Attorney general William Barr has refused to show up for planned testimony before the House Judiciary Committee after enduring a grilling by Democratic senators on Wednesday, who questioned his handling of the Mueller report and called for his resignation.
On Thursday, Democrats in the House blasted Mr Barr for skipping the hearing, and accused the executive branch of subverting constitutional checks and balances by undermining Congress.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the challenge we face is that the president of the United States wants desperately to prevent Congress, a co-equal branch of government, from providing any check whatsoever to even his most reckless decisions,” said chairman Jerrold Nadler, addressing an empty chair as colleague Steve Cohen chewed on a bucket of fried chicken, a stunt to imply Mr Barr was a coward for failing to attend.
Democrats accused Mr Barr on Wednesday of acting as Donald Trump’s human shield by declining to pursue obstruction of justice charges against the president. And, those same Democats called for the attorney general's resignation after the existence of a letter written to him by Robert Mueller appeared to suggest he had lied to Congress during a previous appearance on 10 April.
That drama playing out in Washington came as unrest in Venezuela has persisted, with the United States supporting regime change.
In response to the US position, representative Ilhan Omar claimed that US use of sanctions to force regime change has led to strife in Central America. Ms Omar went as far as to say that US foreign policy in Central America has exacerbated the immigration problem at the US southern border.
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Donald Trump's attorney general William Barr will not appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday as scheduled after enduring a torrid time before Democratic senators on Wednesday regarding his handling of the Mueller report.
“He’s trying to blackmail the committee... The administration cannot dictate the terms of our hearing in our hearing room,” said chairman Jerrold Nadler after Barr refused to be interviewed by lawyers in addition to committee members as part of the House hearing and declined to a handover a full, unredacted copy of the FBI special counsel’s 448-page dossier on Russian election hacking.
Barr was put to the sword by senators on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, who accused him of acting as President Trump’s human shield by shutting down possible obstruction of justice charges and called for his resignation after the existence of a letter written to him by Robert Mueller appeared to suggest he had lied to Congress during a previous appearance on 10 April.
Speaking after watching his Senate counterparts tear into Barr, Nadler had this to say:
Here's Andrew Buncombe and Clark Mindock.
If you missed Barr's four-hour appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, oh boy.
Despite the gathering being chaired by Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham, who opened proceedings by admitting with a smirk that he hadn't actually read the full Mueller report and launching into the saga of Hillary Clinton's emails, Barr found himself cornered by wolves.
The attorney general attempted to defend his four-page memo of 24 March, saying he was merely attempting to report the special counsel's verdict rather than shape the narrative, blaming the media for whipping up excitement and attempting to join Graham in turning the conversation back towards the origins of the FBI counter-intelligence probe by examining the Justice Department under Barack Obama.
But the Democrats were having none of it.
Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut was devastating here:
Hawaii's Mazie Hirono even more so:
But it was perhaps Barr's own hesitation over questions relating to seemingly elementary matters of ethics from the likes of Chris Coons of Delaware and 2020 presidential hopeful Kamala Harris that were most damning of all.
The attorney general, sweating and exhausted, was also frequently reduced to some fairly extreme hair-splitting in defence of the report's account of the president ordering his adviser Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller (McGahn declined, potentially saving Trump's hide in the process).
Texas Republican Ted Cruz spoke for his party when he whined Barr was being given "the Kavanaugh treatment" but Barr can have few serious complaints even if he did call it "mind-bendingly bizarre" that he was there at all.
He knew what he was getting into when he took the job.
Afterwards the likes of Nadler and Blumenthal told the press Barr had to go.
But what about President Trump?
"He did a fantastic job today, I'm told. I got to see some of it. He did a fantastic job," he told Fox Business in a phone interview with Trish Regan, going on to accuse Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker (all potential 2020 presidential contenders) of "ranting and raving like lunatics".
"You have three of them running against me and they're up there ranting and raving like lunatics, frankly, and they're running, and how is that fair?" Trump said.
"So you have Bill Barr, highly respected, great attorney general, and he's got to take the abuse from people that are running for office,"
Harris is "probably very nasty", the president added, given that she - and Booker - had called for Barr to resign.
Trump also defended Barr's decision not to appear before the House Judiciary today, saying he believes "they want to treat him differently than they have anybody else."
