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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Vivian Ho in San Francisco (now) and Amanda Holpuch in New York (earlier)

Clinton: Trump has 'proved himself unwilling to defend our nation' – as it happened

Hillary Clinton speaks during the Time 100 Summit event on Tuesday.
Hillary Clinton speaks during the Time 100 Summit event on Tuesday. Photograph: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images

Evening summary

  • Hillary Clinton sounded off on the Mueller report, saying that it “documents a serious crime against the American people.” In an oped for the Washington Post, she talked about the national security risks at play, and how “unless he’s held accountable, the president may show even more disregard for the laws of the land and the obligations of his office.”
  • The National Security Agency has recommended that the White House to drop the metadata phone-surveillance program that Edward Snowden revealed to the world, according to the Wall Street Journal.
  • Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ nonprofit is suing the FEC to take action on the complaints accusing the NRA of campaign finance violations.

Ed Helmore writes for the Guardian about the White House’s new focus with immigration:

The White House has opened a new front in its war on illegal immigration, threatening nations to punish with high rates of visitors who arrive in the US legally and then remain after their visas expire.

In a presidential memo issued on Monday, Trump described visa overstays a “widespread problem” and instructed the department of homeland security to consider action against countries that have business and tourist visa overstays higher than 10 percent.

According to a Washington Post report, 20 countries fall into that category, though with the exception of Syria and Nigeria, they account for fewer than 1,000 overstayers each.

Thirteen of the countries identified are in Africa, with Djibouti topping of list with 180 of the 403 business and tourism travelers to the US in 2018 overstaying. Chad’s 30.8 percent overstay rate amounted to 165 people. Yemen, with the third-highest rate, had 518 overstayers.

The report found that Mexico had more than 43,000 overstays — a rate of 1.5 percent — and that Canada had 88,000 overstays, at a rate of less than 1 percent. The list only consider travelers who entered the country legally.

Of the 50 million visitors who entered the US last year, nearly 667,000 people overstayed their visas last year. In fiscal 2017, more than 700,000 people stayed in the United States longer than they were allowed.

Trump gave the state department four months to consult with Homeland Security officials and the attorney general to recommend sanctions.

Updated

It appears former Congresswoman and outspoken gun control activist Gabrielle Giffords is taking the NRA to task:

NSA recommends abandoning US metadata phone-surveillance program

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that that the National Security Agency has advised the White House to drop the 9/11-era surveillance program that gathers metadata from Americans’ phone calls and text messages because “the logistical and legal burdens of keeping it outweigh its intelligence benefits.”

The recommendation against seeking the renewal of the once-secret spying program amounts to an about-face by the agency, which had long argued in public and to congressional overseers that the program was vital to the task of finding and disrupting terrorism plots against the U.S.

The latest view is rooted in a growing belief among senior intelligence officials that the spying program provides limited value to national security and has become a logistical headache.

Frustrations about legal-compliance issues forced the NSA to halt use of the program earlier this year, the people said. Its legal authority will expire in December unless Congress reauthorizes it.

It is up to the White House, not the NSA, to decide whether to push for legislation to renew the phone-records program. The White House hasn’t yet reached a policy decision about the surveillance program, according to the people familiar with the matter.

The White House National Security Council and the NSA declined to comment.

The surveillance program began clandestinely—and, at first, without court approval—under the George W. Bush administration in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The NSA operation has sought to collect the metadata of all domestic calls in the U.S. in order to hunt for links among potential associates of terrorism suspects. Metadata include the numbers and time stamps of a call or text message but not the contents of the conversation.

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked the existence of the program—along with a tranche of documents exposing other surveillance operations carried out by the NSA—to journalists nearly six years ago. The disclosures ignited an international uproar over the scope of America’s electronic-spying capabilities.

Hillary Clinton pens oped about Mueller report

Everybody and their mother has weighed in on the Mueller report at this point in time, and Hillary Clinton has jumped in as well with an oped in the Washington Post today. She wastes no time batting around the bush:

Obviously, this is personal for me, and some may say that I’m not the right messenger. But my perspective is not just that of a former candidate and target of the Russian plot. I am also a former senator and secretary of state who served during much of Vladi­mir Putin’s ascent, sat across the table from him and knows firsthand that he seeks to weaken our country.

