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North Korean leader meets with China’s president during ‘unofficial visit’ to Beijing
BEIJING — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a surprise trip to China this week, meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of planned summits with South Korean and U.S. leaders, Chinese and North Korean state media confirmed Wednesday.
The journey, which is believed to be Kim’s first foreign trip since he came to power in 2011, adds a new piece to a complex diplomatic puzzle over the future of North Korea’s nuclear program.
The announcement ends a mystery that started on Monday, when a mysterious train chugged into central Beijing, spurring reports of a high-profile visitor from North Korea.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) confirmed that the visitor was indeed Kim, along with his wife, Ri Sol Ju, arriving for an “unofficial” visit at the invitation of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. The confirmation came sometime after the North Korean group is believed to have departed China.
Kim traveled with all his top aides, KCNA said, including Choe Ryong Hae, often called the No. 2 leader of North Korea and the head of the powerful Organization and Guidance Department, and Ri Su Yong, the former ambassador to Switzerland and foreign minister, who is now a top official in the Politburo.
China and North Korea have had close ties for decades, but in recent years, the relationship has been stressed. Kim’s visit suggests an effort to repair relations ahead of Kim’s planned meetings with the South’s president, Moon Jae-in, and then U.S. President Donald Trump.
Chinese and North Korean accounts of the meeting struck a positive tone. “We speak highly of this visit,” Xi told Kim, according to Chinese state media.
Kim’s toast to Xi: “It is appropriate that my first trip abroad is in China’s capital, and my responsibility to consider continuing NK-China relations as valuable as life,” according to KCNA.
The question of who was on the armored train had gripped the Chinese capital for days. The train arrived unannounced. Passengers disembarked and boarded limos. After nightfall, a motorcade drove to a state guesthouse where foreign dignitaries often stay.
But Chinese officials and media and the South Korean government were initially quiet about the identities of those who had been aboard.
Chinese netizens looking for answers hit a wall. On Tuesday, three of the top 10 blocked terms on Weibo, a microblogging site, were “Kim Jong Un,” “North Korea” and “Fatty the third,” a popular Chinese nickname for Kim, according to freeweibo.com, a website that tracks censorship.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to the news of Kim’s visit by saying that the Chinese government had briefed the Trump administration about the visit on Tuesday. The briefing included a “personal message from President Xi to President Trump,” she said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in this still image taken from video released on March 28. (Reuters Tv/Reuters)
The Trump administration sees the development “as further evidence that our campaign of maximum pressure is creating the appropriate atmosphere for dialogue with North Korea,” Sanders said.
Chinese experts said a visit by a senior North Korean leader before the meetings with Moon and Trump made sense.
“At a possibly historic moment, before the start of a dramatic play on the Korean Peninsula, China was losing the spotlight,” said Cheng Xiaohe, a North Korea expert at Beijing’s Renmin University. A visit would restore Beijing’s leading role, he reasoned.
Zhang Liangui, a retired professor and Korea scholar at the Central Party School in Beijing, said, “The North Korea nuclear issue cannot be solved by solely relying on negotiations between North Korea and the United States, because, essentially, the nuclear issue is a regional security issue, not an issue of the relationship between North Korea and the United States.”
Experts also said secrecy was standard for North Korean visitors. “Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, employed a similar approach in the past,” said Lu Chao, a Korea expert at China’s Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences. “It’s usually a secret visit and then publicized after the North Korean leader has left.”
It was the example of Kim Jong Il’s 2011 visit that provided early clues that something was up.
The detective work started Monday when train spotters and North Korea watchers noticed two suspicious developments: tight security at the China-North Korea border and train delays across the northeast.
On Monday afternoon, Japanese broadcaster NTV spotted an unusual train pulling into a station in the heart of the capital. It was green and yellow and looked a lot like the trains used by Kim Jong Il in 2011.
As the news started to spread, so did unverified videos of a motorcade speeding through the Chinese capital. Soon, unconfirmed reports of Kim sightings were spreading in chat groups.
