California senator Kamala Harris, one of the leading Democratic candidates to challenge the president in 2020, has said the Justice Department would have little choice but to pursue criminal obstruction charges against Donald Trump if she were elected to the Oval Office.
President Trump has meanwhile lashed out on Twitter suggesting reports about internal polling indicating he might lose next year’s race are “Fake numbers” and the work of the “Fake (Corrupt) News Media”.
In Washington, the House Intelligence Committee is staging a hearing on lessons learned from the Mueller report while the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, is due to appear before the equivalent Senate committee behind closed doors.
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Donald Trump Jr gave the following statement to reporters as he was departing from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s closed door hearing on Wednesday:
New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tore apart Donald Trump’s decision to assert executive privilege over the controversial Census documents –
Here’s more on Donald Trump’s decision to assert executive privilege over those controversial Census documents –
Democrat Elijah Cummings described Donald Trump’s decision to invoke executive privilege over controversial Census documents as “another example of the administration’s blanket defiance of Congress” –
Here’s Jon Sharman with more on that fiery quote about prosecuting Trump by 2020 hopeful Kamala Harris:
As Bioreports’s Manu Raju notes, the Justice Department’s claims that the census documents “are protected from disclosure by the deliberative process” will likely lead to yet another court battle:
Donald Trump has asserted executive privilege over documents related to his administration’s decision to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census:
Kamala Harris, one of the leading Democrats in the 2020 primaries, has announced her Justice Department would have “no choice” but to prosecute Donald Trump over his alleged obstruction of justice if she were elected.
“I mean look, people might, you know, question why I became a prosecutor. Well, I’ll tell you one of the reasons — I believe there should be accountability,” the California Democrat and former top prosecutor said on Wednesday in an episode of NPR Politics Podcast.
She added, “Everyone should be held accountable, and the president is not above the law.”
Donald Trump Jr quipped to reporters that he had “nothing to correct” before heading into a closed door testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee:
Adam Schiff’s hearing is underway.
Veteran chat show host David Letterman has branded Trump “psychotic” and said he would like give him a dressing down on his new Netflix show.
Letterman has interviewed the president more than 30 times over the course of their long respective careers, reflecting: “I had no sense that he was the soulless bastard that he’s turned into.”
“Everybody says, ‘Oh, wouldn’t you like to talk to Donald Trump [today]?’ And I would. I would just like to say, ‘Don, it’s Dave. Remember me? I want to talk to the real Donald Trump.’ Because I now don’t know which is the real Donald Trump, and if the Donald Trump that I was talking to [back then] was the real Donald Trump.”
Here’s Jacob Stolworthy’s report.
For Indy Voices, Molly Jong-Fast asks whether Joe Biden is playing “16-dimensional chess” or simply screwing up by insisting bipartisanship is alive and well in the age of Trump.
Here’s Tom Embury-Dennis on the president’s extraordinary remarks about IT in the Midwest during his speech yesterday.
Yesterday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that she does not believe that President Trump is trailing former vice president Biden in a hypothetical 2020 race as she defended her boss.
“I think the polling got it completely wrong in 2016, I don’t think it’s right now,” Ms Sanders told reporters in what has become a common refrain for the Trump camp.
“I’m not worried about polling,” she said after being pressed about Trump internal polling. “The president has an incredible record, he’s had tremendous success and we feel very comfortable about where we are as an administration.”
Here is our full story, from Chris Riotta, on the latest Trump tweets:
One of those Democrat candidates, Kamala Harris has told NPR this morning that if she was elected president, the Department of Justice would have little choice but to pursue criminal obstruction of justice charges against the former President Trump.
“I believe that they would have no choice and that they should, yes,” the California senator told the NPR Politics Podcast, pointing to the 10 instances of possible obstruction in Robert Mueller’s Russia report
“There has to be accountability,” Ms Harris added. “I mean look, people might, you know, question why I became a prosecutor. Well, I’ll tell you one of the reasons — I believe there should be accountability. Everyone should be held accountable, and the president is not above the law.”
The latest tweets also appear after a number of stories this morning reporting a new national Quinnipiac University poll which looks at potential head-to-head match-ups in a general election.
Mr Trump gets beaten by six of the leading Democrats he could face. Mr Biden is obviously the front-runner at the moment so he has the biggest lead.
Joe Biden 53%, Trump 40%
Bernie Sanders 51%, Trump 42%
Kamala Harris 49%, Trump 41%
Elizabeth Warren 49%, Trump 42%
Peter Buttigieg 47%, Trump 42%
Cory Booker 47%, Trump 42%
The president is now tweeting about the “fake news” of polling data. He is repeating his false claim that polls that represent him poorly are a form of “suppression” of his support.
It follows a story from the New York Times that Mr Trump had asked aides “to deny that his internal polling showed him trailing [Joe] Biden” in a number of states.
As you can, Mr Trump denies that:
Donald Trump is up and about and is tweeting about an event in Orlando on 18 June.
He claims that there have been 74,000 requests for tickets to a 20,000-capacity arena.
It is there that the president is expected to formally launch his re-election campaign – which might account for some of the apparent demand
“Talk about living in the past. The Democrats want to talk about Watergate? I mean this happened before I was born! This is a total waste of time.”
While this remark in response to Richard Nixon’s ex-counsel John Dean‘s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on Monday may sound like it came from Don Jr, it was actually made by Missouri senator Josh Hawley, the youngest man in the Senate at 39.
Hawley voiced the anger of many Republicans frustrated by the opposition’s flirtation with impeachment proceedings and attempts to discredit the president by likening the Mueller investigation to the scandal that brought down “Tricky Dick” in 1974.
Dean obliged in his testimony, saying the FBI special counsel had gifted Trump’s enemies with their own “Watergate road map”.
Here’s Chris Riotta’s report.
