January 6 takeaways: Donald Trump ‘could not be moved’ amid violence
The House January 6 committee is closing out its set of summer hearings with its most detailed focus yet on the investigation’s main target: former President Donald Trump. The panel is examining Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, as hundreds of his supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol, guiding viewers minute-by-minute through the deadly afternoon to show how long it took for the former president to call off the rioters. The panel is focusing on 187 minutes that day, between the end of Trump’s speech calling for supporters to march to the Capitol at 1:10 p.m. and a video he released at 4:17 p.m. telling the rioters they were “very special” but they had to go home. Trump was “the only person in the world who could call off the mob,” but he refused to do so for several hours, said the committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, who was participating in the hearing remotely due to a COVID-19 diagnosis. “He could not be moved.” THE WHITE HOUSE DINING ROOM The panel emphasized where Trump was as the violence unfolded — in a White House dining room, sitting at the head of the table, watching the violent breach of the Capitol on Fox News. He retreated to the dining room at 1:25 p.m., according to Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., one of two members who led the hearing. That was after some rioters had already breached barriers around the Capitol — and after Trump had been told about the violence within 15 minutes of returning to the White House. Fox News was showing live shots of the rioters pushing past police, Luria said, showing excerpts of the coverage. In video testimony played at the hearing, former White House aides talked about their frantic efforts to get the president to tell his supporters to turn around. Pat Cipollone, Trump’s top White House lawyer, told the panel that multiple aides — including Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump — advised the president to say something. “People need to be told” to leave, Cipollone recalled telling people, urging Trump to make a public announcement. Trump “could not be moved,” Thompson said, “to rise from his dining room table and walk the few steps down the White House hallway into the press briefing room where cameras were anxiously and desperately waiting to carry his message to the armed and violent mob savagely beating and killing law enforcement officers.” NO CALLS FOR HELP As he sat in the White House, Trump made no efforts to call for increased law enforcement assistance at the Capitol, the committee said. Witnesses confirmed that Trump did not call the defense secretary, the homeland security secretary, or the attorney general. The committee played audio of Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reacting with surprise to the former president’s reaction to the attack. “You’re the commander-in-chief. You’ve got an assault going on on the Capitol of the United States of America. And there’s Nothing? No call? Nothing Zero?” Milley said. As Trump declined to call for help, Vice President Mike Pence was hiding in the Capitol, just feet away from rioters who were about to breach the Senate chamber. The committee played audio from an unidentified White House security official who said Pence’s Secret Service agents “started to fear for their own lives” at the Capitol and called family members in case they didn’t survive. Shortly afterward, at 2:24 p.m., Trump tweeted that Pence didn’t have the “courage” to block or delay the election results as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory. FORMER WHITE HOUSE AIDES Matt Pottinger, who was Trump’s deputy national security adviser at the time, and Sarah Matthews, then the deputy press secretary, testified at the hearing. Both resigned from their White House jobs immediately after the insurrection. Both Pottinger and Matthews told the committee of their disgust at Trump’s tweet about Pence. Pottinger said he was “disturbed and worried to see that the president was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty,” which he said was “the opposite of what we needed at that moment.” “That was the moment I decided I was going to resign,” Pottinger said. Matthews said the tweet was “essentially him giving the green light to those people,” and said Trump’s supporters “truly latch on to every word and every tweet.” ‘WE HAVE CONSIDERABLY MORE TO DO’ At the beginning of the hearing, Thompson and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s Republican vice chair, announced that the panel would “reconvene” in September to continue laying out their findings. “Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney said of the committee’s probe. “We have considerably more to do. We have far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather.” Republished with the permission of The Associated Press.
Ivana Trump, first wife of former president Donald Trump, dies at 73
Ivana Trump, a skier-turned-businesswoman who formed half of a publicity power couple in the 1980s as the first wife of former President Donald Trump and mother of his oldest children, has died in New York City, her family announced Thursday. She was 73. The former president posted on his social media app that she died at her Manhattan home. “She was a wonderful, beautiful, and amazing woman, who led a great and inspirational life,” he wrote on Truth Social. The couple shared three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. “She was so proud of them, as we were all so proud of her,” he wrote. “Rest In Peace, Ivana!” Two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that police are investigating whether Ivana Trump fell down the stairs and believe her death was accidental. Republished with the permission of The Associated Press.