Anna Fifield in Tokyo, Philip Rucker in Washington, Amber Ziye Wang, Shirley Feng, Luna Lin and Yang Liu in Beijing, Min Joo Kim in Seoul and Yuki Oda in Tokyo contributed to this report.
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China’s VIP security raises speculation of Kim Jong Un visit
BEIJING — The arrival of a special train in Beijing and unusually heavy security at a guesthouse where prominent North Koreans have stayed in the past have raised speculation that Kim Jong Un is making his first visit to China as the North’s leader.
Kim has summits planned with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in late April and with President Donald Trump by May. While there has been no word of a similar meeting with Chinese leaders, China has been one of North Korea’s most important allies even though relations have recently chilled because of Kim’s development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
A vehicle convoy entered the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on Monday evening and a military honor guard and heavy security were seen later. That followed reports from Japanese network NTV and public broadcaster NHK of a special North Korean train arriving in Beijing under unusually heavy security.
A spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said she was not aware of the situation and had no further comment. North Korea’s state-run media had no reports of a delegation traveling to China.
South Korea’s presidential office said Tuesday it cannot confirm reports that the train carried Kim nor a separate report that Kim’s sister was onboard.
South Korean analysts were doubtful the visitor is Kim Jong Un. Since succeeding his father as leader in 2011, Kim has touted an image of his country as diplomatic equal to China and it’s unlikely he would sneak into Beijing for his first face-to-face meetings with the Chinese leadership, the experts said. They said it’s more likely Kim sent a special envoy, possibly his sister Kim Yo Jong, to appease a traditional ally ahead of his planned meetings with the presidents of South Korea and the United States. The envoy could potentially seek Chinese commitment for future support should North Korea’s talks with rivals fall through, said Du Hyeogn Cha, a visiting scholar at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
“North Korea doesn’t want to send a message that China has been pushed to the back as it makes diplomatic approaches to the United States and South Korea,” said Cha, saying that the visit could be part of the North’s effort to gain leverage in the talks with South Korea and the United States. “If the talks with South Korea and the United States fall through, North Korea will surely try to demonstrate its nuclear weapons and missile capabilities again. The special envoy could discuss this possibility with Chinese officials, asking China not to press too hard with sanctions if that happens.”
Heavy security was reported at the Friendship Bridge before the train passed from North Korea to China, and there were reports of it passing through several stations on the way from North Korea to Beijing.
NTV reported the green and yellow train appeared very similar to the one that former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un’s late father, took to Beijing in 2011 and has 21 cars.
A video that aired on NTV also showed a motorcade of black limousines waiting at the train station and rows of Chinese soldiers marching on what appeared to be a train platform. The video did not show anyone getting off the train.
White House spokesman Raj Shah said Monday the U.S. could not confirm reports that Kim was visiting China.
Shah reiterated Trump’s plans to meet with Kim, saying the U.S.-led international pressure campaign against Pyongyang “has paid dividends and has brought the North Koreans to the table.”
Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Arizona Governor Suspends Uber’s Self-Driving Cars From Roads
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Monday ordered Uber Technologies Inc. to suspend testing autonomous vehicles on public roadways in the state, a rebuke by a former supporter that takes the company’s decision on testing out of its hands.
The governor’s decree follows the fatal crash of a self-driving Uber on a Tempe street two Sundays ago when it struck a pedestrian walking her bike across the street outside of a crosswalk.
Mr….
Linda Brown, Who Was At Center Of Brown v. Board Of Education, Dies
Linda Brown, left, attends ceremonies in 1979 observing the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in her father’s class-action lawsuit against the Board of Education in Topeka, Kan.
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Linda Brown, left, attends ceremonies in 1979 observing the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in her father’s class-action lawsuit against the Board of Education in Topeka, Kan.
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Updated at 10:44 p.m. ET
Linda Brown, who as a schoolgirl was at the center of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that rejected racial segregation in American schools, died in Topeka, Kan., Sunday afternoon.
Her sister, Cheryl Brown Henderson, confirmed the death to The Topeka Capital-Journal. The newspaper says Brown was 75 but some sources have said she was 76.
