Mueller report release: Democrats demand full report by early April – live | US news

We’re closing out our live US coverage for tonight. Across the country:

• El Paso, Texas readies for hometown 2020 candidate Beto O’Rourke’s first campaign rally there on Saturday morning. The Associated Press has a revealing look at the Democrat’s local history, including an intriguing account of Beto’s blind date.
• In California, family and friends of Willie McCoy are speaking out after Vallejo police released the disturbing body-cam footage of the 20-year-old’s killing by officers after he was found asleep in his car.
• Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is campaigning in Iowa tonight.

Earlier, in Washington and Mar-a-Lago:

• Democrats on Capitol Hill are demanding the full report of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation – into allegations of collusion by Donald Trump or his 2016 election campaign team with the Kremlin to stymie Hillary Clinton, and accusations of obstruction of justice by the president or his circle – by Tuesday April 2, without redactions.
• Attorney general William Barr sent a letter to Congress on Friday saying he would hand the report over to Congress by mid-April or sooner, without giving the president the chance to edit it, but with redactions.
• Donald Trump has threatened to shut the US-Mexico border next week if Mexico doesn’t act to stem the surge of migrants from Central America reaching the US unlawfully. He also blames Democrats for shortcomings in immigration laws and US policy.

My colleague Sam Levin is reporting from a press conference that Willie McCoy’s family is holding now in Oakland, in response to the public release of body-cam footage of the 2o-year-old’s killing.

Follow Sam on Twitter for live updates and video:

The footage of McCoy’s death is extremely painful to watch. McCoy’s brother said that he thinks it is important for the public to see the footage, but that “there’s a thousand videos on YouTube that show police misconduct…it gets dismissed.”

In California, Vallejo police have released body cam footage of Willie McCoy’s killing, which shows the 20-year-old asleep in his car before police open fire.

The footage is consistent with claims of McCoy’s family, who said officers did not try to wake him or talk to him before shooting, my colleague Sam Levin reports.

The footage shows:

• That officers did not try to wake McCoy up or talk to him after they spotted a gun in his lap, and instead pointed their firearms at his head directly outside the car as he slept for several minutes.
• The officers then appeared to make a plan to fire at him, with one saying, “If he reaches for it, you know what to do.”
• McCoy eventually started to move, scratching his shoulder and not yet appearing alert or saying anything to officers, and several seconds later, all six officers fired at him.

Police officials did not give the family or their attorney a heads-up about their decision to release the video today, according to the attorney.

Some of the footage, which is extremely disturbing, is included in with article below. The video will not start playing automatically. It is located part-way down the article page.

Read an in-depth profile of McCoy’s life, and hear his friends speak on video about their memories of him, here.

Save this one for your weekend read: Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke is holding his first rally in his hometown of El Paso, Texas, on Saturday. Ahead of the event, the Associated Press has a revealing profile of O’Rourke’s relationship with El Paso, and with Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city just across the Rio Grande.

The profile highlights some important tensions between O’Rourke’s current rhetoric and his record:

• “Though now he calls for tearing down the border walls that have stood between El Paso and Juarez in some form since the 1970s, O’Rourke voted just last year to approve new border barrier construction.”
• In 2008, O’Rourke also cast a key vote that some El Paso residents say allowed the city to displace poor Mexican families from some of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. “He has charisma for people who don’t know him,” said Angie Martinez, a 74-year-old, retired school cafeteria worker. “But here we know the truth.”

The profile details how O’Rourke took Amy Sanders, the woman he would later marry, on a blind date to Juarez as a “test.” It also includes an astonishing anecdote from O’Rourke’s sister, Charlotte, about the early signs of O’Rourke’s ambition.

At one point, when she was considering becoming a teacher, her brother sat down and presented a very different vision for what she should do with her life. It was “this big spiel about how I am going to be this amazing, like, politician who’s going to change El Paso….And I was like, ‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh,’” Charlotte O’Rourke said. “Now I always say, ‘Oh, he was talking to himself that day.’”

Read the full profile here.

Trump’s re-election campaign is selling t-shirts decorated with a cartoon of House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff, and emblazoned with the president’s nickname for him: “Little Pencil-Neck.”

It’s yet another reminder, commenters noted, that Melania Trump’s campaign against social media bullying, “Be Best,” might have some work to do in the White House.

Adults should teach children that “when they are using their voices—whether verbally or online—they must choose their words wisely and speak with respect and compassion,” the White House’s “Be Best” site advises.