January 6 committee requests interview with Ivanka Trump
The House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection is asking Ivanka Trump, daughter of former President Donald Trump, to voluntarily cooperate as lawmakers make their first public attempt to arrange an interview with a Trump family member. The committee sent a letter Thursday requesting a meeting in February with Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser to her father. In the letter, the committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Ivanka Trump was in direct contact with her father during key moments on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to halt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s presidential win. The riot followed a rally near the White House where Donald Trump had urged his supporters to “fight like hell” as Congress convened to certify the 2020 election results. The committee says it wants to discuss what Ivanka Trump knew about her father’s efforts, including a telephone call they say she witnessed, to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject those results, as well as concerns she may have heard from Pence’s staff, members of Congress and the White House counsel’s office about those efforts. “Ivanka Trump just learned that the January 6 Committee issued a public letter asking her to appear,” her spokesperson said. “As the Committee already knows, Ivanka did not speak at the January 6 rally.” The committee cited testimony that Ivanka Trump implored her father to quell the violence by his supporters, and investigators want to ask about her actions while the insurrection was underway. “Testimony obtained by the Committee indicates that members of the White House staff requested your assistance on multiple occasions to intervene in an attempt to persuade President Trump to address the ongoing lawlessness and violence on Capitol Hill,” Thompson wrote. The letter is the committee’s first attempt to seek information from inside the Trump family. Earlier this week, it issued subpoenas to lawyer Rudy Giuliani and other members of Trump’s legal team who filed meritless court challenges to the election that fueled the lie that the race had been stolen from Trump. The committee is narrowing in on three requests to Ivanka Trump, starting with a conversation alleged to have taken place between Donald Trump and Pence on the morning of the attack. The committee said Keith Kellogg, who was Pence’s national security adviser, was also in the room and testified to investigators that Trump questioned whether Pence had the courage to delay the congressional counting of the electoral votes. The Constitution makes clear that a vice president’s role is largely ceremonial in the certification process, and Pence had issued a statement before the congressional session that laid out his conclusion that a vice president could not claim “unilateral authority” to reject states’ electoral votes. “You were present in the Oval Office and observed at least one side of that telephone conversation,” the letter to Ivanka Trump said, adding that the committee “wishes to discuss the part of the conversation you observed” between the then-president and Pence. The letter also mentioned a message, in the days before the scheduled vote certification on January 6, 2021, between an unidentified member of the House Freedom Caucus to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows with an explicit warning: “If POTUS allows this to occur … we’re driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic.” POTUS is an abbreviation for President of the United States. The other requests in the letter to Ivanka Trump concern conversations after Donald Trump’s tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” The committee said White House staff and even members of Congress requested Ivanka Trump’s help in trying to convince her father that he should address the violence and tell rioters to go home. “We are particularly interested in this question: Why didn’t White House staff simply ask the President to walk to the briefing room and appear on live television — to ask the crowd to leave the capital?” Besides the subpoenas issued this week, the committee had a victory Wednesday when the Supreme Court rejected a bid by Trump to block the release of White House records sought by lawmakers. The National Archives began to turn over the hundreds of pages of records to the nine-member committee almost immediately. They include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts, and handwritten notes dealing with January 6 from the Meadows’ files. The committee’s investigation has touched nearly every corner of Trump’s orbit in the nearly seven months since it was created, from strategist Steve Bannon to media companies such as Twitter, Meta, and Reddit. The committee says it has interviewed nearly 400 people and issued dozens of subpoenas as it prepares a report set for release before the November elections. Still, the committee has run into roadblocks from some of Trump’s allies, including Bannon and Meadows, who have refused to fully cooperate. Their resistance has led the committee to file charges of contempt of Congress. The seven Democrats and two Republicans on the committee have also faced defiance from fellow lawmakers. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and GOP Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Jim Jordan of Ohio have denied the committee’s requests for voluntary cooperation. While the committee has considered subpoenaing fellow lawmakers, that would be an extraordinary move and could run up against legal and political challenges. The committee says the extraordinary trove of material it has collected — 35,000 pages of records so far, including texts, emails, and phone records from people close to Trump — is fleshing out critical details of the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries. The next phase of the investigation will include a series of public hearings in the coming months. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Donald Trump’s silent public outing belies White House in tumult
