President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign is set to report that it raised more than $30 million in the first quarter of 2019, edging out his top two Democratic rivals combined, according to figures it provided to The Associated Press.

The haul brings the campaign’s cash on hand to $40.8 million, an unprecedented war chest for an incumbent president this early in a campaign.

The Trump campaign said nearly 99% of its donations were of $200 or less, with an average donation of $34.26.

Trump’s fundraising ability was matched by the Republican National Committee, which brought in $45.8 million in the first quarter — its best non-election year total. Combined, the pro-Trump effort is reporting $82 million in the bank, with $40.8 million belonging to the campaign alone.

Trump formally launched his reelection effort just hours after taking office in 2017, earlier than any incumbent has in prior years. By contrast, former President Barack Obama launched his 2012 effort in April 2011 and had under $2 million on hand at this point in the campaign.

Obama went on to raise more than $720 million for his reelection. Trump’s reelection effort has set a $1 billion target for 2020.

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement that Trump “is in a vastly stronger position at this point than any previous incumbent president running for re-election, and only continues to build momentum.”

Trump’s fundraising with the RNC is divided between two entities: Trump Victory, the joint account used for high-dollar gifts, and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, the low-dollar digital fundraising operation known internally as “T-Magic.” The campaign is set to launch a traditional “bundling” program — which it lacked in 2016 — in the coming weeks. Bundlers are mid-tier donors who bring in contributions from their associates.

Together, the Trump entities have raised a combined $165.5 million since 2017.

Trump is benefiting from the advantages of incumbency, like universal name recognition and his unrivaled position atop the Republican Party.

Among Democrats, dollars are divided across a candidate field of well more than a dozen, while the Democratic National Committee remains in debt and has suffered from being dramatically outraised by the RNC in recent months.

Bernie Sanders topped the Democratic field in the first quarter, raising slightly more than $18 million, followed by Kamala Harris with $12 million and Beto O’Rourke with $9.4 million. Trump is reporting a haul of $30.3 million.

Republicans have trailed Democrats in online fundraising ever since the medium was invented roughly two decades ago. But Trump has closed the gap, driving small-dollar donors who make recurring donations to the GOP like the party has never seen before. According to RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump’s campaign has already had eight seven-figure fundraising days this year, and has taken in money from more than 1 million new online donors since Trump’s inauguration — including 100,000 this year.

The Republican committee said it is planning on spending $30 million on maintaining and growing Trump’s email list alone, recently expanded its headquarters space to an annex in Virginia and will soon invest in developing an app.

In 2015, Trump swore off outside money, declaring in his opening speech: “I’m using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists’. I’m not using donors’. I don’t care. I’m really rich.”

He quickly reversed course on high-dollar donations after he won the GOP nomination, bowing to the financial pressures of running a general election campaign, and he’d already raised millions online through the sale of merchandise like his signature red Make America Great Again hats.

Trump gave or loaned $66 million to his 2016 campaign, but has yet to spend any of his own cash for his reelection effort. Aides don’t expect that to change.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he does not think the Venezuelan people will tolerate the Maduro regime much longer.

“The devastation wrought by Nicolas Maruro, the tragedy of the humanitarian situation there bought out solely by Maduro making the choice to bring in the Cubans, to allow Russians to intervene in the country — those are things that are destroying the lives of young people in Venezuela,” Pompeo told Peru’s El Comercio newspaper Sunday.

Pompeo was on the last day of a four-nation tour of South America, where the economic and political calamity in Venezuela was among the top concerns during talks in Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Colombia.

“This is not something that has happened in the last weeks or months. This is devastation wrought by the Cubans, the Russians and Maduro over the last years. … I’m very hopeful that it’ll come to its conclusion quickly,” he said.

Watch: Pompeo Spoke to VOA About Venezuela, Iran, and Nicaragua:

Pompeo again said all options are on the table when it comes to U.S. involvement in Venezuela. But the Trump administration has not said under what circumstances it would use military action.

