President Donald Trump wrongly claimed that shoppers need to show photo identification to buy groceries and accused Democrats of obstructing his agenda and his Supreme Court nominee during a raucous rally aimed at bolstering two Florida Republicans ahead of the state’s primary.

Trump, addressing thousands of supporters Tuesday night in one of the nation’s top electoral battlegrounds, also mounted a rigorous defense of his trade agenda, accusing China and others of having “targeted our farmers.”

“Not good, not nice,” he told the crowd as tensions with China continue to escalate, adding: “You know what our farmers are saying? `It’s OK, we can take it.” The Trump administration last week announced plans for $12 billion in temporary aid to help farmers deal with retaliatory tariffs from U.S. trading partners in response to Trump’s policies.

The freewheeling rally lasted more than an hour and included numerous attacks on the media, as well as one glaring false claim. Trump was railing against the idea of noncitizens voting and advocating stricter voting laws when he claimed that IDs are required for everything else, including shopping.

“If you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID,” he said at the event at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa. “You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID and you need your picture.”

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about when the billionaire president last bought groceries or anything else himself. Photo IDs are required for certain purchases, such as alcohol, cigarettes or cold medicine.

The comment came as Trump waded into Florida Republican politics, picking sides as he embraced U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis in a competitive primary for governor and backed the Senate campaign of his longtime ally, Gov. Rick Scott.

“We have to make sure Rick Scott wins and wins big,” Trump told the crowd. “It’s time to vote Bill Nelson out of office.”

Trump, who is seeking Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court in the fall, also made the case that voters need to elect more Republicans, pointing to Democratic opposition to his pick.

Democrats “don’t want to give Trump any victory,” he said. “They will do anything they can to not help the Trump agenda.”

Trump has publicly threatened to shut down the federal government over his push to overhaul the nation’s immigration system and fund his signature border wall, though officials say he has privately assured staff he wouldn’t provoke a fiscal crisis before midterms. The president avoided making an outright reference to a government shutdown during the rally, saying, “We may have to do some pretty drastic things” unless Democrats support his agenda.

Instead, he spent much of the rally highlight strong economic numbers and praising DeSantis as “a tough, brilliant cookie.” He predicted DeSantis will win against Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam in the state’s Aug. 28 Republican primary.

Trump, who makes frequent trips to Florida and his private Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago club, criticized Nelson’s policies and claimed the only time he sees the senator is “five months before every election.”

“After a while, you forget who’s the senator,” Trump said.

Scott didn’t join Trump at the rally but appeared with him at an earlier roundtable event.

DeSantis has tied his campaign for governor directly to Trump, appearing on Fox News more than 100 times to talk about federal issues and defend the president. DeSantis has campaigned with Fox’s Sean Hannity and Donald Trump Jr. and uses humor in a new ad to show his alliance with the president, teaching one of his two children to “build the wall” with blocks.

Putnam, a state agriculture commissioner and former congressman, has run a more traditional campaign for governor, barnstorming the state with campaign events aimed at building upon his family’s deep ties to the state.

Trump, in railing against the idea of allowing noncitizens to vote in some elections, said at the rally, “Only American citizens should vote in American elections.”

He also advocated for requiring voters to present photo identification, even though Florida already has such a law on the books.

“The time has come for voter ID like everything else,” Trump said, before making his claim about groceries.

“It’s crazy,” he added, “but we’re turning it around.”
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U.S. prosecutors said former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort believed he was above tax and banking laws as he used offshore accounts to direct millions of dollars he earned for political work in Ukraine, while Manafort’s lawyers directed blame at his business partner.

“We are primarily here because of one man: Rick Gates,” defense lawyer Thomas Zehnle said in his opening statement Tuesday in Manafort’s trial on tax and bank fraud charges in Alexandria, Virginia.

Zehnle blamed Gates and the Ukrainian oligarchs who paid for much of Manafort’s political consulting work for former President Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Russia Party of Regions.

