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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Vivian Ho in Oakland (now) and Erin Durkin in New York (earlier)

Roger Stone: Mueller notifies judge of Instagram post that could violate gag order – as it happened

Roger Stone leaves federal court in Washington DC on 1 February.
Roger Stone leaves federal court in Washington DC on 1 February. Photograph: Pablo Martínez Monsiváis/AP

Evening summary

  • Roger Stone may have violated his court-issued gag order on Sunday with an Instagram post riffing off of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” But Mueller’s team was already questioning whether he violated his gag order with the re-release of his book with its purported “explosive” new introduction.
  • Attorney General William Barr will not recuse himself from the Mueller investigation.

Newly appointed Attorney General William Barr will not recuse himself from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Barr will decide how much of the report will be made public. House intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff is already prepared to call Mueller to testify before Congress should Barr “try to bury any part of this report.”

Whether Roger Stone had violated his gag order was already a question that was being asked with the re-release of his 2017 book, “The Making of the President 2016.” In recently unsealed court documents obtained by BuzzFeed, his attorneys argued that the book, now titled “The Myth of Russian Collusion,” was written before the Feb. 21 gag order was put in place and therefore exempt.

Senator Rand Paul briefly spoke to reporters on Monday about the resolution blocking Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency.

Roger Stone, the longtime Trump confidante with an obsession with Richard Nixon, may have violated the terms of his expanded gag order with yet another Instagram post this weekend - and Robert Mueller and his team are already all over it.

Updated

Felix Sater, the Russia-born businessman with ties to President Donald Trump, is being sued by Mariah Carey’s former manager for allegedly creating an electronic backdoor to hack into the manager’s electronics and access confidential information about her celebrity clients, the Associated Press is reporting.

Stella Bulochnikov Stolper filed a lawsuit against Sater and his personal assistant, Kalsom Kam, in New York on Friday, seeking at least $1 million in damages and and for the pair to turn over any stolen material.

Stolper and Sater grew up together in Brooklyn and reconnected at a funeral in November 2017, eventually getting so close that she allowed him and Kam, to stay over at her Los Angeles home, according to the lawsuit.

Sater wanted Stolper’s help pitching his life story to Hollywood and took advantage of her “delicate emotional state” at the time and their shared history to spend more time with her, the lawsuit said.

By last October, Sater and Kam had worn out their welcome. Stolper kicked them out after growing frustrated and suspicious of their “increasingly lengthy stays” and “increased meddling in her business, professional and personal affairs,” the lawsuit said.

She discovered the alleged hacking a few weeks later, according to the lawsuit. Sater and Kam allegedly stole contracts and scripts belonging to Stolper’s production company and material from Stolper’s personal files, including her pitches to movie studios and television networks, ideas she hadn’t marketed yet, text messages, family photos and financial records.

Sater, who is due to testify before Congress next week about his work trying to get a Trump skyscraper built in Moscow, did not immediately respond to the Associated Press’ request for comment, while Kam said that he “was completely authorized by Stella to do the work that I was doing.”

Hey everybody, Vivian Ho taking over a little earlier today. Happy Monday.

Summary

  • House Democrats launched an expansive new probe into Donald Trump. The House Judiciary Committee sent letter requesting documents to 81 people connected to the president, including his two sons Donald Jr. and Eric Trump and son in law Jared Kushner. The wide-ranging investigation is looking at alleged obstruction of justice and abuse of power. Separately, three other House committees requested records related to Trump’s conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
  • Fox News had the story of Stormy Daniels alleged affair and hush money payment from Donald Trump before the 2016 election, but killed it, according to a new report in the New Yorker. The reporter working on the story told colleagues it was killed because Fox owner Rupert Murdoch wanted Trump to win the election. The same story revealed that Trump pressured an aid to get the Justice Department to block a merger between Time Warner and AT&T.
  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConell said he expects a resolution to block Donald Trump’s national emergency to pass the Senate, though not with enough votes to override a veto. The White House was reportedly meeting with Senate staffers in an attempt to limit the number of Republicans voting for the resolution.

Updated

Donald Trump says in a tweet that he did not discuss US-South Korean military drills, which he has halted, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi last week.

