Trump news – live: 'Asked to leave for telling the truth': Expert who testified in impeachment escorted from White House
President declares trial victory as crucial witness fired from administration
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Donald Trump launched into another rally-like White House event, this time ostensibly supporting job opportunities for formerly incarcerated people and lower-income communities, during his remarks at an economic summit in Charlotte, North Carolina, hours after declaring that Nancy Pelosi broke the law when she ripped up a copy of his speech and ominously predicting the ousting of an impeachment witness.
The president hit out at Democrats from the White House lawn, calling them "crazy" and "evil" as he celebrated his administration's win in a federal appeals court case that dismissed a lawsuit by congressional Democrats trying to access his financial records to determine violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause.
Lt Col Alexander Vindman, a key impeachment witness as a member of the National Security Council, was escorted from the White House on Friday afternoon, apparent relation for his testimony.
Addressing rumours about staff departures, Mr Trump told reporters: "Well, I'm not happy with him. Do you think I'm supposed to be happy with him? I'm not."
All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment
Show all 6On Thursday, the president launched into a blistering, score-settling diatribe against the House Democrats following his impeachment acquittal by the Senate, calling the likes of the House Speaker and Adam Schiff “vicious” and “corrupt”, ex-FBI director James Comey “a sleazebag” and the bureau’s top brass “scum” from the East Room of the White House.
The president labelled his trial “bulls***” and also singled out lone rebel Republican senator Mitt Romney for using “religion as a crutch” in voting for his conviction, although arguably his most menacing proclamation came when he adopted a Mafia-style euphemism to say: “We’re going to take care of things because we can never allow this to happen again.”
His speech was met with widespread alarm, with 2020 candidate Pete Buttigieg branding the attack on Mr Romney “disgraceful” and ex-White House ethics chief Walter Shaub warning: “We’re in the heads-on-pikes phase of burgeoning authoritarianism.”
On Friday, following his razor-thin lead in the Iowa caucus, Mr Trump mocked Mr Buttigieg, saying "whoever the hell that is" while attacking Democrats for the drawn-out results.
Follow the news as it happened:
Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
Trump denounces 'bulls***' impeachment, 'vicious' Democrats
Donald Trump launched into a blistering, score-settling diatribe against the House Democrats on Thursday following his impeachment acquittal by the Senate, calling the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff "vicious", "evil" and "corrupt", ex-FBI director James Comey “a sleazebag” and the bureau’s top brass “scum” from the East Room of the White House.
The president labelled his trial “bulls***” and also singled out lone rebel Republican senator Mitt Romney for using “religion as a crutch” in voting for his conviction, although arguably his most menacing proclamation came when he adopted a Mafia-style euphemism to say: “We’re going to take care of things because we can never allow this to happen again.”
His legal team - including the notorious celebrity defence lawyer Alan Dershowitz - were given a hero's welcome by the president's guests as they entered, the audience including such MAGA luminaries as congresspeople Matt Gaetz, Doug Collins, Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik and Mark Meadows, Senate leader Mitch McConnell, attorney general Bill Barr and Fox pundits Laura Ingraham and Katie Pavlich.
“The witch hunt started the day I came down the elevator”, Trump began (meaning the golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York from which he descended on 16 June 2015 to announce his candidacy), before launching into an address he described as a "celebration".
"If this happened to President Obama, a lot of people would've been in jail for a long time already”, he said, before focusing on the ordeal that has dogged his first term in office: "We first went through 'Russia, Russia, Russia.' It was all bulls***."
His vitriol for the House speaker followed his thinly-veiled attacks on her earlier at that morning's National Prayer Breakfast and he didn't let up: "I had Nancy Pelosi sitting four seats away and I'm saying things that a lot of people wouldn't have said, but I meant every word of it."
"Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person… I doubt she prays at all,” he continued, a remark designed to infuriate the devout Catholic.
The score-settling kept on coming - even impeachment witness and Purple Heart recipient Lt Col Alexander Vindman was mocked - as the president touched on a wild and wide range of other subjects: from the 2017 congressional baseball shooting of Steve Scalise to Robert Mueller’s performance before Congress to the range of former New York Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson to prescription drug prices, Democratic primary polling, Arizona and even college wrestling.
He concluded his hour-long address with a call for bipartisan co-operation (!) and an appeal for sympathy: “I want to apologise to my family for having them have to go through a phony, rotted deal by some very evil and sick people. And Ivanka is here, and my sons, and my whole family. And that includes Barron.”
Here's John T Bennett on a rant that felt next level, even for the Orange One.
Critics round on president's 'disgraceful' address
The speech was met with widespread alarm, with 2020 candidate Pete Buttigieg branding the attack on Romney “disgraceful” and ex-White House ethics chief Walter Shaub warning: “We’re in the heads-on-pikes phase of burgeoning authoritarianism.”
Speaking to CNN's Chris Cuomo at a town hall from Manchester, New Hampshire, Mayor Pete commented: “It was disgraceful, especially to hear the way he attacked Senator Romney for clearly following his own conscience and being more concerned about, as Senator Romney clearly was, more concerned about the judgment of history and perhaps about his relationship with God, than about party loyalty.”
Cuomo had a few words of his own last night for the Republican Party, saying on his show that the GOP has bought into Trumpism wholesale and "bears no resemblance to its traditional self", its customary values "eviscerated".