"For many, many years, they've never done it this way where they're bringing in outside counsel or something, you know, you elect people they're supposed to be able to do their own talking," he said.
You can tell the president is relaxed about it all because he spent his evening frantically retweeting clips from Fox, Judicial Watch and his son Eric in his favour.
President Trump's defeated 2016 rival Hillary Clinton, still the subject of many a Republican conspiracy theory, appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show last night and had plenty to say about Barr.
Here's Ahmed Baba for Indy Voices on why yesterday's hearing leaves William Barr without a stitch of credibility left.
Away from yesterday's sideshow on Capitol Hill, a new poll from Politico/Morning Consult suggests almost half of American voters believe President Trump's Twitter habit could cost him the 2020 election.
Forty-six percent of respondents said that they believe Trump's wild tweets - used to slam rivals, celebrities and foreign governments and even invent policy on the hoof - could cost him at the ballot box while 70 percent agreed he spends too much time on Twitter. Just 1 percent felt he tweets too little.
I wonder why so many believe the president's social media habit could be a liability?
In case you missed it amid all the Barr excitement, the White House yesterday requested a further $4.5bn (£3.4bn) from Congress to address the "crisis" at the southwestern border as it grapples with a surge of Central American migrant families seeking refuge in the US.
Most of the money requested would be used to increase shelter capacity and care for the migrant families who have been fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said they would likely run out of money without the extra cash.
“DHS projects it will exhaust resources well before the end of the fiscal year,” read the administration’s formal request letter to Congress.
The request is just the latest in a flurry of efforts by the administration to cope with what it calls a “crisis” that officials say has overwhelmed federal resources and capacity. President Trump has railed against aides and Congress for failing to do more to address the situation, but has also made clear he believes his hard line on immigration was key to his 2016 victory and intends to continue to hammer the issue to motivate his base heading into his 2020 re-election campaign.
It also comes a day after a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy in the care of US Health and Human Services died after falling ill with a fever and chills. His death is under investigation. Two other children died in Customs and Border Protection custody late last year.
The 2019 fiscal year budget already contained $415m (£318m) for humanitarian assistance at the border, including $28m (£21m) in medical care, senior administration officials said on Wednesday.
But the White House now wants an extra $3.3bn (£2.5bn) to increase shelter capacity for unaccompanied migrant children and for the feeding and care of families, plus transportation and processing centres.
Of the new request, $1.1bn (£842m) would go toward operational support, including personnel expenses, detention beds, transportation and investigative work on smuggling. The remaining $178m (£136m) would be used for mission support, including technology upgrades.
It’s unclear, however, if Congress will approve the extra funding.
It’s unclear, however, if Congress will approve the extra funding.
Getting Democrats and Republicans to agree on how to address the border situation has been a challenge, especially on the heels of the longest government shutdown in history over Trump’s demand for border wall funding. Trump eventually declared a national emergency declaration to circumvent Congress to get the funding elsewhere.
Senior administration officials, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to discuss the request by name, insisted the new money would not be used for border barriers and said the funds were different from those Trump has sought to access through his declaration of a national emergency.
The number of families and children arriving alone at the border is now outpacing the number of single adults, putting new strains on the immigration system. The US is on track to have as many as 1m cross this year, the highest number since the early 2000s, when most of those crossing were single men from Mexico looking for work.
Border stations were not constructed to handle such a large volume of children and families, and they have been pushed to the breaking point.
US Customs and Border Protection encountered 50,036 unaccompanied children during the last budget year, and so far this budget year there have been 35,898 children. Their average length of stay in a government shelter is 66 days, up from 59 during fiscal year 2018 and 40 in 2016′s fiscal year.
Customs and Border Protection on Tuesday encountered its largest group to date: 424 people, comprised mostly of children and families, in rural New Mexico.
Acting homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan said on Tuesday before a House subcommittee that his department was running out of money amid the spike and said officials would be submitting a supplemental request, but didn’t say for how much.
In a letter to House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Russell Vought, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the crisis was overwhelming the ability of the federal government to respond.
“The situation becomes more dire every day,” he wrote.
The official request also said the Department of Health and Human Services, which manages the care of migrant children who arrive alone or who are separated from their parents by DHS under certain circumstances, will exhaust its resources by June. The funding request includes $2.8bn (£2.1bn) to increase shelter capacity to about 23,600 total beds for unaccompanied children.
