Trump news - live: President gives out controversial pardons as new report undermines White House rationale for Soleimani killing
Follow the latest updates
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox
Get our free Inside Washington email
Donald Trump has again lashed out at Barack Obama, accusing the 44th president of “trying to take credit for the Economic Boom taking place under the Trump Administration” in response to his predeccessor’s tweet remembering his signing of the Recovery Act in 2009 at the onset of the Great Recession.
Democratic 2020 front-runner Bernie Sanders has meanwhile hit back at rival Michael Bloomberg following criticism of his supporters by posting a picture on Twitter of the former New York mayor golfing with the president, suggesting there is little real difference between the two men. Mr Sanders is surging ahead in the polls while Mr Bloomberg has just qualified for his first primary debate.
Away from the 2020 race, the president’s ex-national security adviser John Bolton has expressed fears the White House will “suppress” his forthcoming memoir, The Room Where It Happened, telling a university audience in North Carolina the ongoing review process could interfere with his “effort to write history”.
And, Mr Trump signed off on several high-profile and contentious pardons, drawing the ire of former prosecturs who worked on those caes.
Among them was a former NYPD commissioner with ties to Rudy GIuliani, a former Democratic governor of Illinois and the former owner of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team.
Donald Trump celebrity president: A decade in two halves
Show all 29Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
John Bolton fears memoir will be 'suppressed' by White House
Donald Trump’s ex-national security adviser John Bolton has expressed fears the White House will “suppress” his forthcoming memoir, The Room Where It Happened, telling a university audience in North Carolina the ongoing review process could interfere with his “effort to write history”.
Speaking at Duke University in Durham a matter of weeks after the Senate opting against subpoenaing him as a witness during the president's impeachment trial, Bolton commented: "I hope, ultimately, I can get the book published... I hope it's not suppressed."
Asked about the president's criticism of him on Twitter, Bolton said: "He tweets, but I can't talk about it. How fair is that?" The former adviser, 71, left his post in September after disagreements with the president. Trump said he fired him. Bolton said he quit.
The New York Times reported in January that Bolton wrote in his manuscript for the new book that Trump wanted to continue freezing $391m (£302m) in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democratic rival Joe Biden - an allegation that fueled Trump's impeachment.
On 18 December, the Democratic-led House of Representatives had approved two articles of impeachment charging Trump with abuse of power and obstructing Congress relating to his actions in Ukraine. Trump denied wrongdoing and denounced the impeachment process as a sham. The Republican-led Senate duly acquitted Trump largely along party lines on 5 February in only the third presidential impeachment trial in US history.
The White House informed Bolton in January that his book manuscript appeared to contain "significant amounts of classified information" and could not be published in its current form.
Bolton said during Monday's event that the White House was still doing a pre-publication review of his manuscript. “This is an effort to write history. I did the best I can... We'll see what happens with the censorship,” he said.
Asked about what it was like to oversee Trump’s infamous 2018 meeting with Vladimir Putin at the Helsinki summit, Bolton said: “To pursue the right policies for America, I was willing to put up with a lot.”
“I’m not asking for martyrdom,” he added. “I knew, I think I knew, what I was getting into.”
At an event that saw protesters gather outside for a "People Vs John Bolton Rally" organised on Facebook to denounce his record as an interventionist war hawk and regime change advocate, the speaker took every opportunity to tease his new book, promising that the Ukraine revelations he included are merely "the sprinkles on an ice cream sundae".
"You'll love chapter 14," he added.
Bernie Sanders hits back at Bloomberg with Trump photo
Democratic 2020 front-runner Bernie Sanders has meanwhile hit back at rival Michael Bloomberg following criticism of his supporters by posting a picture on Twitter of the former New York mayor golfing with the president, suggesting there is little real difference between the two men.
Bloomberg - who has just qualified for the next party debate in Nevada on Wednesday night - yesterday posted an aggressive attack video joining in an attack on Sanders led by fellow runner Joe Biden about the threatening behaviour of "Bernie Bros" on social media.
Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren likewise joined in with the criticism yesterday, saying Bernie has "a lot of questions to answer".
With #PresidentWarren trending on Twitter as supporters seek to promote the case for her electability and revive her flagging candidacy, it's Sanders who is having the last laugh.
A new poll has just put him 19-points ahead in Nevada ahead of the upcoming primary.
Here's Andrew Buncombe on his latest campaign appearance with Pramila Jayapal in Tacoma, Washington.
Trump is 'unhinged' over Bloomberg, says the Mooch
As Michael Bloomberg continues to be the cat amongst the pigeons, the president's short-lived former press secretary Anthony Scaramucci says the man in the Oval Office is also concerned about the financial might of his campaign.
Graig Graziosi has more from the worm turned.