Donald Trump spent 10 minutes in public Wednesday honoring America’s war veterans — a veneer of normalcy for a White House that’s frozen by a defeated president mulling his options, mostly forgoing the mechanics of governing and blocking his inevitable successor. Trump’s appearance at the annual Veterans Day commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery was his first public outing for official business in more than a week. He’s spent the past few days in private tweeting angry, unsupported claims of voter fraud. The president has made no comments in person since Democrat Joe Biden clinched the 270 electoral votes on Saturday needed to win the presidency. All the while, his aides grow more certain that legal challenges won’t change the outcome of the election, according to seven campaign and White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the thinking of the president and others in the executive mansion. Before setting off for the solemn commemoration at Arlington, Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday to slam “fake pollsters” and grouse that a Republican city commissioner who defended the vote tabulation in Philadelphia wasn’t a true Republican. He also sought to draw attention to a Pennsylvania poll worker who recanted allegations of voter fraud on Tuesday before reasserting his allegations on Wednesday. Trump later posted a debunked video that had purported to show poll workers collecting ballots too late. “You are looking at BALLOTS! Is this what our Country has come to?” Trump fumed. Although his official schedule has been bare of public events, Trump has made several personnel moves — firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper and installing three staunch loyalists in top defense jobs. His pick as acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, was among the Pentagon brass that joined him at Arlington. Some supporters pushed back against the notion that Trump is shirking his presidential duties. “The president is out there as much as he’s ever been on Twitter, and the White House team are moving ahead with budget and staffing priorities,” said Dan Eberhart, a prominent Republican donor and Trump backer. He added, “The president is understandably focused on the ballot counting, but at some point soon he needs to turn his attention back to the lame-duck session and putting a capstone on his first four years.” However, few senior staffers have been around the president in recent days, with many either in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19 or in insolation after a confirmed exposure or simply not wanting to be near the Oval Office, according to White House staffers and campaign officials. Staff working from the White House thinned out after chief of staff Mark Meadows confirmed last week that he had tested positive for the virus. Some staffers still believe the election outcome can change with litigation and recounts. But there is a growing recognition among most that the election is lost and the building will be vacated by Jan. 20. Trump’s moods have vacillated over recent days. At times, he has seethed with anger, fuming that he lost to a candidate he doesn’t respect and believing that the media –- including what he views as typically friendly Fox News — worked against him. In addition to misdoings with mail-in ballots. But aides say he has been calmer than his tweets suggest, showing greater understanding of his predicament and believing that he needs to keep fighting almost as performance, as a show to the 70 million people who voted for him that he is still battling. In recent days, some aides, including his daughter Ivanka Trump, have started to talk to him about an endgame, questioning how much longer he wants to fight. Outside the White House, one prominent former ally turned Trump critic warned that the president was doing potentially irreparable damage to the Republican Party. “The real issue is the grievous harm he is causing to public trust in America’s constitutional system,” former Trump national security adviser John Bolton wrote in a Washington Post op-ed Wednesday. “Trump’s time is running out, even as his rhetoric continues escalating.” But no one in his inner circle — West Wing staff or Cabinet — is forcefully pushing him to stop. Though he has been in the Oval Office late two nights this week, the president has done little in the way of governing and has instead been working the phones. He has called friendly governors — in red states like Arizona, Texas, and Florida — and influential confidants in the conservative media, like Sean Hannity. But he has not been as responsive to Republican lawmakers as before the election. Always an obsessive cable news viewer, he has been watching even more TV than usual in recent weeks, often from his private dining room just off the Oval Office. Trump’s approach to two