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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Kari Paul in San Francisco (now) and Tom McCarthy in New York (earlier)

Trump's attorney general criticizes Mueller: 'He could’ve reached a decision' – as it happened

Summary

I’m logging off, readers, here is the top news from this afternoon:

  • William Barr says Obama administrations officials did not commit treason in their investigation of Russia interference in the 2016.
  • Software firm Salesforce is banning the sale of guns on its technology.
  • Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promised to introduce legislation cracking down on former Congress members entering lobbying positions after leaving office following a conversation on Twitter.
  • The Trump administration has made moves towards updating NAFTA.
  • A judge in Missouri was weighing a Planned Parenthood request that health officials be blocked from closing the state’s sole abortion provider. A ruling was expected before midnight Friday, when the clinic’s license would expire.
  • The ulterior motive of voter suppression behind a Trump administration push to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census was laid bare in new documents from the archive of a deceased GOP consultant.
  • Trump accused former special counsel Robert Mueller of a conflict of interest, again offered a wildly misleading version of the Mueller report and then admitted in a tweet that Russia helped him win the election.
  • Attorney general William Barr repeated his criticism of Mueller’s decision not to decide on whether the evidence against Trump warranted charging him with a crime.

Obama Administration officials who oversaw the investigation of Russian interference in US elections did not commit treason, Attorney General William Barr said in an interview with CBS.

Barr admitted he has concerns about the way officials conducted investigations into Russian interference in the US elections and Trump campaigns ties to such issues, but believes the investigators did not commit treason. The full interview will air on CBS on Friday morning.

“Sometimes people can convince themselves that what they’re doing is in the higher interest and better good,” he said. “They don’t realize that what they’re doing is really antithetical to the democratic system that we have.”

On May 24, president Donald Trump doubled down on his orders to “investigate the investigators” and gave Barr authority to declassify intelligence documents related to the Russian attack on the 2016 election. Trump had accused former FBI officials of “treason” and an ongoing “witch hunt” against him.

Software firm Salesforce is banning customers from using its technology to sell semiautomatic weapons.

The tech giant, which has a market value of nearly $120 billion, has changed its acceptable-use policy to target sales of weapons, according to a report from the Washington Post. It will now prohibit customers from using Salesforce framework to market products, manage customer service operations, and fulfill orders involving certain kinds of guns including semi-automatic weapons, automatic weapons, “magazines capable of accepting more than 10 rounds” and “multi-burst trigger devices.”

CEO Marc Benioff has been publicly supportive of gun control and in favor of bans on military-style rifles in the past.

Updated

Ted Cruz and AOC team up via Twitter to crack down on lobbying

A conversation on Twitter has led to an unlikely collaboration between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to pass legislation targeting lobbying by former members of Congress.

The two Congress members both tweeted support of placing restrictions or a potential lifetime ban on former Congress members becoming lobbyists. The conversation began when Ocasio-Cortez tweeted a study from Public Citizen that found 60% of former Congress members have taken jobs influencing federal policy.

“If you are a member of Congress and leave, you shouldn’t be allowed to turn right around and leverage your service for a lobbyist check,” she wrote.

Cruz retweeted Ocasio-Cortez, suggesting introducing bi-partisan legislation to drain “the swamp.” Republican House representative Chip Roy tweeted that he would help Ocasio-Cortez spearhead the effort. She later agreed to create a bipartisan team in the House and Cruz will form one in the Senate to write a ban.

Currently lawmakers in the Senate have to wait two years after they leave office to engage in any lobbying and former House members have to wait only one year.

Ocasio-Cortez and Cruz have previously butted heads on Twitter, arguing about the price of croissants at the airport (really) and minimum wage. Lobbying appears to be a rare area where the two agree.

Previous efforts to prevent lobbying from former Congress have been put forth but not passed, including a 2017 bill co-sponsored by Republican senator Cory Gardner and Democratic senators Michael Bennet and Al Franken. Also in 2017, Sen. Jon Tester of Montana introduced legislation that would ban lawmakers from lobbying their former colleagues until five years after leaving office but it failed to gain traction. Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has also called for legislation preventing former Congress members from lobbying.

