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Michael Cohen Has Said He Would Take a Bullet for Trump. Maybe Not Anymore.

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Although Mr. Trump called Mr. Cohen last Friday, four days after the raid, to “check in,’’ according to people familiar with the call, he and Mr. Cohen have spoken little since Mr. Trump entered the White House. The two men did have dinner together at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club in Florida, a few weeks ago, but since the raid Mr. Cohen has told associates he feels isolated.

Mr. Trump has long felt he had leverage over Mr. Cohen, but people who have worked for the president said the raid has changed all that.

“Ironically, Michael now holds the leverage over Trump,” said Sam Nunberg, a former aide to Mr. Trump who worked with Mr. Cohen and Mr. Stone. Mr. Nunberg said that Mr. Cohen “should maximize” that leverage.

“The softer side of the president genuinely has an affection for Michael,” Mr. Nunberg said. For instance, Mr. Trump attended the bar and bat mitzvahs of Mr. Cohen’s children. “However, the president has also taken Michael for granted.” Mr. Nunberg added that “whenever anyone complains to me about Trump screwing them over, my reflexive response is that person has nothing to complain about compared to Michael.”

Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, far right in New Hampshire in 2011.


Jim Cole/Associated Press

Mr. Stone recalled Mr. Trump saying of Mr. Cohen, “He owns some of the finest Trump real estate in the country — paid top dollar for it, too.” In Mr. Trump’s worldview, there are few insults more devastating than saying someone overpaid.

For years, Mr. Cohen has described himself as unflinchingly devoted to Mr. Trump, whom he has admired since high school. He has told interviewers that he has never heard Mr. Trump utter an inaccuracy or break a promise. He has tweeted about Mr. Trump nearly 3,000 times.

In a Fox News interview last year, Mr. Cohen declared: “I will do anything to protect Mr. Trump.’’ He told Vanity Fair in September that “I’m the guy who would take a bullet for the president,” adding, “I’d never walk away.”

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At a Republican fund-raiser at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, Mr. Cohen went so far as to approach the first lady, Melania Trump, to try to apologize for the pain he caused her with the payment to Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who has claimed to have had the sexual encounter with Mr. Trump.

Over the years, Mr. Trump threatened to fire Mr. Cohen over deals that didn’t work out, or snafus with business projects, people who were present for the discussions said. He was aware that Mr. Cohen benefited in other business projects as being seen as affiliated with the Trump Organization, and it irked him.

“He clearly doesn’t think that Michael Cohen is his Roy Cohn,” said Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer, referring to Mr. Trump’s former mentor and the president’s ideal for a pit bull-like defender. “I think his abusive behavior to Michael is animated by his feeling that Michael is inadequate.”

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Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Cohen did little actual legal work for Mr. Trump and instead focused on extensive political, media and real-estate dealings for the president.

Michael D’Antonio, another Trump biographer, recalled Mr. Cohen calling him soon before the book was published.

“He wanted to know if I was going to call Trump a racist and he wanted to know” if it would include an old allegation from Mr. Trump’s wife, Ivana Trump, that he had committed marital rape, Mr. D’Antonio said.

Mr. Cohen also wanted the title of the book, which was originally “Never Enough,” changed, Mr. D’Antonio said. He recalled saying to Mr. Cohen, “When has it ever been enough for Donald?”

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How Michael Cohen and President Trump Are Connected

How Donald J. Trump’s longtime lawyer may be related to payments made to two women who claim they had affairs with Mr. Trump.


“And Cohen started laughing, and he said, ‘I don’t have a problem with the title personally,’” Mr. D’Antonio recalled. Nonetheless, he said, Mr. Cohen said he would call the publisher to get the title changed, and then threatened a lawsuit when he couldn’t.

In 2007, Mr. Cohen was dispatched, along with Ivanka Trump, to scout a golf course development project in Fresno, Calif., that didn’t materialize. The next year, he served as chief operating officer of Affliction Entertainment, a Trump mixed-martial arts venture of boxing, wrestling and karate that featured a Russian Army veteran named Fedor Emelianenko. (“His thing is inflicting death on people,” Mr. Trump said at the time.)

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He has also scouted business opportunities for Mr. Trump in the former Soviet bloc, including a 2010 trip to Georgia on Mr. Trump’s behalf.

Mr. Cohen has been active in Mr. Trump’s political ventures. When Mr. Trump pondered running for president in 2012, it was Mr. Cohen who went on an early trip to Iowa to meet with Republican operatives and who set up a website called ShouldTrumpRun.org. He even initially sought to pay some of the costs for the site with money raised for his own abortive run for New York State Senate.

