe Biden told a crowd his family is on board if he wants to run for president in 2020, a move he says he’s not yet decided about.
  • The House voted 245-182 to block Trump’s emergency declaration, mostly along party lines. Thirteen Republicans joined Democrats in the vote to rebuke the president’s attempt to circumvent the legislative branch, which denied him $5.7bn in funding for his southern border wall.
  • A public lands package is on its way to the president’s desk after the House overwhelmingly approved the protections of 1.3m acres of wilderness, expansion of national parks and monuments, and the permanent reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Updated

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement on Twitter in response to the comments made by Representative Gaetz, reminding members of Congress to be more “mindful” with what they say on social media or to the press:

House passes huge public lands legislation

With a sweeping 363-62 bipartisan vote, this evening the House passed one of the largest public lands bills in decades. The package permanently reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), protects 1.3 million acres of wilderness, and expands national parks and monuments.

Advocacy orgs were quick to champion the passage in both the House and Senate, calling on the president to sign the legislation.

“Such overwhelming support in the House and Senate once again demonstrates that public lands conservation transcends partisan politics. This legislation establishes new wilderness areas, mineral withdrawals, National Park Service units, and national monuments, a welcome contrast to the energy-first and anti-conservation policies that have flooded out of the Interior Department over the last two years,” Jennifer Rokala, the Executive Firector for the Center for Western Priorities said in a statement. “It’s imperative that President Trump sign the legislation, then fully fund LWCF in his upcoming budget proposal”

House votes to block Trump's emergency declaration

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has advanced a resolution to terminate Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration at the US-Mexico border, in a bid to block the president from beginning construction on a border wall without approval from Congress.

In a vote of 245-182, the House easily passed the measure. hours as Trump prepared for his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.

Thirteen Republicans joined Democrats in moving to revoke Trump’s executive order, which he signed earlier this month after US lawmakers refused to authorize his request for $5.7b in funding toward a border wall during negotiations on government spending.

“This isn’t about the border,” House speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “This is about the Constitution.”

The resolution will now face a vote in the Republican-led Senate, where only a handful of defections are needed for it to pass in what would mark a major rebuke of the president. Trump has vowed to veto the measure if it reaches his desk.

Michael Cohen’s attorney Lanny J. Davis issued a statement rebuking Florida Congressman and Trump ally Matt Gaetz for a tweet largely perceived as a threat, a day before Cohen is slated to testify.

“We will not respond to Mr. Gaetz’s despicable lies and personal smears, except to say we trust that his colleagues in the House, both Republicans and Democrats, will repudiate his words and his conduct,” Davis said.

“I also trust that his constituents will not appreciate that their congressman has set a new low — which in today’s political culture is hard to imagine as possible”.

Tomorrow, Michael Cohen is expected to produce evidence for the House Oversight Committee that Trump was directly involved in the cover-up of his affair with Stormy Daniels and hush-money payment during his campaign for president, the Wall Street Journal reports.

In addition to providing a copy of the check reimbursing Cohen for the payment, Cohen has plans to testify on Trump’s conflict of interests and tax evasion.

Maria Butina, a unregistered Russian spy who pleaded guilty in December to helping her home country influence the 2016 US presidential election will not be sentenced for another month, as she is helping prosecutors pursue others involved.

Per CNN:

Butina is largely expected to be helping investigators pursue cases against her American boyfriend Paul Erickson, a Republican political operative. He pleaded not guilty to money laundering in South Dakota recently, and was under investigation by DC federal prosecutors, who have not brought charges. Butina has been held in Washington area jails since summer 2018”.

Gabrielle Canon here taking over for Amanda Holpuch.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is getting closer to entering the 2020 race, telling a crowd at the University of Delaware today that his family supports the move.

“The first hurdle for me was deciding whether or not I am comfortable taking the family through what would be a very, very difficult campaign. No matter who runs, it’s a very difficult campaign” he said during a speech at the school.

“But the second piece is that I don’t want this to be a fool’s errand and I want to make sure that if we do this — and we’re very close to getting to a decision — that I am fully prepared to do it.”

While he says he is still making up his mind and and is “not there yet,” reporters are hearing that he may already be in the process of building his team:

Witness testing or witness tampering?

Attorneys and political commentators are alerting a sitting US congressman to the US law on “witness tampering” after the representative in question, Matt Gaetz, appeared to threaten Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who testified before Congress today.

