TV News LIES

The White House's former top lawyer, Don McGahn, defied a congressional subpoena and skipped a hearing Tuesday where lawmakers had planned to press him on President Donald Trump's efforts to thwart the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

McGahn's refusal to comply with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena came at the direction of the White House and after a legal opinion from the Justice Department on Monday said he could not be forced to appear before the panel.

The committee's chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., bristled at McGahn's absence. “This conduct is not remotely acceptable,” he said Tuesday, facing an empty witness chair. “Our subpoenas are not optional.”

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House Oversight and Reform Committee Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) is moving to issue a subpoena to obtain 10 years of President Donald Trump’s financial records from accounting firm Mazars USA, the chairman told members of the panel in a memo on Friday.

Cummings plans to issue the subpoena on Monday after Mazars asked for a so-called “friendly” subpoena, so that it could comply with the committee’s document demands.

In his memo, Cummings explained that the committee asked for the records as part of its efforts to corroborate allegations made by Trump’s former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen, who told lawmakers in February that Trump artificially inflated and deflated the value of his assets to his personal benefit.

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House Democratic leaders are calling for Attorney General William Barr to immediately appear for a hearing to explain his decision last month to release a top-line summary of Robert Mueller’s investigation without unveiling the full report.

It's a move that has given President Donald Trump a potent — and at times misleading — talking point about the conclusions of the nearly two-year Russia probe and left Democrats frustrated with Barr.

Barr's four-page memo said the special counsel did not find a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow to sway the 2016 presidential election, but it also said that Mueller did not exonerate the president on obstruction of justice. However, Barr added that he would not charge the president with obstruction of justice. Trump has touted the letter as a complete vindication.

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Top Democratic lawmakers are preparing to request President Donald Trump’s personal tax returns, but some liberal lawmakers say they should also demand his business tax filings.

The business returns are much more likely to indicate conflicts of interest and other possible malfeasance Democrats hope to uncover, such as suspicious ties to Russian interests and whether he took aggressive steps to avoid paying taxes.

Trump’s financial disclosures show he has more than 500 partnerships and other types of businesses, and each of those would generally have its own tax return.

There are other types of returns Democrats could seek as well. They could demand returns from his trusts -- a check from Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen released earlier this month, that he said reimbursed him for hush payments to Stormy Daniels, was written out of the account of a revocable trust. Democrats might want First Lady Melania Trump’s returns, because if she and her husband file separately yet own a business together they could allocate income from it to her and not him.

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Michael Cohen offered riveting testimony about his allegations against President Trump on Wednesday, laying into his former boss as a “racist” and a “cheat” in a packed House Oversight and Reform Committee room.

A decidedly contrite Cohen said he was ashamed of things he had done as Trump's personal lawyer and fixer, saying he had paid for his loyalty dearly.

“I blindly followed his demands,” Cohen said in closing remarks after more than seven hours of testimony. “My loyalty to Mr. Trump has cost me everything.”

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A U.S. House panel investigating President Donald Trump wants to depose Trump’s long-time tax lawyer Sheri Dillon, as well as Stefan Passantino, former deputy White House Counsel in charge of compliance and ethics, according to letters sent to both of them on Wednesday and seen by Reuters.

House of Representatives Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, said in the letters that the panel wants to ask about Trump’s legally mandated financial ethics disclosures.

The panel, the letters said, also seeks information about payments made before the 2016 presidential election by former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen to buy the silence of women who claimed they had affairs with the married Trump.

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