Trump news: President's ally Roger Stone banned from speaking about case after Instagram post of judge
The updates from Washington as they happened on Thursday
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FBI special counsel Robert Mueller could hand in his report into allegations members of the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 US presidential election as early as next week, according to reports on Wednesday.
As that report was hypothesised about, Donald Trump’s former confidant, the flamboyant political consultant Roger Stone, appeared in court after posting an image on Instagram appearing to threaten a US district judge overseeing his criminal trial, itself instigated by Mr Mueller’s investigation.
The judge, who he repeatedly apologised to, then issued a full gag order on him and warned him that he would not be given another chance to keep his freedom as he awaits trial.
House Democrats will meanwhile file a resolution tomorrow against Mr Trump’s controversial decision to declare a national emergency over illegal immigration from the southwestern border in order to bypass Congress and get his wall built.
As all of that Washington drama swirled, Mr Trump weighed in on a number of issues on Thursday, including the case of Empire actor Jussie Smollett, who was charged in Chicago on Thursday for filing a false police report.
Trump's inner circle: Meet the members of the US president's cabinet
Show all 20"What about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments!?" the president tweeted, referring to Smollett's claims that he was attacked by two men who told him he was in "MAGA country", referring to the president's popular slogan. Chicago police have said that Smollett's attack was staged and orchestrated by the actor.
The White House also detailed on Thursday the president's upcoming trip to Vietnam, where he will have his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
That summit is scheduled for next week.
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Hello and welcome to The Independent's coverage of a bright new day for the Trump administration.
The big news of the morning is that FBI special counsel Robert Mueller could turn in his report on possible collusion between the Trump camp and Russia in 2016 as early as next week, according to CNN.
Should new attorney-general William Barr announce the investigation's conclusion, it would mark the end of a near two-year process, regularly branded a "witch hunt" by the president, that has seen raids on the offices and homes of a number of his closest confidantes - including ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort, lawyer Michael Cohen and adviser Roger Stone - and those men charged with a variety of federal offences.
Here's Clark Mindock in New York.
Speaking of Roger Stone, the extrovert Republican political consultant and Trump champion will return to court in Washington today after posting an image on Instagram of US district court judge Amy Berman Jackson with the cross-hairs of a rifle sight superimposed over her head.
The post, which he later removed, was widely interpreted as a threat against Judge Jackson, the accompanying comment also declaring Mr Stone's "show trial" had been organised through the "legal trickery" of Robert Mueller, describing the official as a "Deep State hitman".
Mr Stone's lawyers submitted a written apology to the judge saying their client "recognises the impropriety" of his actions.
He is charged with lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering related to discussions he had during the 2016 election about stolen Democratic Party emails published by WikiLeaks, pleading not guilty on all counts.
Anyone at all acquainted with Roger Stone will know he has a reputation for sartorial extravagance, even writing a fashion column for the conservative website The Daily Caller.
CNN political analyst David Gergen caused a stir yesterday with a comment suggesting Mr Stone's status as a "dandy" could see him subjected to sexual violence should he go to prison.
"Roger Stone must worry if he goes there - he’s seen as something of a dandy. Will he be physically safe? Will he be subject to rape? There must be a lot of things that going through his mind. 'Oh my god what have I gotten myself into?' In light of that how odd, how perfectly odd, to even post this thing," Mr Gergen said.
Mr Stone issued an angry statement in response:
“Not only was CNN tipped off in advance of my arrest, allowed to video it from 25 feet away while the street was cleared, clearly had a draft copy of my indictment while it was still sealed, but now both Jake Tapper and David Gergen have salivated over the prospect that I could be raped in prison... These people are demons.”
Democrats in the House of Representatives will file a resolution to block Donald Trump's national emergency declaration on Friday.
The opposition argues the president has overstated and misrepresented the extent of the problem of illegal immigration from Central America at the southwestern border in order to activate emergency powers, allowing him to bypass Congress and reallocate federal funding to realise his 2,000-mile border wall, his signature campaign promise.
A vote on the measure - dubbed the "resolution of disapproval" by its co-sponsor, Texas representative Joaquin Castro - isn't likely until mid-March, however, because of a timeline set by law.
House speaker Nancy Pelosi told colleagues in a letter on Wednesday that the House will "move swiftly" to pass the resolution and that it will be referred to the Senate and then sent on to President Trump.
"The president's decision to go outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process violates the Constitution and must be terminated," she added.
Passage through the Republican-controlled Senate is not certain, but a veto by Mr Trump is.
The development follows the filing of a lawsuit by 16 states to challenge the same measure in court, an initiative spearhead by California, prompting the president to lash out at the Golden State's costly bullet train project, which he says has wasted almost $3.5bn (£2.7bn) in federal funds already.
The man himself has been busily tweeting about the progress of construction, which at least makes a change from endangering journalists.
Andrew Buncombe here with a disturbing report that killings by white supremacists in the US more than doubled last year.
“The organised hate movement may be showing signs of disappointment with Donald Trump, but the president, aided and abetted by Fox News, continues to push his noxious anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim ideas into the public consciousness — fueling fears of a forthcoming white-minority country,” the Southern Poverty Law Centre says in a strongly-worded statement.
Another classic: President Trump's panel to examine the effect of climate change on national security will include at least one man who doesn't believe in global warming.
White House adviser William Happer, a physicist with no background in climate science, refutes the scientific community's consensus that carbon dioxide pollution is harmful to the planet.
"More CO2 will benefit the world," he told Greenpeace in an email.
"The only way to limit CO2 would be to stop using fossil fuels, which I think would be a profoundly immoral and irrational policy."
Actor Alec Baldwin, who has regularly annoyed Donald Trump with his unflattering impersonation of him on NBC's satirical sketch show Saturday Night Live, has repeated his fears for his personal safety as a result of the president's tweets denouncing the programme.
Here's Jack Shepherd.
Here's Sarah Harvard and Jon Sharman on the president's taking credit for blocking Isis bride Hoda Muthana, 24, from returning to the US with her 18-month-old son.
A Yemeni diplomat's daughter born in Hackensack, New Jersey, and raised in Alabama, Muthnana left to join the Islamist militants in Syria in 2014 while she was a university student but now says she rejects the group's extremist ideology.
"I’m a normal human being who has been manipulated," she says. "I hope America doesn’t think I am a threat to them and I hope they accept me. I hope they excuse me because of how young and ignorant I was."
Secretary of state Mike Pompeo announced the decision to stop her return on Wednesday, saying she did not have US citizenship, but apparently it wasn't his call after all.
"We cannot get to a point where we simply strip citizenship from those who break the law. That's not what America is about," the family's lawyer, Hassan Shibly, told AFP.
"I think Andrew McCabe has made a fool out of himself over the last couple of days. He really looks to me like sort of a poor man’s J Edgar Hoover."
So said President Trump yesterday when questioned by reporters during his meeting with Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz.
Mr Trump has spent several days infuriated by comments made by Mr McCabe, who is currently on a media tour to promote his book The Threat about his firing from the FBI.
Mr McCabe's revelations that he discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove the president with senior bureau officials and that deputy attorney-general Rod Rosenstein offered to wear a wire in the White House caused particular consternation.
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