Gaetz, who is from Florida, said:

Conservative commentator, Erick Erickson, said Gaetz’s tweet “should be against the law.”

On the other side of the aisle, Rachel Maddow shared Gaetz’s tweet with a link to the US law on witness tampering. She’s likely referring to section b.

@popehat provided legal advice to Gaetz. So did national security attorney, Bradley Moss:

A national security reporter at Vox, Alex Ward, shared texts from Gaetz, who claims he is “witness testing,” not “witness tampering.”

Top strategists from Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign announced they would not be sticking with the Vermont senator for his 2020 campaign.

The New York Times said the departure of the three men, who produced Sanders’ 2020 announcement video last week, was “abrupt.”

Tad Devine, Julian Mulvey and Mark Longabaugh of the firm DML said they were leaving the campaign because of differences in “creative vision.”

Sanders’ 2020 campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, thanked the group in a statement and said the campaign “wishes them well.”

Politico said:

Their departure could be indicative of Sanders’ desire to get serious about making changes to his team of strategists in an effort to make a deep run in a wide open Democratic primary field.

The House has began to debate the resolution to block Donald Trump’s national declaration to build a border wall.

“Border crossings are at a four decades low,” says Joaquin Castro, a Democratic representative from Texas.

Mark Meadows, a Republican from North Carolina, does not engage with the fact that illegal border crossing have plummeted. Instead, he accuses Democrats of opposing the national emergency because they want to stop Trump, not stop the wall.

Points in favor and against the wall are being tossed back and forth across the aisle.

Here’s a preview of how this could all turn out:

Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, will no longer be allowed to practice law, according to the New York Daily News.

The Daily News reported that the state Supreme Court in Manhattan disbarred Cohen, who first began practicing law in 1992, today while he was testifying in Washington DC. The Guardian has not independently confirmed this report.

A five-judge panel in New York wrote Cohen was being disbarred for lying to Congress.

Cohen is expected to start a three-year prison sentence on May 6 for crimes including facilitating illegal payments to silence two women who alleged affairs with Trump.

Updated

Mark Harris, the Republican who won a North Carolina congressional seat but was then investigated for election fraud, has said he will not run in a scheduled re-election.

Harris, a 52-year-old pastor who ran unsuccessfully in 2016, made the announcement in a Facebook post. He attributed the decision to poor health and made no mention of the alleged ballot fraud scandal that has swamped his run for North Carolina’s ninth district.

A political consultant hired by Harris is alleged to have tampered with mail-in ballots during the election. Harris won by 905 votes but the state refused to verify the result.

“After consulting with my physicians, there are several things that my health situation requires as a result of the extremely serious condition that I faced in mid-January. One of those is a necessary surgery that is now scheduled for the last week in March,” Harris said.

“Given my health situation, the need to regain full strength, and the timing of this surgery the last week of March, I have decided not to file in the new election for Congressional District 9.”

Mark Harris
Mark Harris, seen here with Donald Trump in 2018. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

US journalists were booted at the last minute from their Hanoi hotel this morning – after it emerged it had also been booked by Kim Jong-Un.

My colleagues in Vietnam report that after “a brief discussion” between North Korean and Vietnamese officials “the US journalists were unceremoniously evicted from the media centre that the White House advance teams had spent days erecting”.

The fact that the problem was only discovered on Tuesday, the day before Kim is due to meet Donald Trumpin the Vietnamese capital, said a lot about the haste with which this second summit between the two leaders has been arranged. Hanoi was agreed as a venue two weeks ago, a win for the North Koreans who wanted to combine the trip with a relationship-building session with the Vietnamese leadership. The Trump administration had wanted to meet in the coastal resort of Danang.

Michael Cohen was given a “grilling” by the Senate Intelligence Committee today, according to Susan Collins, the Republican Senator for Maine.

The hearing today was behind closed doors, but tomorrow Cohen will appear in public before the House Oversight Committee.

Updated

The House Oversight Committee will subpoena the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and Health for documents on family separations at the border.

Elijah Cummings, chair of the oversight committee, said documents provided by the three agencies were insufficient. Cummings, who represents Maryland, had earlier warned the Trump administration the committee was considering the move.

“The resolution specifically targets Attorney General William Barr, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar,” Politico reported.

Their departments played a key role in Trump’s separation policy. The Oversight Committee is seeking information on the children and families on details of the family’s who were parted at the border.