Federal judges holding emergency meeting on Will Barr's intervention
Away from the campaign trail, the Federal Judges Association is holding an emergency meeting today to discuss concerns arising from attorney general William Barr’s intervention in the sentencing of Republican operative Roger Stone last week.
“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about,” Philadelphia US district judge Cynthia Rufe told USA Today. “We’ll talk all of this through.” Judge Rufe said the independent body simply "could not wait" for its spring conference to address matters so grave.
The development follows more than 1,100 Justice Department issuing an open letter on Sunday calling for Barr to step down after it became clear he had stepped in - apparently at the president's behest - to save Stone from facing a seven to nine year stretch after being found guilty of lying to federal investigators and witness tampering last November, a move that prompted all four members of the prosecution team at Stone's trial to resign in protest.
“It is unheard of for the department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the president,” the signatories wrote.
“Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.”
Barr last week attempted to pust distance between himself and the president by telling ABC that Trump's tweets about the active case were making it difficult for him to do his job, but many commentators saw the move as strategic rather than sincere.
Here's John T Bennett with more on that stinging letter from the prosecutors.
Trump 'complicated things' by praising attorney general after Roger Stone sentence, his own lawyer says
Robert Ray, a member of Trump's impeachment defence team, has echoed Barr's comments of last week, agreeing that the president "complicated things" by hammering out the tweet below on the Roger Stone case.
John T Bennett has more.
Trump attacks Obama for 'taking credit for Economic Boom'
The president's Twitter account has been comparatively quiet in the last few days.
Aside from slamming out NASCAR-related content in the wake of his opening the Daytona 500 on Sunday, Trump misspelled Presidents' Day yesterday...
...and got upset about his predecessor, Barack Obama, using the public holiday set aside to honour George Washington's birthday to remember his own signing of the Recovery Act in 2009 at the onset of the Great Recession.
Trump responded angrily to that, accusing the 44th president of "trying to take credit for the Economic Boom taking place under the Trump Administration".
"He had the WEAKEST recovery since the Great Depression, despite Zero Fed Rate & MASSIVE quantitative easing," the incumbent griped.
Here's Andrew Buncombe on Obama.
Trump compared to South American dictator in new attack ad series
Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA has launched a series of new 2020 attack ads likening the president to South American dictators in a bid to appeal to Latino voters whose families emigrated from countires like Cuba and Venezuela dreaming of a better quality of life
Here's an example:
Andrew Naughtie reports.
Pete Buttigieg jokes Trump can 'do chores' at the White House if loses in November and refuses to leave
Rory Sullivan has the latest from the insurgent 2020 candidate, who was asked at a campaign event in Reno what would happen if the president should lose the election and simply refuse to vacate 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Lawmakers object to Trump's latest $3.8bn Pentagon funding grab to pay for 'vanity wall'
Both the top Republican and Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee have now criticised the president over his latest attempt to swipe $3.8bn (£2.9bn) from the Pentagon to pay for his US-Mexico border wall, complaining that the money should be used for counter-trafficking and other initiatives instead.
“The re-programming announced is contrary to Congress's constitutional authority, and I believe that it requires Congress to take action. I will be working with my colleagues to determine the appropriate steps to take,” Texas GOP respresentative Mac Thornberry said last week.
He added that Trump's manoeuvre “undermines the principle of civilian control of the military and is in violation of the separation of powers within the Constitution" and stressed that his wall money “must come through the Department of Homeland Security rather than diverting critical military resources that are needed and in law”.
Adam Smith, the panel's Democratic chairman, was less delicate in his choice of words.
“The president is obsessed with fulfilling a campaign promise at the expense of our national security. This administration has already stolen billions from the Department of Defense in order to begin building the president's vanity wall and today they are doubling down on bad policy.”
The border wall seen from Organ Pipe National Park south of Ajo, Arizona (Sandy Huffaker/AFP/Getty)
The administration first announced the move to reappropriate the capital - which comes in addition to the $6.1bn (£4.7bn) already clawed away using powers invoked through Trump's national emergency declaration last year - last Thursday and the complaints of Thornberry and Smith have since been echoed by the Democratic wing of the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee.
“This repeated manoeuvre to transfer funds once again is in contrast to the long-established processes involving consultation with the defense oversight committees of Congress on reprogrammings and transfers, " they wrote to defence secretary Mark Esper. "Engaging in this scheme again is not only divisive, but also poisonous to the relationship we seek on national defense matters – which should be above this type of rancor and partisanship.”
Esper insisted at a conference in Munich, Germany, this week that "border security is national security" and that nothing the administration had done was illegal.
Progress is slow, however. The administration has put up just 122 miles of the 2,000 in fencing it promised, much of which involved replacing George W Bush-era barrier.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies