Some investigators in the nearly two-year probe of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign say the findings in a report submitted by special counsel Robert Mueller are more damaging for the president than what has been suggested by Attorney General William Barr, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported late Wednesday.

Barr issued a four-page summary March 24 of the Mueller report and its investigation into allegations the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the election in Trump’s favor. Barr said Mueller’s team found no evidence that Trump or anyone associated with his campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia.

The attorney general also said Mueller did not conclude that the president illegally interfered with the investigation, but added that he was also not exonerated. Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided there was not enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice.

But the Times and the Post say Mueller’s investigators have told associates that Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry. The Post says the members of Mueller’s team believe the evidence they gathered on obstruction was “alarming and significant.” The Times says in its report that the investigators are concerned that because Barr’s summary was “the first narrative” of the team’s findings, the public’s views will be fixed before the final report is released.

The attorney general has vowed to publicly issue the report by mid-April after he and his staff take out any sensitive information, such as grand jury testimonies. But the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday along party lines to authorize Chairman Jerry Nadler to issue subpoenas to obtain the full copy of Mueller’s final report and its supporting evidence.

While Trump has left it to Barr to decide whether to release the complete report, the president is expected to assert what is known as executive privilege over some portions of records other congressional committees are seeking as part of their investigation of the administration. That has set the stage for a showdown between Democrats in Congress and the White House, raising the specter that the issue may ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The committee also authorized Nadler to subpoena documents and testimony from five of Trump’s former aides, including former political adviser Steve Bannon and former White House counsel Donald McGahn.

Despite Barr’s determination that he was not fully exonerated by Mueller’s report, Trump has boasted that he has been fully cleared of any wrongdoing in the probe.
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A handful of Democratic presidential candidates are touting the amount of money they’ve raised in the first fundraising period of a 2020 primary fight that will last into next spring. The totals for the first quarter, which ran through March 31, are the first measure of how candidates are faring.

Details for the entire field won’t be known until candidates file their required disclosures with the Federal Election Commission by April 15, but here are some takeaways from what the campaigns have released so far:

BERNIE REALLY IS A FRONT-RUNNER

Bernie Sanders joins former Vice President Joe Biden atop many polls of prospective Democratic primary voters. But Sanders has something Biden doesn’t have (yet): a campaign operation raking in cash.

The senator from Vermont, who showed surprising fundraising heft in his upstart challenge to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton four years ago, raised more than $18 million in the 41 days between his official campaign launch and March 31, giving him $28 million cash on hand.

Those totals are expected to lead the Democratic field, putting pressure on other heavyweights, including Biden, who is still deciding whether to run and who is navigating accusations that he’s acted inappropriately toward women.

Besides Sanders, Sen. Kamala Harris of California put up an impressive $12 million haul. Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas didn’t offer a fundraising total Tuesday, but aides said he raised more than $1 million over the weekend and previously said he raised more than $6 million in his first 24 hours as a candidate.

Sanders’ haul shows that his base is just as enthusiastic as it was four years ago. In fact, it may be growing. The senator’s campaign noted that of his 525,000 unique donors, about 20% are new, about 100,000 are registered independents and about 20,000 are registered Republicans.

As impressive as Sanders’ fundraising has been, it’s not as large as previous presidential contenders who were more reliant on big donors.

In her first quarter as a candidate ahead of 2016, Clinton topped $45 million. In 2007, when then-Sen. Barack Obama and Clinton were beginning their long battle for the 2008 nomination, the favored Clinton opened with an initial fundraising quarter of $36 million, while the underdog Obama pulled in $26 million.

EXPECTATIONS GAME: MAYOR PETE WINS

Sanders’ fundraising haul set the curve for all candidates and will give pause to some of the other perceived heavyweights in the field, particularly his fellow senators Harris, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. (Harris is the only candidate of that group to release her fundraising totals.)

But the biggest winner may be Pete Buttigieg, an unlikely headline-grabber even among a group of lesser-known candidates that includes governors and members of Congress.

The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, raised $7 million, calling it “a great look for our first quarter.” That might be an understatement.

