Donald Trump has been accused of endangering America’s Kurdish allies in Syria by his own former envoy, an ex-ambassador and a key DC attack dog after announcing a plan to withdraw US troops from the country’s northern border, therein abandoning the Syrian Democratic Forces to an onslaught from the Turkish military.
The president has meanwhile been ordered to turn over eight years of tax returns to New York prosecutors after a US district judge ruled his financial affairs are not immune from investigation in spite of his high office.
As the Ukraine scandal rumbles on, Mr Trump has conceded impeachment is a “bad thing to have on your resume” during a phone call with House Republicans, a rare confession that he fears for his legacy as a second whistleblower emerges to support the first’s account of the damning 25 July call with Volodymyr Zelensky during which the president appeared to push for the Eastern European leader to investigate allegations against his 2020 rival Joe Biden.
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The judge presiding over the president's tax return case called Donald Trump’s claim of broad immunity “extraordinary” and “an overreach of executive power.”
“As the court reads it, presidential immunity would stretch to cover every phase of criminal proceedings, including investigations, grand jury proceedings and subpoenas, indictment, prosecution, arrest, trial, conviction, and incarceration,” Marrero wrote. “That constitutional protection presumably would encompass any conduct, at any time, in any forum, whether federal or state, and whether the President acted alone or in concert with other individuals.”
The judge said he couldn’t accept that legal view, “especially in the light of the fundamental concerns over excessive arrogation of power” that led the founding fathers to create a balance of power among the three branches of government.
In a statement, Mr Trump's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow said only that he was pleased by the appeals court stay.
AP
Donald Trump‘s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani lashed out at the “idiot press” during his latest TV interview about the impeachment inquiry.
The former mayor of New York even turned on Fox News host Howard Kurtz for daring to contradict his allegations about the US president’s 2020 main rival Joe Biden.
“Shhhh, shhhh, wait, before you interrupt me,” he said. “I know you want to defend it so bad, you do, it’s pathetic, its pathetic.
“You contradict me immediately. Biden cronies and Democratic lapdogs get 15 minutes to answer a question, with me they contradict me before I get one minute into the sentence.”
At one point Mr Kurtz had to make a frenzied “time out” gesture to get Mr Guiliani to stop talking so they could cut away for an advertising break.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who has closely aligned himself with Donald Trump on foreign policy issues, blasted the president on Twitter over his decision pull the US military out of Syria.
The senator slammed Mr Trump over the move, saying it would lead to the revival of the Islamic State, hamper US-Turkish relations and serve as “a stain” on America’s honour.
In a follow up tweet shortly after, Mr Graham said he would “introduce bipartisan sanctions against Turkey if they invade Syria” and said he would also “call for their suspension from NATO if they attack Kurdish forces who assisted the US in the destruction of the ISIS Caliphate”.
“I don’t know all the details regarding President Trump’s decision in northern Syria,” Mr Graham initially wrote after news broke of the president's decision to remove troops from northeast Syria. “If press reports are accurate this is a disaster in the making.”
He added: “Also, if this plan goes forward will introduce Senate resolution opposing and asking for reversal of this decision.”
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Donald Trump has threatened to "totally destroy and obliterate" Turkey's economy if the country does anything that he does not like in Syria, amid criticism from Republicans over new US policy allowing the Turkish military to take over in the war-torn country.
The statement follows after Mr Trump announced he had decided to pull back US troops from northern Syria, allowing Turkey to go through with a military offensive in the region, a move that even strong backers of the president have blasted as "shortsighted and irresponsible". The decision appears to leave US-backed Kurdish forces there in jeopardy, which Turkey has labelled as a terrorist organisation.
In apparent response to that criticism, Mr Trump pledged to destroy Turkey's economy if it steps over the line, and cited what he called his "great and unmatched wisdom" for knowing just where that line is.
"As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I've done before!)," Mr Trump wrote on Twitter Monday morning.