Mr. Trump never ran in 2012, but Mr. Cohen raised $500,000 in four hours for the Mitt Romney presidential campaign that year during one of their “national call days” — and had campaign officials credit it as money that his boss had raised, one former Romney official recalled. When Mr. Trump ran for president in 2016, Mr. Cohen was given no official role on the campaign.

He fought with the initial campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman, later blocked him from coming on board. Mr. Trump never ordered his aides to make a place for Mr. Cohen.

Some of Mr. Cohen’s efforts to help only led to embarrassing rebuffs in front of those in charge. A month before the election, Mr. Cohen approached Mr. Trump outside his Trump Tower office with photographs of Bill Clinton and a mixed-race man alleged — without any evidence — to be the former president’s illegitimate son. Mr. Trump knocked the papers away, angrily telling Mr. Cohen to “get that out of my face,” said one former campaign official who witnessed the incident.

Particularly hurtful to Mr. Cohen was the way Mr. Trump lavished approval on Mr. Lewandowski in a way he never did for Mr. Cohen. When Mr. Cohen told Mr. Trump that he believed that Mr. Lewandowski had been behind a negative story about Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump dismissed the comments as simple jealousy, and didn’t pay attention, according to two people familiar with the incident.

Mr. Cohen raised millions of dollars for Mr. Trump in the campaign, at a time when the candidate was struggling to attract support. Mr. Cohen tried to soften the edges as Mr. Trump faced a torrent of criticism for decades of racially divisive remarks, forming a “diversity coalition” to give Mr. Trump cover composed of African-Americans, Muslims and other groups.

“Nobody else around Donald Trump would have thought to do that for him,” said Darrell Scott, an African-American pastor from Ohio and a friend of Mr. Cohen who helped created the coalition.

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Kim: North Korea no longer needs nuclear tests, state-run media reports

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CNN’s Will Ripley, who has reported from North Korea 17 times, says that Kim “is trying to send the world a positive signal ahead of a potentially monumental summit with President Donald Trump. But the steps he is taking at this point are largely symbolic. Operations at missile and nuclear testing sites could easily be resumed, since North Korea has not agreed to destroy weapons or dismantle key facilities. Furthermore, nuclear weapons — and the materials to make them — are undoubtedly hidden at secret sites throughout North Korea that are unknown to the US and its allies. Taking more substantive steps towards denuclearization will come at a high price, far higher than 1994’s Agreed Framework that promised North Korean denuclearization in exchange for light water reactors (that were never built) and heavy fuel shipments (that were often late). This announcement indicates a willingness by Kim to explore denuclearization in exchange for better economic conditions. But it won’t be easy to convince him to give up the missile program that has arguably gotten him to this point, unless there are substantial incentives to do so.

Whoa! 3.6-magnitude earthquake rattles southeast Michigan

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Witness an earthquake simulation at the Nevada Seismological Lab.
Jason Bean Sam Gross

A small earthquake rattled windows and nerves Thursday night in metro Detroit. 

The 3.6-magnitude quake struck at 8:01 p.m. and was centered near Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada, according to the United States Geological Survey. Amherstburg is about 20 miles from downtown Detroit. 

 

“They happen from time to time, right in that magnitude” in the region, said David Gurney, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in White Lake. “They are rare, but not unheard of.” 

There were no immediate reports of damage. 

In Taylor, Jeff Ward, 58, was on his couch watching TV when the ground started shaking. 

“This was kind of like a rumbling,” he said. “I live close to I-94, so I thought it was a truck maybe on 94, but then it kept going, and the house started shaking.” 

Ward said he wondered initially whether the shaking was caused by a meteor like the one that exploded across the sky back in January. 

Social media quickly erupted with comments about the earthquake.

“Never thought I’d experience my first earthquake in Michigan!” Twitter user @ashleyyymc1 wrote. 

Another Twitter user, @cole_hinzmann, said: “Just when you thought Michigan’s weather couldn’t get any worse, boom, earthquake.”

Ian Lee, National Weather Service meteorologist, said about an hour after the quake that the agency hadn’t received any reports of damage. 

Thursday’s quake was the latest in a series of small tremors to hit the Mitten State in recent years. 

On May 2, 2015, there was a magnitude-4.2 earthquake with an epicenter about 5 miles south of Galesburg, or 9 miles southeast of Kalamazoo. It was widely felt across lower Michigan, northern Indiana, northwestern Ohio, even into Illinois, Wisconsin and Ontario.

It was recorded as the strongest quake in Michigan in more than 67 years.

Just weeks later on June 30, 2015, another quake — this one a 3.3 magnitude —  struck 13 miles southeast of Battle Creek. 

In 2011, an earthquake with an epicenter in Virginia caused the upper floors of the Renaissance Center in Detroit to sway. 