Democrats will introduce a bill this week to restore net neutrality protections, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday.

Pelosi sent a letter to Democratic House members saying a bill called the Save the Internet Act will be unveiled on Wednesday, and introduced in the Senate as well, the Hill reported.

The Trump administration repealed the net neutrality rules in 2017. The rules required internet providers to treat websites equally, rather than allowing faster performance for sites they favor or that pay for the privilege.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, fresh off surgery for lung cancer, announced two of the Supreme Court’s three opinions on Monday, the Associated Press reports.

She wrote an opinion siding with a railroad in a dispute with a worker over lost wages following an injury, and another resolving a case about when a party can sue for copyright infringement.

Special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York signed off on the sweeping request for documents sent today by the House Judiciary Committee to dozens of Trump associates, Politico reports.

States sue after Trump slashes family planning funding

States are suing to stop Donald Trump’s new rule stripping family planning funding from organizations that perform or give referrals for abortions.

California’s attorney general filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to block the policy, according to the Hill. Oregon and 20 other states announced they would file another suit.

The new rules governs the use of federal family planning money from the Title X program. They require that clinics that receive the money be physically and financially separate from abortion providers, and says they may not give referrals for abortions at other facilities. It would strip millions of dollars from Planned Parenthood and other organizations.

Updated

North Carolina elections officials set a Sept. 10 date for a new House election where a re-do was ordered after accusations of fraud. Party primaries will be on May 14, the Associated Press reports.

The state elections board ordered a new election in North Carolina’s ninth district, the nation’s only unresolved House race. Republican Mark Harris narrowly led Democrat Dan McReady, but it was revealed that an operative working for Harris had illegally collected a number of absentee ballots.

The operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, faces criminal charges.

McReady is running again in the new election, but Harris has opted out.

If no candidate in a party primary earns greater than 30% of the vote, a primary runoff will take place on Sept. 10, and the general will be moved to Nov. 5, according to Politico.

The deadline for candidates to file to get into the race is next Friday, March 15.

Schumer slams Trump over New York bridge block

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer accused Donald Trump of flirting with “economic suicide” for the sake of political leverage by blocking Monday for a Hudson River tunnel project.

“What this is about, we all know it: it’s punishing elected officials who refuse to fall in line behind President Trump,” Schumer said Monday in remarks to the Association for a Better New York, Crain’s reports.

The $30 billion Gateway project seeks to build a rail tunnel under the Hudson River connecting New York and New Jersey, replacing a current tunnel that is in danger of collapse.

Schumer said Trump is “holding up this urgently needed project in a systematic and cynical bid to exert false political leverage over me and my colleagues in the New York and New Jersey delegations.”

Updated

The White House is scrambling to limit the number of Republican senators voting for a resolution to block Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration, the Washington Post reports.

Zach Parkinson, White House deputy director of government communications, met Monday with Senate communications staffers, sources told the Post. He cautioned them against public criticism of the emergency declaration and said that if they’re planning to vote for the resolution, they should contact the White House to get more information about Trump’s reasoning.

Trump declared the emergency so he could use federal money to build a border wall without Congressional approval. A resolution to terminate the state of emergency is pending in the Senate, and majority leader Mitch McConnell said Monday he thinks it will pass, though not with enough votes to override a veto by Trump.

The resolution has already passed the House.

The former lawyer for Stormy Daniels says he will only turn over documents requested by the House Judiciary Committee today if served with a subpoena.

Keith Davidson represented Daniels at the time she made a deal to receive $130,000 in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump.

The House may vote as soon as this week on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism prompted by recent remarks by Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Washington Post reports.

It’s unclear whether the resolution will mention Omar’s comments directly or just generally condemn anti-Semitism.

“I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” the freshman Congresswoman said last week.

She previously apologized for suggesting Israel supporters were motivated by money.

Three more House committee chairs are demanding documents from the Trump administration today.

Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff, Foreign Affairs Committee chair Eliot Engel, and Oversight Committee chair Elijah Cummings have asked for records of Donald Trump’s conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin, according to CNN.

They say they are investigating a “number of issues surrounding these communications.”