Manafort and Gates were indicted last year and earlier this year on charges related to their work in Ukraine by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Gates pleaded guilty to two lesser charges in February, agreeing to cooperate with the special counsel’s investigation. He has emerged as the prosecution’s star witness against Manafort.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to tax and bank fraud charges.

Core allegations

There are two core allegations against Manafort.

One is that he earned more than $60 million in consulting fees in Ukraine between 2010 and 2014 but evaded U.S. taxes on most of the income by setting up secret shell companies for the purpose of disguising the money as “loans.” 

The other charge alleges that after Yanukovych was deposed in 2014 and Manafort’s Ukrainian earnings dwindled, he fraudulently obtained loans by lying about his income and debt to several U.S. banks.

“In each of these cases, the evidence will show that Paul Manafort placed himself and his money above the law,” said prosecutor Uzo Asonye. 

Bank records obtained by prosecutors show that Manafort used money transfers from more than 30 overseas accounts to pay for $6 million worth of real estate and all manner of luxury goods, from a $21,000 watch to a $15,000 jacket “made from ostrich,” Asonye said.

U.S. law requires taxpayers to disclose foreign financial interests and bank accounts. But Manafort, according to prosecutors, hid the existence of his offshore accounts from his own tax preparers and bookkeepers.

“Just like he lied to the IRS and his tax preparer, Paul Manafort also misled his bookkeeper about his foreign accounts,” Asonye said.

But Zehnle, the defense lawyer, sought to play down the tax evasion charges, labeling the case as one about taxes and a failure “to check a box” on tax return forms.

The defense will present evidence to show that Manafort reported $30 million in adjusted gross income between 2005 and 2015 and that his company reported an income of more than $92 million during the period, Zehnle said.

U.S. taxpayers are audited rather than “punished” for the “mistakes” they make on their tax returns, he said, adding that Manafort and his company were not audited by the IRS prior to the special counsel’s investigation.  

Shell companies

The more than two dozen secret shell companies Manafort is accused of using, Zehnle said, were created at the initiative of the Party of Regions’ financial supporters. 

“The people he was dealing with, they were the ones who told him to open the accounts,” Zehnle explained.

The funders “instructed” Manafort that they didn’t want Manafort’s or Gates’ names on the accounts. But Gates kept his name on them “so he could keep control,” he said. 

Discrediting the prosecution’s witnesses is a common defense strategy. But Manafort’s lawyers appear intent on turning the tables on Gates and make him the main culprit in the affair.

Zehnle described Gates as the “point person” for Manafort’s consultancy on tax and financial issues.

He said Manafort entrusted him with running the day to day operations of the company, but instead Gates abused his trust and “embezzled tens of millions of dollars from his longtime employer.”

“Unfortunately, his trust in Rick Gates was misplaced,” Zehnle said.

The trial is expected to take about three weeks.

Manafort has been in jail since June, when the judge presiding over the Washington case revoked his bail for allegedly tampering with potential witnesses. 

The special counsel has enlisted as many as 35 witnesses to testify against Manafort. They include accountants, financial advisers, tax preparers and real estate agents. 

But prosecutors’ star witness is likely to be Gates, who worked closely with Manafort in Ukraine and later followed him into Trump’s campaign as deputy chairman. 

Gates was named as a co-defendant in the initial indictment handed down against Manafort last October. But when the special counsel hit the two men with a second indictment in February, Gates pleaded guilty to two lesser counts in exchange for cooperation.

Manafort has remained defiant, vowing to fight the charges.
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U.S. President Donald Trump defended his trade policies on Tuesday in a speech in Florida and said American farmers hurt by retaliatory tariffs from China were bearing up, in a sign he is feeling some political heat on the issue.

Trump’s rally speech in Tampa contained many elements familiar to his political events. Several hecklers were ejected and the crowd at the state fairgrounds was big and loud. Trump attacked public opinion polls, except one that said he was popular among Republicans.