crucial Senate run-off elections in Georgia remains an open question: He has not yet signaled if he will campaign there, and aides have started to worry that the extended legal battle could sap support for the GOP candidates. Trump has also begun talking about his own future upon leaving office. He has mused about declaring he will run again in 2024, and aides believe that he will at least openly flirt with the idea to enhance his relevance and raise interest in whatever money-making efforts he pursues. While he ponders his options, his involvement in the day-to-day governing of the nation has nearly stopped: According to his schedule, he has not attended an intelligence briefing in weeks, and the White House has done little of late to manage the pandemic that has surged to record highs in many states. The president’s resistance to acknowledging the outcome of the race has stalled the transition process. The head of the General Services Administration, a Trump appointee, has held off on certifying Biden as the winner of the election. The certification — known as ascertainment — would free money for the transition and clear the way for Biden’s team to begin placing transition personnel at federal agencies. White House spokesman Judd Deere said he
Donald Trump, on huge White House stage, decrying Joe Biden, radicals
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The Latest: House passes rules package for impeachment probe
The Latest on President Donald Trump and the House impeachment resolution (all times local): 9:25 p.m. Democrats have swept a rules package for their impeachment probe of President Donald Trump through a divided House, as the chamber’s first vote on the investigation highlighted the partisan breach the issue has only deepened. By 232-196, lawmakers have approved the procedures they’ll follow as weeks of closed-door interviews with witnesses evolve into public committee hearings and — almost certainly — votes on whether the House should recommend Trump’s removal. All voting Republicans opposed the package. Every voting Democrat but two supported it.Trump tweeted, “Now is the time for Republicans to stand together and defend the leader of their party against these smears.” 12:10 p.m. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says Democrats are abusing their power and discrediting democracy by “trying to impeach the president because they are scared they can’t defeat him at the ballot box.” The California Republican is speaking out against a package of impeachment rules approved Thursday. McCarthy says that ever since Donald Trump’s election, Democrats have waged a “permanent campaign to undermine his legitimacy. They have predetermined the president’s guilt. They have never accepted the voters’ choice to make him president. So, for 37 days and counting, they have run an unprecedented, undemocratic and unfair investigation. This resolution only makes it worse.” McCarthy says Democrats are “using secret interviews and selective leaks” to portray Trump’s legitimate actions as an impeachable offense. He is referring to the closed-door hearings in the House as Democrats gather evidence in the impeachment inquiry. 12:05 p.m. Ivanka Trump is quoting a letter from Thomas Jefferson to his daughter following the House near party-line vote approving rules for its impeachment inquiry into her father. Ivanka Trump tweets “Some things never change, dad!” after quoting a portion of the Jefferson letter that talks about being surrounded by enemies and spies “catching and perverting every word that falls from my lips or flows from my pen, and inventing where facts fail them.” Ivanka Trump has generally avoided weighing in on the impeachment probe. The probe is focused on the president’s effort to have Ukraine investigate Democrats and a potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, while the administration was withholding military aid to the Eastern European ally. It’s illegal to seek or receive foreign help in U.S. elections. Trump says he did nothing wrong. 11:40 a.m. The White House says the House vote approving rules for its impeachment inquiry has enshrined “unacceptable violations of due process into House rules.” Press secretary Stephanie Grisham says in a statement moments after the House vote that the process “is unfair, unconstitutional, and fundamentally un-American.” Thursday’s near party-line 232-196 vote was a victory for Democrats, who will control the investigation in the House. It gives them the ability to curb the ability of Republicans to subpoena witnesses and of White House lawyers to present witnesses. Grisham says President Donald Trump “has done nothing wrong” and that Democrats have an “unhinged obsession” with impeachment. Her statement was echoed by Trump’s reelection campaign which accused Democrats of trying to legitimize their process after the fact. Campaign manager Brad Parscale says: “Voters will punish Democrats who support this farce and President Trump will be easily re-elected.” 11:30 a.m. A sharply divided House has approved the rules for its impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. Thursday’s near party-line 232-196 roll call was the chamber’s first formal vote on a process that’s likely to take months, possibly stretching into the early weeks of the 2020 election year. Underscoring the gravity of the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi presided over the chamber as it voted on the rules package. The vote was a victory for majority Democrats, who will control the investigation in the House. It gives them the ability to curb the ability of Republicans to subpoena witnesses and of White House lawyers to present witnesses. Republicans said the process was skewed against them and the White House. The vote showed how neither side has budged in their fight over whether Trump’s effort to squeeze Ukraine for dirt on his Democratic political foes merits forcing him from office. 