As Politico reported:

An HHS internal audit of the policy released in January said the administration separated thousands more children than previously acknowledged. The report found the number of separated children remained unknown because of the administration’s failure to track the families.

The US military launched an internet strike of its own during the 2018 midterms, blocking internet access to an infamous Russian troll farm, according to the Washington Post.

The military blocked internet access to the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg, a company underwritten by an oligarch close to Vladi­mir Putin, the Post reported.

Officials told the paper the US action was part “of the first offensive cyber campaign against Russia designed to thwart attempts to interfere with a US election, the officials said”.

“They basically took the IRA offline,” an official told the Post. “They shut ‘em down.”

According to the newspaper:

The operation marked the first muscle-flexing by U.S. Cyber Command, with intelligence from the National Security Agency, under new authorities it was granted by President Trump and Congress last year to bolster offensive capabilities.

Whether the impact of the St. Petersburg action will be long-lasting remains to be seen. Russia’s tactics are evolving, and some analysts were skeptical of the deterrent value on either the Russian troll factory or on Putin, who, according to U.S. intelligence officials, ordered an “influence” campaign in 2016 to undermine faith in U.S. democracy. U.S. officials have also assessed that the Internet Research Agency works on behalf of the Kremlin.

Updated

Summary

  • Michael Cohen is testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed door hearing. Cohen, Donald Trump’s former aide and lawyer, arrived on Capitol Hill at 9.30am this morning. He reportedly plans to tell Congress this week that Trump broke the law while in office.
  • Donald Trump has arrived in Vietnam for a summit with Kim Jong-Un. The president is due to meet with the North Korean leader on Wednesday, while the diplomats from the two countries plan two days of talks. Kim arrived earlier in the day by train.
  • John Kasich, the former GOP governor said to be weighing a 2020 primary run against Trump, will call for Republicans to wake up on climate change tonight. Kasich plans to tell his party to “have a discussion instead of being in denial that this is a problem”.
  • Ivanka Trump has delivered an apparently irony-free missive against Democratic climate plan which would guarantee jobs. “I don’t think most Americans [...] want to be given something,” Trump said. “People want to work for what they get.” Trump had never worked in politics before she was given a job in her father’s administration. Etc.

Updated

Cohen's Trump evidence was found in 'the last 48 hours'

Michael Cohen is currently giving testimony in the closed door Senate Intelligence Hearing in Washington DC – testimony which will reportedly “provide evidence of alleged criminal conduct by Trump since he became president”.

Axios is now reporting that this evidence was “stumbled across ... within the last 48 hours”.

The news site says it was given this snippet of information by “a source familiar with Cohen’s testimony”. There’s no more information just yet, but we’ll hopefully learn more as the day continues.

The point Aaron Rupar is making here is that the dispute in the victory of Mark Harris, the Republican who was running for Congress in North Carolina’s ninth district, is over election fraud – not voter ID laws.

Allegations surfaced after Harris narrowly beat his Democratic opponent that a political operative employed by Harris may have tampered with mail-in ballots.

CNN’s Andrew Kacynski points out that North Carolina actually has some of the strictest voter ID laws – which researchers say suppress the minority vote – in the country.

Last week North Carolina’s elections board has ordered a new election in the ninth district.

Updated

John Kasich, the Republican former Ohio governor who is flirting with a 2020 presidential run, will tell fellow Republicans to get real on climate change in a speech tonight.

Kasich, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2016, is speaking at a British Columbia event on Tuesday.

According to Axios Kasich will promote a “centrist” climate change plan including a cap on CO2 emissions and subsidies for electric vehicles and some renewable energy companies. He will also tell the GOP that it cannot simply deny the existence of manmade climate change.

Axios quotes this line from Kasich speech:

This is like a call to arms. Let’s have conservatives have a discussion instead of being in denial that this is a problem. You can’t just be a science denier.

Here’s Michael Cohen arriving at his Senate Intelligence Committee hearing a little while ago. He looks fairly chipper:

Ivanka Trump has criticized Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, which includes a living wage and jobs guarantee, claiming that Americans do not “want to be given something”.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump said:

I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last 4 years. People want to work for what they get.

She added:

So, I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want. They want the ability to be able to secure a job. They want the ability to live in a country where’s there’s the potential for upward mobility.