The president, in Florida to campaign for Republican Governor Rick Scott’s bid for a U.S. Senate seat and U.S. Representative Ron DeSantis’ campaign for governor, said he could tame his raucous presidential style if he wanted.

“I can be more presidential than any president in history except for maybe Abe Lincoln with the big hat,” Trump said. “I admit it, Abe Lincoln is tough.”

The president spent considerable time talking about his trade policies, including tit-for-tat tariffs with China that he said would eventually pay dividends for the United States.

The tariffs are causing unease among Republican lawmakers facing tough re-election battles in November, and Trump’s focus on them suggested he was concerned about their potential political impact.

China and other top U.S. trade partners zeroed in on American farmers with retaliatory tariffs after the administration imposed duties on Chinese goods, as well as steel and aluminum from the European Union, Canada and Mexico.

“China and others have targeted our farmers. Not good. Not nice. And you know what our farmers are saying? ‘It’s OK. We can take it,'” Trump said.

The Trump administration announced a $12 billion farm aid package last week, prompting some farmers and farm-state lawmakers, including Trump’s fellow Republicans, to criticize the move, saying they would rather trade with no tariffs than receive government help.

“I want to thank our farmers,” Trump said. “Our farmers are true patriots.”

Trump also defended the denuclearization deal he signed with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June in Singapore after reports surfaced that North Korea was proceeding with its missile program.

The Singapore summit was long on positive imagery but short on specific benchmarks for North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons.

Trump said the fact that North Korea was starting to return the remains of American dead from the 1950s Korean War and that there had been no nuclear or missile tests were offshoots of the summit.

“I think it’s going to work out very well,” he said. “No tests, no rockets flying. But we’ll see what happens.”
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A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Texas company from releasing instructions on how to use a three-dimensional printer to make guns at home.

Judge Robert Lasnik issued his restraining order from Seattle just hours before gun rights advocate Cody Wilson was to have started putting the blueprints on the internet.

“There is a possibility of irreparable harm because of the way these guns can be made,” the judge wrote.

Attorneys general from nine states and the District of Columbia had filed a lawsuit in Seattle against the Trump administration to try to prevent the gun plans from being distributed.

They said downloadable guns would be unregistered and very difficult to detect and also would be available to anyone regardless of age, mental health or criminal history.

The blueprints created by the company, Defense Distributed, would allow anyone with a 3-D printer to make the parts for a plastic gun that would cost just a few hundred dollars.

The State Department had ordered Cody Wilson to stop distributing the blueprints, arguing they violated U.S. export laws.

Wilson sued, alleging the ban violated his constitutional rights. The Trump administration reversed itself and said Wilson could again start publishing the gun plans starting Wednesday. That decision is now on hold.

But it is unclear how many people got copies of the plans before the State Department ordered Wilson to stop.

​Doesn’t ‘make much sense’

On Tuesday, Trump himself questioned the wisdom of allowing people to assemble homemade weapons.

“I am looking into 3-D plastic guns being sold to the public. Already spoke to the NRA, doesn’t seem to make much sense,” Trump tweeted.

Some senators want Trump to do more than tweet and talk to the National Rifle Association. Several Democrats introduced a bill Tuesday that would outlaw the dissemination on the internet of blueprints for plastic homemade guns.

Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, appealed to Trump to fix what he called a “deadly mistake” his administration made.

“Donald Trump will be totally responsible for every downloadable plastic AR-15 gun that will be roaming the streets of our country,” he said.

Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal put it more bluntly, saying if the president did not stop plastic guns, “blood is going to be on his hands.”

Gun experts say the plastic handguns may not work without certain metal parts, and that the guns also have a tendency to blow up and break apart in users’ hands.

The experts also say the 3-D printer required to make the guns is expensive.
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday slammed the powerful Koch-led donor network as “globalist” and “a total joke,” rejecting the conservative group amid reports that the network was shifting away from him over trade and immigration issues.

Trump’s comments follow media reports that the Koch donor network sought to distance itself from Trump and the Republican Party at a weekend gathering in Colorado where concerns were also raised that his trade policies could fuel a recession.