I am also someone who, by a strange twist of fate, was a young staff attorney on the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate impeachment inquiry in 1974, as well as first lady during the impeachment process that began in 1998. And I was a senator for New York after 9/11, when Congress had to respond to an attack on our country. Each of these experiences offers important lessons for how we should proceed today.

Read the full piece here.

Hey all, Vivian Ho taking over for Amanda Holpuch. Happy Wednesday.

Summary

The intermission dance party break has come and gone ... but politics remains.

Here’s where we’re at as I sign-off on the live blog and hand over to Vivian Ho in San Francisco.

Ed Helmore writes for the Guardian about Joe Biden’s forthcoming presidential bid announcement:

When Joe Biden announces his presidential bid tomorrow he will be exceptional to the expansive, 20-strong Democratic field in one crucial respect: fundraising.

Biden, who has not been a singular political candidate for more than a decade, is likely to rely on big donors and not small-donor contributions funding.

The question for supporters of the former Delaware senator – who will enter the race a front runner with 27% of Democrats voters supporting him, according to CNN – is whether this distinctly old-fashioned strategy will help or hinder his candidacy.

“He’s in an unusual position because he’s against candidates who have been fundraising recently and he hasn’t had his own campaign since his unsuccessful presidential bid in 2008,” OpenSecrets’ Ben Quinn told the Guardian last month. “A lot of political fundraising norms have changed and his ability to fundraise is unknown.”

The campaigns of Biden’s closest rivals have used their small-donor fundraising numbers to establish the grassroots strength of their candidacies. Sen Bernie Sanders, for instance, raised $18.2m in the six weeks from 900,000 donors.

According to The Atlantic, the three most prolific democratic fundraisers —Senators Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, and former Representative Beto O’Rourke—hauled in just less than $40 million total in the first three months of the year.

That’s noticeably low compared to previous races at this point in the cycle (in the first three months of 2007, democratic Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and ex-Senator John Edwards had raised more than $65 million.)

The former deputy chief of staff for former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, was resentenced to 13 months for her role in “Bridgegate,” a plot to cause traffic jams near New York City’s George Washington Bridge to punish a mayor who wouldn’t endorse Christie’s reelection.

The former aide, Bridget Kelly, cried in court and asked the judge to consider the impact of imprisonment on her children.

She was convicted with Bill Baroni in 2016, but some of the counts against them were tossed out by a federal appeals court last year.

Baroni had his sentence reduced from 24 months to 18 months in February and has begun serving his term, according to the AP.

Kelly was initially sentenced to 18 months.

Former Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary, Julián Castro, took the stage at the SheThePeople conference and pointed out they had used a photo of his brother, Joaquin, in the event program. “He would say that that’s a good thing, because he’s better looking than I am,” Castro said.

He also promised to address economic and social inequalities, if elected president, such as raising the minimum wage.

“I’ve called for giving people a first chance in life because too often we can’t even talk about a second chance in life, people don’t even get a first chance,” Castro said.

He also received applause when he answered a question about income inequality in Spanish.

Updated

New Jersey senator, Cory Booker, is the first Democrat seeking the presidential nomination to speak at the She the People forum in Houston.

Booker garnered much applause for committing to picking a female running mate.

“I will have a woman running mate,” Booker said. “To me it’s really clear that we do that.”

He is also asked what he will do to stand-up for women such as representative Ilhan Omar, who the president has repeatedly harassed.

“The criticisms of Ilhan Omar, what Donald Trump is saying about her, is reprehensible,” Booker said. “It’s stoking Islamophobia. It should be condemned by everyone.”

Booker was also asked why women of color should support him in the Democratic race when there are several women running.

“Women of color can trust me as someone from my entire career has been rooted in the communities that have empowered me to be who I am today,” he said. “And so my fights have shown who I am and shown my loyalty and when I am president, these are going to continue to be the kind of fights that I take on and I will make sure this nation is finally who we say we are, a nation of liberty and justice for all.”

More from Khushbu Shah, reporting from the drug abuse forum in Atlanta:

President Trump spoke for nearly 45 minutes on issues surrounding drug abuse and addiction prevention to a seemingly divided audience – the applause through his speech was scattered.

