Trump news: President called Fox reporter into Oval Office to argue over Alabama gaffe as new tax fraud allegation emerges

Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.

Donald Trump was so incensed by reporting over his erroneous suggestion Hurricane Dorian could have hit Alabama that he summoned Fox News correspondent John Roberts to the Oval Office on Thursday to argue about the gaffe, according to CNN. 

Anchor Jake Tapper reports that Roberts was beckoned inside after completing his 3pm update to camera on the latest ludicrous episode to embroil the president and later circulated an email to Fox colleagues explaining what went on.

"He stressed to me that forecasts for Dorian last week had Alabama in the warning cone," Roberts wrote. "He insisted that it is unfair to say Alabama was never threatened by the storm."

Roberts said Trump was "just looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point, Alabama was at risk - even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet" on Sunday morning, in which he said the state "will most likely be hit."

The president also provided Roberts with (more) graphics to make his points.

In case you're late to the matter, Trump has been unable to admit that Sunday tweet was wrong all week, despite being contradicted by government meteorologists seeking to avert mass panic, and the scandal is now in its fifth day.

Trump made matters worse on Wednesday by presenting a map of the storm's path that he appeared to have doctored himself with the Sharpie pen on his desk, although naturally he denied doing so or knowing who had. That detail provoked a fresh deluge of ridicule by memes on social media.

“No one else writes like that on a map with a black Sharpie,” an anoymous official told The Washington Post, pinning the blame squarely on Trump.

As Roberts' colleague Shep Smith put it so expertly last night: "Some things in Trumplandia are inexplicable".

His Chris Riotta on Sharpiegate's origins.

Trump continued to obsess over the matter yesterday in incredibly undignified manner, even for him.

He got homeland security and counterterrorism adviser Peter J Brown, a rear admiral, to issue a statement backing up the initial Alabama projection...

...and continued to froth about it on Twitter while the storm itself continued its menacing progress along the coastlines of Georgia and South Carolina.

2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg appeared on CNN's New Day and was asked about all this and responded wryly: “I feel sorry for the president, and that is not the way we should feel about the most powerful figure in this country.”

Chris Riotta has more from Mayor Pete.

Again, with Dorian still a cause for concern, Trump also found time to go after Will & Grace actress Debra Messing, attacking her for calling for a blacklist of celebrities who attend his fundraisers and for liking a controversial tweet about a church sign on which African Americans voting for Trump were accused of suffering from mental illness.

The fact that he's still angered by the cancellation of Roseanne Barr's comeback series last year is just too ridiculous for words.

Messing posted this yesterday by way of response and, judging by her Twitter feed, has only been encouraged to redouble her efforts in campaigning against him.

Clark Mindock has more.

Meanwhile, a new investigation into an unexplained $50m (£41m) construction loan the president took out to build his Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago a decade ago appears to leave him open to allegations of tax fraud, concerns that have festered since he broke with White House custom by refusing to release his returns.

The piece by Russ Choma of Mother Jones examines the loan held by a Trump Organization company called Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC, of which Trump told The New York Times in 2016: "We don’t assess any value to it because we don’t care. I have the mortgage. That is all there is. Very simple. I am the bank."

A personal financial disclosure filed by the president indicates the loan in question earns no revenue, suggesting he pays no interest on it, and identifies it as a "springing loan", a classification that allows the owner to impose harsh repayment terms, something Trump would hardly be likely to inflict on himself.

The creditor from whom he acquired the $50m is not identified, but he is known to have received $640m (£520m) from Deutsche Bank and another $130m (£106m) from Fortress Investment Group towards the Chicago development. Both are possible sources for the money.

Trump's project was hit by disaster when the financial crisis struck in 2008, leaving him facing $800m (£650m) in debt and about to default on a payment of $330m (£268m) to Deutsche, at which point he brazenly sued them for causing the economic meltdown. He eventually wiggled out of that situation by getting a new loan from the German bank's private lending arm to pay off its commercial division, seemingly doing so without purchasing any debt.