The U.S. has already imposed a number of sanctions against some Venezuelan officials and the country’s oil sector.

Pompeo’s stop in Colombia will include a visit to the border city of Cucuta, which is separated from Venezuela by a bridge.

Tons of U.S. food, medicine and other relief supplies are sitting in warehouses in Cucuta, waiting to be delivered. Maduro has refused to let U.S. aid into the country, calling it the vanguard of a U.S. invasion.

Pompeo said the Trump administration wants to be deeply engaged in Central and South America, noting that great democracies, free market economies and transparency have not always flourished in the region.

“There were many communist countries in Latin America for many years, but that’s the great thing that’s changed. This idea of the totalitarian Orwellian state of communism is being rejected by the people of South America. It’s glorious,” the secretary said.

But while Pompeo said the U.S. welcomes Chinese private enterprises bringing goods and services to Latin America, competing with what the U.S. has to offer, he said Latin countries must be aware that Chinese companies may come instead for “malign activities.”

“State-owned enterprises, companies deeply connected to the Chinese government that want to put infrastructure, telecommunications infrastructure inside of your country … we want to make sure everyone has their eyes wide open,” Pompeo said.

The United States has accused Chinese computer and telecommunications firms, including Huawei, of installing spyware in its products – charges the companies deny.

Pompeo told the Peruvian newspaper that if the country uses Chinese technology, its information would be “in the hands of President Xi (Jinping) and the People’s Liberation Army.”
…

Kathleen Struck, Esha Sarai contributed to this report.

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has become the latest Democrat to formally enter the crowded field of presidential candidates seeking to unseat Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

The 37-year-old, who announced a presidential exploratory committee in January, made it official at a rally in South Bend on Sunday.

The Harvard and Oxford graduate and Afghanistan war veteran has gone from being virtually unknown on the national political landscape to surging in recent polls, placing third behind behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. 

The son of an immigrant from Malta, Buttigieg attended Harvard College around the same time as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He received a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, spent seven months in Afghanistan in the U.S. Navy Reserves as an intelligence analyst and driver and worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company. Reportedly he speaks seven languages, some of them fluently, including Spanish and Norwegian.

And in 2011, he was elected mayor of his hometown, South Bend, population 100,000.

Buttigieg would be America’s first openly gay president. His husband, Chastain, has also won over many American voters.

“As for my husband, you know I’m pretty biased, because I love him, but it’s pretty great to see that the rest of America is falling in love with him too,” Buttigieg said at a recent appearance in New Hampshire.

The South Bend mayor has raised more than $7 million so far and assured himself a spot in the Democratic presidential debates that begin in June. Analysts say it remains to be seen if Buttigieg can maintain his recent momentum.

“Sometimes candidates have a few weeks or few months of stardom and then another ‘it candidate’ replaces them,” Leah Askarinam, a reporter and political analyst for Inside Elections, told VOA. “So I think we know he’s viable. I don’t think we know at this point that he’s going to be a star in the field.”

At least 18 Democrats are in the run to become the party’s nominee to face off against President Donald Trump in next year’s election.
…

Washington continues to emit a cacophony of signals in response to a historic surge of migrant arrivals at America’s southern border with Mexico. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, President Donald Trump has floated a variety of proposals, from closing the border to transferring migrants to urban Democratic strongholds, as record numbers of Central Americans trek northwards.
…

Release appears imminent of a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s nearly 400-page report on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but sparring over Mueller’s conclusions is already rampant.

Washington is expecting that Attorney General William Barr could disclose the report on Monday or Tuesday, much-awaited details from Mueller’s 22-month investigation of Donald Trump campaign contacts with Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News Sunday, “I don’t think it is going to be damaging to the president.”

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee that is probing the election, told CNN on Sunday that Barr should release the full report and underlying investigatory evidence to his panel, but Barr has balked.

“To deny the Judiciary Committee and the Congress the knowledge of what’s in parts of the Mueller report is not proper,” Nadler said.