The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, involved several families, all trying to dismantle decades of federal education laws that condoned segregated schools for black and white students. But it began with Brown’s father Oliver, who tried to enroll her at the Sumner School, an all-white elementary school in Topeka just a few blocks from the Browns’ home.
The school board prohibited the child from enrolling and Brown, an assistant pastor at St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church, was angry that his daughter had to be shuttled miles away to go to school. He partnered with the NAACP and a dozen other plaintiffs to file a lawsuit against the Topeka Board of Education.
By 1952 the U.S. Supreme Court had on its docket similar cases from Delaware, the District of Columbia, South Carolina, and Virginia. They all challenged the constitutionality of racial segregation in public schools.
Two years later the court unanimously ruled to strike down the doctrine of “separate but equal.” The justices agreed that it denied 14th Amendment guarantees of equal protection under the law.
“I just couldn’t understand,” Brown told NPR 19 years after the milestone decision.
“We lived in a mixed neighborhood but when school time came I would have to take the school bus and go clear across town and the white children I played with would go to this other school,” she said.
“My parents tried to explain this to me but I was too young at that time to understand.”
In the same interview, Brown’s mother, Leola Brown, said she and her husband tried their best to help their daughter understand why she wasn’t allowed in the school. She broke it down in simple terms: “It was because her face was black. … and she just couldn’t go to school with the white races at that time.”
She said, “Her daddy told her he was going to try his best to do something about it and see that that was done away.”
Recalling the day her father first walked her by the hand to Sumner School, Brown said,”I remember him talking to the principal and I remember our brisk walk back home and how I could just feel the tension within him.”
When they got home, she said, her parents discussed what had gone on “and I knew that there was something terribly wrong about this,” Brown said.
By the time the Supreme Court handed down its decision Brown was in junior high school and it was her mother who gave her the good news. “She was very happy,” her mother said.
Brown never got the chance to attend Sumner. The family had moved out of the neighborhood during the lengthy case. But her mother said her younger daughters attended integrated schools, and one of them went on to become a teacher within the Topeka school district.
Even after the Supreme Court decision segregation in public schools continued for years. When finally nine black students enrolled at an all-white high school in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957, they had to be escorted onto the campus by federal guards.
The Topeka Capital-Journals reported:
“In 1979, Linda Brown, now with her own children in Topeka schools, became a plaintiff in a resurrected version of Brown, which still had the same title. Topeka Capital-Journal archives indicate the plaintiffs sued the school district for not following through with desegregation.
“Federal Judge Richard Rogers sided with the school district in a 1987 decision, but an appeals court reversed his ruling in 1989 and the Supreme Court chose not to review that decision. Rogers then approved a desegregation plan for Topeka Unified School District 501 in 1993.”
Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer noted Brown’s passing in a tweet Monday. “Linda Brown’s life reminds us that sometimes the most unlikely people can have an incredible impact and that by serving our community we can truly change the world.”
Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in a statement remarked, “Linda Brown is one of that special band of heroic young people who, along with her family, courageously fought to end the ultimate symbol of white supremacy – racial segregation in public schools. She stands as an example of how ordinary schoolchildren took center stage in transforming this country.”
Eventually Brown became an educational consultant and public speaker.
When asked about her role in the historic case she told NPR it was her father who deserved the credit but added, “I am very proud that this happened to me and my family and I think it has helped minorities everywhere.”
As a mother of two children who had attended racially diverse schools, she said, “By them going to an integrated school, they are advancing much more rapidly than I was at the age that they are now. … And I think that children are relating to one another much better these days because of integration.”
Scores of Russians Expelled by US and Its Allies Over UK Poisoning
The expulsions brought into focus the disconnect between aggressive actions taken against the Kremlin by the Trump administration and the president’s public eagerness to have a cooperative relationship with Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump has staunchly resisted criticizing the Russian president, even as he imposed sanctions on a series of Russian organizations and individuals for interference in the 2016 presidential election and what the administration called other “malicious cyberattacks.”
Mr. Trump, who energetically comments on almost any other subject on Twitter or in encounters with reporters, stayed conspicuously silent on the showdown with Russia on Monday, leaving it to aides to explain his decision.
“The only real conclusion to draw is there is something of a divide,” said Thomas Wright, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe. “They may have convinced him to sign off, but he doesn’t want to be the face of it. He could have resolved this any day with a 10-minute appearance. That’s the part that’s puzzling to me.”
Michael Anton, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said Mr. Trump deserved credit for organizing the joint response and expressed frustration at the perception that the president had not been firm enough with Russia.
“No matter what we do, it’s like, ‘You guys are soft on Russia,’” he said. “What do we have to do to show that we’re tough? We just coordinated a 22-nation action and kicked out 60 Russians.”
Mr. Anton said the president did not publicly excoriate Russia for its actions because he wanted to maintain a constructive relationship at the level of the countries’ leaders. “Happy talk on one phone call is better than belligerent talk on one phone call,” he said.
Speaking from the White House lectern on Monday, Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, called the poisoning attack “brazen” and “reckless,” and said that it impeded Mr. Trump’s continued desire to foster a constructive relationship with the Russians.
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“We want to have a cooperative relationship,” Mr. Shah said. “The president wants to work with the Russians, but their actions sometimes don’t allow that to happen.”
Indeed, aides were intent on describing a president who was keenly aware of Russian misbehavior. One official, who was not authorized to publicly describe the president’s private conversations, said Mr. Trump sounded aggressive about Moscow during a discussion with advisers in the Oval Office on Friday, calling Russia’s actions of late “dangerous.”
The American expulsion order was designed to root out Russians actively engaging in intelligence operations against the country, White House officials said. Those expelled included 12 people identified as Russian intelligence officers who have been stationed at the United Nations in New York, and 48 operating under the Russian Embassy in Washington. The Russians and their families have seven days to leave the United States, according to officials. American officials estimate that there are more than 100 Russian intelligence officers in the United States.
The Trump administration also announced that it would close the Russian Consulate in Seattle because of its proximity to Naval Base Kitsap, one of two American naval bases that house a fleet of nuclear-powered, ballistic missile-carrying submarines.
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Mr. Shah said the president took a proactive role in speaking with foreign leaders and encouraging others to join the efforts. White House officials who described the expulsion order said it had coordinated with about a dozen American allies. A British official said London’s diplomats, military officers and intelligence officials had spoken with their American counterparts on a daily, even hourly, basis since the attack on Mr. Skripal.
The Kremlin has maintained that it had nothing to do with the poisoning. In a statement released by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday, officials accused British authorities of “a prejudiced, biased as well as hypocritical stance” in carrying out the expulsions, and castigated European Union and NATO member countries for following suit.
“It goes without saying that this unfriendly move by this group of countries will not go unnoticed, and we will respond to it,” the statement read.
Current and former diplomats said the real test of the expulsions would be if they served to deter Russia from further intervention in other countries.
“The key question for me is whether all this — and whatever else is to follow — will finally persuade Putin that the cost of killing off enemies and ‘traitors’ and subverting other people’s societies in order to ‘make Russia great again’ just isn’t worth it,” said Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to the United States. “That would be a great prize for the free world, and for British diplomacy.”
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Poland has positioned itself to take a lead role in coordinating a response from the Eastern European nations traditionally most wary of their giant neighbor to the east. Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz called the incident in Britain an “unprecedented attack on civilians with the use of chemical weapon, unseen in Europe since World War II.”
The expulsion of Russian diplomats was an unprecedented move by Warsaw, the first time it has taken diplomatic action against its neighbor because of Russian behavior outside of Poland.
Germany’s move not only signaled solidarity with London, but also suggested the incoming foreign minister, Heiko Maas, may be more hawkish toward Moscow than his predecessor.
“The attack in Salisbury shook us all in the European Union,” Mr. Maas said. “For the first time since the end of World War II, a chemical war agent was used in the middle of Europe.”
Mr. Maas said Germany did not take the decision “flippantly.”
“But the fact and indications point to Russia. The Russian government has so far not answered any of the open questions and has shown no readiness to play a constructive role in solving this attack,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s decision to join a united front against Russia came amid a personnel churn in the White House as numerous aides, including his national security adviser, Army Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, have said they will leave the administration. Last month, Mr. McMaster called evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election “incontrovertible.”
His words angered the president, who remains anxious over the continued investigation into his campaign’s contact with Russian officials. Mr. Trump publicly rebuked General McMaster on Twitter for forgetting “to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems,” referring to his Democratic election opponent, Hillary Clinton.
The harsher stance on Russia will also prove to be an early test of the ideological compatibility of the president’s newly revamped national security team. Last week, Mr. Trump announced that he would replace General McMaster with John R. Bolton, long a vocal critic of Mr. Putin who has called Russian interference in the 2016 election “a true act of war.” Mike Pompeo, the nominee for secretary of state, has been quieter with his criticisms.
And then there is the president himself, whose public declarations have repeatedly found themselves in conflict with the policy decisions rolled out in his White House. Brian McKeon, who served as a chief of staff of the national security counsel under President Barack Obama, said the staff disruptions were sure to play out if the Trump administration was considering taking further action against Russia.
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“Bolton’s worldview is that there should be more” measures, including sanctions, Mr. McKeon said. “I don’t think that’s the president’s view.”
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White House Probes Loans to Kushner’s Business
WASHINGTON—White House attorneys are examining whether two loans totaling more than $500 million to Jared Kushner’s family business may have violated any criminal laws or federal ethics regulations, according to a letter from a federal ethics agency made public Monday.
The Office of Government Ethics told a Democratic lawmaker in the letter that the White House is probing whether a $184 million loan from the real-estate arm of Apollo Global Management LLC and a $325 million loan from Citigroup Inc. may have run afoul of the…
‘Not in a punch-back mode’: Why Trump has been largely silent on Stormy Daniels
The counterpuncher, so far, has held his punches.
President Trump exercised uncharacteristic public restraint Monday following an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in which adult film star Stormy Daniels described, in vivid detail, a consensual sexual encounter with Trump — a relationship the president has repeatedly denied.
But privately, the president has lobbed sharp attacks at Daniels and her media tour, calling her allegations a “hoax” and asking confidants if the episode is hurting his poll numbers. The president even has griped to several people that Daniels is not the type of woman he finds attractive.
Trump — who was among the estimated 22 million Americans who watched the Daniels interview that aired Sunday night — asked staff in the White House if they, too, had watched and wondered what they thought of it, someone who has spoken to him said. The president said that he personally did not think Daniels appeared credible, added this person, who has talked to the president about his interactions with the pornographic film star and did not want to be identified discussing them.
But publicly, Trump was uncharacteristically silent after the “60 Minutes” interview, in which Daniels recounted having unprotected sex with Trump in 2006 and described being verbally threatened five years later by a man she didn’t know to stay silent about her allegations. Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford and who was 27 years old during the alleged encounter, also said that she did not find Trump, then 60, attractive and that she viewed the encounter simply as a “business deal.” She said that Trump had floated the idea of her appearing on his reality TV show, “The Apprentice.”
Experts say any possible legal danger for Trump stemming from the alleged affair could come from the nondisclosure agreement that his longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, executed with Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election. In exchange for her silence, Cohen facilitated a $130,000 payment to Daniels in October 2016 — which, if deemed an in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign, would violate federal law.
The president and his White House staff have hewed to a remarkably disciplined and restrained playbook — a departure for the normally brash Trump, who is usually reluctant to let a slight go unanswered.
Trump has not personally addressed the matter in recent weeks, and while his spokesmen have broadly denied the allegations on his behalf, they have declined to publicly litigate Daniels’s specific claims.
“The president strongly, clearly and has consistently denied these underlying claims,” Raj Shah, the principal deputy White House press secretary, told reporters Monday. “The only person who’s been inconsistent is the one making the claims.”
The closest Trump skirted to weighing in came in a tweet Monday morning that did not reference Daniels or the interview but generally decried what he said were a spate of false media reports. “So much Fake News,” Trump wrote. “Never been more voluminous or more inaccurate. But through it all, our country is doing great!”