 

Contact Ann Zaniewski: 313-222-6594 or azaniewski@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @AnnZaniewski. 

A duckling onesie and a blazer: The Senate floor sees its first baby, but many traditions stand

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Times are changing on Capitol Hill, where for the first time in history on Thursday, an infant was permitted on the Senate floor.

At least Maile Bowlsbey, newborn daughter of Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), didn’t ignore the dress code.

“She’s wearing a blazer!” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) exclaimed as Duckworth arrived, 10-day-old Maile in her arms, to vote against President Trump’s nominee for NASA administrator.

The decision to allow Maile’s presence on the floor this week — blazer or no blazer — was the latest sign that the Senate’s increasing share of female members is pushing the institution to reconsider some of its conventions. But while the baby ban collapsed without a fight, it’s unclear whether other traditions can be felled so easily.

Since Duckworth confirmed her pregnancy in January, the upper chamber had been privately racked with debate over how far it should go to accommodate lawmakers who have children while in office. Eventually, this week, senators voted to allow children younger than 1 to accompany their parents to votes.

The change technically happened without opposition. But that did not stop some senators from grumbling about the possible consequences of loosening the rules.

“What if there are 10 babies on the floor of the Senate?” 84-year-old Republican Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah asked a reporter this week, a comment that drew chastisement online.

[‘It’s about time’: Sen. Duckworth’s newborn daughter becomes first baby permitted on Senate floor]

The senator, whose large extended family includes dozens of children, later clarified his statement. Having 10 babies on the Senate floor “would be a wonderful thing,” his office wrote on Twitter. “Senator Hatch supported the change.”

To some observers, the controversy was another sign of the culture clash slowly escalating within one of the U.S. government’s most hidebound institutions. The current Congress is among the oldest in recent history. So as the Senate gains more women — 23 now — and members under 50 begin to flex their power, divisions on matters like tradition, technology and gender can become inflamed.

Such tensions are not limited to children’s access to the Senate floor — the House has long allowed members’ children inside the chamber — nor to changes favored by President Trump, such as ending the legislative filibuster.

On Thursday afternoon, 32 male senators joined their female colleagues to demand that the Senate update its system for reporting and adjudicating complaints of sexual harassment and other workplace misconduct in members’ offices.

While the House made such changes in February, the Senate failed to include them in a major spending bill last month, drawing criticism from female senators en masse. Leaders still have not moved to bring the Senate’s system in line with the House’s, which now provides greater support for accusers.

“If we are to lead by example, the Senate must revise current law to give the victims of sexual harassment and discrimination a more coherent, transparent, and fair process,” a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) stated.

It was signed by a single Republican, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), and every male senator apart from Schumer who caucuses with the Democrats.

“If we fail to act immediately to address this systemic problem in our own workplace, we will lose all credibility in the eyes of the American public,” they wrote.

By today’s standards, it can be hard to understand how traditional the Senate remains.

Unlike the House, there is no electronic mechanism for floor votes; every senator must indicate decisions to clerks one by one. Use of technology is limited in general, to the point where Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) once needed special permission to bring a laptop onto the floor during complex fiscal debates.

[Senate confirms Trump pick for NASA administrator over Democratic objections]

Some practices have received scrutiny specifically because of the presence of female members.

Consider the Senate swimming pool. The gym used by female senators does not have a pool, and the pool in the men’s gym used to ban women altogether. The “men only” sign was in place because a handful of male senators liked to swim naked, female senators have told reporters. (That pool has since been opened to women.)

Even finding an open restroom has been a problem for female lawmakers. House women didn’t have a bathroom directly off the floor until 2011. And while Senate women have had one since 1993, it had only two stalls until 2013.

It was perhaps this history that gave Duckworth’s arrival on Thursday its air of minor triumph. As the senator entered the chamber with Maile, applause erupted, and colleagues gathered around her.

Even McConnell and Schumer offered their best wishes — Schumer with a thumbs up and McConnell with a little wave.

“I think it will do us good in the United States Senate every once in a while to see a pacifier next to the antique ink wells on our desk, or a diaper bag next to one of these brass spittoons,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the Democratic whip, said this week on the floor.

He added that the Senate certainly reveres history — “but part of our history is recognizing change.”

Duckworth, before entering the Capitol on Thursday, thanked her colleagues for the support in changing the rules. “It feels great,” she said. “It’s about time.”

She had already picked out a miniature aqua green jacket for Maile so she “doesn’t violate the Senate floor dress code.”

“Not sure what the policy is on duckling onesies, but I think we’re ready,” Duckworth tweeted Thursday.