10:25 a.m. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says a vote to approve ground rules for their impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump is a solemn but necessary duty for lawmakers. In a floor speech before Thursday’s vote, Pelosi said, “This is not any cause for any glee or comfort.” Standing next to a large U.S. flag in the well of the House, Pelosi said the impeachment inquiry was necessary to defend the Constitution and prevent an abuse of power by Trump.“The times have found each and every one of us in this room,” Pelosi said. She urged lawmakers to vote in favor of the impeachment rules “to protect the Constitution of the United States. What is at stake in all of this is nothing less than our democracy.”The investigation is focused on Trump’s efforts to push Ukraine to investigate his Democratic political opponents by withholding military aid and an Oval Office meeting craved by the country’s new president. 9:37 a.m. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is asking all Democratic lawmakers to come to the House floor as a show of solidarity for the impeachment inquiry resolution. The House is set to take its first vote Thursday on the resolution that affirms the investigation into President Donald Trump and outlines the process for public hearings and possibly drafting articles of impeachment. Pelosi sent out word for lawmakers to join the floor debate as proceedings were getting underway, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it. Few Democrats are expected to oppose the plan in a vote that is expected to fall largely along party lines. 12:08 a.m. House Democrats and Republicans alike are rounding up votes on the ground rules for considering the impeachment of President Donald Trump. A near party-line vote is expected Thursday on the eight pages of procedures, which are certain to be passed
Ivanka Trump makes workforce announcement in Alabama
Ivanka Trump visited a robotics training center in Alabama to make a workforce development announcement. News outlets report that President Donald Trump’s eldest daughter and senior adviser on Tuesday visited the Alabama Robotics Technology Park outside Decatur. The younger Trump announced an expansion of a skills training program created by Toyota Motor North America. The program called the Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education, FAME, will be managed by the National Association of Manufacturer’s Manufacturing Institute. She says apprenticeship programs will be expanded across the nation. The younger Trump tweeted that it was an “incredible day” visiting with students at the center. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Ivanka Trump project seeks to help women in developing world
President Donald Trump threw his weight behind his daughter’s latest White House effort Thursday, backing her initiative to provide an economic boost to women in the developing world. The president on Thursday launched the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, a governmentwide project led by senior adviser Ivanka Trump. The initiative involves the State Department, the National Security Council and other agencies. It aims to coordinate current programs and develop new ones to assist women in areas such as job training, financial support, and legal or regulatory reforms. Calling it a “historic step,” he signed a national security memorandum to officially launch the effort, framing it as a way to promote stability around the world. He was joined in the Oval Office by Ivanka Trump, elected officials, Cabinet members, business leaders and women who have benefited from such programs. The initiative aims to help 50 million women in the developing world get ahead economically over the next six years. It will draw on public and private resources, with the U.S. Agency for International Development initially setting up a $50 million fund, using already-budgeted dollars. Trump has twice tried unsuccessfully to slash USAID’s budget by a third, and his “America first” foreign policy has sought to limit the United States’ role as an international leader. But his daughter told The Associated Press that the women’s initiative was in keeping with administration goals, arguing it was a strategic investment that promoted security. “We’re proud of our legacy of being a generous nation, looking to uplift others around the world. But we want to do so in a fiscally responsible way,” she said, promising “rigorous” efforts to track progress. Among those she has consulted for the project is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Ivanka Trump, who will attend the Munich Security Conference next week to promote the project, stressed that she sees this as a national security priority. “We think women are arguably the most under-tapped resource in the developing world for accelerating economic growth and prosperity,” she said. As part of the launch, USAID and Pepsi Co. announced a partnership aimed at women in India, and USAID and UPS an agreement designed to help female entrepreneurs export goods. The