He promised the crowd of lawmakers, law enforcement, advocates, health care officials: “Nothing is going to stop us. We will never stop until our job is done. We will succeed.”

Later, he bragged that the US has dedicated six billion dollars to fight the opioid epidemic. But the loudest cheers from the audience when he referenced faith-based initiatives.

During his speech, President Trump seemed to only veer off script substantially when speaking about pharamceutical companies “rigging the system” around the pricing of drugs. He added, “I know all about the rigging the system because I had the system rigged on me.”

“I think you know what I’m talking about,” he said, looking out across the audience, receiving a smattering of laughter. At the same time, a number of audience members shook their head in disbelief.

Much of the speech revolved around praising law enforcement, the DEA, and Customs and Border Protection...and dogs.

The president deftly weaved in a reference to his proclamation of a national emergency along the southern border, declaring much of the drugs came through the border.

Kim Kroeger, who has attended the summit since Monday, said at a session earlier in the week where she was told most of the drugs coming into the United States actually came in via the US Post Office and shipments seized by the US Coast Guard.

Trump: 'the greatest equipment in the world is a dog'

First Lady Melania Trump spoke first at the prescription drug abuse forum in Atlanta and told the crowd responding to the opioid crisis has been much of her focus while living in the White House. “I have seen first hand both the medical and the personal results of this crisis,” Trump said.

Trump then took the stage, heaping praise on “faith-based initiatives” for responding to addiction.

He spoke about building a wall at the US-Mexico border to stem the flow of drugs from the country, though most of the drugs that come from Mexico are smuggled in through legal ports of entry.

And commended the work of law enforcement in responding to the crisis: “I don’t know if you know it but over the past two and a half years, law enforcement has become hot....They’re hot, people are loving their law enforcement more than ever before because we respect them at the highest levels.”

Oh, and he sees a lot of potential in dogs.

The greatest equipment in the world is a dog. Dogs do a better job that $400 million worth of equipment, can you believe that? Only the dog lovers would understand that. I said to the Border Patrol the other day, they were giving me a little bit of a rundown the other day....I said how does this compare to those great dogs? They say ‘Sir, honestly, the dogs are better.’ I said, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’

Female officers introduce a litter of Golden Retriever puppies to be trained as police dogs in La Paz, Bolivia, earlier this month
Female officers introduce a litter of Golden Retriever puppies to be trained as police dogs in La Paz, Bolivia, earlier this month Photograph: Juan Karita/AP

Good news for male Elizabeth Warren fans, there’s a whole lot of plural nouns you can categorize yourself under: Liz Lads, Warmen, Elizabros, Elizabinches.

Men’s magazine, Mel, has a piece on Elizabeth Warren’s male supporters and how she seems to be hitting her stride in the Democratic race.

Yes, Twitter is not real life, and Warren’s poll numbers aren’t exactly surging. But with each plank she sets in her platform — with each question answered in her reassuringly expert, stable tone — she builds more buzz. The conversation has subtly shifted from “Why aren’t we talking about Warren?” to “Whoa, Warren is killing it lately.” Her plan to dissolve a gargantuan amount of student loan debt may be her splashiest policy proposal yet.

Cindy McCain, the widow of Arizona senator John McCain, has disputed a Washington Examiner report claiming her family is endorsing Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

McCain said Biden “is a wonderful man and dear friend of the McCain family” but she has “no intention of getting involved in presidential politics.”

The She the People forum just kicked off in Houston, where eight Democratic presidential hopefuls will speak. The forum will feature an “intermission dance party break” at 2:27pm local time.

In 1996, that “intermission dance party break” meant a whole lot of politicos doing the Macarena:

Summary

It’s been a busy morning in Trump world, with the president saying he will fight all subpoenas about the Mueller report and threatening military conflict with Mexico.

He’ll soon be speaking at a drug abuse conference in Atlanta, before attention shifts to his Democratic challengers in the presidential election this afternoon. Eight candidates are due to speak this afternoon in Houston, which will be covered live here.

Now, a look back at this morning’s other key events:

Reporting for the Guardian from Atlanta, Khushbu Shah describes the scene

The line to hear Donald and Melania Trump winds around the entire floor of the Atlanta Hyatt and winds even further outside as thousands of people line up to hear Trump’s address to the Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit. A convention organizer says there are 2,200 seats inside the ballroom, all of them likely to be filled. Some started lining up at 8am, she adds.