Such a sum ensures Buttigieg can finance a legitimate campaign operation for months as long as he’s not a profligate spender. (Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker learned in the 2015-16 Republican presidential campaign that being an early fundraising leader is no guarantee of success; he spent big, ran out of money and dropped out before the Iowa caucuses.)

Just as important as the bottom line: Buttigieg said he has almost 160,000 unique donors, a mark that meets the new grassroots fundraising thresholds that the Democratic National Committee has set for candidates to qualify for the initial summer debates.

SMALL DONORS RULE THE DAY

It’s a new day in Democratic politics, with small donors carrying the day.

Sanders touts that he’s held zero traditional fundraisers and has an average donation of $20 — less than 1% of the $2800 maximum. Sanders’ campaign says the senator got 88% of his money from donors who contributed $200 or less.

Buttigieg said his average contribution is about $36, with 64% of his total coming from those donating $200 or less. Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur who’s never held political office, has raised just $1.7 million, but his campaign says it’s come from about 80,000 donors averaging less than $18 per contribution.

This shift largely reflects politicians reacting to a progressive base that looks with suspicion and distrust on big-money donors.

For example, Warren is among the perceived favorites in the field but has promised she’ll be financing her campaign without leaning on traditional donors.

Harris isn’t eschewing high-dollar fundraisers. In a recent stop in Atlanta, she held one small-dollar event but also a high-dollar gathering sponsored by bundlers who’d pulled together at least $28,000 for her campaign. Yet when her campaign aides released fundraising totals for the first quarter, it wasn’t the big checks they touted. Rather, they emphasized that 98% percent of her contributors gave less than $100.

Gordon Giffin, a former Canadian ambassador under President Bill Clinton, recently hosted a fundraiser for Klobuchar in his metro Atlanta home. Traditional fundraising isn’t going away, Giffin said in a recent interview, “but that grassroots money can more than make up for it, and candidates have to prove they can do that.”
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Chicago Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot’s resounding victory was a clear call for change at City Hall and a historic repudiation of the old-style, insider politics that have long defined the nation’s third-largest city.

Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor who’d never been elected to public office, defeated Cook County Board President and longtime City Council member Toni Preckwinkle on Tuesday with backing from voters across the city. Late results showed Lightfoot, 56, winning every one of the city’s 50 wards.

Lightfoot also made history, becoming the first black woman and the first openly gay person to be elected Chicago mayor. Chicago will become the largest U.S. city to have a black woman serve as mayor when Lightfoot is sworn in May 20. She will join seven other black women currently serving as mayors in major U.S. cities, including Atlanta and New Orleans, and will be the second woman to lead Chicago.

“Out there tonight a lot of little girls and boys are watching. They’re watching us, and they’re seeing the beginning of something, well, a little bit different,” Lightfoot told a jubilant crowd at a downtown hotel. “They’re seeing a city reborn.”

She pledged to make Chicago “a place where your zip code doesn’t determine your destiny,” to address the city’s violence and to “break this city’s endless cycle of corruption” that allows politicians to profit from their office.

Lightfoot emerged as the surprising leader in the first round of voting in February when 14 candidates were on the ballot to succeed Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who decided against running for a third term.

She seized on outrage over a white police officer’s fatal shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald to launch her reformer campaign. She got in the race even before Emanuel announced he wouldn’t seek re-election amid criticism for initially resisting calls to release video of the shooting.

Joyce Ross, 64, a resident of the city’s predominantly black West Side who is a certified nursing assistant, cast her ballot Tuesday for Lightfoot. Ross said she believes Lightfoot will be better able to clean up the police department and curb the city’s violence.

She was also bothered by Preckwinkle’s association with longtime Alderman Ed Burke, who was indicted earlier this year on charges he tried to shake down a restaurant owner who wanted to build in his ward.

“My momma always said birds of a feather flock together,” Ross said.

Preckwinkle said she called Lightfoot Tuesday night to congratulate her on a “hard-fought campaign.”

“While I may be disappointed I’m not disheartened. For one thing, this is clearly a historic night,” she told a crowd gathered in her South Side neighborhood. “Not long ago two African American women vying for this position would have been unthinkable. And while it may be true that we took two very different paths to get here, tonight is about the path forward.”

That path will have major challenges. Chicago has been losing population, particularly in predominantly African American neighborhoods hit hardest by violence and a lack of jobs.

