Donald Trump reveals details of meeting with Kim Jong Un

7 March

Porn actress Stormy Daniels sues Donald Trump

Porn actress Stormy Daniels, who claims she was paid money to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Donald Trump, has sued to have a non-disclosure agreement overturned.

The adult performer, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, argues in the lawsuit that the so-called “hush agreement” she signed shortly before the 2016 presidential election is invalid and unenforceable because Trump didn’t sign it.

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The Washington Post reports that the lawsuit also raises allegations against Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, suggesting that he used “intimidation and coercive tactics” to force Daniels to sign a statement denying the affair, “thus helping to ensure he [Trump] won the election.”

Should the lawsuit be successful, it raises two issues for Trump. First, Daniels would be free to publicly discuss the affair, which she says took place from 2006 to 2007.

Second, if the court finds that Trump was aware of the agreement and the payment, he would fall foul of Federal Election Commission laws because the $130,000 was not reported as an in-kind donation.

6 March

Donald Trump ‘may have done something’ during campaign, says former aide

During a series of extraordinary interviews, Donald Trump’s former campaign aide Sam Nunberg has made explosive claims about the US President and several other people connected with his campaign.

The day began with Nunberg announcing that he would not comply with a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller to appear before a grand jury on Friday.

Having told The Washington Post that he would also refuse to hand over emails and other documents relating to Trump, he spent several hours giving interviews to news networks including CNN and MSNBC.

On CNN, he said he was not trying to protect Trump, whom he called “an idiot”, but Trump ally Roger Stone.

He then told MSNBC that Mueller “may have something” on the President, and that the special counsel believed that Trump is a “Manchurian candidate”.

“I think that he [Trump] may have done something during the election,” Nunberg said. “But I don't know that for sure.”

In a separate interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Nunberg claimed that Trump knew about a significant meeting between his son, campaign staff and two Russians in Trump Tower, at which Trump Jr talked to a Kremlin-linked lawyer promising damaging information about Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

The US President “talked about it for a week before” it took place, Nunberg said.

He then alleged that Carter Page, a former adviser to the Trump campaign, had been working with the Kremlin.

“I believe Carter Page was colluding with the Russians,” he said. “I think that Carter Page is a weird dude. I don’t think he should have been involved in that campaign.”

Page later dismissed Nunberg’s claims. “There's been a lot of people that have been quite intoxicated for over a year and a half now, so nothing new here,” he told Fox News.

By late Monday night, Nunberg told NBC News he would “probably cooperate with Mueller” after all.

Nunberg was fired from the Trump campaign in 2015 after racist Facebook posts came to light.

5 March

Donald Trump escalates trade war rhetoric

Donald Trump has stepped up talk of a trade war, threatening to impose new tariffs on foreign cars if other nations retaliate against his 25% levy on steel imports.

Last week’s surprise announcement of new steel and aluminium tariffs sparked a backlash from the US’s major trading partners.

Global stock markets tumbled on Friday as traders feared tit-for-tat barriers to trade going up between the US and China, the world’s two largest economies.

Beijing said it does not want a trade war with the US, but will not sit idly by if its economy is hurt, while the IMF and WTO also strongly criticised the US move.

The European Commission President, Jean Claude Juncker, said Europe was ready to target imports such as Harley-Davidson motorbikes, Levi’s jeans and Kentucky bourbon whiskey. Trump to hit back, threatening to increase tariffs on EU-made cars.

“If the EU wants to further increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on US companies doing business there, we will simply apply a tax on their cars which freely pour into the US,” he said. “They make it impossible for our cars (and more) to sell there. Big trade imbalance!”

The US is the largest export market for EU cars - making up 25% of the €192bn (£171bn) worth of motor vehicles the bloc exported in 2016.

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday, Theresa May said she had phone Trump to raise Britain’s “deep concern” over his plans.

2 March

Donald Trump’s steel tariff angers trading partners

Several of the US's largest trading partners are considering their response after Donald Trump said he would introduce steep import tariffs on steel and aluminium.

The tariffs, set at 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium, are designed to shore up the struggling US steel industry, and are likely to spark a trade war with other steel-producing nations.