No one other than Barr and key officials in the Justice Department, Mueller and his team of prosecutors appear to know what the report says about the extent of Trump campaign links with Russia during his 2016 campaign or whether he took any actions as the U.S. leader aimed at inhibiting the investigation.

Barr released a four-page summary of the Mueller conclusions three weeks ago, saying the prosecutor had concluded that Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia to help him win but had reached no conclusion whether Trump obstructed justice. But with Mueller not reaching a decision on the obstruction issue, Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided no obstruction charges against Trump were warranted.

Nadler said that even though Barr concluded no obstruction charges should be brought against Trump, his decision should not go without review. Nadler noted that Barr, before he became the country’s top law enforcement official, wrote that Trump could not obstruct justice because the president “is the boss of the Justice Department and could order it around to institute an investigation, to eliminate an investigation or could not be questioned about that.”

“In other words, (Barr) thinks as a matter of law a president can’t obstruct justice, which is a very wild theory to which most people do not agree,” Nadler said. “The fact of the matter is we should see and judge for ourselves and Congress should judge whether the president obstructed justice or not, and the public ultimately.”

Nadler said it “may be that Mueller decided not to prosecute obstruction of justice for various reasons that there wasn’t proof beyond a reasonable doubt on some things. But there still may have been proof of some very bad deeds and very bad motives. And we need to see them and the public needs to see them.”

Since the release of Barr’s summary, Trump has claimed “total exoneration, no collusion, no obstruction.” Trump for months derided Mueller’s investigation, but said he believes Mueller acted honorably in clearing him of colluding with Russia.

Opposition Democrats like Nadler have launched new investigations of Trump, a Republican, but the president is objecting.

On Twitter, Trump said Saturday, “Why should Radical Left Democrats in Congress have a right to retry and examine the $35,000,000 (two years in the making) No Collusion Mueller Report, when the crime committed was by Crooked Hillary, the DNC and Dirty Cops? Attorney General Barr will make the decision!” He was referring to Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent, and the Democratic National Committee, which supported her candidacy.

Barr has said he will release as much of the Mueller report as possible, while excluding material Mueller included from secret grand jury testimony and confidential U.S. intelligence sources.
…

In a series of tweets Saturday night, President Donald Trump denied reports that he asked a border control official to close the U.S. border with Mexico, and that he offered to pardon the official if he faced legal problems for doing so.

On Friday, The New York Times and CNN reported that last week Trump asked Kevin McAleenan, then the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border to stop migrants from coming into the U.S. McAleenan has since been named the acting secretary of homeland security after the resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen on April 10.

Both news organizations cited unnamed administration officials as sources in their reports. The Times report also suggested “it was possible Mr. Trump had intended the comments to Mr. McAleenan as a joke.”

On Friday, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying: “At no time has the president indicated, asked, directed or pressured the acting secretary to do anything illegal. Nor would the acting secretary take actions that are not in accordance with our responsibility to enforce the law.”

Saturday evening, Trump used social media to issue his own denial, tweeting that he “never offered Pardons to Homeland Security Officials, never ordered anyone to close our Southern Border (although I have the absolute right to do so, and may if Mexico does not apprehend the illegals coming to our Border), and am not ‘frustrated.’ ’’ 

In his tweets, the president took aim at the Times, saying the newspaper didn’t call the White House to verify its facts, and predicting the 167-year-old newspaper would be gone in six years.
…

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, kicked off his campaign Saturday in Newark, calling for community building, criminal justice reform, gun control, Medicare for all and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. 

Booker told supporters that Saturday’s rally was the launch of a two-week tour of the United States as he tries to make himself more visible in a pack of more than a dozen competitors. The mostly Democratic campaigners are all vying to replace incumbent President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. 

“The president wants a race to the gutter and to fight us in the gutter,” Booker said to the crowd at Newark’s Military Park, a revitalized green space. But “to win, we have to fight from higher ground in order to bring this country to higher ground.” 

From New Jersey, Booker plans to make stops in states that hold caucuses and primaries early in the presidential race, including Iowa, Georgia and Nevada.

