Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has given himself a January deadline to decide whether to run for president in 2020, used his address at a Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast in Washington Monday to express regret for supporting tough-on-crime bills during his time in Congress, including a measure that established strict sentencing standards for crack and powder cocaine offenses.
Why it matters: Biden would be an early front-runner if he enters the race.
Rudy Giuliani yesterday: "It's our understanding that it, that [talks] went on throughout 2016, not a lot of them, ... but the president can remember having conversations with [Cohen] about it. ... Probably up to, could be up to as far as October, November."
Rudy Giuliani today: "My recent statements about discussions during the 2016 campaign between Michael Cohen and then-candidate Donald Trump about a potential Trump Moscow 'project' were hypothetical and not based on conversations with the President. My comments did not represent the actual timing or circumstances of any such discussions. The point is that the proposal was in the earliest stage and did not advance beyond a free non-binding letter of intent."
China has granted Ivanka Trump preliminary approval of five new trademarks this month on products including wedding dresses, sunglasses, as well as child care centers, reports the AP. The trademarks also cover brokerage, charitable fundraising and art valuation services.
Why it matters: The approvals come as her father’s administration is hammering out a trade deal with China amid ongoing trade clashes. The expansion of her intellectual property holdings has been a major source of ethical concern, and ethics watchdog groups including the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have been skeptical of the timing of the approvals. But Trump's representatives have said in the past that the trademarks are part of a global effort to protect the Trump name.
President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence stopped by the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial and attended a wreath laying in observance of MLK Day.
Details: Trump was only at the memorial for about two minutes and didn't make remarks, per pool report. But he did tweet prior to the visit: "Today we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for standing up for the self-evident truth Americans hold so dear, that no matter what the color of our skin or the place of our birth, we are all created equal by God. #MLKDay"
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, writes in his forthcoming memoir — "Let Me Finish," out Jan. 29 — that President Trump filled his administration with "riffraff" instead of canny players who could help him overcome his impulses and shaky grasp of how government works.
In a remarkable interview with CNN's Jake Tapper today, the president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani suggested it was possible — and would be "perfectly normal" — that Trump talked to Michael Cohen before he testified about him to Congress. Giuliani added he didn't know if Trump and Cohen had such a conversation.
Why it matters: It's not "perfectly normal" for subjects of or witnesses in a Congressional investigation to discuss testimony directly with each other. If witnesses or subjects are talking to each other, the government can always claim one is trying to influence the others' testimony. That's why lawyers counsel against doing it.
What they're saying: Senior White House officials told Axios their strategy — conceived largely by Jared Kushner and Vice President Mike Pence — was to get Trump's "compromise" immigration bill through the Senate with an overwhelming vote and then pressure House Democrats to break from Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