The new mayor will take over a city that faces massive financial problems. She will have just a few months to prepare a new budget, which in 2020 is expected to have a roughly $250 million deficit. Lightfoot also will take over the worst-funded public pensions of any major U.S. city. Chicago’s annual payments to the retirement systems are slated to grow by $1.2 billion by 2023.

She has expressed support for a casino in Chicago and changing the state’s income tax system to a graduated tax, in which higher earners are taxed at a higher rate — two measures lawmakers have tried for unsuccessfully for years to pass.

Violence and policing will also continue to be an issue, and one that has proven to be politically difficult.

The Chicago Police Department must implement a federally monitored consent decree approved in January. It followed the McDonald killing and a U.S. Justice Department review that found a long history of excessive use of force and racial bias by officers.

While voters also elected several newcomers over City Council veterans, Lightfoot will have to work with a council that has a sizable number of members who are the type of politicians she railed against during her campaign.
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The Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee is set to vote Wednesday to authorize subpoenas to obtain the full report on Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election from special counsel Robert Mueller, as well as the testimonies of five former White House officials interviewed by the special counsel.

Lawmakers were expected to vote along party lines to authorize Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler to subpoena documents and testimony from five former Trump aides, including former political advisor Steve Bannon and former White House Counsel Donald McGahn.

While Trump has left it to Attorney General William Barr to decide whether to release the complete report, the president is expected to assert what is known as executive privilege over some portions of records other congressional committees are seeking as part of their investigation of the administration. That has set the stage for a showdown between Democrats in Congress and the White House, raising the specter that the issue may ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

But if the past is any indication, the coming battle is likely to be fought — and eventually settled — through political give and take between the executive and legislative branches of government rather than the courts, said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of an acclaimed book on executive privilege.

“Historically, I found in my studies on executive privilege that presidents and Congress have done a good job of engaging in a negotiating process and settling these matters because they both understood that they had a real incentive not to let this go into the courts and not to let these matters drag on,” Rozell said.

Executive privilege

Executive privilege is the right of the president and his senior advisers to protect certain communications from disclosure to Congress and the courts. While the courts have long recognized that power, as well as Congress’ authority to investigate the executive branch, they’ve been reluctant to decide disputes over access to records between the two branches of government. 

“Courts have typically required the executive and the legislative branches to engage in a good faith back-and-forth accommodation process about the information before the court will ultimately decide the issue of whether certain documents or testimony are required to be provided to the Congress,” said Margaret Taylor, a senior editor at the popular Lawfare legal blog and a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. 

Short of serving a subpoena, Congress has other tools it can use to seek access to information from the executive branch, including the power of appropriation and the power to confirm senior administration officials, Taylor said.

“These are other tools that Congress can use to hasten … the provision of information from the executive branch to the Congress,” Taylor said.

Congress’ power to investigate

While not enshrined in the Constitution, Congress’ power to investigate and obtain confidential information from the executive branch is “extremely broad” and has been recognized as essential to its legislative function, according to the Congressional Research Service.

To obtain information or testimony from executive branch officials, congressional committees initially submit a request. When that fails, Congress can resort to another means of compulsion: subpoenas.

Failure to comply with a congressional subpoena can lead to a vote by the full House or Senate holding the person in contempt of Congress and referring him or her to the Department of Justice for prosecution. If the Justice Department is unwilling to bring charges, Congress can seek a civil judgment from a federal court compelling the individual to respond.

WATCH: Request for Mueller report

​With the power of executive privilege, presidents have wide latitude to refuse to fully comply with congressional subpoenas. While there is no consensus on the scope of executive privilege, Taylor said presidents have claimed executive privilege over several categories of information — sensitive or classified information; presidential deliberations with advisers; attorney-client communications; law enforcement investigations and national security matters.

“These claims of executive privilege aren’t always successful,” Taylor said. “Sometimes the president ends up waving the privilege and going ahead and sharing the information.”

While presidents going back to Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s have asserted executive privilege, previous presidents “exercised various forms of presidential secrecy that are consistent with what we today call executive privilege,” Rozell said.