Newark is where Booker made his political reputation, serving as a member of the municipal council and then the mayor from 2006 to 2013. 
…

Eager to jump-start the stalled Keystone XL oil pipeline and other energy projects, President Donald Trump has acted to assert executive power over pipelines and such infrastructure. 

He issued a new permit for Keystone XL and insisted this exercise of presidential authority was not subject to judicial review. Then he signed an executive order clarifying that the president alone has the power to grant permits for cross-border projects such as pipelines. A separate order makes it harder for states to block pipelines and other energy projects on the basis of environmental concerns. 

Taken together, the actions amount to a broad assertion of power that reverses more than 50 years of precedent that delegated decision-making on energy projects to individual agencies. 

Trump has shown a willingness to override his own agencies to accomplish his aims. His actions, if upheld by the courts, could consolidate power over energy projects at the White House, increasing the influence of the president’s political advisers and potentially cutting out experts and career officials throughout the government. 

“Too often badly needed energy infrastructure is being held back by special interest groups, entrenched bureaucracies and radical activists,” Trump said Wednesday before signing the executive orders at an event in Texas. 

​’New decision-making structure’

Pipeline opponents say Trump acted illegally. They have asked a federal court to block the new Keystone permit, arguing that it is an effort to get around an earlier court ruling. 

But one legal expert said Trump’s approach might succeed. 

“He has now created a whole new decision-making structure” for cross-border pipelines, said Richard Pierce, a law professor at George Washington University. 

If the courts follow a 1992 Supreme Court ruling, they may find that action taken by the State Department in approving or rejecting the pipeline “is nonreviewable, because it doesn’t qualify as final agency action,” Pierce said. Further, Trump’s decision would not be subject to review because of a separate law that declares the president is not an agency and therefore is not bound by rules that apply to agency actions. 

“That’s a very clever approach that might well work,” Pierce said. 

Trump’s actions are “typical of this presidency,” said Holly Doremus, an environmental law professor at the University of California-Berkeley. She said Trump frequently seeks to stretch the limits of his power, and she cited Trump’s declaration of an emergency that he says allows him to shift more money to construction of a promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. 

In the case of Keystone, Trump appears to be arguing that the new presidential permit, issued March 29, gets around restrictions under the National Environmental Policy Act or other laws, because the statutes apply to executive-branch agencies but not to the president, Doremus said. 

“If the president is the only discretionary decision maker, NEPA simply does not apply,” she said. 

Who decides?

While Trump’s theory is plausible, it is unclear who is the ultimate decision-maker on Keystone XL, Doremus said. The pipeline would ship crude oil from the tar sands of western Canada to U.S. refineries along the Gulf of Mexico.  

Both a 2015 rejection of the project by the Obama administration and a 2017 approval by Trump were issued by the State Department under terms of a 2004 executive order that delegated presidential authority for cross-border projects to that agency. 

Trump’s executive order revokes the 2004 order, issued by President George W. Bush. Bush’s action extended an executive order first issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. 

“It’s surprising that the president would come in and single-handedly try to circumvent 50 years of precedent for these types of projects by just issuing a permit himself,” said Doug Hayes, a Sierra Club attorney who has sued to block the Keystone project in court. 

In November, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris in Montana ruled that the Trump administration did not fully consider potential oil spills and other impacts when it approved the pipeline in 2017. Morris ordered a new environmental review of the pipeline. 

The White House said the new permit issued by Trump “dispels any uncertainty” about the long-delayed project, which was first proposed a decade ago by Calgary-based TransCanada.  

Trump’s move on Keystone XL reinforces the idea that “the presidential permit is indeed an exercise of presidential authority that is not subject to judicial review,” according to the White House. 

Reviews by different agencies

Under the new order, federal officials still would conduct environmental reviews of the project, but they would be carried out by agencies other than the State Department, the White House said. 

TransCanada spokesman Matthew John said the administration’s action “clearly demonstrates to the courts that the permit is [the] product of presidential decision-making and should not be subject to additional environmental review.” 

