Donald Trump has raged at Democrats plotting his impeachment on Twitter, boasting about American economic achievements and accusing the “The Squad” of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome”.
A day before ex-FBI special counsel Robert Mueller testifies before two congressional committees, Republican commentators are warning his appearance – to explain the investigation into Russian election hacking and possible instances of obstruction of justice – poses “a danger to the Trump White House”.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, President Trump insisted he would not be watching the proceedings “because you can’t take all those bites out of the apple” as the Justice Department wrote to the witness ordering him to stick to the substance of his 448-page report, a move that has been criticised as an attempt to intimidate Mr Mueller.
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FBI Director Christopher Wray said during a Senate hearing on Tuesday the increasing number of arrests related to domestic terrorism was fuelled in part by white supremacy.
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the director said his agency has already made more domestic terrorism-related arrests in 2019 than the year prior, with nearly 100 thus far.
“A majority of the domestic terrorism cases we've investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence," Mr Wray said during an exchange with Senator Dick Durbin.
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The rule is aimed at enforcing the “expedited removal” of the majority of those who enter the US illegally – unless they can prove they have been living in the country for at least two years.
Beginning today, fast-track deportations can apply to anyone in the country without proper documentation for less than 48 months. Previously, those deportations were largely limited to people arrested almost immediately after crossing the Mexican border.
Ivanka Trump has congratulated Boris Johnson on becoming the next prime minister of “the United Kingston”.
“Congratulations @BorisJohnson on becoming the next Prime Minister of the United Kingston,” the US president’s daughter wrote on Twitter.
It was unclear whether she believed this is the country’s correct name or whether the tweet was simply the result of a misspelling.
The panel is chaired by one of President Trump's closest allies, Senator Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina Republican has vowed to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation.
Republicans are likely to spend time questioning Wray and Mueller about Peter Strzok, an FBI agent who helped lead the Trump investigation and exchanged anti-Trump text messages during the 2016 election with an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page.
Once Mueller learned of the existence of the texts, which were sent before his appointment as special counsel, he removed Strzok from his team investigating potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. Strzok ultimately was fired and Page left the bureau.
Wray made headlines during a Senate hearing in May when he broke from attorney general William Barr and said he didn't consider court-approved FBI surveillance to be "spying" and that there was no evidence the FBI illegally monitored Trump's campaign during the 2016 election. Barr has said he believes "spying did occur" on the campaign and suggested the origins of the probe may have been mishandled.
Barr didn't specify what he meant when he said he believed there had been spying on the Trump campaign, but he was likely alluding to the FBI obtaining a secret surveillance warrant in the fall of 2016 to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, whose interactions with Russians several years earlier had raised law enforcement suspicions even before he joined the campaign.
Barr has not said such surveillance was necessarily improper, but Trump nonetheless seized on those comments to suggest his campaign was spied on in an illegal and unprecedented act. The attorney general appointed US attorney John Durham, the chief federal prosecutor in Connecticut, to investigate the surveillance methods used during the investigation and to probe the origins of the Russia investigation. Part of Durham's mandate is to investigate whether there was a proper basis for the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Wray has previously declined to discuss in detail the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign because of Durham's investigation and a separate, ongoing Justice Department inspector general probe into the origins of the Russia inquiry.
As FBI director, he has sought to avoid public spats with Trump, but his appearance on Capitol Hill comes amid signs of possible tension between the two men.
Trump told ABC News last month that Wray was "wrong" to suggest that Donald Trump Jr. should have called the FBI as the organiser of a 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer offering negative information on his political opponent, Hillary Clinton. Wray made the comment during the May congressional hearing and said the FBI would want to know about any outreach from a foreign government to an American political campaign.
Trump told ABC that if a foreign power were offering dirt on his 2020 opponent, he'd be open to accepting it and would have no obligation to call the FBI.