Laura Busler and Christi Ecklert, both from Marion, Ohio, work with young people at the Marion-Crawford Prevention Center and got in line around 11am. Neither one is sure the president will stick to the topic at hand. Busler noted, “He’s been up tweeting this morning about other things, so we’ll see.”

Donald and Melania Trump arrive at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia
Donald and Melania Trump arrive at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia
 Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

Earlier this year, the Trump administration outlined its priorities and strategies in combating drug abuse, focusing on reducing the number of death resulting from opioid abuse and methods to prevent addiction. More than 70,000 people died from drug overdose in the US in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The couple have just arrived in Atlanta, after a smooth flight where the cabin crew served a “Mexican style lunch,” according to the pool report.

McCain family endorses Biden for 2020 - reports

Update 3:43pm: Cindy McCain said she is staying out of presidential race, disputing this report.

Before Senator John McCain died in August 2018, he was one of the most the prominent Republican critics of Trump. The president, in turn, attacked McCain before and after his death, earning condemnation from both Republicans and Democrats.

So it is not a complete surprise that the McCain family is backing former vice president and *Democrat*, Joe Biden, in the 2020 presidential election, according to the Washington Examiner:

Sources close to both Biden’s presidential campaign and the McCains said that at some point during the White House race, McCain’s widow Cindy, 64, and daughter Meghan, 34, a host on “The View,” will offer their public support in the hope of removing Trump from office in 2020.

A former McCain campaign official with close ties to the family said support for Biden was a given, but they needed to calculate how they could best help the former vice president. Both Cindy and Meghan McCain remain Republicans, and one consideration is whether endorsing Biden in the Democratic primary could do him more harm than good. “It’s undeniable that Joe Biden and the McCain family have a very close, personal relationship. It’s about what’s good for him [Biden].”

Updated

Cohen disavows some of the crimes he committed - report

Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, disavowed responsibility for some of the crimes he committed, according to a recorded phone conversation between Cohen and the actor and comedian, Tom Arnold. Arnold, a Trump critic, shared the recording with the Wall Street Journal:

“My family’s happiness, and my law license,” Mr Cohen continued. “I lost my business…my insurance, my bank accounts, all for what? All for what? Because Trump, you know, had an affair with a porn star? That’s really what this is about.”

Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Mr. Cohen, said: “Michael has taken responsibility for his crimes and will soon report to prison to serve his sentence. While he cannot change the past, he is making every effort to reclaim his life and do right by his family and country. He meant no offense by his statements.”

A spokesman for the Manhattan US attorney’s office declined to comment. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Kaitlan Collins, a White House reporter for CNN, tweeted that a former Trump campaign aide, Michael Caputo, had a White House meeting with Trump today. She said Caputo hasn’t spoken with the president or been to the White House in two years.

Caputo makes a few Mueller report appearances in the section: Other Potential Campaign Interest in Russia Hacked Materials:

In the spring of 2016, Trump Campaign advisor Michael Caputo learned through a Florida-based Russian business partner that another Florida-based Russian, Henry Oknyansky (who also went by the name Henry Greenberg), claimed to have information pertaining to Hillary Clinton. Caputo notified Roger Stone and brokered communication between Stone and Oknyansky. Oknyansky and Stone set up a May 2016 in-person meeting.

The report continues to detail Caputo’s recollections of the meetings, which contradicts the recollections Oknyansky described to investigators.

At the Time 100 gala last night, comedian Hasan Minaj told Jared Kushner, who was in the audience, to text Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and ask him to free the activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who has been detained in Saudi Arabia for 11 months.

“I am very lucky that I get to be here in America and that I can make jokes about very powerful leaders, and I have the safety of being here in America,” Minaj said, before praising al-Hathloul for her fight for women’s equality.

Minaj took up the role of unknowing innocent before confronting Kushner:

This is a very powerful room and I know there’s a lot of powerful people here and it would be crazy if... I don’t know, like ... I don’t know... if there was a high-ranking official in the White House that could WhatsApp MBS and say hey maybe you could help that person get out of prison because they don’t deserve it.