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said it was “strange” that Trump issued the executive order after granting the new permit. 

The White House is making the argument supposedly that he has untrammeled authority and doesn't have to obey the laws of Congress'' in approving a cross-border pipeline, Tobias said.I’m dubious and I think a number of other people are, too.” 

Kathryn Watts, a law professor at the University of Washington, said it’s unclear what happens next. Trump’s permit wades into “uncharted, unsettled” legal territory, she said.
…

President Donald Trump’s longtime confidant, Roger Stone, asked a federal judge Friday to compel the Justice Department to turn over a full copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation as part of discovery in his criminal case.

Stone has pleaded not guilty to charges he lied to Congress, engaged in witness tampering and obstructed a congressional investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In a court filing late Friday night, his lawyers said Stone is entitled to see the confidential report, which was submitted to the attorney general late last month, because it would help prove their allegation that there are constitutional issues with the investigation.

In a separate action, Andrew Miller, a former aide to Stone who was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, asked a federal appeals court to determine whether he still needs to testify now that the Russia probe has concluded.

Private disclosure of report

Stone’s team also filed motions Friday night arguing he was selectively prosecuted, challenging the constitutionality of Mueller’s appointment and that the special counsel didn’t have the ability to prosecute him for lying to Congress. They allege that Congress did not formally make a referral to the Justice Department about Stone’s testimony and because of that, Mueller’s investigation was “a violation of the separation of powers.”

In court documents, the lawyers argue they are entitled to a private disclosure of the nearly 400-page report that Mueller submitted to Attorney General William Barr late last month and said they “must be allowed to review the report in its entirety because it contains the government’s evidence and conclusions on matters essential to Stone’s defense.”

“To be clear, Stone is not requesting the report be disclosed to the world, only to his counsel so that it may aid in preparing his defense,” the lawyers wrote.

November trial

Stone, who is set to go on trial in November, has maintained his innocence and blasted the special counsel’s investigation as politically motivated. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which stem from conversations he had during the campaign about WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that released material stolen from Democratic groups, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

In a four-page letter to Congress that detailed Mueller’s “principal conclusions,” Barr said the special counsel did not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump associates during the campaign, but did not reach a definitive conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice. Instead, Mueller presented evidence on both sides of the obstruction question, but Barr said he did not believe the evidence was sufficient to prove that Trump had obstructed justice.

Barr has said he expects to release a redacted version of Mueller’s report next week that will be sent to Congress and made public.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he was considering sending detained illegal migrants to so-called sanctuary cities, which oppose his tough immigration policies. 

Trump made the announcement hours after White House and Homeland Security officials insisted the idea had been rejected. 

He told reporters at the White House that his administration was “strongly looking at the possibly.”  

Earlier Friday, he tweeted, “Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities.” 

“The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy — so this should make them very happy!” he added. 

Sanctuary cities are local jurisdictions — often run by Democrats — that have refused to hand over illegal immigrants to federal authorities for possible deportation.  

Offer of pardon?

In another development Friday, CNN reported that Trump told the head of Customs and Border Protection, Kevin McAleenan, that he would pardon him if he were sent to jail for denying U.S. entry to migrants. CNN cited two unnamed officials who said Trump made the offer during a visit to the border town of Calexico, California.

Trump has since named McAleenan the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, following the resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen.

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Friday: “At no time has the president indicated, asked, directed or pressured the acting secretary to do anything illegal. Nor would the Acting Secretary take actions that are not in accordance with our responsibility to enforce the law.”

Sending a message

The White House proposal to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities was first reported by The Washington Post. 

According to the Post, the White House told Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the plan would alleviate a shortage of detention space, as well as send a message to Democrats.  

The Post said a White House official and a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said the proposal was no longer under consideration. 

Revelation of the proposal drew criticism from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as other Democrats. 

In remarks to reporters Friday, Pelosi called the idea “unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful of the challenges that we face as a country, as a people, to address who we are — a nation of immigrants.” 