Erica Werner, Seung Min Kim and Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost

Trump hires Giuliani, two other attorneys amid mounting legal turmoil over Russia

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Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and two other former federal prosecutors joined President Trump’s legal team Thursday following weeks of turbulence and struggles to find attorneys who would agree to represent the president in the ongoing federal probe into Russian election interference.

The reshuffling comes at a particularly tense juncture for Trump, who aides said is increasingly frustrated by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation and with the senior officials at the Justice Department.

The entry of Giuliani, an experienced attorney with a combative reputation, immediately raises questions about how Trump will engage with Mueller and the leadership at Justice. Some Trump advisers are concerned that the president could use his ­executive authority to close or diminish the special counsel probe, which has spawned a parallel investigation in New York targeting his personal attorney.

“I’m doing it because I hope we can negotiate an end to this for the good of the country and because I have high regard for the president and for Bob Mueller,” Giuliani said in an interview Thursday.

Trump said in a statement that Giuliani “wants to get this matter quickly resolved.”

In recent days, the president has been regularly venting and speculating to aides about his legal status and the expected timeline for the Russia investigation to end, according to associates briefed on the discussions.

Trump also loudly and repeatedly complained to several advisers earlier this week that former FBI director James B. Comey, former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, among others, should be charged with crimes for misdeeds alleged by Republicans, the associates said.

Although White House officials said Thursday that Trump has not called Justice Department officials or taken any formal action, the persistent grousing has made some advisers anxious, according to two people close to the president. A publicity tour by Comey to promote his book critical of Trump, “A Higher Loyalty,” has attracted particular attention from the president, who has disparaged Comey publicly and privately.

Trump also complained this week about Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, saying the judge had proved too liberal in recent cases, according to administration officials who heard about the complaints. Associates said he was incensed that Gorsuch had voted against the administration on an immigration case and said it renewed his doubts that Gorsuch would be a reliable conservative. One top Trump adviser played down the comments as unhappiness with Gorsuch’s decision rather than with Gorsuch broadly.

Giuliani, 73, brings a familiarity with several of the legal fronts that Trump is navigating. He is a former associate attorney general and a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is the office overseeing an investigation of Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen.

Trump counsel Jay Sekulow said Thursday that former federal prosecutors Jane Serene Raskin and Marty Raskin, a couple who manage a Florida-based law firm, have also agreed to join the legal team.

Giuliani is certain to come under intense scrutiny for his role. His own pre-election activities two years ago have been the subject of criticism from Democrats, especially television interviews in which he suggested he had sources providing him inside information about the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s private email server when she was secretary of state.

A Justice Department Inspector General report on the department’s handling of the Clinton investigations is expected to be released in coming weeks and will probably include results of leak investigations regarding the Clinton probe.

Numerous other challenges face the attorneys who will work alongside Sekulow and counsel Ty Cobb — who have functioned as Trump’s legal nucleus for weeks following the resignation of John Dowd, a legal veteran and the team’s former leader. Dowd stepped down in March amid clashes over strategy and whether Trump should sit for a voluntary interview with Mueller. The legal team has often been beset by infighting.

“The big question is, how’s he going to play with everybody else?” said a lawyer involved with the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly. “Will he be combative Rudy, or will he play well with Mueller’s team? Will he try to walk . . . back from the brink and answer the big question, which is whether the president will sit for an interview? And will Trump listen to him?”

Giuliani declined to say whether Trump has made a final decision on whether to sit for an interview with federal investigators. Trump has been mulling it for weeks, moving away from the idea after the home, offices and hotel room of Cohen were raided this month. Trump reacted angrily, calling it “disgraceful.”

“It’s too early for me to say that,” Giuliani replied, when asked whether a Trump interview is unlikely to happen.

Giuliani also declined to discuss whether Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who has been under fire from conservatives and oversees the Russia probe, could be fired by the president in the coming weeks.

“I’m not involved in anything about those issues. My advice on Mueller has been this: He should be allowed to do his job. He’s entitled to do his job.”

Giuliani said he formalized his decision in recent days, including over dinner last week at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Giuliani and Trump spoke Thursday about the legal plan moving forward, along with Sekulow, whom he has known for years and called a friend. He added that he and Cobb also spoke, on Wednesday.

Giuliani — who will take a leave from his law firm, Greenberg Traurig, and is in the midst of a divorce from his third wife — said he would spend a “great deal of time” in Washington working with Trump but would continue to live in New York. He has been frequently been seen holding court at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, dining and drinking with friends and browsing for gourmet cigars.

Trump had considered Giuliani for attorney general and has said in recent weeks he needs a New York-based attorney. Many leading white-collar lawyers, such as former solicitor general Theodore Olson, have declined Trump’s entreaties, often citing conflicts or expressing unease about the high-profile case.

