Joe Biden to announce presidential bid on Thursday – as it happened

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Source: The Guardian

19:34

Blocking McGahn testimony will be "one more act of obstruction"

House Judiciary chair Jerry Nadler responds to reports that the White House plans to fight a subpoena issued by his committee for testimony from former White House counsel Donald McGahn.

19:01

What did President Trump and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey talk about in their meeting this afternoon? According to the Washington Post, mostly about the number of followers the president has:

A significant portion of the meeting focused on Trump’s concerns that Twitter quietly, and deliberately, has limited or removed some of his followers, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity because it was private. Trump said he had heard from fellow conservatives who had lost followers for unclear reasons as well.

But Twitter long has explained that follower figures fluctuate as the company takes action to remove fraudulent spam accounts. In the meeting, Dorsey stressed that point, noting even he had lost followers as part of Twitter’s work to enforce its policies, according to the source, who described the meeting as cordial.

Updated

18:19

Comedian Patton Oswalt appeared in a video announcing MJ Hegar’s run for US Senate in Texas. That would usually be where the story ends, but this is 2019 in the age of Twitter, and incumbent Senator John Cornyn’s team is having none of it.

Team Cornyn has decided to comb through Oswalt’s Twitter feed going back to 2013 to pick out “some offensive comments” to show his supporters exactly what “Hollywood Hegar” embraces. The problem, however, is not so much what Hollywood Hegar embraces, but what Team Cornyn rejects. For some reason, Team Cornyn has found the words “vagina”, “penis”, “scrotum” and “dildo” so offensive that they bleeped them out.

As expected, Team Cornyn’s efforts have been met with more amusement than support, particularly from Oswalt himself.

Updated

17:28

Now the Washington Post is reporting that the White House will fight the House Judiciary Committee subpoena of former counsel Donald McGahn:

The Trump administration also plans to oppose other requests from House committees for the testimony of current and former aides about actions in the White House described in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report, according to two people familiar with internal thinking.

White House lawyers plan to tell attorneys for administration witnesses called by the House that they will be asserting executive privilege over their testimony, officials said.

Such a move will intensify an ongoing power struggle between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats, potentially setting up a protracted court battle.

Updated

17:01

Hey all, Vivian Ho on the west coast, taking over for Tom McCarthy.

Updated

16:57

Here’s a summary of where things stand:

  • Former vice president Joe Biden intends to make a video announcement Thursday that he is running for president, sources have told the Guardian. Biden was then to head out on tour.
  • Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner downplayed the Russian election-jamming effort detailed in the Mueller report. Kushner said Mueller’s investigation “had a much harsher impact on democracy than a bunch of Facebook ads.”
  • Democrats continued their debate about whether to pursue the impeachment of Trump. Among 2020 candidates, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris favor the step while Bernie Sanders and others have doubts.
  • The House oversight committee has moved to find a former White House official in contempt of Congress for his refusal to testify about the Trump administration’s process for granting security clearances.
  • The White House has announced a boycott of the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner, set for Saturday.

16:57

Trump has tweeted a photo from his historic meeting with @jack:

16:54

Pelosi: impeachment would be 'divisive'

House speaker Nancy Pelosi just got asked, at the Time 100 summit in NYC, for her latest thoughts on impeachment – and she sure didn’t sound like a fan of the idea.

“I do believe impeachment is one of the most divisive paths that we could go down in our country,” Pelosi said. “But if the path of fact-finding takes us there, we have no choice. But we’re not there yet.”

‘We’re not there yet.’ Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Lauren Aratani is at the event for the Guardian. Pelosi was interviewed by Molly Bell, national political correspondent for Time. Here are extracts from Pelosi’s replies:

On the Mueller report:

While we haven’t seen it all, what we’ve seen has omitted the grand jury’s report, which we expect to see. What we did learn is that the Russians had a systemic overall assault on electoral system, so what we see is that the President of the United States engaged in behavior that was unethical, unscrupulous and beneath the dignity of the office he holds. What’s surprising about that is that the Republicans have an appetite for this behavior. Instead of being ashamed about what that report said, they’ve given their blessing, once again, to the president.

Do you believe the president committed obstruction of justice?

That remains to be seen when we see the rest of the report. … We said no, we’re not taking any redaction back here by reading it in a room with the few of us and then preventing us from having any conversation with other people. Our people deserve the truth, we want them to see what the report says.