initiative builds on previous White House efforts to help women internationally. The Obama administration established an Office of Global Women’s Issues at the State Department and established an ambassador-at-large for global women’s Issues. That position has been vacant since Trump took office — drawing criticism from some advocates — but the White House said it now has a candidate lined up for the job. Since she joined the administration in early 2017, Ivanka Trump has focused on women’s economic issues. She previously led an effort to launch a World Bank fund to help drive women’s entrepreneurship. And she recently advocated for the Women’s Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act, which bolsters efforts focused on women by USAID. Ivanka Trump said her hope is that this effort has staying power beyond the current administration. Past global initiatives she has studied include the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, started under President George W. Bush in 2003. “This is not an initiative that we think should stop at the culmination of the administration,” she said. “We think it’s something that should sustain itself over time, and we’re going to work really hard to show that this is a great use of foreign development assistance.” Republished with permission from the Associated Press
Ivanka Trump says ‘Lock her up!’ doesn’t apply in her case
Ivanka Trump defended her use of a private email account as she was moving into an adviser’s position in her father’s administration, saying that it cannot be compared to the flap over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s private email server and that “Lock her up!” doesn’t apply to her. “All of my emails are stored and preserved. There were no deletions,” President Donald Trump‘s elder daughter and adviser told ABC News in an interview broadcast Wednesday. The Washington Post reported this month that Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of emails about government business from a personal email account last year to White House aides, Cabinet members and her assistant, many in violation of public records rules. “There is no restriction of using personal email,” she said. “In fact, we’re instructed that if we receive an email to our personal account that could relate to government work, you simply just forward it to your government account so it can be archived.” Clinton used a personal email account linked to a private server at her home in Chappaqua, a New York City suburb, during her time as the top U.S. diplomat under President Barack Obama. The FBI found classified information in some of the emails that were sent or received through her private server. Donald Trump harshly criticized Clinton, his 2016 Democratic presidential rival, for her use of the private email server. Trump dubbed her “Crooked Hillary” and repeatedly said, including to her face, that she belonged in jail. At his campaign rallies, chants of “Lock her up!” rang out. Ivanka Trump was asked by ABC News, “So the idea of ‘Lock her up!’ doesn’t apply to you?” “No,” she replied. Referencing her father’s denunciations of Clinton’s private email server, she said, “There’s no equivalency to what my father’s spoken about.” Clinton deleted thousands of emails that she and her lawyers decided were personal or unrelated to her work as secretary of state before she turned over thousands of other emails to federal investigators. She said she had been unaware of rules against using private email to conduct the public’s business and said she never knowingly emailed classified information. Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill plan to scrutinize Ivanka Trump’s personal email use. The Republican chairmen of Senate and House oversight committees — as well as a top House Democrat who will be wielding a gavel when his party takes power in January — have called on the White House to provide more information about the email account and the nature of her messages. That would renew Republican-led congressional probes that had languished since last year when reports by Politico revealed that Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner, and other White House officials had been using private email for government purposes in possible violation of the Presidential Records Act and other federal record-keeping laws. On other issues, Ivanka Trump said she is not worried about legal exposure for herself, her father or anyone else in her family with regards to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. “I know the facts as they relate to me and my family, and so I have nothing to be concerned about,” she said. Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
Rudy Giuliani becomes aggressive new face of Donald Trump legal team
