BitGou: Thursday Morning Briefing: Trump walks away from deal with North Korea's Kim over sanctions demand

TRUMP

“It was all about the sanctions,” President Donald Trump said as he walked away from a nuclear deal at his summit with Kim Jong Un because of unacceptable demands from the North Korean leader to lift punishing U.S.-led sanctions. Since their first summit in Singapore in June, Trump has stressed his good chemistry with Kim, but there have been questions about whether the bonhomie could move them beyond summit pageantry to substantive progress on eliminating North Korea's nuclear arsenal. The U.N. and the U.S. ratcheted up sanctions on the reclusive state when it undertook a series of nuclear and ballistic missile tests in 2017, cutting off its main sources hard cash. “Sometimes you have to walk, and this was just one of those times,” Trump added.

Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen will talk behind closed doors to a congressional panel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election, capping an explosive week of testimony in which he leveled new allegations of wrongdoing at his former boss. Michael Cohen's testimony to a U.S. congressional committee on Wednesday also highlighted several legal risks Trump may face. Here is a look at some of Cohen’s statements and whether they may implicate Trump in criminal conduct.

Impeachment decoded: Investigations involving President Trump by Special Counsel Mueller and U.S. lawmakers have raised the possibility that Congress could seek to remove him from office using the impeachment process. Trump has denied collusion and obstruction and has called Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt.” Here is a look at how to remove a U.S. president.

Politics

“I love Joe Biden. He’s a great guy and a great politician,” said Jerry Shriner, a Democratic national committee member from Idaho. “I wish he were the president right now. But I’m not sure I wish he is president in 2021.” He is not alone in questioning if the former vice president is the man for the moment. The clamor for Biden to join the pack seeking to challenge Trump has quieted as the Democratic field has grown more crowded and diverse, according to interviews with more than two dozen strategists, activists, party organizers and voters.

China has provided over $158 million to U.S. schools for Confucius Institutes to promote Chinese culture, U.S. Senate investigators said, releasing a report saying the centers have acted as tightly controlled propaganda arms for Beijing and should be changed - or shut down.

The prototypes for President Trump’s contest for a border wall near San Diego, California, were torn down, to make way for a new section of actual border fencing.

World

The Kremlin dismissed talk of potential U.S. sanctions targeting President Vladimir Putin’s wealth and called draft sanctions legislation an example of anti-Russian sentiment that should not be taken seriously.

Pakistan said it was considering returning a captured Indian pilot, identified by Islamabad as Wing Commander Abhi Nandan, as Donald Trump said American mediation was helping to defuse a crisis between the two nuclear powers a day after both downed enemy jets. The pilot became the human face of the latest flare-up following the release of videos showing him being captured and later held in custody.

A mass grave containing the bodies of dozens of people believed to be Yazidis held captive by Islamic State has been found in territory recently captured from the jihadists by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a SDF commander said. “They were slaughtered,” the commander said, adding that most had been decapitated.

United Nations investigators said Israeli security forces may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in killing 189 Palestinians and wounding more than 6,100 at weekly protests in Gaza last year. Israel rejected the report as a “theater of the absurd”. Protests have been held at the frontier between Israel and the Gaza Strip since last year, calling for the easing of an Israeli blockade of the territory and recognition of the right of Palestinian refugees there to return to homes in Israel.

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Two @Reuters journalists have been detained in Myanmar since Dec. 12, 2017. See our coverage of the case: https://reut.rs/2EiBioU

7:35 AM - Feb 28, 2019

Venezuela

Venezuela removed 8 tons of central bank gold last week. The gold was removed in government vehicles between Wednesday and Friday last week when there were no regular security guards present at the bank, Legislator Angel Alvarado and the three government sources said. It is the latest sign of President Nicolas Maduro’s desperation to raise hard currency amid tightening sanctions.

Inside a U.S. businessman's oil deal with Venezuela. In November 2017 Harry Sargeant III flew to Venezuela. The day after the wealthy American businessman arrived, he said a small convoy of SUVs took him to a house at the Fuerte Tiuna military base in Caracas. Inside, he said officials showed off a room with various live snakes, some venomous, on display in glass cages. Sargeant thought he would be meeting only with a PDVSA official he knew. Instead he said he found himself face-to-face with Maduro, whom he said was “friendly but serious.”