Pelosi’s hometown of San Francisco is a sanctuary city.

Mayors of several sanctuary cities said Friday they would accept undocumented migrants.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement, “While the Trump administration’s proposal shows their disdain to basic human dignity, the City (Philadelphia) would be prepared to welcome these immigrants just as we have embraced our immigrant communities for decades.”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said, “We would welcome these migrants with open arms, just as we welcomed Syrian refugees, just as we welcomed Puerto Ricans displaced by Hurricane Maria and just as we welcome Rohingya refugees fleeing genocide in Myanmar.” 
…

A Washington political consultant initially entangled in the Russia investigation was sentenced to three years of probation for illegal lobbying and skirting the ban on foreign donations to President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee.

W. Samuel Patten and prosecutors had asked for leniency citing his cooperation in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and other ongoing probes.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposed the sentence Friday as Mueller has concluded his investigation but federal prosecutors in New York continue to investigate foreign donations to the inaugural committee.

Patten has said he wasn’t part of a larger scheme to funnel money to the committee.

He pleaded guilty to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act for lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian political party. He also lied to the Senate intelligence committee.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he has no knowledge of the website WikiLeaks, after the whistleblowing site’s founder, Julian Assange, was arrested in Britain.

The 47-year-old Australian national had been living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, but was ejected Thursday and taken into custody by British police.

Ecuador said Assange had broken asylum conventions by continuing to interfere in other countries’ affairs through the publishing of confidential information.

WATCH: Trump Denies Knowledge of WikiLeaks

Trump was questioned by reporters on the arrest Thursday.

“I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing,” Trump said. “I know there is something to do with Julian Assange, and I’ve been seeing what’s happened to Assange. And that would be a determination, I would imagine, mostly by the attorney general, who’s doing an excellent job. So, he’ll be making a determination.”

On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump repeatedly referred to WikiLeaks after it published hacked emails from the Democrat National Committee. He once declared, “WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks,” at a rally in Pennsylvania.

In 2010, WikiLeaks published a cache of more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts from Iraq and Afghanistan, obtained by former U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley Manning. They detailed civilian casualties, along with details of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Manning was prosecuted under the Espionage Act and jailed in 2010. She was released in 2017, but was jailed again in March 2019 for refusing to testify before a grand jury about WikiLeaks.

​Asylum in embassy

Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy after facing rape charges in Sweden, which have since been dropped. He predicted then that he would face extradition to the United States.

“As WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of all our societies,” Assange told a crowd of supporters from the balcony of the embassy.

The United States accuses Assange of conspiring with Manning to access classified information on Department of Defense computers and has requested his extradition from Britain.

Freedom of the Press

Freedom of the press is protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, so the precise charges against Assange will be key, said legal analyst Caroline Mala Corbin of the University of Miami School of Law.

“If you break the law while you gather information, that is not protected by the free speech clause. If, however, you publish information — even if someone else has illegally obtained it — the free speech clause does come into play,” she told VOA.

Assange supporter and prominent human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said Assange must be afforded the rights of other journalists.

“It smacks of double standards, and it has the whiff of a vendetta against WikiLeaks and against Julian Assange,” he said.

British judges will now decide whether to fulfill the U.S. extradition request.

Geoffrey Robertson, an attorney who has represented Assange in the past, said Assange could face up to 40 years in prison if he is extradited to the United States.

“I have faith in the British justice system, and I think he will argue that this is a breach of his right of freedom of speech,” Robertson said.

Assange will first face sentencing for failing to surrender to authorities on sexual assault charges in 2012.

Meanwhile, one of the Swedish women who accused Assange of rape has requested the case be reopened, further complicating the legal case against him.
…

The Treasury Department did not meet House Democrats’ deadline to turn over President Trump’s past tax returns this week, escalating the legal battle and investigation into the president’s personal and business finances. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara looks at the tradition of American presidents releasing their tax returns, and why after Trump’s refusal some think the tradition should be codified into law.
…