It was really a sad day for our country to see that report come out with all the inconsistencies in it. Over the weekend, I have read and studied it. Last night we had a conference call with our members -- a record number of 177 members were on the phone over a break, holiday time, … for 87 minutes, 70 minutes at least of that was listening to the comments of 20 members who called in over and above the report of our six distinguished chairpersons. They made their presentation of the Mueller report. . … This is about being totally free from passion, prejudice, politics. It’s about presentation of the facts when we have the facts we’ll have a better idea of how to go forward.

Do you see the report as a impeachment referral?

There are many ways to hold the President of the United States accountable, and the Mueller report sort of led way to that by not making an indictment .... What matters is the truth. The investigations that our committees will conduct will take us down a fact-finding path — everyone should welcome that. What’s interesting about that is that we see the administration’s stonewalling of the facts getting to the American people. They want to sue head of the oversight committee Elijah Cummings for making a request for testimony, they want to obstruct any subpoenas for info. This is a moment in our history, it’s not about politics, it’s about patriotism, this is an existential threat to our democracy, to our constitution.

I do believe that all of us in public office have a duty to the American people to keep us together. … I do believe impeachment is one of the most divisive paths that we could go down in our country. But if the path of fact-finding takes us there, we have no choice. But we’re not there yet.

16:22

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has held will hold [it was unclear whether the meeting had yet taken place] a private half-hour meeting with the president to discuss “the health of the public conversation on Twitter,” Vice reports, quoting what it says is an internal Twitter email:

The email does not detail what the meeting will specifically be about, but says the company anticipates it to be about “the health of the public conversation on Twitter,” according to the email written by Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s global lead for legal, policy, and trust and safety.

If only someone could think of a way to instantly improve the health of the public conversation on Twitter.

Will @jack get stern with Trump? Given the hate speech that Twitter has in the past allowed to thrive on the sight, that’s hard to imagine.

Twitter shares by the way are up. Here’s a snap this morning from Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares in Twitter Inc jumped 13 percent on Tuesday after the social media company reported quarterly revenue above analyst estimates, which executives said was the result of weeding out spam and abusive posts and targeting ads better.

Updated

15:48

The House oversight committee has moved to hold a former White House official in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear at a hearing to investigate the handling of White House security clearances.

Committee chairman Elijah E. Cummings said he would schedule a contempt vote against personnel security director Carl Kline, who was directed not to appear by a White House lawyer who said Cummings’ subpoena “unconstitutionally encroaches on fundamental executive branch interests”.

A whistleblower previously told the committee that the mishandling of security clearances, including a clearance for Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, had created a national security vulnerability.

A statement issued by Cummings said in part:

“The White House and Mr. Kline now stand in open defiance of a duly authorized congressional subpoena with no assertion of any privilege of any kind by President Trump. Based on these actions, it appears that the President believes that the Constitution does not apply to his White House, that he may order officials at will to violate their legal obligations, and that he may obstruct attempts by Congress to conduct oversight.”

14:55

Clinton calls Mueller report 'part of the beginning'

Following Jared Kushner onstage (though not immediately) onstage at the Time 100 summit, Hillary Clinton makes a point opposite to what Kushner said. The Russian attack on the US election should not be treated as a threat that’s behind us, Clinton said: “This is about what’s going on today and the threats to our next election.”

“We were a subject of a foreign adversary’s attack,” Clinton said. “You can try to figure out everything that – we need to get the full report, unredacted version. It’s fair to say that this is not just about the reckoning with a recent past. This is about what’s going on today and the threats to our next election.

“The report is long and it obviously takes time to wade through it, but it’s something that every American who cares about holding our adversaries accountable should take the time to go through. I’m really of the mind that the Mueller report is part of the beginning, it’s not the end. ... there’s so much more that we should know and act upon and obviously that’s what Congress is trying to do.

“... What I want is for the country, the Congress and the press to come to grips with what happened and not to get diverted and distracted by an effort to move on or diminish the impact of this attack.”

“There’s so much more that we should know and act upon...” Photograph: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images

Clinton said Trump had committed acts worthy of indictment:

“I think there’s enough that any other person who had engaged in those acts would certainly have been indicted,” she said. “But because of the rule in the Justice Department that you can’t indict a sitting president, the whole matter of obstruction was very directly sent to the Congress.”

Clinton said she agreed with how Nancy Pelosi was handling the response to the Mueller report:

“I think what Nancy [Pelosi] means, and I agree with what she means I that it shouldn’t be a pre-ordained conclusion, it shouldn’t be about what you do for partisan political purposes outsides … it should be something you take based on serious evidence, not on partisan advantage.”