A Mississipi lawsuit claims the way the state choses governors is racist. From the Associated Press:

In 1890, as white politicians across the South cracked down on the black population with Jim Crow laws, Mississippi inserted into its constitution an unusually high bar for getting elected governor or winning any other statewide office.

The provision, which remains in force to this day, says candidates must win not only a majority of the popular vote - that is, more than 50% - but also a majority of the state’s 122 House districts.

On Thursday, more than a century later, four black Mississippians sued in federal court to put an end to what they say is a racially discriminatory system, unique in the U.S. and aimed at thwarting the election of African Americans.

“The scheme has its basis in racism - an 1890 post-Reconstruction attempt to keep African Americans out of statewide office,” said former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the first black person to hold that position. He added: “In the 21st century, it’s finally time to say that this provision should be struck down.”

Holder is chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, whose affiliated foundation is providing financial and legal backing for the lawsuit.

Updated

A report from the Associated Press says Congressional voting records on a $19 billion disaster aid bill shows “the inconsistency of lawmakers, mostly conservatives, who stood resolute against such aid six years ago but demand it now that their states are under water.”

The same political maps that Trump likes to display that show wide expanses of less-populated regions of the country like the Midwest, the rural South, and the Gulf Coast registering solidly for him also track with recent disasters. Now, the desperate cries for help are coming from across Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska and the Florida Panhandle, whose residents and representatives tend to be Trump loyalists.

The House failed to pass the disaster bill during a pro forma session of the House on Thursday, with Republican John Rose of Tennessee stepping in to stop its passage. The measure will be revived and passed next week.

The Trump administration has made a significant step toward enacting changes to the North American trade agreement, according to CNN.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will send a draft of changes to NAFTA to Congress on Thursday, sources told CNN, triggering a 30-day waiting period before the White House can officially submit the full legislation.

The submission of the “Statement of Administrative Action” draft puts NAFTA on schedule to be ratified as early as the end of June and would set up a vote for late 2019.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke against this move, according to CNN, saying Democrats seek would like to see labor concerns regarding the new deal addressed before moving forward.

“The Trump Administration’s decision to send Congress a draft statement of administrative action before we have finished working with US Trade Representative Lighthizer to ensure the USMCA benefits American workers and farmers is not a positive step,” Pelosi said in a statement. “It indicates a lack of knowledge on the part of the administration on the policy and process to pass a trade agreement.”

Hello everyone, this is Kari Paul in San Francisco taking over for the next few hours.

The Washington Post reports president Trump is threatening Mexico with new tariffs over the ongoing surge of migrants from the country seeking asylum in the US. Trump “teased” the decision to reporters on Thursday morning.

Trump is planning to make the announcement Friday, but some White House aides are trying to talk him out of it, arguing that such a threat would rattle financial markets and potentially imperil passage of the USMCA trade agreement, according to these officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration plans.

Updated

Summary

Here’s a summary of developments so far today:

  • A judge in Missouri was weighing a Planned Parenthood request that health officials be blocked from closing the state’s sole abortion provider. A ruling was expected before midnight Friday, when the clinic’s license would expire.
  • The ulterior motive of voter suppression behind a Trump administration push to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census was laid bare in new documents from the archive of a deceased GOP consultant.
  • Trump accused former special counsel Robert Mueller of a conflict of interest, again offered a wildly misleading version of the Mueller report and then admitted in a tweet that Russia helped him win the election.
  • Attorney general William Barr repeated his criticism of Mueller’s decision not to decide on whether the evidence against Trump warranted charging him with a crime.
  • Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is running for president, repeated her call for Trump’s impeachment and said if he weren’t president “he’d be in handcuffs.”
  • Trump said he might call on his “friends” Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson during an upcoming UK trip.
  • Trump denied he was behind a White House order to keep the warship USS John S McCain “out of sight” during a recent Trump visit to Japan but said whoever gave the order was “well-meaning.”
  • Trump also spoke at a graduation ceremony for the US Air Force Academy:

The government now owns Paul Manafort’s condo in Trump Tower. Among other crimes, Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman now serving a seven-and-a-half year sentence in federal prison, was convicted of defrauding the IRS of millions by failing to declare overseas income. Politico reports:

When is Judge Michael Stelzer expected to rule on a Planned Parenthood request to block health officials from closing Missouri’s sole abortion provider? Before midnight Friday, when the license for the clinic in question is set to lapse, reports the St Louis Post Dispatch:

Stelzer’s decision is expected before midnight Friday. He’ll weigh whether DHSS’s interpretation of Missouri rules for renewing licenses conflicts with state law and if the state’s failure to renew Planned Parenthood’s license interferes with a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

The Riverfront Times reports arrests at the abortion rights rally in the state office building in St Louis:

A hearing was held in a St Louis court earlier today on a Planned Parenthood request for an injunction on health officials’ efforts to cancel a license for the state of Missouri’s sole abortion provider. No further action in that case yet.

Here’s a parallel protest at the city’s landmark Gateway Arch:

Updated

The Trump administration can’t resume work on border wall projects in Texas and Arizona using Pentagon funds, pending the resolution of a court appeal, a federal judge in California has ruled:

Here’s more from the San Francisco Chronicle:

But [Judge] Gilliam, the first judge to consider lawsuits challenging the wall, ruled last Friday that Trump appeared to be defying the will of Congress, which must authorize all federal government appropriations. His injunction blocked administration from using $1 billion, which Congress had approved last year for Defense Department antidrug operations, to build walls in border areas near El Paso, Texas, and Yuma, Ariz.

Barr says Mueller 'could've reached a decision' on Trump conduct

Critics of former special counsel Robert Mueller who fault Mueller for his decision to punt on the question of whether the evidence supported an indictment of the president have included the attorney general, William Barr, who at the start of this month said he was “surprised” that Mueller declined to weigh charges.

In a new interview with CBS News, Barr says “I personally felt he could’ve reached a decision” on whether charges against the president were warranted.

Mueller had reasoned, in something of a constitutional Catch-22, that his inability under justice department guidelines to bring charges meant he could not weigh charges, because to potentially conclude that charges were warranted but then not bring them would be damaging to the rule of law and the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law.

Barr doesn’t think much of that line of reasoning:

Former SDNY prosecutor Elie Honig responds:

Updated

In reply to a question from reporters about the USS John S McCain being cloaked to protect Donald Trump’s eyes during a recent trip to Japan, Biden says McCain was a hero, “he was a friend of mine but we argued like the devil” and “we need a lot more John McCains.”

Pending a court decision on health officials’ attempted closure of Missouri’s sole abortion provider, abortion rights activists have taken over several floors of the state office building in St Louis:

(h/t @jessicaglenza)

Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota senator and presidential candidate, is on the campaign trail in Nevada today:

Trump: 'Nigel is a friend, Boris is a friend'

Donald Trump has said he might meet with Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson during his trip to the UK next week.

“Well I may,” Trump said when asked about a potential summit.

“Nigel Farage is a friend of mine, Boris is a friend of mine. They’re two very good guys, very interesting people. Nigel’s had a big victory, he’s picked up 32% of the vote, starting from nothing and I think they’re big powers over there I think they’ve done a good job.”

Trump was giving a typically freewheeling press conference after arriving back in Washington DC from his trip to Japan. It was hard to hear reporters’s questions over the sound of the presidential helicopter, but someone appeared to ask Trump if he was thinking about supporting either Farage or Johnson.

“I like them, they’re friends of mine, but I haven’t thought about supporting them. Maybe it’s not my business to support people but I have a lot of respect for both of those men.”

Updated

Rules shaping up for Democratic debates

Late next month the Democratic presidential candidates will hold two consecutive nights of “debates”, featuring 20 candidates, which collectively will constitute the first primary “debate”. The party has just laid out some ground rules.

That’s ten (10) podiums – per night:

Deceased GOP consultant's archive reveals 'citizenship' question on Census meant to disenfranchise

The most damning evidence yet has emerged that the Trump administration’s efforts to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 US census amount to a racist play to disenfranchise Democrats and voters of color.

The US Supreme Court heard a challenge to the citizenship question plan last month but has yet to issue a ruling.

