Cohen returns to Capitol Hill after slamming Trump as liar
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s former lawyer returned to Capitol Hill on Thursday for hours of closed-door questioning after publicly branding his former boss a racist and a con man who lied about business dealings in Russia and directed him to conceal extramarital relationships.
Michael Cohen was speaking privately to the House intelligence committee for the last of three appearances before Congress this week.
Cohen, who pleaded guilty last year to lying to Congress and reports to prison soon for a three-year sentence, gave harsh testimony about Trump on Wednesday. He said Trump knew in advance that damaging emails about Democrat Hillary Clinton would be released during the 2016 campaign —a claim the president has denied — and accused Trump of lying during the 2016 campaign about a Moscow real estate protect.
Cohen also said Trump directed him during the campaign to arrange a hush money payment to a porn actress who said she had sex with the president a decade earlier. He said Trump arranged to reimburse Cohen, and Cohen brought to the hearing a check from the president’s personal bank account that he said was proof of the transaction.
Two of Trump’s most vocal defenders, GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina, sent a referral to the Justice Department alleging Cohen lied in his testimony. Their letter to Attorney General William Barr details several Cohen statements they said were false, including claims that he “never defrauded any bank” and did not want a job in Trump’s White House.
Israel’s Netanyahu jolted by corruption recommendations
JERUSALEM — Israel’s attorney general on Thursday recommended criminal charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a series of corruption cases, shaking up an already tumultuous election campaign and threatening to end the Israeli leader’s decades-long political career.
The potential charges stretch across an array of embarrassing scandals that have painted Netanyahu as a hedonistic, and sometimes petty, leader with a taste for expensive gifts and an obsession over his public image. They include allegations he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of champagne and cigars from billionaire friends, and allegedly used his influence to help a wealthy telecom magnate in exchange for favorable coverage on a popular news site.
While a final decision on charges is still months away, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s recommendations threatened to hurt Netanyahu’s standing in the heat of a tight re-election battle. Netanyahu quickly faced calls to immediately step aside while he deals with the distraction of trying to clear his name.
Appearing on national TV late Thursday, Netanyahu dismissed the allegations as an “unprecedented witch hunt” by political opponents intent on seeing him lose the April 9 election.
He called the timing of the recommendations “outrageous” and accused prosecutors of caving in to pressure from “the left.” Appearing emotional at times, he called the case a “blood libel,” said he would debunk all charges and vowed to remain prime minister for many years.
Trump wrongly says Islamic State controls no land in Syria
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump asserted on Thursday that the Islamic State group has lost 100 percent of the territory it once controlled in Syria, but U.S. officials in Washington and accounts from people in Syria said a sliver of land remains contested.
Trump made his statement to troops in Alaska during a refueling stop on his way home from meeting in Vietnam with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
He noted that IS has been on the verge of losing its entire so-called caliphate in Syria for many months.
“Now it’s 100 percent we just took over, 100 percent,” he said, adding, “The area, the land, we just have 100 percent. We did that in a much shorter period of time than it was supposed to be.”
When asked about Trump’s comments, the Pentagon referred reporters to the White House.
Trump border emergency foes in Senate close on needed votes
WASHINGTON — Senate opponents of President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the Mexican border moved within a hair Thursday of having enough votes to prevail, and one Republican suggested he could face a rejection by the GOP-led chamber if he doesn’t change course.
Trump’s move would “turn a border crisis into a constitutional crisis,” veteran Sen. Lamar Alexander said on the Senate floor. But he stopped just short of saying he’d support a resolution blocking the president’s move. Had Alexander pledged his vote, it would probably be enough for the Senate to pass a measure repealing the emergency declaration.
Speaking later to reporters, Alexander, R-Tenn., warned about what might happen if Trump doesn’t settle for using other money he can access without declaring an emergency.
“He can build a wall and avoid a dangerous precedent and I hope he’ll do that,” Alexander said. “So that would change the voting situation if he would agree to do that.”
The Democratic-led House voted Tuesday to upend Trump’s move, which if left standing would let him circumvent Congress and funnel billions of extra dollars to build his proposed wall. The Senate is considering the measure.
Venezuela’s Guaido plans to go home despite safety concerns
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela is waiting for Guaido.
The man who would be paramount leader of a country in upheaval is on the move. He heads to Paraguay on Friday after lobbying in Brazil for international pressure on the government back home and coordinating a failed attempt to deliver aid across the Colombian border to desperate Venezuelans.
Caracas is also on the itinerary for Juan Guaido , the Venezuelan opposition chief who declared himself president. He says he’s going home in the coming days despite “threats,” in another looming flashpoint in his power struggle with Nicolas Maduro, the military-backed president targeted by U.S. oil sanctions aimed at forcing his ouster.
A defiant return by Guaido to steer protests against Maduro would test the resolve of a government that says the 35-year-old head of Venezuela’s National Assembly left the country illegally. Even so, any attempt to arrest Guaido could further inflame tensions in a country where hyperinflation, shortages of food and medicine and other hardships have forced several million Venezuelans — about one-tenth of the population — to flee the country in the last few years.
Just how he will get back into Venezuela, or whether Venezuelan security forces would try to block him, is unclear. In an interview with Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper, Guaido described his secretive exit from Venezuela, a 42-hour trip from Caracas to the Colombian border during which he changed clothes and had to leave behind his bag.