The embattled former Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, was trying to get the White House to focus on election security in the months before she was forced to resign, according to an investigation in the New York Times.

Nielsen’s tenure was defined by her role in executing Trump’s hardline immigration policies, such as family separation, but her expertise was actually in cybersecurity.

The New York Times reported:

Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.

But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”

Even though the Department of Homeland Security has primary responsibility for civilian cyberdefense, Ms. Nielsen eventually gave up on her effort to organize a White House meeting of cabinet secretaries to coordinate a strategy to protect next year’s elections.

The president and first lady are traveling to Atlanta to attend a summit about prescription drug abuse this afternoon. It’s a quick trip, with the couple scheduled to spend about two hours in Georgia before returning to DC.

Donald Trump talks to reporters before leaving the White House for a short trip to Atlanta
Donald Trump talks to reporters before leaving the White House for a short trip to Atlanta Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

Trump: 'we're fighting all the subpoenas'

Just before boarding the presidential helicopter, Marine One, Trump responded to questions about the Mueller report, proclaiming: “we’re fighting all the subpoenas.”

Q1: What do you plan to do about this subpoena for Don McGahn?

The subpoena is ridiculous. … We just went through the Mueller witch hunt where you had really 18 angry Democrats that hate President Trump. They hate him with a passion… And they came up with no collusion and they actually also came up with no obstruction. But our attorney general ruled based on the information there was no obstruction. So you had no collusion, no obstruction. Now we’re finished with it and I thought after two years we’d be finished with it. No. Now the House goes and starts subpoenas. They want to do every deal I’ve ever done. Now Mueller, I assume, for 35 million dollars, checked my taxes, checked my financials – which are great, by the way…. They checked my financials and they checked my taxes, I assume. It was the most thorough investigation probably in the history of our country…. I say it’s enough. Get back to infrastructure. Get back to cutting taxes. Get back to lowering drug prices.

Q2: Will you fight the McGahn subpoena?

We’re fighting all the subpoenas. These aren’t like impartial people. The Democrats are trying to win 2020. They’re not going to win with the people that I see. And they’re not gonna win against me. The only way they can maybe luck out, and I don’t think that’s gonna happen – it might make it even the opposite, that’s what a lot of people are saying – the only way they can luck out is by constantly going after me on nonsense.

“If you want to litigate, go after the DNC, crooked Hillary, the dirty cops, all of these things… That was a rigged system and I’m breaking down – I am breaking down the swamp. If you look at what’s happening, they’re getting caught, they’re getting fired… If you look at drain the swamp, I am draining the swamp.

Updated

Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to the president, spoke with reporters this morning after an interview with Fox News.

When asked whether Trump and Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, would talk about impeachment and subpoenas in their next meeting, Conway said: “They’re supposed to be talking about infrastructure... If she’s coming here under the ruse of infrastructure and wants to talk about subpoenas, I’ll let you know.”

Conway also responded to a report about Trump’s closed-door meeting with Twitter executives including CEO, Jack Dorsey. A “significant portion” of the meeting focused on Trump’s concern that Twitter removed some of his followers, according to the Washington Post.

Conway said of the meeting: “They had a very productive conversation about keeping the media platforms open for 2020. The president is very concerned about what he sees as losing followers or people being blocked for certain actions. That’s obvious.”

Last night, the Treasury department declined to fulfill a deadline to provide Donald Trump’s tax returns the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, Richard Neal, a Democrat from Massachussets.

Neal made a formal request for the return this month under a law that lets chairmen of tax-writing committees get any taxpayer’s returns, according to the Wall Street Journal. For the past 40 years, presidents and candidates have voluntarily released their tax returns.

The Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, declined to provide the return, writing to Neal:

History demonstrates that private tax return information is susceptible to abuse for partisan purposes—regardless of which party is in power. Unless carefully restrained by law, this risk threatens the privacy of all taxpayers.

Iowa update!

The longest-serving Republican in the Iowa’s legislature is becoming a Democrat.

Representative Andy McKean said he is making the switch after 40 years in the Iowa State House because the amount of moderates in the party has thinned in favor of candidates like Trump who favor partisanship.