In a bombshell New York Times report, journalist Michael Wines describes documents recently unearthed from the archive of the mastermind of the Republican gerrymander, Thomas Hofeller, now deceased.

The documents reveal the true intent behind including the citizenship question on the census: it “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,” as Hofeller puts it, in an analysis of Texas state legislative districts.

Political maps are currently drawn based on a state’s total population. But the Trump administration has proposed drawing the maps based on the number US citizens of voting age - not overall population. Thus the push to include the citizenship question on the decennial census.

The Trump administration has disingenuously framed its proposal as a defense of voting rights.

Via the Times:

The disclosures represent the most explicit evidence to date that the Trump administration added the question to the 2020 census to advance Republican Party interests.

And this from a related court case:

Updated

Judge Michael Steltzer in Missouri’s 22nd Circuit Court has heard Planned Parenthood’s request for an injunction of state health officials’ move to cancel the license of the state’s sole abortion provider.

Judge Steltzer adjourned “promptly” after hearing from both sides, a court officer said. We’re waiting on further action. The license cancellation was anticipated to go into effect Friday.

Elizabeth Warren urges impeachment against Trump

Here’s video of Warren. “Impeachment it is,” she says:

Updated

Trump has arrived in Colorado, per Trump.

Trump uses Cochran's death to take dig at McCain

The president has found a way to use the death announced today of seven-term Mississippi senator Thad Cochran to take another dig at the late senator John McCain. “Thad never let our Country (or me) down!” Trump writes.

The vice-president is in Ottawa for talks with the Canadian prime minister. For those of you looking forward to the Mike Pence-Justin Trudeau joint presser later today, here’s an amuse-bouche:

Updated

Warren: if Trump weren't president he'd be in handcuffs

Elizabeth Warren was the first presidential candidate to call for Trump’s impeachment. This morning on the View, she says if Trump weren’t president “he would be in handcuffs”:

In Iowa last weekend.
In Iowa last weekend. Photograph: Rachel Mummey/Reuters

Is this the “dramatic” announcement about immigration that Trump telegraphed this morning? Politico reports that Trump is weighing a further move against asylum-seekers from Central America:

President Donald Trump is considering sweeping restrictions on asylum that would effectively block Central American migrants from entering the U.S., according to several administration officials and advocates briefed on the plan.

A draft proposal circulating among Trump’s Homeland Security advisers would prohibit migrants from seeking asylum if they have resided in a country other than their own before coming to the U.S., according to a DHS official and an outside advocate familiar with the plan. If executed, it would deny asylum to thousands of migrants waiting just south of the border, many of whom have trekked a perilous journey through Mexico.

US law explicitly grants “any alien” physically present in the United States the right to apply for asylum. Read further:

Trump’s typical tactic after someone criticizes him – from Michael Cohen to Mitt Romney – is to say that offstage that person had been begging him, Trump, for some favor, implying that the criticism stems from some personal sour grapes.

Here he tries out the tactic on Robert Mueller, claiming that Mueller wanted to replace James Comey as FBI director, but Trump wouldn’t let him, so Mueller, you know, became special counsel, investigated and prosecuted an elaborate Russian election-tampering campaign and then repeatedly explicitly declined to exculpate the president on suspicions that Trump had committed a criminal obstruction of justice.

Buuuut:

Trump is due to address a graduation ceremony for the US Air Force Academy shortly, but he apparently can’t stop thinking about and taking swings at Mueller.

Updated

A Planned Parenthood support group has announced a rally in St Louis, Missouri, where a court will weigh in today on a move by health officials to shutter the state’s sole abortion provider as early as Friday:

(h/t @jessicaglenza)

The View cohost Meghan McCain has responded to Trump’s latest attack on her late father, accusing Trump of having a corrosive effect on military culture:

Fight over abortion rights in Missouri court today

Missouri could become the first US state in the modern era without an abortion clinic, officials with the last remaining facility, in St Louis, said on Tuesday.

Health officials in Missouri have refused to renew the clinic’s license, demanding that all seven physicians and trainees practicing there be made available for what officials of the women’s reproductive healthcare provider Planned Parenthood described as an “interrogation”.