One letter asks White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney whether it is true that Trump ordered an interpreter present at his meeting with Putin to destroy notes of the conversation.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee called Donald Trump’s criticism of efforts to combat climate change “moronic.”

Appearing on ABC’s The View, the newly-minted presidential candidate discussed his campaign centered on climate change.

“When Donald Trump said that we’re not going to have toasters and TVs if we have wind power, that’s just simply moronic is the best way I could say it,” he said, referencing Trump’s criticism of the Green New Deal proposal. “He is just such a pessimist and a narrow-minded thinker, he needs to get with the rest of Americans and understand that a country that sent a man to the moon can develop a green energy economy.”

Many Republican criticisms of the Green New Deal are similarly hyperbolic, Inslee said.

“We are not going to eliminate cars. We are not going to eliminate trains ... When we think about our opportunities here, we can’t be so narrow-minded. Look, I grew up in the time of rotary phones and now we got cell phones. We are going to have the greatest transformation of our economy if we unleash this potential,” he said.

Inslee is running on the platform that fighting climate change must be the nation’s number one priority.

“We need a president who will say this: America is going to defeat climate change. It’s our destiny,” he said. “To do this, we have to have a leader who will say fundamentally and unequivocally that this is the number one priority in the United States. It has to be.”

Updated

A top Democrat is demanding an apology from Rep. Ilhan Omar for comments critics called antisemitic.

If that sounds familiar, it’s happened once before - Omar did apologize for comments suggesting political support for Israel was motivated by money.

Now Rep. Eliot Engel is demanding another apology for new Israel comments, the Washington Post reports.

“I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” Omar said last week at a town hall.

Engel, a New York Democrat and chair of the the House Foreign Affairs Committee said the remarks conjured “vile anti-Semitic slur.”

He said it was “unacceptable and deeply offensive to call into question the loyalty of fellow American citizens because of their political views, including support for the US-Israel relationship.”

A letter from 34 former Republican members of Congress to current lawmakers urges them to vote to block Donald Trump’s emergency declaration at the southern border.

John Kasich, also a former Ohio governor and 2016 presidential candidate, and former Senators Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar and Olympia Snowe are among the signers.

“How much are you willing to undermine both the Constitution and the Congress in order to advance a policy outcome that by all other legitimate means is not achievable?” the group wrote.

“The current issue—a wall on our southern border—has gone through the process put in place by the Constitution. It has been proposed by the President, it has been debated by Congress, and the representatives of the people allocated funding at a level deemed appropriate by Congress. We understand that there are many Members of Congress who disagree with the final funding compromise reached by a bipartisan group of legislators. To you, we ask this question: what will you do when a president of another party uses the precedent you are establishing to impose policies to which you are unalterably opposed?”

Congress is considering a resolution that would terminate the state of emergency, which Trump is using to get funding for a border wall without Congressional approval. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell said Monday the resolution is likely to pass the Senate.

“I cooperate all the time with everybody,” Donald Trump said Monday when asked if he would cooperate with a sweeping documents request from the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating obstruction of justice and other potential abuses by Trump and his associates.

The committee requested records Monday from 81 people and organizations connected to Trump.

“You know the beautiful thing — no collusion. It’s all a hoax,” Trump said Monday at the White House, according to a pool report.

Addressing North Dakota State Bison college football players he was hosting at the White House and served a spread of fast food, some of whom chuckled at his remarks, Trump said, “You’re going to learn about that as you grow older..It’s a political hoax. there’s no collusion...Folks go and eat up.”

Updated

Matthew Whitaker, the former acting attorney general for Donald Trump, has left the Justice Department, NBC News reports.

William Barr has now been confirmed by the Senate as permanent Attorney General. Whitaker served in the post from the forced resignation of Jeff Sessions until Barr was confirmed.

Whitaker had been serving as a senior counselor at the Justice Department since Barr was sworn in, but left the job Saturday, according to NBC.

The Super PAC supporting Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s presidential bid has spent $250,000 on video production and digital ads, according to the research director for California Target Book.

It’s the first expenditure for the group, called Act Now on Climate, and the first ad buy by a candidate’s super PAC in the 2020 presidential primary.

As he offered up a spread of fast food to a North Dakota college, Donald Trump said that he could have served them chef-prepared food, but, “I know you people.”