“The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against strong borders and powerful trade. I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas,” Trump said in a post on Twitter.

“Their network is highly overrated, I have beaten them at every turn.”

Charles and David Koch have been a force in American politics for decades, channeling billions of dollars into conservative causes. But the billionaire industrialist pair kept their distance from Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

Charles Koch has taken the lead after his younger brother, David, stepped down from their political group and their company Koch Industries earlier in June due to poor health.

On Sunday, Charles Koch told reporters at the gathering that Trump’s trade policies, including tariffs, could trigger severe economic fallout, Bloomberg reported.

The Koch-backed network also said it would not support the Republican challenger to Democratic U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, who is facing re-election, according to the Washington Post.
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President Donald Trump is celebrating his chief of staff’s survival for a full year on the job.

Trump congratulated John Kelly in a tweet that includes a photo of the two men smiling wide.

He writes: “Congratulations to General John Kelly. Today we celebrate his first full year as (at)WhiteHouse Chief of Staff!”

Trump also marked the occasion during an Oval Office swearing-in ceremony for the new secretary of Veterans Affairs.

Kelly’s fate has been a subject of months of speculation as his standing in the West Wing diminished.

Trump has at times sounded out allies about potential replacements, and Kelly has told people he’d be happy if he made it to the one-year mark.

It was July 28 of last year when Trump announced Kelly would replace Reince Priebus.
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American culture has become “less hospitable to people of faith,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday in vowing that the Justice Department would protect people’s religious freedom and convictions.

Sessions spoke at a Justice Department summit on religious tolerance at a time when courts across the country have been asked how to balance anti-discrimination laws against the First Amendment’s religious freedom guarantees. He also announced the creation of a “religious liberty task force” to help implement that guidance and ensure that Justice Department employees are accommodating peoples’ religious beliefs.

Conservative groups immediately praised Sessions for promising to protect deeply held religious convictions, though Trump administration critics have repeatedly voiced concerns that the attorney general’s stance undercuts LGBT rights and favors the rights of Christians over those of other faiths.

Sessions, the country’s chief law enforcement officer, warned of a “dangerous movement” that he said was eroding protections for religious Americans.

He asserted that “nuns were being forced to buy contraceptives” — an apparent, though not fully accurate, reference to an Obama administration health care policy meant to ensure women covered by faith-based groups’ health plans have access to cost-free contraceptives. Religious groups that challenged the policy argued it violated their religious beliefs.

Sessions also said it was inappropriate that judicial and executive branch nominees were being asked about their religious dogma. And he praised a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple in a case that reached the Supreme Court and ended in his favor this year. That baker, Jack Phillips, was part of a panel discussion at the Justice Department summit.

“Let’s be frank: A dangerous movement, undetected by many but real, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom. There can be no doubt. It’s no little matter. It must be confronted intellectually and politically, and defeated,” Sessions said. “This election, this past election, and much that has flowed from it, gives us a rare opportunity to arrest these trends and to confront them.

“Such a reversal will not just be done with electoral victories, however, but by intellectual victories,” he added.

Sessions, a Methodist and former Republican senator from Alabama, has made protecting religious liberty a cornerstone agenda item of his Justice Department — along with defending freedom of speech on college campuses.

In his speech, the attorney general noted that he had issued guidance last year advising executive branch employees on how to apply religious liberty protections in federal law.
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Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who had publicly wavered as to whether he would support Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, endorsed him Monday.

Paul of Kentucky says he will back Kavanaugh despite misgivings about the judge’s views on surveillance and privacy issues. Few had expected Paul would oppose President Donald Trump’s choice in the end.

The endorsement gives Kavanaugh a boost as he prepares to sit down Monday afternoon with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, one of a handful of Democratic senators seen as potential swing votes in the confirmation fight.

Manchin has said he’s interested in Kavanaugh’s views on the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. The senator has also asked West Virginia residents to send him questions for the meeting.

