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Wednesday 12 February 2020 11:43
Donald Trump has been forced to deny meddling in the sentencing of Republican political operative Roger Stone – before launching into a Twitter attack on the judge presiding over his case – as legal experts warn of a “political infestation” of the US Justice Department under attorney general William Barr.
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders won the Democratic New Hampshire primary on Tuesday and promised his victory meant “the beginning of the end” for Mr Trump, whom he labelled “the most dangerous president in modern history”.
The commander-in-chief spent his evening deriding the candidates on social media, singling out the faltering campaigns of Elizabeth Warren, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg for particular ridicule, despite the latter not being on the ballot paper in the Granite State.
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For Indy Premium, here’s Andrew Buncombe on another rough night for Joe Biden. The former vice president told Morning Joe yesterday that even Mickey Mouse had a shot against Trump, words he might already be coming to regret.
Biden was quick to look ahead to Nevada and South Carolina yesterday…
…but, behind the scenes, a campaign adviser told Politico: “The is horrendous. We’re all scared.”
Last night’s results mean we’ve lost two more candidates from the race for the Democratic nomination: the entertaining, forward-thinking maths enthusiast and universal basic income champion Andrew Yang and the largely anonymous senator for Colorado Michael Bennet.
Both ended their campaigns after failing to drum up the necessary support in the key bellwether states of Iowa and New Hampshire but we have surely not heard the last of the Yang Gang, whose figurehead thanked his supporters late on Tuesday and warned the party not to become fixated on the president alone going forward.
CNN pundit Van Jones meanwhile applauded him for inspiring a more “positive” form of populism than that the president has come to embody.
Here’s Bennet signing off.
The commander-in-chief spent his evening deriding the candidates on social media, singling out the faltering campaigns of Elizabeth Warren, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg for particular ridicule, despite the latter not being on the ballot paper in the Granite State.
As petty as ever, Trump would rather the media focused on his winning the Republican primary, despite his only having to run against Bill Weld and notching up 85.5 per cent of the vote as a formality. He did beat Ronald Reagan’s record take for an incumbent president but it’s hardly the most significant line of the evening.
Chris Riotta has this report on Trump trotting out the same tired old racist assault on Warren’s claim to Native American heritage.
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders won the Democratic New Hampshire primary on Tuesday and promised his victory meant “the beginning of the end” for Trump, whom he labelled “the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country”.
As he did in Iowa (eventually), Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg enjoyed another strong showing, as did Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar but it was another disappointing night for Senator Warren and long-time front-runner Joe Biden.
Here’s Clark Mindock’s report from Manchester.
Donald Trump has been forced to deny meddling in the sentencing of Republican political operative Roger Stone – before launching into a Twitter attack on the judge presiding over his case – as legal experts warn of a “political infestation” of the US Justice Department under attorney general William Barr.
The flamboyant Stone, 67, is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of witness tampering and lying to investigators in November last year, charges arising from ex-FBI special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian plot to influence the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favour.
Speaking a gathering of military veterans in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon, the president disputed the suggestion that his tweet expressing objections to the seven-to-nine year sentence Judge Amy Berman Jackson is considering for Stone was an attempt to sway her decision.
But he also insisted he has an “absolute right” to tell his Justice Department how to act despite the obvious conflict of interest such behavior would carry.
All four prosecutors of in the case against Stone – Jonathan Kravis, Michael Marando, Aaron Zelinsky and Adam C Jed – resigned yesterday in response to Trump criticising their sentencing recommendation and the Justice Department acquiescing, prompting further questionable comments from the president:
“This signals to me that there has been a political infestation and that is the single most dangerous thing that you can do to the Department of Justice,” NBC News legal analyst Chuck Rosenberg, a former US attorney in Virginia, said on MSNBC.
On the campaign trail in New Hampshire, 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren praised the prosecutors, saying they “showed more backbone than almost every Republican senator” at the president’s impeachment trial and expressed her concern about the “corruption of a Trump Justice Department that abandons the rule of law to give sweetheart deals to criminals who commit their crimes on behalf of Donald Trump”.
Here’s John T Bennett’s report on all of this.
Hello and welcome to The Independent‘s rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
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