Lanny Davis, a former White House special counsel who helped President Bill Clinton navigate the Monica Lewinksy scandal, said Trump is sending a message with his lack of direct engagement.
“His absence of comment, to me, was a concession to a not very shocking or newsworthy conclusion, which is that he carried on extramarital affairs,” said Davis, a partner at the law firm Davis Goldberg Galper. “He was silent and wasn’t attacking or criticizing or contradicting her.”
President Trump, flanked by Vice President Pence, speaks after signing a $1.3 trillion spending bill last week. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
But Daniels has been on Trump’s mind. Over the weekend at his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., he talked to friends and club members about the controversy, and on Saturday he dined with Cohen.
Trump’s friends and advisers have been cautioning him that he has little to gain by getting into a back-and-forth with Daniels.
“He’s really not in a punch-back mode,” said one friend who has discussed the matter with the president in recent days and spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. “Everyone is telling him, look, you can’t win here, so just do nothing.”
Trump has calculated that the salacious details from Daniels and other women now surfacing publicly will not erode his political support in any meaningful way. The president has convinced himself, said one Republican in frequent touch with the White House, that the scandal will blow over — in part because, for decades, Trump deliberately presented himself as a Manhattan millionaire playboy.
“The president, when he used to be plain old Donald Trump, used to say all publicity is good publicity,” said Louise Sunshine, a former longtime executive at the Trump Organization. “He used to enjoy negative publicity because he said even that is good publicity.”
Trump also believes his base of loyal supporters, including Christian conservatives, will not abandon him, just as they stuck by his side after the “Access Hollywood” tape was reported in The Washington Post in October 2016.
“The president is correct believing that his solid group of supporters, including evangelicals and Protestants, are not going to leave him on this issue,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide. “He’s delivered for them on judges, which is really the most important issue, and on life” — a reference to abortion policy.
Nunberg added, “I don’t think anybody believes that they elected Saint Joseph.”
Still, Trump’s friends say that the allegations — not only from Daniels, but also from Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who has alleged a nearly year-long affair with Trump, and from Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant who is suing Trump for defamation — have caused a strain in his marriage.
First lady Melania Trump did not return to Washington with Trump on Sunday, instead remaining at Mar-a-Lago for what a White House aide called a previously scheduled “spring break.”
Sunshine, who said she thought Daniels was “very believable,” said that based on her years working with Trump, she thought he would probably be most bothered by the scandal’s impact on his family.
“I think it probably would upset him because it would upset Melania, it would upset his daughter,” Sunshine said.
Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for the first lady, issued a public appeal for privacy that seemed to reference the president’s 12-year-old son, Barron, who was born around the time of the alleged affair with Daniels. “While I know the media is enjoying speculation salacious gossip, Id like to remind people there’s a minor child who’s name should be kept out of news stories when at all possible,” Grisham tweeted.
Inside the West Wing, senior officials believe Daniels’s account to be largely credible and consider it a serious news story that could deal real and lasting damage to the president, according to one of Trump’s advisers.
The White House communications team collectively monitors all Daniels developments but has largely tried to leave the official response to Trump’s outside lawyers involved in the case, a White House aide said. There is little upside, this person added, in trying to respond to each new twist and turn.
“We don’t necessarily know exactly what happened and all the details, and trying to create a response based on a lack of knowledge is like flying blind,” said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions. “Once the White House gets into the business of actually responding to it, we’ll go down this rabbit hole of just being consumed with all things Stormy.”
At Monday’s briefing, Shah was peppered with questions about Daniels. He tried to avoid answering with much detail and referred some questions to Cohen.
Asked whether Trump had watched the “60 Minutes” interview, Shah said, “I’m not going to get into what the president may or may not have seen.” He later added, “There are clips of it playing all over, in the morning news shows.”
Pressed to explain the offer of compensation to Daniels to ensure her silence, Shah seemed to defend the move. “False charges are settled out of court all the time. And this is nothing outside the ordinary,” he said.
Trump’s denials of Daniels’s allegations have been consistent since his presidential campaign. In 2016, Trump acknowledged to some of his closest political advisers that he had met Daniels but repeatedly denied to them that he ever had a salacious encounter with her, two people familiar with the matter said.