Manchin was one of three Democrats who voted to confirm Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota were the others. All three are up for re-election in states Trump easily won in 2016.

Republicans have a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate. With the absence of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is fighting brain cancer, they cannot afford to lose a single Republican vote if all Democrats vote “no.”

Paul had let Trump know he preferred other potential Supreme Court nominees he viewed as more conservative. He had expressed concern over Kavanaugh’s record on warrantless bulk collection of data and how that might apply to important privacy cases.

Paul said he hoped Kavanaugh “will be more open to a Fourth Amendment that protects digital records and property.”

Yet he also said his vote doesn’t hinge on any one issue. “I believe he will carefully adhere to the Constitution and will take his job to protect individual liberty seriously,” Paul said.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s attorney said Monday it remains unlikely  Trump will agree to answer questions from special counsel Robert Mueller about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and whether the president obstructed justice by trying to thwart the investigation.

“The odds are against it, but I wouldn’t be shocked, because he wants to do it,” Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said of the president in a CNN interview.

Giuliani said, however, that if Trump does sit for an interview, he would only agree to answer questions about whether his campaign colluded with Russia to help him win, not questions, except in a very limited way, about obstruction.

Trump has for months said there was “no collusion” between his campaign aides and Russia and that as president he did not attempt to block Mueller’s probe.

Trump unleashed a new broadside against Mueller and his investigation late Sunday, accusing the prosecutor of undisclosed “conflicts of interest” involving him, “including the fact that we had a very nasty & contentious business relationship.”

Giuliani declined to say what the purported Trump-Mueller business relationship was and said it was up to Mueller to reveal it, even though Trump raised the issue with his Twitter comment.

The former New York mayor said if Trump is interviewed by Mueller’s legal team, “Our real concern is they’re going to set up a perjury trap,” attempting to catch Trump, who often misstates facts, in a lie, which is a criminal offense.

He said Trump’s legal team presented its offer for limited questioning of the president to Mueller’s team 10 days ago but has not heard back. Mueller, if he does not like the proposed limits on questioning, could subpoena Trump to testify, setting the stage for a legal fight that could eventually be decided by the Supreme Court over whether a sitting president can be compelled to testify.

Mueller is expected to adhere to U.S. Justice Department guidelines to not indict a current president, but is expected to write a report on his findings that could, if wrongdoing is alleged, be turned over to Congress. If it wishes, Congress could start impeachment proceedings against Trump.

Giuliani said he thinks Mueller wants to conclude his now 14-month probe by sometime in September, enough time before the nationwide congressional elections on November 6, “so they can say they didn’t interfere in the elections.”

In the CNN interview, Giuliani sharply attacked Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, for taping conversations with clients, including one in which the future president discussed a hush money payment to former Playboy magazine model Karen McDougal shortly before the 2016 election to buy her silence about the alleged affair she says she had with Trump more than a decade ago.

Giuliani accused Cohen of “fooling, lying, deceiving everyone he talked with.” He said Trump, who employed Cohen for a decade, “had a close friend betray him. It happens in life.”

“You’ve forfeited your law license, as far as I’m concerned,” Giuliani said. “You can’t record your client without his permission. It’s outrageous.”
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The trial of President Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman will open this week with tales of lavish spending, secret shell companies and millions of dollars of Ukrainian money flowing through offshore bank accounts and into the political consultant’s pocket.

What’s likely to be missing: answers about whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential election, or really any mention of Russia at all.

Paul Manafort’s financial crimes trial, the first arising from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, will center on his Ukrainian consulting work and only briefly touch on his involvement with the president’s campaign.

But the broader implications are unmistakable.

The trial, scheduled to begin Tuesday with jury selection in Alexandria, Virginia, will give the public its most detailed glimpse of evidence Mueller’s team has spent the year accumulating. It will feature testimony about the business dealings and foreign ties of a defendant Trump entrusted to run his campaign during a critical stretch in 2016, including during the Republican convention. And it will unfold at a delicate time for the president as Mueller’s team presses for an interview and as Trump escalates his attacks on an investigation he calls a “witch hunt.”