The fare was similar to a fast food banquet Trump served to the Clemson Tigers during the government shutdown.

“We like American companies,” Trump said Monday, according to a pool report.

The team’s quarterback gave him a team jersey with the number 45, recognizing Trump’s spot as the 45th US president.

Donald Trump donated $6,000 to Kamala Harris’s campaigns for California attorney general in 2011 and 2013, the Sacramento Bee reports.

His daughter Ivanka Trump gave her $2,000 in 2014.

Harris is now a senator and Democratic presidential candidate hoping to win the nomination to take on Trump in 2020.

A spokesman told the Bee that Harris donated the $6,000 Donald Trump gave her to a non-profit that advocates for Central Americans.

Donald Trump is again serving a spread of fast food as he welcomes the North Dakota State University Bison to the White House.

A spread of french fries, chic-fil-a sandwiches and Big Macs was laid out in the State Dining Room, according to a pool report.

Trump previously served a fast food spread to the national champion Clemson football team, saying it was because of the government shutdown, which has since ended. Perhaps it was so well received he decided to repeat the trick.

The North Dakota team are the 2018 FCS Division I Football National Champions.

Senator Bernie Sanders said Monday that “too many lives are being destroyed” by laws criminalizing marijuana.

“Too many lives are being destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of people get criminal records. You know why? Because they have smoked marijuana,” the 2020 presidential candidate said on the “Breakfast Club” radio show, Politico reported.

Sanders said he had used marijuana a few times but was never much of a fan. “Didn’t do a whole lot for me,” he said. “My recollection is I nearly coughed my brains out, so it’s not my cup of tea.”

The Democratic National Committee has made three new hires for top staff roles going into the 2020 presidential race, Politico reports.

Muthoni Wambu Kraal, who was vice president at Emily’s List, will be the the DNC’s national political and organizing director. Patrick Stevenson will be the mobilization director. And Brandon Gassaway will be national press secretary.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand predicted Monday that a bill to fund payments to sick 9/11 first responders would pass the Senate unanimously.

The fund that compensates people suffering from cancer and other diseases because of their exposure to Ground Zero toxins has cut payments in half or more because it is running out of money. A bill to reverse those cuts and permanently fund the compensation program has been introduced in Congress.

“I passed the 9/11 health bill unanimously twice. I’m going to pass it unanimously again,” Gillibrand said Monday on CBS This Morning, noting the bill has Republican co-sponsors including Cory Gardner and Tom Cotton.

Gillibrand, who is running for president, made the comments in the context of touting her ability to reach across the aisle to get legislation passed. She predicted some Republicans would also be willing to suppose the Green New Deal, beloved by progressives.

“It is infrastructure, which is widely bipartisan - more money for mass transit, more money for electric grids, more money for rural water supplies, roads, bridges, everything. The second piece of the Green New Deal is all about jobs. It’s all about training people to do wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, biofuels,” Gillibrand said.

“And the third part of the Green New Deal is clean air and clean water, and I can’t think of a more universal issue.”

Here’s the full list of people receiving document requests from the House Judiciary Committee, via Politico.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler accused Rep. Jim Jordan of anti-Semitism for his criticism of Nadler’s document request to the White House.

“C’mon @RepJerryNadler—at least pretend to be serious about fact finding. Nadler feeling the heat big time. Jumps to Tom $teyer’s conclusion—impeaching our President—before first document request,” Jordan, an Ohio Republican, wrote in a tweet. “What a Kangaroo court.”

Nadler said he believes it is “very clear” that Donald Trump obstructed justice, but said he has not reached any conclusions about whether Trump should face impeachment.

“To be clear, this tweet counts both as inane AND anti-Semitic,” he said in a tweet in response to Jordan.

The people targeted by a sweeping document request by House Democrats include the president’s sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, WikiLeaks, White House aide and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former White House counsel Doug McGahn, Reuters reports.

The House Judiciary Committee requested documents Monday from 81 government agencies, entities and individuals as part of an expanding investigation into alleged obstruction of justice and other abuses by Donald Trump.

The White House has said it received the request and will review it.