Once, when the topic of Daniels came up on Trump’s private plane near the end of the campaign, the candidate asked what year the encounter was said to have taken place, these people said. When he was told 2006, he simply shrugged and moved the conversation along, they added.
The White House has largely adopted Trump’s nothing-to-see-here posture. Republican allies say they have received little guidance, and no official talking points, on how to handle questions about Daniels or the other women.
One Republican operative who works closely with the White House described the information vacuum strategy: “It’s almost like it doesn’t exist.”
Russia fire: Children missing in deadly Kemerovo mall blaze
At least 37 people are confirmed to have died in a fire that tore through a shopping centre in the Siberian coal-mining city of Kemerovo.
At least 64 people are missing, including 41 children, and parts of the building are in danger of collapse.
The blaze started on an upper floor of the Winter Cherry complex while many of the victims were in cinema halls.
Video posted on social media showed people jumping from windows to escape the flames on Sunday.
As many as 660 emergency personnel have been deployed in the rescue effort.
The cause of the blaze is not yet known but authorities have launched an investigation.
Kemerovo, a key coal-producing area, lies about 3,600km (2,200 miles) east of Moscow.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has offered his condolences to the families and friends of the victims, as did Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs.
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Where did the fire start?
As well as cinema screens, the complex, opened in 2013, includes restaurants, a sauna, a bowling alley and a petting zoo.
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The fire is believed to have started at around 17:00 (10:00 GMT) in a part of the building that contains the entertainment complex, local media report.
“According to preliminary information, the roof collapsed in two cinemas,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.
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Smoke billowed from the building
Yevgeny Dedyukhin, deputy head of the Kemerovo region emergency department, said the area of the fire was about 1,500 sq m.
“The shopping centre is a very complex construction,” he said. “There are a lot of combustible materials.”
What do we know of the victims?
The 37 bodies found are difficult to identify, said Mr Dedyukhin, but nine of them are of children.
Andrei Mamchenkov, deputy head of Russia’s National Crisis Management Centre, said a search was under way for 41 children.
Emergency services had been unable to reach one of the cinema halls on the third floor because of smoke and the danger of the building collapsing, an unnamed source told Russian news agency Interfax.
Another source told the agency there was practically no chance of finding survivors.
At a Crucial Juncture, Trump’s Legal Defense Is Largely a One-Man Operation
That lawyer, Jay Sekulow, is a conservative commentator who made his name on religious freedom cases. Mr. Sekulow is in talks with other lawyers about joining the team, although it is not clear how far those discussions have progressed.
Hours before the announcement of Mr. diGenova’s departure, which Mr. Sekulow said was related to a conflict of interest, the president took to Twitter to reject any suggestion that lawyers do not want to work for him.
“Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case … don’t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on,” he wrote. “Fame fortune will NEVER be turned down by a lawyer, though some are conflicted.”
Adding new lawyers, he said, would be costly because they would take months “to get up to speed (if for no other reason than they can bill more).”
“I am very happy with my existing team,” he added.
This month, the president met with the veteran lawyer Emmet Flood about the possibility of joining the legal team. But Mr. Trump was put off by the fact that Mr. Flood, a Republican, had represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment process, and Mr. Flood has made clear that he will not represent the president if Marc E. Kasowitz, his brash longtime personal lawyer, has any role in the effort.
Mr. Trump also tried to recruit Theodore B. Olson, a well-known Republican lawyer, but Mr. Olson has said he would not be representing the president.
The first phase of legal work for Mr. Trump in the inquiry by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, was led by a White House lawyer, Ty Cobb. That work, which in part involved the production of documents and the arrangement of interviews with White House officials, has been largely completed.
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The second phase, which is now focused on the question of a presidential interview with Mr. Mueller, had been led by Mr. Dowd. One reason Mr. Dowd quit was that, against his advice, Mr. Trump was insistent that he wanted to answer questions under oath from Mr. Mueller, believing that it would help clear him.
