President Donald Trump threatened to shut down daily press briefings Friday as he sought to defend his White House from criticism of its shifting explanations and misstatements about the firing of FBI Director James Comey.
Donald Trump asked his now-fired FBI director on three occasions whether he was the target of ongoing investigations, he said Thursday, stoking allegations of presidential interference.
At a White House briefing Thursday, deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders was peppered with questions about the propriety of the conversations between Comey and Trump. They are among more than a dozen candidates Trump is considering, a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials.
Democrats have blasted Trump's decision to fire Comey, which came as he was investigating last year's election hacking and any potential ties between Trump campaign officials and Moscow.
Later, OANN's Trey Yingst asks if anyone has an audio recording of what went on at the dinner between Comey and Trump.
"He's doing a good job, but he gets beat up", said Trump.
The long and short of it is that when Clapper said he wasn't aware of evidence of collusion during a March 5 Meet the Press interview, he didn't mean that such evidence doesn't exit - he simply wasn't looped in about the FBI's counterintelligence investigation, which unbeknownst to Clapper has been going on since July 2016.
Democrats also want Horowitz to look into Sessions's role and the "intent and impact" of Comey's firing including the timing of the decision and public inconsistencies from the Trump administration.
Spicer: I don't think-that's not a threat.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that Trump pressed Comey for a pledge of loyalty over dinner only a week after his inauguration, according to an account by two associates of the lawman.
US appeals court hears case against Trump's travel ban
Circuit Court of Appeals that the executive order should be reinstated because it falls well within the president's authority. Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, defending the travel ban, told the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S.
The Washington Post newspaper and ProPublica investigative journalism network reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was forced to clarify in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Comey had exaggerated about the number of emails Abedin forwarded.
The White House released a new timeline of events.
"President Trump doesn't understand Watergate, he hasn't learned anything from it", he said.
White House briefings and news conferences provide both "substantive and symbolic opportunities" for journalists to question government officials, said Jeff Mason, White House correspondent for Reuters and president of the White House Correspondents Association.
GRASSLEY: Question two, relatively related, have you ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?
The Democratic senator also urged Republicans to "join in calling for an independent prosecutor in Trump campaign's connections with Russian Federation".
Comey reportedly asked for more resources for the investigation shortly before his firing, though the Department of Justice has denied that. In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, testifying in place of Comey, promised to tell the panel of any White House meddling into the agency's probe.
"We see time and time again an attempt to parse every little word and make it more of a game of "gotcha" as opposed to really figuring out what the policies are, why something's being pursued or what the update is on this", Spicer said.
Then on Thursday, Trump told NBC anchor Lester Holt that the decision to fire Comey was his alone and that he would have made it "regardless" of what Rosenstein recommended.
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