“We have seen the damage done to our democratic institutions in the two years that the Congress refused to conduct responsible oversight. Congress must provide a check on abuses of power,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in a statement, according to to Reuters.

Updated

Senate will pass resolution to block Trump’s emergency declaration, McConnell says

The Republican-controlled Senate is expected to pass a resolution blocking Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the US-Mexico border, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday.

But McConnell said he did not think it would pass with enough votes to override a veto.

“I think what is clear in the Senate is that there will be enough votes to pass the resolution of disapproval, which will then be vetoed by the president and then in all likelihood the veto will be upheld in the House,” McConnell told reporters in Kentucky Monday, according to the Hill.

Trump declared the national emergency in order to get money to build a border wall without Congressional approval.

Republican Senators Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Thom Tillis have said they will vote for the resolution, which would terminate the emergency declaration.

The Senate will vote on the resolution before lawmakers leave town on March 15, the Hill reported.

Updated

The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up a case on whether taxpayer funds can be used for historic preservation at churches, CNN reports.

The decision lets stand a ruling by the New Jersey Supreme Court that the state could legally deny the funds to religious establishments.

But three conservative justices, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch wrote in a separate opinion that while they agree the court should not take up this particular case, they believe that “barring religious organizations because they are religious from a general historic preservation grants program is pure discrimination against religion.”

“At some point, this court will need to decide whether governments that distribute historic preservation funds may deny funds to religious organizations simply because the organizations are religious,” Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion, which was joined by the other two justices.

House Democrats send requests for documents to more than 60 Trump associates

The White House said Monday its lawyers would review the sweeping request for documents from the House Judiciary Committee.

“The House Judiciary Committee’s letter has been received by the White House. The Counsel’s Office and relevant White House officials will review it and respond at the appropriate time,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.

House Judiciary Committee chair Jerrold Nadler requested documents Monday from more than 60 people from Trump’s administration, family and business, saying it was “very clear” that Donald Trump has obstructed justice.

The New York Democrat said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the request for information would be going out to the White House, the justice department and other agencies and individuals.

“We will do everything we can,” he said, “to get whatever evidence … to begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power.”

Updated

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Monday the White House’s secrecy about security clearances for Jared Kushner is “not defensible.”

The New York Times reported last week that Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant security clearance to Kushner, his son in law and senior adviser, overruling concerns from intelligence officials.

Christie said on MSNBC Monday that while the president has legal authority to give security clearance to whoever he wants, the lack of transparency is alarming.

“Why not just tell the truth about it? Who not just say I did it?” he said. “Just say, ‘Listen, my father thinks I’m trustworthy, my husband’s trustworthy, he’s made the decision that we should have access to this, that he needs us to consult with him on these issues of foreign policy and intelligence.”

“You can’t defend that. Now some people try to defend that. I won’t try to defend it. It’s not defensible. You need to tell the American people the truth about what happened here,” Christie said.

The Washington Post tallies 9,014 false or misleading claims that Donald Trump has made to date since taking office.

His speech Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference alone included more than 100 dubious statements.

Trump is averaging nearly 22 false or misleading claims a day in 2019, picking up the pace since 2018, when it was 16.5 a day, and 2017, when it was 5.9.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has relied heavily on car services, even though her campaign headquarters was a one-minute walk from the subway, the New York Post reported over the weekend.

The New York Democrat is mocking the report with a tweet this morning.

Donald Trump tweets a promise of “A plus treatment” for people affected by deadly tornadoes in Alabama, which killed at least 23 people.

Some cliques have formed among the freshman class in the new Congress, Politico reports.

There’s the group of CIA agents, Marine Corps vets and a Navy helicopter pilot who text everyday in a group chat and sit together on the House floor.

“It is like high school — I just hope I’m better at it,” Rep. Max Rose, an Afghanistan vet and newly elected Democrat from Staten Island, told Politico.

Then there’s the “squad” of progressive women of color, which includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley.

Another clique is the the “Big Six,” the freshmen designated as liaisons to leadership.

A campaign finance group is asking Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to disavow a super PAC supporting his presidential bid, Politico reports.

The super PAC, Act Now on Climate, was formed by Inslee allies to support his presidential bid, which is focusing on fighting climate change.