Trump is also known to be a difficult client who does not always listen to his attorneys’ advice, according to lawyers who know him. And Giuliani, once a top adviser, grew frustrated with his treatment during the transition and had receded from the inner circle.

As he has closely monitored cable-news programs chronicling his presidency and the Mueller probe, Trump has swatted away the notion that he cannot attract prominent attorneys. He has also spoken about his desire for a bolstered team and wondered aloud about the damage that Cohen’s legal proceedings could bring, according to the associates briefed on the discussions, who requested anonymity to talk about them.

Giuliani’s arrival is part of a broader shift in Trump’s inner circle toward the core allies and brusque and brutal style that defined his outsider presidential campaign and his business career. Beyond Mueller, aides said everyone and everything around Trump feels liable to become a target for his wrath as he grapples with difficult issues at home and abroad, in Syria and North Korea.

“What we’ve been seeing with the president is that he is picking A-level people that he knows are experienced but also know him well,” said Trump ally Christopher Ruddy, the president and CEO of Newsmax Media, a conservative outlet. “One of the problems in the first year was that people didn’t work out because they didn’t know him and they didn’t have experience for the position.”

Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.

South Korean president says North isn’t insisting on American troop withdrawal

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TOKYO —  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will not demand the withdrawal of the American military from South Korea as part of a denuclearization deal, the South’s president said Thursday as preparations for their meeting next week proceeded apace.

The Kim regime has long insisted that it needs its nuclear weapons to protect itself from the United States’ “hostile policy” and that any deal must guarantee its security. That process must include the complete pullout of American troops from the peninsula, the regime has repeatedly stated. 

But Moon Jae-in, who will meet Kim in the demilitarized zone that separates their two countries next Friday, said North Korea has signaled a major shift in its stance. 

“North Korea is expressing its intention for complete denuclearization,” Moon said during a lunch meeting in the presidential Blue House with top executives from 48 media companies. “And it is not making demands that the U.S. cannot accept, such as the withdrawal of the U.S. forces in Korea,” he said, according to the JoongAng Ilbo, one of South Korea’s biggest papers and one that had a representative at the lunch.

The U.S. military has 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea, with backups in Japan and on Guam — the legacy of the standoff that has ensued since the Korean War ended in 1953.

Every spring and fall, U.S. forces conduct drills with the South Korean military, preparing for various scenarios on the peninsula, including the sudden collapse of North Korea and “decapitation” strikes on the North Korean leadership.

North Korea strongly protests the drills, viewing them as a pretext for an invasion and emblematic of what it considers the U.S. policy to destroy the regime.

[S. Korea says it will lay groundwork for Trump, Kim to discuss nuclear arms ]

But Moon, who is vigorously promoting diplomacy as the solution to the North Korean nuclear problem, said Thursday that the Kim regime wants an “end to the hostile policy” and a “guarantee of its security” in return for abandoning its nuclear and missile program.

Many analysts were skeptical about Moon’s version of events, noting that he wants the summit to be a success so that President Trump will go ahead with his own meeting with Kim, tentatively planned for late May or early June.

Vipin Narang, a nonproliferation expert at MIT, said he would be “very, very careful” about interpreting Moon’s statement as a sign that Kim had conceded that U.S. Forces Korea could stay. 

“This is a very clever semantic pirouette,” he said, adding that just because North Korea had not explicitly asked for U.S. forces to leave did not mean that North Korea had not included that step as part of its demand for “ending hostilities.”

Moon said the South Korean government was acting as a mediator “to narrow the gap between Pyongyang and Washington and explore realistic measures that can be accepted by the two sides.” 

Moon’s diplomatic drive picked up pace amid increasing talk in Washington about “bloody nose” military strikes on North Korea — strikes that would be potentially devastating for South Korea. North Korea has a huge amount of conventional artillery lined up on the Seoul capital region, home to 25 million people. 

“When we look back, just a few months ago, the shadow of war glimmered on the Korean peninsula as military tensions here had escalated sharply,” the president told the media executives, according to Yonhap News Agency, which was also represented at the lunch with Moon.

This, he said, highlighted the necessity of having “bold” ideas. 

[Trump vows to cancel meeting with Kim Jong Un if it’s not ‘fruitful’ ]

Moon invited North Korean representatives to the Winter Olympics, which South Korea hosted in February, paving the way for a remarkable set of diplomatic encounters. These have included Kim making his first visit abroad as leader — to Beijing to see Chinese President Xi Jinping — and CIA Director Mike Pompeo traveling to Pyongyang to talk to the 34-year-old Kim about his planned summit with Trump.

But the effort would be successful only if the summit between Trump and Kim was successful, Moon said.

