Donald Trump ignored his attorney-general’s plea to stop tweeting about the Department of Justice on Friday as the US president asserted the “legal right” to direct criminal cases as he wished.
Mr Trump responded to the dramatic rebuke delivered a day earlier by William Barr with a defiant tweet about the broad scope of his powers that quoted the attorney-general’s denial that the president had interfered in any criminal cases.
“‘The President has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.’ A.G. Barr This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!” Mr Trump tweeted early on Friday morning.