Even more damning was Walter Shaub, director of the US Office of Government Ethics between 2013 and 2017:
Here's a little more on the Democratic response, with Chuck Schumer still posing as the ghost at Trump's Big Mac feast.
Pelosi launches astonishing attack on Trump over State of the Union, economy and Romney criticism
As for Nancy Pelosi, she got her own back at her weekly press conference - pre-empting Trump's big moment with some astonishing attacks of her own.
She accused him of using Tuesday's State of the Union as a “backdrop for a reality show, presenting a state of mind that had no contact with reality whatsoever”, repeating her soundbite that the president had presented "a manifesto of mistruths" and giving this justification for her tearing it up: "He has shredded the truth in his speech. He's shredding the Constitution in his conduct. I shredded his state of his mind address."
The speaker also took on Trump's bogus claim that he had inherited an economy in chaos from Barack Obama and turned it around (as though it was he who had taken office in 2009 at the start of the financial crash, not his predecessor).
The president is "trying to discredit the triumph of the Obama administration on the economy," she said. "President Trump did not inherent a mess - he inherited a momentum."
"The president goes on and says, 'because of growth many more people are not on food stamps.' No - you kicked them off," she added, clearly at the end of her tether following a rough week for Democrats.
Like Buttigieg, she took offence at his attack on Romney as "particularly without class".
“It’s so inappropriate at a prayer breakfast,” she said. “He’s talking about things he knows little about: faith and prayer.”
Here's our report from John T Bennett and Alex Woodward on a speaker who says she's feeling "liberated" and it showed.
President accuses Pelosi of shredding 'powerful American stories'
Trump's vengeance against Pelosi did not stop with his speech - as he continued to push the Republican faux outrage campaign against her act of rebellion on Tuesday night by posting a video on Twitter accusing her of disrespecting his SOTU guests (by effectively dimissing his praise for 100-year-old Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee and military wife Amy Williams in tearing up the speech).
But you don't catch Nancy Pelosi out that easily...
For Indy Voices, John T Bennett argues that the whole impeachment bid has nevertheless ultimately proved a failure for the speaker who, he says, should have backed her initial instinct to sidestep a process she onced rejected as "too divisive".
Trump, Xi agree to co-operate on tackling coronavirus
The president, evidentally keen to get back to business as usual, has been tweeting in the wee hours of the morning from DC, saying he has been in talks with Chinese premier Xi Jinping about how best to contain the global spread of the coronavirus.
The two leaders agreed to continue extensive communication and cooperation between both sides, according to White House spokesman Judd Deere. Trump and Xi also reaffirmed their commitment to implementing Phase 1 of the trade deal between the United States and China, he added.
You can follow the latest on the epidemic live with my colleague Samuel Osborne below, reporting after the Chinese doctor who first alerted the world to the virus, Li Wenliang, passed away from it on Thursday.
President 'apoplectic' at Boris Johnson over Huawei deal
Trump has also been speaking to British prime minister Boris Johnson and was reportedly "apoplectic" about the latter's decision to ignore his administration's advice to the contrary and allow Chinese firm Huawei a role in building the UK's 5G mobile phone network.
Johnson has meanwhile just appointed the UK's first female ambassador to the US, Dame Karen Pierce, replaining Sir Kim Darroch whose comments so enraged Trump.
Sleepless Trump bashing out retweets
Despite the fact that it's just past 7am in Washington, Trump has been awake for at least an hour hammering out partisan retweets from favourite cronies Devin Nunes, Lee Zeldin, Mark Meadows, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Mitch McConnell, Lou Dobbs, Dan Bongino, Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens, Tom Fitton and the actor James Woods.
Speaking of Nunes, the California congressman and former dairy farmer is being ridiculed on Twitter by the Washington press corps for accusing reporters of sending out "drunk tweets" attacking the administration - an offence many are only too happy to cop to.
Several of those posts retweeted by the president from GOP congressman are celebrating his announcement yesterday of the killing of al-Qaeda founder Qassim al-Rimi by US forces in Yemen, more on which you can read below.
Treasury Dept hands over Hunter Biden info despite withholding Trump's tax returns
Steve Mnuchin's Treasury Department has handed over highly confidential information it holds on Hunter Biden - the son of Democratic 2020 candidate Joe Biden - to the Senate Finance and Homeland Security Committee chairs Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson (both Republican) after they filed a request for the information at the height of the impeachment inquiry in November.
This nakedly partisan gesture in support of a favourite right-wing conspiracy theory - regularly pushed by Trump himself - about the Bidens being involved in corruption in Ukraine comes despite Mnuchin declining to turn over his boss's tax returns to House Democrats.
“The legal implications of this request could affect protections for all Americans against politically-motivated disclosures of personal tax information, regardless of which party is in power,” Mnuchin said in an April 2019 letter.
Hunter Biden (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
Apparently he has no such qualms about dishing up the personal papers of private citizens but the decision is already attracting outrage.
“The administration told House Democrats to go pound sand when their oversight authority was mandatory while voluntarily co-operating with the Senate Republicans’ sideshow at lightning speed,” said Ashley Schapitl, a spokeswoman for the Finance Committee's ranking Democrat Ron Wyden.
“For them to go willy-nilly handing out financial information of private citizens… is simply outrageous,” Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told The Huffington Post.
'Can nothing the president does shock America anymore?'
Here's our political sketch writer Tom Peck to answer that all-important question, a question rendered even more timely given that he just retweeted a fairly racist joke about Elizabeth Warren from Texas senator Ted Cruz.
Ye gods.
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