“We will need bold imagination and creative solutions to make the two summits successful and not repeat the mistakes of the past,” Moon told the executives. 

On Wednesday, after two days of meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump said he would cancel the meeting with Kim or walk out if there are signs it “is not going to be fruitful.”

“If I think it’s a meeting that is not going to be fruitful, we’re not going to go,” he said. “If the meeting, when I’m there, is not fruitful, I will respectfully leave the meeting.”

Read more

CIA Director Pompeo made top-secret visit to North Korean leader weeks ago 

North Korea’s definition of ‘denuclearization’ is very different from Trump’s 

Could North Korea’s missile test lead to talks? Some see a slight opening.  

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Comey memos: Trump asked for "honest loyalty"

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Capitol Hill has received redacted versions of former FBI Director James Comey’s memos, after President Trump approved their transmission, sources tell CBS News. Two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News’ chief White House correspondent Major Garrett the president approved the transmission after receiving recommendations from top Justice Department officials.

CBS News has obtained a redacted version of the memos. At the top of the first memo, Comey writes: “What follows are my notes I typed in the vehicle immediately upon exiting Trump Tower on 1/6/17.”

As Comey wrote in his book, he details how Mr. Trump had asked him about alleged “golden shower” tape. But Comey also details how Mr. Trump started talking about the women who “falsely accused” him of allegedly grabbing or touching them, with mentioning in particular a “stripper.”

In his memo about the second meeting with Mr. Trump — this meeting took place at the White House — Comey writes how Mr. Trump asked about his future, saying “so what do you want to do?” Comey writes that Mr. Trump told him “about 20 people” wanted Comey’s job, but Mr. Trump said he would understand if Comey “wanted to walk away after all he had been through.”

Comey also writes that Mr. Trump asked whether “your guy McCabe” — who Mr. Trump later fired — has “a problem with me.”

Comey recounts the conversation where the president asked for loyalty, Comey offered honesty, and Mr. Trump asked for “honest loyalty.”

Mr. Trump raised concerns about former national security adviser Michael Flynn‘s judgment, telling Comey on Jan. 28, 2017, that Flynn neglected for six days to tell him of a congratulatory call from an undisclosed/redacted foreign leader, bringing it up only when Mr. Trump was toasting the British prime minister and thanking her for her call.  “The guy has serious judgment issues,” Mr. Trump is quoted as saying.

On Feb. 8, Priebus asked Comey if the FBI had a FISA warrant on Flynn, who has since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Comey said he hesitated but gave Priebus an answer on the spot before urging him to go through “the established channels” to glean such information in the future.

Comey recounts that Mr. Trump, Priebus and Kushner each brought up his handling of the Clinton email investigation.  In Feb. 8 meeting in Priebus’ office, Priebus asked Comey to explain why Clinton’s actions didn’t rise to criminal “gross negligence.”

Mr. Trump was extremely focused on finding leakers, and hoped to get Comey and the FBI engaged in the hunt. On Feb. 14, 2017, Comey writes Mr.  Trump told him “we need to go after the reporters,” referencing the case of Judith Miller.  Ten or 15 years ago “we put them in jail to find out what they know, and it worked,” Comey quotes Mr. Trump as saying.

The memos were requested by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, and House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-California.

Comey, who was fired by Mr. Trump in May, has begun a tour to tout his new book, “A Higher Loyalty,” which describes his time as FBI director and the time period surrounding his firing. In the book, Comey describes Mr. Trump as “untethered to truth,” and Mr. Trump’s leadership style as “ego driven and about personal loyalty.”

In response, Mr. Trump has fired off a handful of tweets about Comey, calling him a “weak and untruthful slime ball.”

“It was my great honor to fire James Comey,” Mr. Trump tweeted over the weekend.

Comey’s memos, some of which he leaked to a friend for release to the media, influenced Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s decision to appoint special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the Russia investigation into Russian election meddling and any ties to Trump associates.

CBS News’ Rebecca Kaplan contributed to this report.

Cuba nominates Castro replacement Miguel Díaz-Canel

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AFP

Image caption

Raúl Castro (L) will remain in the background as Miguel Díaz-Canel (R) takes over

Cuba’s parliament has picked Raúl Castro’s right-hand man, Miguel Díaz-Canel, as the sole candidate to succeed him, ending the family’s long rule.

Mr Castro took over as president from his ailing brother Fidel in 2006.

An improvement in relations with the US which began under Barack Obama has been partially reversed since Donald Trump entered the White House.

Mr Castro is expected to remain a powerful influence in the communist state even after he steps down.

The National Assembly has voted on the nomination but the result will not be announced until Thursday, when he is expected to formally pass the presidency to Mr Díaz-Canel.