Past examples

But it was during the 1970s Watergate scandal that the concept became firmly established when the Nixon administration unsuccessfully fought a grand jury subpoena to turn over secret recordings of White House conversations between President Richard Nixon and his aides.

“The Supreme Court in that case said there is a principle of executive privilege, but it does not apply in this particular instance because there are allegations of wrongdoing, and criminal justice requires access to as much information as possible in order to get the facts,” Rozell said.

Since Nixon, American presidents have invoked executive privilege to varying degrees of success.

In 2001, President George W. Bush asserted executive privilege over internal Justice Department deliberations regarding the FBI’s handling of confidential informants in the 1960s. Turning over the documents, Bush wrote, would “inhibit the candor necessary” to the deliberative process and would be “contrary to national interest.” Congress fought back and eventually reached an agreement with the Justice Department to receive the documents.

On occasion, presidential claims of executive privilege have ended up in court, although by the time a court has issued a verdict, the issue has become moot.

In 2011, the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed internal Justice Department communications and other records as part of its investigation of “Operation Fast and Furious,” a federal gun-running program run amok. Then-President Barack Obama invoked executive privilege to deny the committee access to the records. Three and half years later, a federal court rejected Obama’s assertion of privilege while recognizing that some records were protected and ordering the two sides to negotiate an agreement. 

The Supreme Court has never considered a case over a congressional subpoena versus executive privilege. But given the apparent unwillingness of both the administration and congressional Democrats to compromise, experts say the possibility the issue will land before the high court can’t be discounted.

“I don’t think it’s likely that a subpoena dispute will end up before the Supreme Court,” Rozell said. “Usually, it would be a lower level federal court that would get involved. But it could conceivably be a battle that goes all the way to the United States Supreme Court.”
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Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner faced little scrutiny on his way to becoming one of America’s most powerful people. But now a row over White House security clearances is pushing the president’s publicity-shy favorite into unwelcome limelight.

Unlike his can’t-get-enough-exposure father-in-law, Kushner is a discreet presence.

He’s virtually a ghost on social media, where he has 77,000 Twitter followers but doesn’t tweet.

And in the White House, he may be a fixture at high-level meetings, but he’ll rarely speak if the press corps is present, waiting until journalists leave the room.

So it was a measure of the White House’s need for damage control that Kushner went on the Trump go-to channel Fox News late Monday to dismiss concerns over his security access.

“I’ve been accused of all different types of things, and all of those things have turned out to be false. We’ve had a lot of crazy accusations,” Kushner said on Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle.”

Controversy over Kushner’s access to top secrets has been brewing since the start of the Trump presidency. After all, he was a relatively unknown quantity in Washington — a man with no political or diplomatic experience, or previous vetting, but a ton of potentially tangled business dealings at home and abroad.

This week the issue blew up when a veteran White House bureaucrat told Congress that her department had been overruled by higher-ups to grant passes to 25 people initially rejected due to worries over conflicts of interest, foreign influence and personal problems.

Among the names that the Democrat-led congressional committee investigating the issue suggests may be on that list: Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump.

Riches to power

Kushner was just another privileged New York business scion until his father-in-law and fellow real estate dealer unexpectedly won the presidency in 2016.

The change of address to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2017 catapulted him into the smallest of presidential inner circles.

Kushner’s title in the Trump administration is a vague “senior advisor.”

In reality, the youthful-looking 38-year-old, who married Ivanka Trump in 2009, has the president’s ear on everything from US drug addiction to selling Saudi Arabia weapons.

An Orthodox Jew who is part of what Trump proudly calls the “most pro-Israeli” US government in history, Kushner is also tasked with presenting a new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.

Generations of seasoned US diplomats have already failed there and expectations are low that Kushner’s as yet hidden plan will do better.

With Ivanka Trump also tagged as an adviser to her father, critics say the White House has sunken into the kind of nepotism few would have thought possible anymore.

“Not since JFK — more than 50 years ago — have family members of the president served in policy positions,” Mark Carl Rom, associate politics professor at Georgetown University, said.

“The Trump presidency is a throwback: he is making America 18th century again.”

Everything ‘turned to gold’

Naturally, Trump does not see things that way.

He seems not only to rely heavily on Kushner but genuinely to like and appreciate him.