The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., previously referred to the Democratic congressman as “the pencil neck geek” earlier this week.

In San Francisco, local residents are contributing to dueling crowdfunding campaigns to pay for a legal battle over whether the city will be able to construct a desperately needed homeless shelter in a wealthy area of town.

San Francisco residents have been publicly contributing money, under their names, to help block the construction of a homeless shelter on a vacant lot beneath the Bay Bridge.

Billionaire Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, who has set himself apart from the city’s other tech leaders in his commitment to addressing the city’s homelessness crisis, just donated $10,000 to support the fight for the shelter.

San Francisco currently has an estimated 7,500 homeless residents in the city and more than 1,400 are waiting for temporary spots to open in shelters.

Lois Beckett here picking up our live coverage from Oakland.

Speaking at a news conference in Mar-a-Lago this afternoon, President Trump told reporters that he decided to stop sanctions against North Korea because he didn’t think they were necessary at this time.

Trump is slated to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Washington on April 11.

The Guardian’s US east coast reporting and blogging team will be handing over to our colleagues on the west coast very shortly. My colleague Lois Beckett, in Oakland, California, will take over the live blog, so don’t head for the bar (juice bar or bar bar) just yet – loads more action to come.

Here’s a summary of events of the day so far:

• Democrats on Capitol Hill are demanding the full report of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation – into allegations of collusion by Donald Trump or his 2016 election campaign team with the Kremlin to stymie Hillary Clinton, and accusations of obstruction of justice by the president or his circle – by Tuesday April 2, without redactions.
• Attorney general William Barr sent a letter to Congress on Friday saying he would hand the report over to Congress by mid-April or sooner, without giving the president the chance to edit it, but with redactions.
• Donald Trump has threatened to shut the US-Mexico border next week if Mexico doesn’t act to stem the surge of migrants from Central America reaching the US unlawfully. Also blames Democrats for shortcomings in immigration laws and US policy.
• The president is in Florida, where he swung by Lake Okeechobee with some GOP mates, then ‘coptered off to Mar-a-Lago, where he accepted the resignation of Linda McMahon, director of the small business administration.
• New York magazine published a jolting article about Joe Biden’s habit of giving unsolicited kisses and intimate hugs and “nuzzles” to women and girls he meets at public events and on campaign trails.

House of Representatives judiciary committee chairman Jerry Nadler is still insisting that Congress get the full Mueller report – without redactions – by Tuesday, regardless of AG Bill Barr’s letter a few hours ago saying he would present the report, with redactions, by “mid-April if not sooner”.

Barr wrote to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, and Nadler, Democrat of New York, earlier today with his pledge.

The offering by Barr, appointed by Donald Trump a few short months ago, appears to have done nothing to quell tempers on the other side of the aisle and there’ll be sparks flying next week on Capitol Hill.

When we mentioned earlier that we’d be returning to the subject of Joe Biden, we weren’t quite expecting this:

New York magazine has just published a first-person piece about the former vice-president and potential 2020 election candidate for the Democratic Party nomination, and it’s not a pretty picture.

Lucy Flores, who in 2014 was the 35-year-old Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in Nevada, describes how Joe Biden turned out last minute to campaign for her, but left her feeling appalled.

She describes how the then-in-office, then 70-year-old, Veep came up behind her, put his hands on both of her shoulders, inhaled deeply the scent of her hair and planted “a big slow kiss” on the back of her head just before she was about to go on stage at an eve-of-election campaign rally.

The article goes on to describe and illustrate lots of other examples of Biden hugging, gripping, lips-kissing, “nuzzling” and intimately whispering in the ears of daughters and wives of politicians, and women he’s encountered on the campaign trail or at political events.

In some of the pictures the objects of this seemingly-unilateral display of “affection” are visibly uncomfortable.

Tweeting about the article, Flores, describing herself on Twitter as a social justice advocate, former Nevada assemblywoman and “troll slayer”, amongst other things, said:

“This was an incredibly difficult thing to do, but something that felt necessary. It took a while before I found the words and the support that made me feel like this was finally a story I could tell.”

That’s the latest line from the president holding a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida.

The pool reporter at Mar-a-Lago says:

News conference begins at 4:20 pm. Trump seated on sofa beside Linda McMahon. He announces she is resigning as Small Business Administration director and is going to help with Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.

“This is an outstanding woman. Who has done an outstanding job,” Trump said.

Trump says he will nominate her successor in a short time.

The president also says he has a lot of confidence in AG Barr. Again calls Mueller investigation a hoax and says he has nothing to hide.