However, he will stay on as head of the Communist Party until its next congress in 2021.

The next Cuban leader will inherit a country in economic stagnation and with a young population impatient for change, BBC Cuba correspondent Will Grant reports.

There is also the complex task of leading without the same revolutionary past embodied by Raúl and Fidel, who died in retirement aged 90 in November 2016.

Who is Díaz-Canel?

He may have had a relatively low profile when he was first appointed vice-president of Cuba’s Council of State in 2013 but he has since become Mr Castro’s key ally.

Image copyright
Getty Images

Image caption

Mr Díaz-Canel is said to be more accessible than the Castro brothers

For the past five years, he has been groomed for the presidency and the handover of power. But even before being named first vice-president, the 57-year-old had already had a long political career.

He was born in April 1960, little over a year after Fidel Castro was first sworn in as prime minister.

He studied electrical engineering and began his political career in his early 20s as a member of the Young Communist League in Santa Clara.

While teaching engineering at the local university, he worked his way up the ranks of the Young Communist League, becoming its second secretary at the age of 33.

Raúl Castro has praised his “ideological firmness”.

Carrying on the Castro model

Analysis by Will Grant, BBC News, Havana

In some respects, Miguel Diaz-Canel is a departure from the past. He is in his 50s and he wasn’t even born until after the revolution took power.

Yet, he still represents an extension of the Castro model – especially politically.

The message of political continuity which the Cuban government has stressed from the moment the handover was announced has taken much of the wind out of the sense of renewal.

At least two of Raúl Castro’s inner circle, men in their late 80s, have remained on the Council of State.

The biggest challenges, at least in the short term, are economic. He must tackle a complex dual currency system while trying to make sure inflation doesn’t rise for ordinary Cubans.

He must also try to stimulate a stagnant economy. Many are watching to see if he reverses the freeze on new private business licences to at least signal some support for the concept of private enterprise on the island.

All of this, without the same popular backing of the Castros. He may have his work cut out.

Will the new president bring real change?

He is unlikely to make any major changes in the short term, especially while Mr Castro remains a political force to be reckoned with.

Any changes are likely to be gradual and slow-paced. Yet Mr Castro did bring in reforms after he took over as president, most strikingly the thaw in relations with the US which had seemed unthinkable under his brother Fidel.

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AFP

Image caption

“Long live Fidel! Long live Raúl!” Graffiti on a Havana street

The new leader will have to consider how to overcome the problems caused by the economic collapse of Cuba’s ally, Venezuela, and what kind of relationship the Caribbean island wants with the US under Mr Trump.

Last year, the new American president reimposed certain travel and trade restrictions eased by the Obama administration but did not reverse key diplomatic and commercial ties.

  • Four takeaways from Trump’s Cuba policy

But what most Cubans will judge the new leader on is whether their day-to-day lives improve.

“Right now, we don’t know what the future holds,” Adriana Valdivia, 45, a teacher in Havana, told Reuters news agency.

“Raul is finished and Fidel is history. I can’t see a way out to help Cubans live better, salaries are the same and don’t make ends meet, and now Trump is tightening the screws with the blockade, imagine that.”

“Politics is not my strong point,” said Diadenis Sanabria, 34, who works in a state-owned restaurant in the Cuban capital.

“But I don’t think a change of chief is going to change my life.”

How representative is Cuba’s National Assembly?

Often regarded as a rubber-stamp body, it is officially meeting to swear in its 605 members, who were elected last month.

It also votes on the composition of the all-powerful Council of State, whose president serves as both head of state and government.

Cuba has long maintained it has one of the most inclusive and fairest election systems in the world but critics say that assertion is laughable as the process is fully overseen by the ruling Communist Party.

All 605 candidates stood unopposed in March.

Trump allies press Rosenstein in private meeting in latest sign of tensions

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Two of President Trump’s top legislative allies met with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein this week to press him for more documents about the conduct of law enforcement officials involved in the Russia probe and the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server, according to three people who were not authorized to speak publicly about the discussion.

Rosenstein’s meeting at his office Monday with Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) came days after Meadows, an influential Trump confidant, warned Rosenstein that he could soon face impeachment proceedings or an effort to hold him in contempt of Congress if he did not satisfy GOP demands for documents.

Trump and Meadows spoke at some point after the meeting, the three people said, but they declined to share details of the exchange.

The visit by Meadows and Jordan — leading members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — is the latest sign of the rising tensions between Trump’s inner circle and the Justice Department. Rosenstein, a veteran prosecutor, is confronting a torrent of criticism from Republicans and an uncertain future that puts special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia probe at risk.

