Republican 2020 candidate Bill Weld believes Donald Trump is impeachable
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Donald Trump lost $1.17bn (£897m) from real estate ventures between 1985 and 1994 and paid no income tax for eight years, according to The New York Times, reporting after the newspaper got hold of copies of his tax returns for the period.
The president predictably branded the story, ”A highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!”, the news coming at a time when his treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin was already under fire for refusing to release his boss’s tax returns for 2013 to 2018, setting up what promises to be a protracted legal battle with Democrats.
The vote capped a day of ever-deepening dispute between congressional Democrats and the president, who for the first time invoked the principle of executive privilege, claiming the right to block lawmakers from the full report.
Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York declared the action by Mr Trump’s Justice Department a clear new sign of the president’s “blanket defiance” of Congress’ constitutional rights to conduct oversight.
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“We did not relish doing this, but we have no choice,” Nadler said after the vote.
The White House’s blockade, he said, “is an attack on the ability of the American people to know what the executive branch is doing.” He said, “This cannot be.”
But Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said it was disappointing that members of Congress “have chosen to engage in such inappropriate political theatrics.”
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New York state continues to bring the heat against Donald Trump, voting Wednesday to move towards allowing state prosecutors to issue charges against those pardoned by the president.
The bill will go to the State Assembly, where it is expected to stay on the floor for discussions for several weeks.
Donald Trump is now claiming Democrats don’t want his administration to send hurricane relief funding to the Florida Panhandle, where he is headed now. There is no evidence to support his claims — in fact, Democrats voted to support massive relief efforts for Florida shortly after Hurricane Michael.
New York state has steadily passed legislation in recent days that seeks to limit the president’s pardon powers and curtail his ability to withhold his tax returns from Congress.
The state’s Senate voted in favour of a bill Wednesday that requires local agencies to comply with requests for state tax returns from the heads of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee or the Joint Committee on Taxation.
New York’s Senate also voted to support legislation that allows state prosecutors — including Attorney General Letitia James — to file charges against certain members of the president’s orbit if they have received pardons for federal crimes.
Donald Trump Jr has been subpoenaed by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee over his previous testimony on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election:
The vote will be held open for two members of the House Judiciary Committee who are returning from another hearing. So far the vote has been strictly along party lines, with Democrats voting in favour of holding the attorney general in contempt of Congress and Republicans voting against it.
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