Donald Trump prepared to ‘walk out’ of North Korea summit
Donald Trump said last night he would “walk out” of talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un unless they were leading to progress.
“If the meeting when I’m there is not fruitful, I will respectfully leave the meeting and we’ll continue what we’re doing or whatever it is that we’ll continue, but something will happen,” Trump said.
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Speaking at a joint press conference with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump also said that if he believed the meeting with Kim would not be successful, “we won’t have it. We won’t go.”
Abe and Trump reportedly discussed the proposed summit at length. Abe said he has “urged President Trump to help bring about the release of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s”, the BBC reports.
North Korea has previously admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens with the aim of using them to train spies in the customs of Japan.
CNN says Abe also warned Trump that North Korea should not be rewarded “simply for opening dialogue with the United States”.
16 April
Donald Trump ‘morally unfit to be President’, says Comey
James Comey, the former director of the FBI, has claimed Donald Trump is “morally unfit to be president” and said it remains “possible” that Russia has material that could be used to blackmail him.
He made the comments during his first television interview since he was fired by Trump almost a year ago, and days ahead of the launch of his book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Loyalty”.
CNN reports that the book contains “scathing and unsparingly critical depictions” of Trump, including the claims that the president is “unethical and untethered to the truth”, and likening his presidency to a “forest fire”.
Trump responded to the interview on Twitter, saying Comey “will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history”.
10 April
Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, raided by FBI
FBI agents have raided the office of Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, seizing thousands of documents and sparking an extraordinary outburst from the US President.
Speaking from the White House, Trump declared the raid was “an attack on our country in a true sense” and “an attack on what we all stand for”.
He also accused special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation team of being “the most biased group of people”, adding that the situation is “really now on a whole new level of unfairness”.
The raid, which also targeted Cohen’s home and a room he had been using at the Leow’s Regency, a hotel in New York, was conducted by New York-based federal prosecutors following a referral by Mueller.
The search “does not appear to be directly related to Mueller’s investigation”, says The New York Times, but it is most likely the result of information uncovered during the Russia probe.
CNN says that among the documents seized in the raid was “information related to Stephanie Clifford, better known as porn actress Stormy Daniels”, to whom Cohen paid $130,000 days before the 2016 election. She has claimed that she had an affair with Trump - an allegation Trump denies.
Cohen has also denied that the payment was made on behalf of the Trump campaign, but a watchdog group has brought a lawsuit “alleging that the payment to Daniels was in fact an illegal campaign contribution”, The Guardian reports.
6 April
Donald Trump threatens $100bn in additional tariffs
Donald Trump has reportedly instructed the US trade representative to consider levelling an additional $100bn worth of trade tariffs on China, escalating the already tense stand-off between the world’s two largest economies.
In a statement issued last night, the Trump said the additional tariffs were in response to “China’s unfair retaliation” against the American decision to impose $50bn worth of tariffs intended to penalise China’s intellectual property practices.
CNN reports that Trump’s latest announcement “rattled markets and drew criticism from within his own party”, adding that the Chinese government has indicated it will “respond with equal measure to any new duties on its goods”.
Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican, called the move “the dumbest possible way to do this”, adding: “Hopefully the President is just blowing off steam again but, if he's even half-serious, this is nuts.”
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