At a big event Monday celebrating prison reform — an issue Kushner says he was inspired to work on due to seeing his own father serve 14 months behind bars for financial crimes — Trump singled out his son-in-law for lavish praise.

“You know,” Trump told the audience in the ornate East Room, “Jared has had a very easy life. He was doing phenomenally in New York and everything he touched has turned to gold.”

“Then, one day, he said,’I want to come down and I want to have peace in the Middle East. And I want to do criminal justice reform. And I want to do all these wonderful things.'”

Finally, the punchline: “And his life became extremely complex.”

In a presidency defined by all-out fights with the opposition Democrats, accusations of administrative chaos, and the morass of the Russia collusion investigation, Trump is believed to value Kushner and his daughter as among the few people he knows he can always rely on.

That’s understandable but will depending on family bring Trump more trouble down the road?

“The question is: Is their primary loyalty to the constitution of the United States of America, or to their father?” Rom asked.

 
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Republicans started a long-shot drive Tuesday to force a House vote on a measure that could imprison doctors for five years if they don’t try saving the life of infants born during attempted abortions.

Their effort seems likely to fail in the Democratic-controlled House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has refused to allow a vote on the bill. But Republicans hope it will be politically damaging for Democrats from moderate districts who oppose the GOP move, and see it as a way to energize conservative anti-abortion voters.

“How is it legal in America to kill a baby after it’s been born alive outside the womb?” said No. 2 House GOP leader Steve Scalise, R-La., who’s pushing the effort along with Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo.

“That’s not an accurate statement,” Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California at San Francisco, said of Scalise’s remark. “Any infant born alive during an abortion or otherwise needs to be treated as any live human.”

Opponents say such births are extremely rare, generally occurring when doctors determine that a child won’t survive and parents opt to spend time with it before death.

Republicans have been pushing the issue since it arose earlier this year in Virginia and New York.

Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist, spoke favorably in January about state legislation to ease restrictions on late-term abortions. He said “a discussion would ensue” between doctors and the family over next steps if an infant is born who is badly deformed or incapable of living.

President Donald Trump has criticized a new abortion law in New York that permits abortions of a viable fetus after 24 weeks of pregnancy if the mother’s life is in danger — codifying conditions specified by U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

House Republicans are utilizing a seldom used procedure that forces a vote on a measure once 218 lawmakers, a majority, sign a petition. Aides say all 197 Republicans are expected to sign. A few Democrats will probably join, but not the 21 Democrats that Republicans will need to succeed.

Senate Democrats blocked a GOP effort in February to force debate on a similar bill.
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The chairman of North Carolina’s Republican Party and a secretive big-money donor are facing federal bribery and wire fraud charges accusing them of trying to sway regulatory decisions in favor of the donor’s insurance companies, according to indictments unsealed Tuesday.

State GOP Chairman Robin Hayes and investment firm founder Greg Lindberg are among four people charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud. Hayes faces additional counts of making false statements. The four defendants appeared Tuesday before a federal magistrate.

Federal prosecutors said Hayes, Lindberg and two Lindberg associates promised or gave Republican Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey millions of campaign dollars to do things Lindberg wanted, such as seek the removal of a deputy insurance commissioner responsible for examining Lindberg’s Durham-based insurance business. Prosecutors allege that the scheme ran from April 2017 through August 2018.

Prosecutors said in a news release that Causey, who wasn’t charged in the indictment, voluntarily reported the scheme.

Lindberg’s company, Global Bankers Insurance Group, is the parent or management company for a number of insurance businesses around the country. Lindberg also is the founder and chairman of the investment company Eli Global LLC.

“The indictment unsealed today outlines a brazen bribery scheme in which Greg Lindberg and his coconspirators allegedly offered hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions in exchange for official action that would benefit Lindberg’s business interests,” Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski said in a statement.

Hayes didn’t respond to a message left on his cell phone, and a Lindberg spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a phone message. A spokesman for the state GOP also didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Hayes, a 73-year-old former congressman, had announced Monday that he wouldn’t seek re-election to his post with the state party. A news release from the party cited health reasons including a recent hip surgery as the reason for the decision.

Lindberg has given more than $5 million in political donations to North Carolina candidates, party committees and independent expenditure groups.
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