The announcement came during a “hastily arranged meeting with steel and aluminium executives”, says CNN, at which Trump told the business leaders: “You’ll have protection for a long time in a while. You’ll have to regrow your industries, that’s all I’m asking.”

Both Canada and the EU have announced they will “bring forward their own countermeasures to the steep new tariffs”, the BBC reports. Mexico, China and Brazil are also “weighing up retaliatory steps.”

The prospect of tariffs had an immediate effect on global markets, with the Dow plunging more than 500 points in the hours after it was made.

“Trade policy experts warn the tariff could do more harm than good,” says Time, pointing to a similar tariff imposed by George W Bush in 2002, which led the EU to impose its own tariffs on goods produced by the US.

The World Trade Organisation eventually ruled the 2002 tariffs to be in breach of several international trade agreements, leaving the US open to sanctions.

1 March

Donald Trump’s former aide Paul Manafort will go on trial in September

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has pleaded not guilty to new charges brought against him as part of the investigation into alleged Russian election rigging.

He is due to appear in federal court on 17 September, “setting up a potential test of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe at the height of US congressional elections” this autumn, says The Washington Post.

In October last year, Manafort and his long-time business partner Rick Gates pleaded not guilty to conspiring to defraud the US government by hiding tens of millions of dollars from their work for a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine and former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

Last week, Gates pleaded guilty to conspiracy and false statements and agreed to co-operate with prosecutors and inform them about crimes he said he committed with Manafort.

It also emerged yesterday that the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has had his security clearance downgraded. The Washington Post reports that at least four countries had discussed how to use Kushner’s sparse experience, financial troubles and intricate business arrangements to manipulate him.

On a difficult day for the Trump administration, it also emerged that Mueller was looking into the US President’s business dealings with Russia before the campaign, The Independent reports, and that seven US states had their voter registration systems “compromised” by Russian-backed operatives.

But it is the fate of Manafort that poses perhaps the greatest danger to Trump, and not only in the timing of his September trial, which Politico says is “a potentially unwelcome distraction for Republicans as they try to maintain majorities in Congress”.

Of more concern to the President and his inner circle is Manafort’s access during crucial months of the campaign, says The Guardian, specifically his presence at the now-infamous June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between alleged Russian operatives and senior members of the Trump team.

Legal experts told the New York Daily News that developments in the past week could nudge Manafort to make his own deal with the government, one of three options left open for the 68-year-old veteran lobbyist. Alternatively, says the newspaper, he could hold out for a pardon from Trump, or go to trial and potentially spend the rest of his life in prison.

So far, no indictment has linked anyone in the Trump campaign directly with Russia but the mounting number of charges against Manafort “seems to suggest that Mueller would similarly like Trump’s former campaign chairman to cooperate as well”, says the Post.

“It raises another interesting question: Whom else might Mueller be targeting?” adds the paper.

28 February

Donald Trump’s communication director Hope Hicks admits telling 'white lies'

White House communications director Hope Hicks has admitted telling “white lies” for President Donald Trump - but insists that she has not lied about anything relevant to the Russia investigation.

The admission “came during Hicks’ testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, according to lawmakers present at the nine-hour session”, The New York Times reports.

Hicks, a 29-year-old former model, “has been by Trump's side for years”, says the BBC. “She is seen as a key witness in the ongoing inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.”

Hicks “also pointedly and repeatedly declined to answer questions about the presidential transition or her time in the White House...telling investigators that she had been asked by the White House to discuss only her time on the campaign”, says The New York Times.

The House Intelligence Committee - which has been investigating Russia’s involvement for nearly a year - has “increasingly found itself butting up against the White House over similar claims by witnesses”, adds the newspaper.

Committee member Tom Rooney, a Republican Representative for Florida, said Hicks’ admission of “white lies” was completely unrelated to the Russia investigation.

“When specifically asked whether or not she was instructed to lie by the president, or the candidate, with regard to Russia, the investigation or our investigation, the answer to that question was no,” Rooney said.

“And that’s our jurisdiction. Not whether or not he asked her to cancel a meeting for him, or something like that.”

In the hours before Hicks’ arrival in front of the committee, the president “tweeted several times, quoting cable news commentators who said they hadn’t seen evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia”, says PBS NewsHour.

One tweet encouraged investigations of Clinton, according to the website. Another simply said, “WITCH HUNT!”.