Rudy Giuliani, once known as “America’s Mayor” and hailed for helping unite a wounded city after Sept. 11, has become the aggressive face of President Donald Trump’s forceful new legal team. Giuliani, who is bonded with the president by a particular brand of New York bravado, has escalated Trump’s attacks on the Department of Justice, pushed for strict limits on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and upended White House legal strategy. Giuliani and Trump cut out senior West Wing aides this week as they hashed out plans to combat what they see as an existential threat to the presidency. Giuliani’s bold offensive — on display in a series of cable news appearances in which he unleashed broadsides on the very law enforcement officers with whom he once worked — underscored the thoroughness of his transformation from moderate Republican mayor of a liberal city to fiery conservative hero. “Russian collusion is total fake news,” Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney, told Fox News. “Unfortunately, it has become the basis of the investigation. And Mueller owes us a report saying that Russia collusion means nothing, it didn’t happen. That means the whole investigation was totally unnecessary.” Giuliani has quickly become the dominant figure on the president’s reshuffled legal team as Trump stocks his political inner circle with familiar, TV-ready faces. The two have had several private conversations in recent days in which Giuliani fanned Trump’s anger with Mueller’s probe, according to two people familiar with their conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss them. Giuliani has warned Trump against sitting down for an interview with Mueller and has suggested that, at a minimum, the president place limits on his level of cooperation. Giuliani has warned Trump that he fears that the president’s longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, may flip on him. He has urged Trump to cut off communications with Cohen, according to a person close to Giuliani but not authorized to discuss the talks publicly. After an FBI raid on Cohen’s office and home, Giuliani also indicated that he wanted to change the discussion surrounding the $130,000 payment that Cohen made to porn actress Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about a sexual tryst with Trump. Giuliani did so with a jaw-dropping interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday. Giuliani’s remarks — that Trump knew about the payment and had repaid Cohen for it — seemed to contradict Trump’s past statements. But he argued that it removed legal peril over a possible campaign finance violation, a claim some legal experts have questioned. Trump was pleased with Giuliani’s performance, according to a person familiar with his views but not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. Over a pair of Fox News interviews, Giuliani also unleashed a series of provocative broadsides. He said Trump had fired James Comey last year because the FBI director wouldn’t publicly clear the president of wrongdoing in the Russia probe, a different explanation than the White House offered. He said he would defend the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump but suggested that her husband, Jared Kushner, was “disposable.” And he derided the agents who raided Cohen’s office as “stormtroopers,” a charge that attracted particular attention because it appeared to evoke Nazi soldiers in the context of the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which had approved the raids and which Giuliani had once led. “It’s a different Rudy. He’s always been tough, but he changed when he started to have national ambitions,” said George Arzt, former press secretary to Democrat Ed Koch, one of Giuliani’s predecessors as New York City mayor. “And after he wedded himself to Trump, his popularity in his hometown disappeared completely.” Giuliani was elected mayor in 1993 on a pledge to slash the city’s sky-high crime rate. That year, 1,946 people were killed in the city. By 2001, Giuliani’s final year in office, the number had shrunk to 649. Giuliani was largely praised for the drop in crime but remained a polarizing figure. His no-holds-barred defense of the New York Police Department, often at the expense of minority communities, drew sharp criticism. A possible Senate run was abandoned after a cancer diagnosis. And after years of public battles and a very messy public separation from his second wife — which resulted in him moving out of Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence — his poll numbers sank and many New Yorkers were eager for a change at City Hall. But then, one clear September day just a few months before he was to leave office, two planes flew into the World Trade Center. In the hours after the attacks, Giuliani became the face of the nation’s grief. His leadership — both inspiring and compassionate — over the following weeks earned him the nickname of “America’s Mayor.” But his relationship with the city would soon change again. Giuliani played a key role in the 2004 Republican National Convention that re-nominated President George W. Bush, a deeply unpopular figure in New York. And Giuliani shifted right on a number of issues — including gun control and public funding of abortions — during his failed presidential run four years later. Although his future electoral prospects vanished, Giuliani remained a conservative darling, a frequent guest on Fox News and a sought-after member of the political speaking circuit. He has known Trump for decades — his bomb-throwing rhetorical style can at times mirror that of the president — and he became an aggressive surrogate for the celebrity businessman from the early days of his insurgent presidential campaign. Giuliani had been widely expected to join Trump’s administration but was passed over for secretary of state, the position he badly wanted, and eventually was left without a Cabinet post. But the president kept in touch with Giuliani, sometimes calling to ask for advice, and frequently asked for the ex-mayor’s take on developments in the special counsel’s probe, according to three people familiar with the conversations but not authorized to publicly discuss private talks. In the weeks