The fight will be in court today, CNN reports:

Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, which has provided abortions for more than two decades, filed suit Tuesday against Missouri Gov. Michael Parson and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which administers the license the clinic needs. The suit requests a restraining order against the state, in order to avoid the disruption of services. An emergency hearing on this case originally was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in the Circuit Court of St. Louis. But it was then postponed to late Thursday morning for reasons “outside everybody’s control,” said Judge Michael Steltzer.

“This is not a drill. This is not a warning. This is a real public health crisis,” said Dr Lena Wen, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “This week, Missouri would be the first state in the country to go dark – without a health center that provides safe, legal abortion care.”

Read further:

Updated

Trump promises 'dramatic' statement on immigration

After a day of defending himself for being a potential criminal and running a White House that covers the name of a warship with a tarp to protect his eyes, Donald Trump has told reporters outside the White House that he will make a “dramatic” statement about the country’s southern border. Reuters reports:

He told reporters the statement would be his biggest on the issue to date and would be about people crossing the border illegally.

“This is a big-league statement, but we are going to do something very dramatic on the border,” Trump said, adding he was not closing the border.

Trump denies role in USS McCain concealment but calls order 'well-meaning'

The acting US secretary of defense, Patrick Shanahan, nominated by Donald Trump earlier this month, has denied knowledge of a reported White House order to the Navy to keep the warship USS John S McCain “out of sight” during a recent presidential visit to Japan.

The ship was named for the father and grandfather of former Arizona senator John McCain, who died last year of cancer. Trump has derided McCain for being a prisoner of war and attacked him for voting down a Republican health care bill.

Shanahan has ordered staff to look into reports that the name of the warship was hidden during Trump’s visit, and that sailors from the ship wearing uniforms identifying it by name were blocked from attending a Trump speech. The White House order, which so far has been traced to no one, was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Further remarks via Defense One:

Shanahan on USS McCain: “I never authorized... any action around the movement or activity regarding that ship. Furthermore, I would never dishonor the memory of a great American patriot like Sen. McCain. I would never disrespect the young men and women that crew that ship.“

Meghan McCain reacted on Twitter late Wednesday:

Trump has denied knowledge of the order:

Before departing for Colorado Thursday, Trump said “I was not a big fan of John McCain” and called whoever ordered the warship concealment “well-meaning”:

Trump renews attack on Robert Mueller

Donald Trump renewed his attack on Robert Mueller Thursday, a day after the former special counsel said at a press conference that investigators could not conclude that the president had not committed a crime.

Immediately after Mueller spoke, the White House declared total vindication. But Trump was back on the defensive on Twitter Thursday morning.

In his tweets, Trump kept up the White House campaign to distort what the Mueller report says and what Mueller said. At his press conference, Mueller said that he did not weigh charges against Trump because justice department guidelines prevented the indictment of a sitting president.

But on Twitter, Trump said Mueller “would have brought charges, if he had ANYTHING.”

Then amid a rant about “this witch hunt hoax,” Trump appeared to admit that Russia helped elect him president:

Trump attempted to clean up that tweet in reply to a question from reporters covering his departure for Colorado today, where he is to address a graduation ceremony for the US Air Force academy.

“No, Russia did not help me get elected,” Trump told reporters, in contradiction of the Mueller investigation’s finding that Moscow ran a yearslong hacking and social media campaign to boost Trump and defeat Hillary Clinton.

In his morning Twitter-tribe, Trump also said “Mueller didn’t find Obstruction either,” when in fact the Mueller report describes 11 episodes in which Trump or his campaign engaged in potential obstruction of justice.

To paraphrase:

Mueller: “We can’t indict the sitting president. But if we could clear the president of criminal charges we would. [Significant Silence].”

Trump: “If I did anything wrong Mueller would have charged me, which he has not meaning I did nothing wrong.”

In the blog today we’ll round up the latest reactions to Mueller’s appearance Wednesday, and look at how Democrats are wrestling with the question of potential impeachment of the president. And we’ll catch up with Democratic presidential candidates campaigning across the country. Thanks for joining us.

Updated

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