Trump, 37, joined the family business in 2005, as executive vice president. The Trump Organization was founded by Trump’s great-grandmother and was worth hundreds of millions of dollars by the time Donald Trump became president in the 1970s. Trump went on to file for corporate bankruptcy six times.

Trump became a judge on The Apprentice, which was hosted by her father, in 2007, and has served as an advisor to the president, who is her father, since 2017.

Ivanka Trump
Ivanka Trump, seen here with her husband, Jared. Photograph: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

Trump arrives in Vietnam for Kim Jong-Un summit

Donald Trump has exited Air Force One ahead of the North Korea summit.

The president’s plane landed at Noi Bai airport at around 9am ET, and Trump successfully navigated the stairs in his familiar hang-on-to-the-hand-rail-for-dear-life style.

Trump was greeted by dignatories before clambering into the presidential car – aka “the beast”. He will meet with Kim over dinner on Wednesday evening.

Trump arrives Vietnam
Donald Trump arrives at Noi Bai Airport. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

One of the many surprising events of the past two years has been the complete reversal of Lindsay Graham regarding Donald Trump.

Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, went from being one Trump’s staunchest critics to what one might charitably describe as a supporter, or what many have described as a lapdog.

Back in 2016 Graham was describing Trump as all manner of things, including “a kook”, “crazy”, and “unfit for office”. Oh, and as “the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican party”.

Since Trump took office, Graham has become one of his biggest defenders, supporting all manner of things that make other Republicans shudder: most recently the national emergency declaration.

So what happened in the meantime? Mark Leibovitch interviewed Graham for the new New York Times Magazine, and asked the Senator directly.

“Well, ok, from my point of view, if you know anything about me, it’d be odd not to do this,” he said.

I asked what “this” was. “ ‘This,’ ” Graham said, “is to try to be relevant.” Politics, he explained, was the art of what works and what brings desired outcomes. “I’ve got an opportunity up here working with the president to get some really good outcomes for the country,” he told me.

So is Graham simply playing politics? Does he still think Trump is a kook? (Or “a jackass”, a “nut-job”, and a “loser as a person”, as Graham also described the president?) Only Lindsay Graham knows.

In less happy times.

Updated

Both NBC News and the New York Times say Cohen is planning an explosive testimony on Capitol Hill.

The former Trump lawyer is appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee today, the first of three hearings this week.

Cohen is expected to discuss what he says he knows of contacts between Trump and Russia, and lay out hush payments – which Cohen says were directed by Trump – made to two women.

NBC News said Cohen plans to “provide evidence of alleged criminal conduct by Trump since he became president”, while the New York Times reported Cohen “will use documents and his personal experiences to support his statements”. He will be testifying under penalty of perjury, and will likely be met with skepticism from Republicans who will seek to draw attention to a track record of dishonesty.

Cohen, was sentenced to 36 months in prison in December, for crimes including lying to Congress about Trump’s business dealings with Russia, and facilitating illegal payments.

Trump and Cohen
Happier times: Donald Trump applauds as Michael Cohen delivers remarks at a campaign event in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, in September 2016. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

In his guilty plea, Cohen said: “I made these misstatements to be consistent with Individual 1’s political messaging and out of loyalty to Individual 1.”

Individual 1 was a reference to Trump.

Lanny Davis, Cohen’s lawyer, told the Times that Cohen’s response to questions about his credibility will be: “I take full responsibility, I lied in the past; now you have to decide if I’m telling the truth.”

Updated

Cohen to tell Congress Trump broke the law in office – reports

Good morning and welcome to today’s US politics news.

•Michael Cohen, long-time aide to Donald Trump, plans to tell Congress that Trump broke the law while in office, according to reports. Cohen has previously said the president ordered him to make hush payments to women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump. According to the New York Times, Cohen will provide evidence of reimbursements received after Trump became president. Today’s hearing is behind closed doors, but Cohen is due to testify in public on Wednesday.

•Donald Trump is due to arrive in Vietnam before his summit with Kim Jong-un. The North Korean leader rolled up in Hanoi this morning, following a 65-hour, 2,500-mile train journey. The leaders are scheduled to meet on Wednesday and Thursday.

•The House will vote to block Trump’s national emergency declaration this afternoon. The measure is likely to pass given the Democrats’ majority, and then move to the GOP-controlled Senate, where some Republicans have opposed Trump’s declaration. Democrats say Trump’s move threatens the US constitution.

Updated

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