In recent days, Trump has seethed over the FBI’s raid last week on the home, office and hotel room of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, which Rosenstein approved. He has also taken note of conservative commentators who have called for Rosenstein to be fired, according to two administration officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. And Trump encouraged Rosenstein to work with lawmakers on their document requests in a White House meeting April 12, the officials said.

“They’ve been saying I’m going to get rid of them for the last three months, four months, five months, and they’re still here,” Trump said at a news conference Wednesday when asked about Mueller and Rosenstein.

Meadows, in a brief interview Wednesday, acknowledged that he met with Rosenstein earlier in the week.

“We keep getting promises that Congress will get the documents it has requested, but there has been little action that has supported those promises,” Meadows said. He called the meeting the culmination of the “dissatisfaction I’ve expressed on a number of occasions with varying degrees of passion.”

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Meadows and other Republicans close to Trump, such as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), have long clashed with Rosenstein over documents related to the origin of the Russia investigation. Last week, in a move widely seen as an attempt to calm that rancor, the Justice Department gave Nunes access to a redacted document detailing the beginning of the probe — a day after Nunes suggested that he may try to impeach high-ranking FBI or Justice Department officials over their failure to produce what he wanted.

A Justice official said last week that the department had provided Nunes, ranking Democratic member Adam B. Schiff (Calif.) and all committee members access to the document with redactions “narrowly tailored to protect the name of a foreign country and the name of a foreign agent.”

Before that release, Trump sent a barrage of tweets accusing the Justice Department of “slow walking” document production and asked what the FBI and Justice officials “have to hide” on multiple fronts.

But the anger inside Trump’s orbit goes far beyond concerns about Mueller’s Russia probe and related documents and includes the Clinton investigation and memos from former FBI director James B. Comey about his interactions with Trump. GOP officials said Wednesday that more subpoenas related to Comey documents could be in the offing.

Earlier this year, a federal judge in Washington refused to order the public disclosure of Comey’s memos in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by media organizations. The Justice Department has said the release would interfere with Mueller’s investigation.

Many critics of Trump say congressional Republicans are, fundamentally, attempting to build a case against Rosenstein in the hopes of closing the Mueller investigation — using the battle over documents to paper over their core aim of ending a probe that has become a political and legal burden for the president. Meadows contested that suggestion in the interview Wednesday.

“We’re looking at all DOJ and FBI decision-making as it relates to the lead-up to the 2016 election,” Meadows said. “I’ve sent multiple requests to the deputy attorney general, and he knows that my motivations are all about doing the proper oversight, doing my job for my constituents.”

In a 2000 letter to Congress, Assistant Attorney General Robert Raben noted that “Congress has a clearly legitimate interest in how the department enforces statutes.” But, he said, “the department’s long-standing policy is to decline to provide congressional committees with access to open law enforcement files.”

Still, lawmakers over the past year have been given access to law enforcement records that include the classified surveillance warrant application and subsequent renewals targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. It is unclear whether the Page investigation is ongoing.

The Justice Department’s handling of the Clinton email investigation also remains a Republican target. On Wednesday, several House Republicans sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding criminal referrals for a number of prominent figures, including the former secretary of state and Comey.

The GOP chairman of the House Judiciary Committee last month subpoenaed the Justice Department for records collected by its inspector general in his probe of how the FBI handled its investigation of Clinton’s private email server. The subpoena from Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) also covered documents related to an FBI internal report that recommended the firing of the bureau’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe. Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe last month, citing in part the inspector general’s findings in a separate report that McCabe “lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”

McCabe has alleged that the move was an attempt to slander him and undermine Mueller’s probe.

Meadows and Jordan have made their pursuit of documents related to these various probes a rallying cry and legislative cause, often showcasing their loyalty to Trump in the process.

Speaking Monday on CNN, Jordan said he has never heard Trump lie. “He’s always been square with me,” he said. “That’s for darn sure.”

At the Capitol last week, Meadows told reporters that he was ready to draft articles of impeachment for Rosenstein or push to hold the Justice official in contempt of Congress — and said congressional Republicans were willing to mount an aggressive campaign on Trump’s behalf.

“Contempt of Congress is really at the doorstep of Rod Rosenstein more than anybody else,” Meadows said.

He called contempt “the first step,” to be followed by “other tools” if the Justice Department did not produce the documents requested.

“It is certainly on the path to impeachment,” Meadows added.

Congressional Republican leaders, meanwhile, have shown limited interest in taking legislative steps to protect Mueller’s investigation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday that Trump will not fire Mueller and that he would not hold a vote on a bipartisan measure proposed last week to protect him. The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), has pledged to hold a vote on the bill this month.

“We’ll not be having this on the floor of the Senate,” McConnell told Fox News.

Sari Horwitz, Matt Zapotosky and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.