Republicans warn Trump not to shut down Russia inquiry – as it happened

It’s been another wild day in Washington as Donald Trump and his embattled White House lashed out in response to major electoral setbacks.

Here’s where things stand:

• The Democrats took control of the House of Representatives. While it appears unlikely that the newly empowered opposition will immediately attempt to impeach the president, congressional Democrats will likely move quickly to investigate issues including Trump’s personal finances, allegations of corruption, and possible collusion with Russia.
• Trump held a chaotic press conference in which he refused to answer questions and attacked numerous reporters, including CNN’s Jim Acosta, PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor, and American Urban Radio Networks’ April Ryan.
• Trump fired attorney general Jeff Sessions, who he has long blamed for recusing himself from the investigation into Russian interference in his campaign.
• Trump named Matthew Whitaker, a longtime critic of the Mueller investigation, as acting attorney general, prompting an outcry from Democrats and a handful of Senate Republicans who fear Whitaker will attempt to interfere with the special counsel.
  
• The White House revoked the press credentials of Acosta, baselessly accusing him of “placing his hands” on an intern who had attempted to wrest a microphone out of Acosta’s hands. The move was met with consternation by the press.

The White House Correspondents’ Association president Olivier Knox has issued a statement responding to the revocation of Jim Acosta’s press credentials.

Calling the White House’s action “out of line to the purported offense” and “unacceptable”, Knox “urge[d] the White House to immediately reverse this weak and misguided action”.

House Democrats have picked up another seat in New Mexico, where the AP has just declared Xochitl Torres Small the victor over Republican Yvette Herrell.

Herrell, who was described by the Las Cruces Sun News as a “realtor and big Donald Trump supporter”, gave a victory speech Tuesday night, when she lead in the polls. But Torres Small took and maintained the lead Wednesday as absentee ballots came were counted.

Torres Small was a first time political candidate. She had previously worked for Senator Tom Udall and as a water attorney.

Following the White House’s revocation of Jim Acosta’s press credentials, CNN has issued a strong response accusing White House press secretary Sarah Sanders of making up “fraudulent accusations”.

The full statement reads:

The White House announced tonight that it has revoked the press pass of CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta. It was done in retaliation for his challenging questions at today’s press conference. In an explanation, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders lied. She provided fraudulent accusations and cited and incident that never happened. This unprecedented decision is a threat to our democracy and the country deserves better. Jim Acosta has our full support.

The White House’s allegation that Jim Acosta “placed his hands” on a female intern is being met with derision and disbelief by the DC press corps.

Hours after a CNN reporter questioned Donald Trump over his baseless claims calling a migrant caravan an “invasion”, the Trump administration retaliated against the reporter by suspending his access to the White House “until further notice”.

Jim Acosta, a White House correspondent for CNN, was questioning the president about his rhetoric when Trump tried to brush him off. Acosta continued asking questions into a microphone provided by the White House. A female staffer appeared to try to take the microphone from Acosta’s hand, but he held on. The staffer later successfully grabbed the microphone.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders accused Acosta of “placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job” in a statement announcing the revocation of Acosta’s “hard pass”.

“This is a lie,” tweeted Acosta.

Only journalists who have been accredited with a “hard pass” can enter White House grounds swiftly through security.

Acosta could theoretically apply for a day pass to continue doing his job, but the process is slow and impractical for any journalist who needs to move freely in and out of the White House.

Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor in Georgia, declared victory on Wednesday afternoon, arguing that his current lead of about 63,000 votes was insurmountable.

But Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams has vowed to fight on until every vote is counted – and the Associated Press have not called the race.

The vote count is particularly fraught because Kemp oversaw the election as secretary of state – and drew widespread criticism over allegations of voter suppression.

Abrams’ campaign is holding out hope for two possible scenarios: an outright victory or a runoff election. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, a second round will be held on 4 December.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Kemp is currently 13,071 votes ahead of the threshold for a runoff, with about 25,000 absentee and provisional ballots remaining to be counted.

The firing of Jeff Sessions has (perhaps intentionally) drawn attention away from the actual midterm elections, but it’s worth recalling that three senate races remain undecided: Arizona, Florida and Mississippi.

The Mississippi race will be decided by a runoff, while Florida may or may not require a recount. Meanwhile in Arizona, it could take another week before we know whether Republican Martha McSally or Democrat Kyrsten Sinema prevailed, Reuters reports.

McSally currently leads by about 15,000 votes, but about 600,000 votes remain to be counted. The uncounted votes are mail-in ballots that have to be processed by hand, a process that could take a week or more.

Acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker – currently the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the country – sat on the advisory board of a company that was ordered to pay a $26m settlement to federal authorities over allegations of running a massive scam, the Guardian’s Jon Swaine reports.

World Patent Marketing and its founder, Scott Cooper, were sued by the Federal Trade Commission in March last year. The government said it had “operated an invention-promotion scam that has bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars”.

The company was accused of tricking hopeful inventors into paying it thousands of dollars to obtain patents and licensing deals for their inventions. In fact, they “failed to fulfill almost every promise they make to consumers”, the complaint said.

Emails filed to federal court show that in August 2015, Whitaker cited his former role as a federal prosecutor in a threatening email to a customer of World Patent Marketing who had complained about the company to the Better Business Bureau.