Mr. Dowd had concluded that there was no upside and that the president, who often does not tell the truth, could increase his legal exposure if his answers were not accurate.
Roger Cossack, a seasoned legal analyst, said the key to successfully defending a high-profile client under immense scrutiny was to have a cohesive legal team with a consistent strategy.
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“In these types of cases, you need highly competent lawyers and a client who will listen and follow their advice,” Mr. Cossack said. “If you don’t have both, you have what we’re seeing here: chaos and disaster.”
“You have a client who clearly thinks he has a better idea of how things should work than the lawyers who, from time to time, have told him things he doesn’t want to hear,” he added. “He is looking for the guy who can say, ‘I know how to handle Mueller, I know you think he is bad, and we’ll take care of it.’ Problem is you can’t find that lawyer because no one will be able to do that.”
People close to the president say the upheaval in the legal team was inevitable. When Mr. Kasowitz took the lead after Mr. Mueller was appointed in May, he wanted to follow a model used by Mr. Clinton, with a separate team of lawyers and communications professionals handling issues related to the inquiry, so that the White House staff could keep its distance.
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But Mr. Trump, who trusts few people and considers himself his best lawyer, spokesman and strategist, never wanted that type of system. As a result, his legal and public relations strategies have been out of sync, with the president at times publicly contradicting his lawyers, and the White House often finding itself flat-footed in the face of new disclosures about the Russia investigation.
The president’s decision has also exposed many of his aides, leaving them deeply enmeshed in an inquiry that is likely to cost them tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
But while Mr. Trump has struggled to find lawyers, his family and his close associates are being represented by some of the country’s top legal talent.
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His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has hired Abbe Lowell, a longtime Washington lawyer who recently got the Justice Department to drop corruption charges against Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, after a lengthy court fight.
Three prominent current and former White House officials — the former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon; the former chief of staff, Reince Priebus; and the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn — are being represented by William A. Burck, who turned down the chance to represent the president. Mr. Burck, a former federal prosecutor, represented FIFA in its legal problems in the United States and has worked for high-profile witnesses in federal investigations, including Maureen McDonnell, the wife of a former Virginia governor.
The turmoil in Mr. Trump’s legal team started within weeks of the appointment of Mr. Mueller. Mr. Kasowitz pushed for an adversarial approach to the special counsel, which the president was poised to follow. But Mr. Kasowitz clashed with Mr. Kushner, and he was soon pushed aside after a series of missteps and embarrassing incidents.
The president then hired Mr. Cobb, a veteran Washington lawyer, to lead efforts within the White House, as well as Mr. Dowd, who was put in charge of his personal legal team. They advocated a strategy of cooperation, telling the president that the sooner he gave Mr. Mueller’s office what it wanted, the sooner his name would be cleared.
While Mr. Cobb had told the president that the investigation would be over by now, it seems to be accelerating. Mr. Mueller is still looking into a wide range of matters related to Mr. Trump’s corporate activities, his 2016 campaign, his associates and his time in office.
Mr. Trump, hoping to bolster his team, met with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing in recent days but, according to two people told of details about the meeting, did not believe he had personal chemistry with them.
There were also significant conflict-of-interest issues, but Mr. Trump could have waived them if he wanted. Ms. Toensing is representing Mark Corallo, who was the spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team in 2017 before they parted ways. Mr. Corallo has told investigators that he was concerned that a close aide to Mr. Trump, Hope Hicks, may have been planning to obstruct justice during the drafting of a statement about a meeting between a Russian lawyer and Donald Trump Jr. during the campaign.
Ms. Hicks’s lawyer has strongly denied that suggestion, and White House aides said Mr. Corallo’s assertion had come up in discussions with the president as he weighed whether to go ahead with Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing.
Mr. diGenova had been expected to serve as an outspoken voice for the president as Mr. Trump has increased his attacks on Mr. Mueller. Mr. diGenova has endorsed the notion that a secretive group of F.B.I. agents concocted the Russia investigation as a way to keep Mr. Trump from becoming president, a theory with little supporting evidence.
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“There was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn’t win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime,” he had told Fox News in January.
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