That leaves Fortress, which accepted a 50 cents on the dollar repayment plan from Trump, netting them $48m (£39m) instead of $100m (£81m). That deal could have represented a "discounted payoff" - accounting for the mystery loan, assuming it was written off as a debt repaid - unless, alternatively, Trump purchased the debt back.

In that case, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would consider the $50m as money earned and thus taxable income. Trump could have got around this by getting a corporation to purchase the debt from him, a tactic known as "debt parking". This is a legal grey area - to debt park on a temporary basis is tolerated but it must eventually be repaid. To not do so is to violate federal tax laws.

“If he didn’t actually buy the loan, this is just garden-variety fraud,” Georgetown law professor Adam Levitin tells Choma.

Back to Hurricane Dorian briefly, Trump's new press secretary Stephanie Grisham went after CNN yesteraday after they produced a bad map blunder of their own, misidentifying Alabama as Mississippi.

The network wasted no time in offering a stinging response to her criticism.

Here's Greg Evans for Indy100.

Grisham's predecessor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, makes her debut as a pundit on Trump's favourite breakfast show Fox and Friends this morning. He hasn't been shy about promoting the appearance.

Sanders, incidentally, is about to write a memoir about her chaotic White House tenure.

Lily Puckett has more.

Trump's Interior Department broke the law during the month-long government shutdown back in January by illegal diverting national park fees to keep facilties open, a DC watchdog has concluded.

Entrance fees paid by visitors are designated solely for maintenance, not daily operations, according to federal guidelines, but the administration ignored the rules to ensure parks stayed open with a skeleton staff. Doing so meant rubbish bins were later left overflowing and vandals able to chop down precious trees unimpeded due to the drain on resources.

"Interior disregarded not only the laws themselves but also the congressional prerogatives that underlie them. Instead of carrying out the law, Interior improperly imposed its own will," the Government Accountabilty Office (GAO) said in its official finding.

House Democrats had opposed the move at the time and on Thursday congresswoman Betty McCollum, chair of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, offered an indignant response.

"The administration should now immediately report this violation and take corrective actions as required by law. This should put the administration on notice that their illegal actions will not be tolerated. As stated in the GAO opinion: 'With this decision, we will consider such violations in the future to be knowing and willful violations' and I agree," she said.

“The administration played a shell game with national park money in order to keep parks open,” added Theresa Pierno, CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, in a statement of her own.

Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, has resigned his post without ever releasing the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan he has been working on with the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Kushner's wife, Ivanka Trump, insists there's nothing fishy about it and the project is alive and well.

US defence secretary Mark Esper has said that European nations will have to "pick up the tab" for their own security projects in the wake of the Pentagon diverting money away to pay for Trump's border wall with Mexico.

The Pentagon announced on Wednesday it would pull funding from 127 Defence Department projects abroad and at home, including schools and daycare centres for military families, as it diverts $3.6bn (£2.9bn) to pay for Trump's epoch-making white elephant

The president believes immigration to be a winning issue at the ballot box in 2020 and declared a national emergency over the issue earlier this year in an effort to redirect funding from Congress to build his wall along the US southern border, which he originally said would be paid for by Mexico.

Mark Esper (EPA)

"The message that I've been carrying, since when I was acting secretary to today, has been about the increase in burden sharing," Esper told reporters in London on Thursday.

"So part of the message will be 'Look, if you're really concerned then maybe you should look to cover those projects for us' because that's going to build infrastructure in many cases in their countries," he added. "Part of the message is burden-sharing, 'Maybe pick up that tab.'"

Some of the projects affected are in Europe, like $21.6m (£17.6m) for port operation facilities in Spain and $59m (£48m) for munitions storage in Slovakia. The defunded projects also include schools for the children of military personnel in Germany and the United Kingdom.

The fund diversion has been heavily criticised by US lawmakers, who say it puts national security at risk and circumvents Congress.

Esper will meet his British and French counterparts in the coming days.

The Trump administration has repeatedly called on Nato countries to pay at least 2 per cent of their gross domestic product for defence.