Read the full report here.

A third Republican senator, Jerry Moran of Kansas, has fired a warning shot about interference with the Mueller investigation, though in guarded terms.

While former attorney general Jeff Sessions – architect of the family separation crisis at the US Mexico border and the man the ACLU has called the “worst attorney general in modern American history” – is no hero of the #Resistance, his firing has inspired some Democratic activists to call for protests tomorrow.

Groups like MoveOn and Indivisible, which have long been planing “rapid response” protests in the event that Trump tried to fire Mueller, announced their intention to hold marches across the country tomorrow, Thursday, at 5pm local time.

Hello all! This is Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco, taking over the liveblog from Amanda Holpuch.

As Capitol Hill reels from Donald Trump’s surprise firing of attorney general Jeff Sessions, a handful of Republican senators are warning the president not to get any ideas about shutting down the Mueller investigation.

“The one thing this does make certain is that the Mueller investigation into Russian meddling in elections will continue to its end, as it should, because no new Attorney General can be confirmed who will stop that investigation,” said Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in a statement (emphasis mine).

Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who cast a deciding vote to place Trump’s pick on the Supreme Court last month, also expressed concern over deputy AG Rod Rosenstein’s removal from his role overseeing the Mueller probe.

Senator-elect Mitt Romney also weighed in on the importance of the Mueller investigation.

It’s been a busy afternoon. Following a 1.5 hour press conference about the midterm elections that gave Democrats control of the House, Donald Trump fired attorney general Jeff Sessions.

Here’s where things stand:

• Trump announced Sessions was being replaced in a Tweet that also named Matthew Whitaker as the acting attorney general. Sessions said he was resigning at Trump’s request.
• Whitaker has repeatedly criticized special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election – which is nested in the justice department Whitaker now heads.
• Legal analysts warned Sessions firing could pave the way for a constitutional crisis, if Whittaker were to prematurely shut down Mueller’s investigation.
• Democrats, including New York senator Chuck Schumer, called on Whitaker to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation. When Sessions recused himself from the investigation last year, his relationship with Trump soured.
• In the press conference, Trump nastily attacked a black reporter, declared himself a “moral leader” and said the midterms were a “complete victory” for Republicans.
• Trump was also asked about Jeff Sessions’ future. He responded: “I’d rather answer that at a little different time.”

What does Jeff Sessions’ firing mean for Mueller and the Trump-Russia inquiry?

The Guardian’s Tom McCarthy writes:

A sense of alarm over the Sessions firing and what it could mean for the Mueller investigation was widespread in national security circles. The special counsel’s office is nested inside the justice department, which is headed by the attorney general.

“Not a drill,” tweeted Susan Hennessy, the editor of the Lawfare blog and a Brookings Institution fellow. “This is a frontal assault on the Mueller investigation. Trump sees a window and he’s taking it.”

Trump’s precise plan for Mueller was unclear from the immediate news of the Sessions firing, the latest in a long series of high-profile firings and resignations from the highest echelons of the Trump administration. While Trump’s loudest complaints about Sessions centered on the attorney general’s decision to recuse himself from oversight of the Russia inquiry, Trump has voiced displeasure with Sessions for many other reasons.

Former US attorney general Jeff Sessions has left the building.

Justice department employees were invited to watch Sessions leave the building this afternoon in an office-wide email. “Please join us for this special department wide event!” the email said.

Footage of the exit shows crowds clapping in and outside the Justice department building as a smiling Sessions walks out, pauses in front of the crowd, shakes hands with a few people, then steps into a black car.

Iowa representative Steve King, a Republican, said his “head is bloodied but unbowed” after winning his ninth election.

King faced an unexpected challenge from Democratic opponent JD Scholten in the final days of the campaign.

“I’m going to march through this. I’m going to take on all charges, take on all challengers. We’re going to fight to put this record in order,” King told the Associated Press.

More from the AP:

King said unexpected attacks began after news reports surfaced in September and October about his stance on immigration he was described in one as “the most anti-immigrant member of Congress” and a trip he took to Austria and his meeting there with members of the Freedom Party, which is associated with a man once active in neo-Nazi circles.

Organizations and individuals stirred by the allegations poured money into the Scholten campaign, giving it millions of dollars for television ads.

“I don’t know if anybody in America has taken that kind of nasty, negative, dishonest attack and withstood it,” King said.

King also vowed he’ll no longer passively allow news media or opponents mischaracterize his statements or take them out of context.

“That’s something I’m changing,” King said. “I have refused all these years to defend myself of these baseless charges. I will be defending myself.”

More reaction to Sessions’ firing from the Democrats.

“Trump love plays the media,” Sanders told the Guardian in a phone interview from Burlington moments after the news broke. “It’s not an accident that as the media is discussing last night’s defeats for him and the progress that Democrats have made he wants to change that discussion immediately by firing Sessions.”

“I think that it is absolutely imperative that the Mueller investigation looking at possible Trump campaign collusion with the Russians must be allowed to proceed unimpeded,” he continued. “If it is not allowed it would constitute an obstruction of justice and that would, in fact, be an impeachable offense. My hope is that Trump is smart enough to understand that.”