House Appropriations Committee chairwoman Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, said her team would take a thorough look at the request, but blamed Trump’s administration for contributing to the crisis.
“As a country, we must do more to meet the needs of migrants - especially children and families - who are arriving in increasing numbers,” she said. “However, the Trump administration appears to want much of this $4.5bn (£3.4bn) emergency supplemental request to double down on cruel and ill-conceived policies.”
House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee chairwoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (Democrat-California), also weighed in, saying she would assess the administration’s funding request, while “fighting for policies that will keep our country secure while treating migrants fairly and humanely, and addressing the root causes of migration.”
Another development yesterday was US secretary of state Mike Pompeo saying Washington would be prepared to intervene militarily to resolve the political crisis in Venezuela as President Trump warned Cuba not to stand by Nicolas Maduro.
Russia responded ominously to Pompeo by warning American intervention in Caracas would be met with "the gravest consequences".
Here's Andrew Buncombe's report.
President Trump has invited fellow anti-immigration populist Viktor Orban of Hungary to the White House on 13 May.
The far-right prime minister will jet in to discuss energy security, defence cooperation, bilateral relations and regional security, according to his foreign minister Peter Szijjarto.
Here's Adam Forrest's report.
Back to the Mueller report.
Southern snake oil salesman Lindsey Graham may insist "It's over!" and that there's no need for Robert Mueller himself to appear before his Senate Judiciary Committee but Graham's House counterpart Jerry Nadler disagrees.
The FBI special counsel will at last speak for himself on Capitol Hill later this month at a date TBC.
The spotlight turned on Mueller late on Tuesday night when The Washington Post reported the existence of a letter Mueller had written to Barr on 27 March, expressing his unhappiness at the characterisation of his report - concluding 22 months of exhaustive investigation - arising as a result of Barr's executive summary, published three days earlier.
It threatened to undermine “full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations”, he wrote.
That letter leaked yesterday.
Barr went on to say this about Mueller's feelings in his Senate hearing yesterday:
Which directly contradicts what he told Congress on 10 April:
Here's Chris Stevenson's report on the quiet man everybody wants to hear from.
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace bit the hand that feeds him yesterday, stressing the significance of the Mueller report and the special counsel's 27 March letter to Barr in defiance of attempts by colleagues to brush the significance of the matter under the carpet.
Here's what the network is peddling this morning.
James Comey, the ex-FBI director whose firing by Trump on 9 May 2017 brought this all down upon us, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times yesterday in which he warned that "accomplished people lacking inner strength" like Bill Barr and the outgoing Rod Rosenstein are being co-opted by the president and ending up entangled in his "web of alternative reality".
He praises the principle of men like former secretary of defence James Mattis who resigned in December "to avoid the damage, because Mr Trump eats your soul in small bites".
Trump has resumed his busy schedule of retweeting, going after Barr's critics and Joe Biden once again with this from The New York Times on a possible conflict of interest scandal.
He clearly fears "Sleepy Joe" or wouldn't pursue him so doggedly.
Trump's pick for the board of the Federal Reserve, Stephen Moore, was already in hot water after misogynistic remarks he made about women in basketball re-emerged.
Only attractive women should be allowed to referee games, Moore suggested in the pages of conservative magazine National Review in the 2000s, a story picked up by CNN.
One wonders what the championship-winning players of the Baylor Lady Bears, who reluctantly dined on junk food at the White House earlier this week, might think about that.
Now it appears Moore has been under-paying alimony to his ex-wife Alison after the couple divorced in 2011, according to The Guardian.
The economist owes her tens of thousands of dollars, routinely handing over $12,000 (£9,200) instead of $20,000 (£15,000).
He reportedly continued to do so even after being found to be in contempt of court in Virginia in 2012, at which point he owed $300,000 (£230,000) and was under threat of losing his house in Falls Church.
Richard Blumenthal is resuming his attack on Barr on CNN's New Day.
Here's a word from arguably the real hero of yesterday.
Donald Trump was lured into retweeting this account yesterday with false praise, only for the user to change their handle and profile pic to something less than flattering to the president.
It was some time before his team noticed.
Kamala Harris makes a wonderful face here and wisely sidesteps one of the queasiest analogies ever heard from MSNBC's Chris Matthews on executive privilege.