The Des Moines Register said McKean told a press conference: “With the 2020 presidential election looming on the horizon, I feel, as a Republican, that I need to be able to support the standard bearer of our party. Unfortunately, that’s something I’m unable to do.”

Meanwhile, Iowa representative Steve King, who represents the state’s interests at a federal level, said at a town hall last night that criticism of his comments embracing white nationalism gave him insight into the suffering endured by Jesus, then likened himself to Jesus.

Per the Washington Post:

“It’s been, for all that I’ve been through, it seems even strange for me to say it, but I’m at a certain peace, and it’s because of a lot of prayers for me,” he said. Earlier this year, the Iowa Republican said the prayers of his constituents might cause House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, to reconsider his decision to isolate him.

But the verdict didn’t change, as King told the town hall. In describing his experience on Capitol Hill, the congressman conjured a courtroom scene, evoking the trial that, in the telling of the New Testament, preceded the crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus. King called his fellow lawmakers “accusers.”

“And when I had to step down to the floor of the House of Representatives and look up at those 400-and-some accusers — you know, we’ve just passed through Easter and Christ’s Passion — and I have a better insight into what He went through for us, partly because of that experience,” he said. (King’s spokesman didn’t immediately return a query inviting the congressman to elaborate on his analysis.)

If you would like to read more on King and Iowa politics, I highly recommend this piece by my colleague Tom McCarthy:

Also on Twitter this morning, Trump threatened military conflict with Mexico.

He said the military would be called up and the border would be closed, if Mexico does not stop everyone on the latest migrant caravan from approaching the border. He pegged that caravan at 20,000 people, but reporters traveling with it said it is about 3,000 people.

Though Trump first said he would call the military to the border, he then said ARMED SOLDIERS were already being sent to the border.

In summary:

This is also not true.

One day after accepting an invitation for a state visit to Britain, Trump has promoted an unfounded allegation, first made two years ago, that the British government had helped the Obama administration spy on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

US and British intelligence services denied this when it first surfaced, and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has denied it again today, calling the allegations “nonsense,” per Reuters.

While railing against the Mueller report this morning on Twitter, Trump said the 448-page document was crafted by “angry Democrats” and had unlimited money/$35m behind it – one lie and one maybe truth.

Not to mention, his suggestion that the supreme court could intervene in impeachment is something the supreme court ruled it wouldn’t do in 1993.

Mueller himself is a registered Republican who was appointed to positions in two Republican and two Democratic presidencies.

The last public figures on the report cost pegged it at $25m in September 2018. It’s almost certain that more money was spent on the report since then but we don’t know if it reached $35m. Yahoo Finance notes this ranks below the $47.4m cost of the Iran-Contra Affair and the more than $52m spent investigating Bill Clinton. Additional investigations into Clinton took another $100m from taxpayers.

So, that’s one tweet explained. In the second, Trump declares “there are no Crimes by me at all.”

It also is his sixth tweet to use the phrase “dirty cops,” which seems to have been added to Trump’s twitter vocabulary this month, first appearing in an April 13 and apparently never before then.

Meanwhile, Trump said he is opposed to current and former aides testifying to congressional committees about the Mueller report in an interview with the Washington Post.

“There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress where it’s very partisan – obviously very partisan,” Trump told the Post. “I don’t want people testifying to a party, because that is what they’re doing if they do this.”

Updated

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the 2020 race to the White House.

The president has already sent six tweets this morning about immigration and the Mueller report, declaring: “I DID NOTHING WRONG.”

Trump also said he will go to the Supreme Court if Democrats pursue impeachment – perhaps not the most effective strategy as the Supreme Court said in 1993 it could not intervene in impeachment proceedings, ruling that it is Congress’ duty.

Democrats have plenty of opportunities to talk impeachment today, with eight of the hopefuls scheduled to speak in back to back town halls on race and gender starting at 2pm. The She the People forum in Houston is billed as “the first-ever Presidential candidate forum focused on women of color.”

Democratic 2020 US presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a senator from California, takes the stage for a campaign stop in Keene on Tuesday
Democratic 2020 US presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a senator from California, takes the stage for a campaign stop in Keene on Tuesday Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

Many of that group will also today address the African American Mayors Association Annual Conference, which is conveniently located in Houston.

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