The group End Citizens United sent Inslee a letter asking him to publicly disavow the PAC, according to Politico.

“Even worse than super PACs themselves are single-candidate super PACs,” they wrote. “Often, politicians exploit loopholes in the law to find ways to coordinate with them, including sending their top political operatives to run these super PACs.”

George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, says it would “unquestionably be grounds for impeachment” if Donald Trump ordered an aide to block the merger of Time Warner and AT&T as retaliation against CNN.

He’s reacting to a New Yorker story which reported Monday morning that Trump pressured Gary Cohn, then the director of the National Economic Council, to get the Justice Department to file a lawsuit to block the merger.

Conway, a lawyer in Washington, has become known for frequent criticism of the Trump administration, despite his wife’s prominent role at the White House.

Democrats running for president are not all that interested in seeking advice from former President Bill Clinton, the Associated Press reports.

None of the early front runners have formally met with Clinton, although he has spoken to Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, former Housing secretary Julian Castro and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney.

Clinton was a popular two-term Democratic president, but many in the party have come to view the sex scandals that plagued his administration, including an affair with a White House intern that led to his impeachment, in a more critical light. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a presidential candidate, has said he should have resigned.

House Democrats expand Russia probe

Declaring it’s “very clear” President Donald Trump obstructed justice, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, says the panel is requesting documents Monday from more than 60 people from Trump’s administration, family and business as part of a rapidly expanding Russia investigation, the Associated Press reports:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the House Judiciary Committee wants to review documents from the Justice Department, the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg. Former White House chief of staff John Kelly and former White House counsel Don McGahn also are likely targets, he said.

“We are going to initiate investigations into abuses of power, into corruption and into obstruction of justice,” Nadler said. “We will do everything we can to get that evidence.”

Asked if he believed Trump obstructed justice, Nadler said, “Yes, I do.”

Nadler isn’t calling the inquiry an impeachment investigation but said House Democrats, now in the majority, are simply doing “our job to protect the rule of law” after Republicans during the first two years of Trump’s term were “shielding the president from any proper accountability.”

“We’re far from making decisions” about impeachment, he said.

Updated

A New Yorker story out this morning details the cozy relationship between Fox News and Donald Trump’s White House.

Among the revelations:

  • Trump has granted 44 interviews to Fox News, compared to 10 to the other three major TV networks combined.
  • Fox host Sean Hannity has told colleagues that he speaks to the President virtually every night, after his show ends, at 10 p.m.
  • Trump has told confidants that he has ranked the loyalty of many reporters, on a scale of 1 to 10. Bret Baier, Fox News’ chief political anchor, is a 6; Hannity a solid 10. Steve Doocy, the co-host of “Fox & Friends,” is so adoring that Trump gives him a 12.
  • A Fox News reporter confirmed Trump’s hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in the fall of 2016, before the presidential election. The network killed the story. The reporter told colleagues that she was told, “Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go.”
  • Trump ordered Gary Cohn, then the director of the National Economic Council, to pressure the Justice Department to intervene to stop AT&T from buying Time Warner, which owns CNN. Trump reportedly told his chief of staff: “I’ve been telling Cohn to get this lawsuit filed and nothing’s happened! I’ve mentioned it fifty times. And nothing’s happened. I want to make sure it’s filed. I want that deal blocked!”

Updated

Hickenlooper announces bid for president

Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper jumped into the race for president this morning.

In a kickoff video, the Democrat touts his accomplishments in two terms as governor, including an improving economy and requiring universal background checks to buy guns.

“We’re facing a crisis that threatens everything we stand for,” he said. “We need dreamers in Washington, but we also need to get things done.”

He plans a kickoff rally at Denver’s Civic Center Park on Thursday.

Meanwhile, former Attorney General Eric Holder announced this morning that he will NOT run for president.

In a Washington Post op-ed, the attorney general under President Barack Obama said he would continue working on a project to combat gerrymandering in the drawing of political district lines.

“With the depth and diversity of the current field of candidates (and those who may still join), we will have a host of good options,” he wrote of the crowded 2020 Democratic primary, arguing the next president must be committed to combating climate change, immigration reform, criminal justice reform, healing the nation’s divisions, and protecting voting rights.

Updated

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