Adding to the intrigue is the expected spectacle of Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, testifying against him after cutting a plea deal with prosecutors, and the speculation that Manafort, who faces charges in two different courts and decades in prison if convicted, may be holding out for a pardon from Trump.

“Perhaps he believes that he’s done nothing wrong, and because he’s done nothing wrong, he’s unwilling to plead guilty to any crime whatsoever — even if it’s a lesser crime,” said Jimmy Gurule, a Notre Dame law professor and former federal prosecutor. “Obviously, that’s very risky for him.”

Manafort was indicted along with Gates in Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation, but he is the only American charged to opt for a trial instead of cooperating with the government. The remaining 31 individuals charged have either reached plea agreements, including ex-White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, or are Russians seen as unlikely to enter an American courtroom. Three Russian companies have also been charged.

Prosecutors in Manafort’s case have said they may call 35 witnesses, including five who have immunity agreements, as they try to prove that he laundered more than $30 million in Ukrainian political consulting proceeds and concealed the funds from the IRS.

Jurors are expected to see photographs of his Mercedes-Benz and of his Hampton property putting green and swimming pool. There’s likely to be testimony, too, about tailored Beverly Hills clothing, high-end antiques, rugs and art and New York Yankees seasons tickets.

The luxurious lifestyle was funded by Manafort’s political consulting for the pro-Russian Ukrainian political party of Viktor Yanukovych, who was deposed as Ukraine’s president in 2014.

Lawyers have tangled over how much jurors will hear of his overseas political work, particularly about his ties to Russia and other wealthy political figures.

At a recent hearing, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who will preside over the trial, warned prosecutors to restrain themselves, noting the current “antipathy” toward Russia and how “most people in this country don’t distinguish between Ukrainians and Russians.” He said he would not tolerate any pictures of Manafort and others “at a cocktail party with scantily clad women,” if they exist.

Prosecutor Greg Andres reassured the judge that “there will be no pictures of scantily clad women, period,” nor photographs of Russian flags.

“I don’t anticipate that a government witness will utter the word `Russia,”‘ Andres said.

While jurors will be hearing painstaking detail about Manafort’s finances, they won’t be told about Manafort’s other criminal case, in the nation’s capital, where he faces charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent and lying to the government.

Nor will they hear about the reason he’s been jailed since last month after a judge revoked his house arrest over allegations that he and a longtime associate attempted to tamper with witnesses in the case. And they won’t learn that Manafort’s co-defendant in the Washington case is a business associate named Konstantin Kilimnik, who lives in Russia and who U.S. authorities assert has connections to Russian intelligence.

Trump and his lawyers have repeatedly sought to play down Manafort’s connection to the president, yet the trial won’t be entirely without references to the campaign.

Mueller’s team says Manafort’s position in the Trump campaign is relevant to some of the bank fraud charges. Prosecutors plan to present evidence that a chairman of one of the banks allowed Manafort to file inaccurate loan information in exchange for a job on the campaign and the promise of a job in the Trump administration. The administration job never materialized.

The trial will afford the public its first glimpse of a defense that so far has focused less on the substance of the allegations than on Mueller’s authority to bring the case in the first place. At one point, his defense lawyers sued Mueller and the Justice Department, saying they had overstepped their bounds by bringing a prosecution untethered to the core questions of Mueller’s investigation — whether Russia worked with the Trump campaign to tip the election.

Ellis rejected that argument despite having initially questioned the special counsel’s motives for bringing the case. He noted that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, had explicitly authorized Mueller to investigate Manafort’s business dealings. Mueller’s original mandate was to investigate not only potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, but also any other crimes arising from the probe.

“When a prosecutor looks into those dealings and uncovers evidence of criminal culpability,” said Stanford law professor David Alan Sklansky, “it doesn’t make sense to ask him to avert his eyes.”
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