Philip Rucker

President Donald Trump called for the Justice Department to investigate the anonymous author of an op-ed depicting a “resistance” inside the government and said he is considering taking legal action against the New York Times for publishing it. The column, published online Sept 5, was written by someone the Times identified only as a senior official in the Trump administration. “We’re going to take a look at what he had, what he gave, what he’s talking about, also where he is right now,” President Trump told reporters.

Hope Hicks, the White House Communications Director and one of President Donald Trump’s longest-serving and closest political advisers, said that she is leaving the administration sometime in the next few weeks. Hicks, 29, began working for Trump before he announced his candidacy and has been a constant at his side over the past three years, managing his public image and advising him on policy and other matters.

President Donald Trump on Nov 3 pressured the Department of Justice — and specifically the FBI — to investigate Hillary Clinton, ticking through a slew of issues involving the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and her party, and urging law enforcement to “do what is right and proper.” President Trump's advocacy for criminal probe of his political opponent marked a significant breach of the traditional boundaries within the executive branch designed to prevent investigations from being politicized. In a series of Friday morning tweets, President Trump claimed there was mounting public pre

Hillary Clinton attributed her defeat in the 2016 presidential election to interference by Russian hackers and FBI Director James B. Comey, and declared herself to be “part of the resistance” to Donald Trump’s presidency. “If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” Clinton told moderator Christiane Amanpour, the CNN anchor, at a Women for Women event in New York. “I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off,” Clinton said. Clinton talked about “the unprecedented interference” by a foreign leader “who is not a member of my fan club” — a reference to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, with whom she tangled as secretary of state.

President-elect Donald Trump appointed a handful of campaign loyalists to senior positions in his White House with responsibility for overseeing the administration’s outreach to the public and managing Trump’s sometimes hostile relationship with the news media.

• Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager who was an unyielding promoter and defender of his on television, will serve as counselor to the president with direct access to advise him on his message strategy and political tactics across a broad range of issues.
• Conway will serve as a public face of the administration along with Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee’s chief strategist and communications director, who was named White House press secretary. A veteran operative with deep relationships among Republican officials and political journalists, Spicer will ascend to one of Washington’s most coveted jobs, representing the president in briefings with the press corps.
• Also leading the communications operation will be Jason Miller, the Trump campaign’s senior communications adviser, who will serve as director of communications;
• Hope Hicks, Trump’s longtime spokeswoman who was at the candidate’s side nearly every day of his 16-month campaign, who will be director of strategic communications; and
• Dan Scavino, a onetime golf caddy who managed Trump’s presence on Twitter and Facebook during the campaign, who has been named director of social media.

After a tortured 24 hours in which Donald Trump’s campaign struggled to come up with a coherent explanation for how portions of a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama had reappeared in remarks delivered by Melania Trump at the Republican National Convention, a Trump staff writer said that she was responsible and apologized for the “confusion.” Meredith McIver said she was an “in-house staff writer” who had worked with Melania Trump on the speech. McIver took responsibility for including the passages from the first lady’s speech — though she said she had not revisited the earlier speech herself, only listened as Trump read parts of it that she liked to McIver over the phone. McIver said she had offered her resignation to Donald Trump and his family on July 19, but they declined to accept it. “Mr. Trump told me that people make innocent mistakes and that we learn and grow from these experiences,” she said.

Shortly before McIver’s statement was distributed by the campaign, Trump himself addressed the controversy on Twitter, though he did not weigh in on allegations that his wife had borrowed language from the first lady’s speech to the Democratic National Convention eight years ago. “Good news is Melania’s speech got more publicity than any in the history of politics especially if you believe that all press is good press!” he wrote in one message. And he attempted to shift blame onto his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, writing, “The media is spending more time doing a forensic analysis of Melania’s speech than the FBI spent on Hillary’s emails.”