NOTE TO EDITORS: THIS CAN RUN ANY TIME BETWEEN NOW AND NEW YEAR'S DAY.
2019 promises to be a very challenging year for US President Donald Trump.
In early January, the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives following November's mid-term elections, and they will immediately have the ability to launch investigations into the Trump administration and to force witnesses to testify.
Even now, there are 17 other investigations of President Trump underway, some of them looking into his businesses and his family members.
But the probe led by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller who is investigating ties between the Trump campaign and the Russians remains the most potent threat to the Trump Presidency.
So what did 2018 tell us about what's in store for the US over the next 12 months?
Our US Correspondent Simon Marks reports.
IN: "There is no easy….."
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[Back-announce: Simon Marks, our US Correspondent….and he'll be here throughout the year bringing you all the latest news from Washington].
http://www.fsnradionews.com/feeds/1221Review-Marks.mp3
There is no easy way to review the events of the past year in Washington.
Once again, they have been so dizzying….so heated…..so rapid….that it's almost impossible to remember everything that has taken place in this city's now non-stop news cycle.
But there is a central theme emerging: that President Trump will continue to say whatever he likes, whether it's true or not, and will continue to enjoy the core support of about a third of the American electorate.
No matter how great the lie, how bold the falsehood, how bald-faced the about face….there is nothing that shames him….nothing that constrains him.
As evidence, let's revisit his Helsinki summit meeting with Vladimir Putin…and this salient question asked in light of intelligence agency reports unanimously agreeing that the Russians tried to interfere in the twenty sixteen election.
TRUMP-RUSSIA
Now that was a simply astonishing moment…the President infuriating his entire national security team, by ignoring their conclusions on Russia's actions and siding instead with President Vladimir Putin.
So great was the outrage and so numerous the threats by Trump lieutenants to resign that the minute he landed back on American soil Donald Trump….without a hint of irony….was forced to walk it back….reading a prepared statement in what almost looked like a hostage video.
TRUMP - WOULDN'T
Odd, then, that within days he was once again questioning whether the Russians really did it.
We still don't know why Donald Trump is so strangely beguiled by Vladimir Putin.
But we do know, now, that the Russians definitely had something on him.
They knew - at the very least - that he lied when, during the election campaign, he said he had no active business dealings with Russia.
Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has established that talks with the Russians about building a Trump Tower in Moscow were still taking place while the election campaign was underway.
Why lie about it? Perhaps Mr. Mueller will find out.
Because he's also uncovered other lies that the President and his spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders have willingly told.
SANDERS - LIES
Except they are true.
Michael Cohen, the President's former lawyer, will soon begin a three year jail sentence for those payments…and prosecutors say they believe his claim that he was acting at the direction of Donald Trump.
TRUMP - KNEW
He should now be concerned about how Michael Cohen's guilty plea will effect his own future.
Even if all the other investigations go nowhere - and that's unlikely - Donald Trump is at risk of facing criminal prosecution and a jail sentence over those payments made to two women, silencing them about their extra-marital affairs with him.
Some of the President's lies in twenty eighteen were about his achievements.
He falsely claimed that following his summit meeting in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the North no longer poses a nuclear threat to the world.
In fact, North Korea continues to work busily building its nuclear capacity, after the two leaders signed a generically worded agreement that didn't rise to the level of demanding the complete, verifiable disarmament of the North that US policymakers said they would insist upon.
KIM VERIFIABLE
Within weeks, things got even odder.
TRUMP LOVE
He's fallen in love with a North Korean dictator who has an estimated one hundred thousand people languishing in the country's gulags.
You heard his supporters there laughing with the President.
It wasn't the only time in twenty eighteen that people laughed during a Donald Trump appearance….but at the United Nations General Assembly, they were definitely laughing at him…and not with him.
LAUGHTER
President Trump uses the scorn that most world leaders have for him to his own advantage in the US.
After all, which other American President could shred age-old alliances with countries like Canada, Germany and France without alienating his support at home.
His supporters say he spent the year making good on his policy pledges: pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.
TRUMP IRAN
Moving America's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem….ordering a unilateral withdrawal of military forces from Syria….waging a trade war on China…..and building an economy that - until the last few weeks of the year at least - seemed to be booming.
And then there's Britain…where the President is only too ready to pull the rug out from beneath Prime Minister Theresa May.
Time and again during twenty eighteen he deliberately caused her difficulty, including this unexpected intervention just as she was trying to secure Parliamentary support for the compromise Brexit agreement she'd worked out with Brussels.
BREXIT
That depth charge was exploded even as the US Ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, claimed that behind-the-scenes talks on a unilateral US-UK free trade agreement that will be needed post-Brexit were making progress.
And that wasn't the only controversy rooted in Britain that the President was willing to stoke.
His quick - oh so quick - visit to the UK in July included a memorable moment at Windsor where he broke protocol, stood in front of the Queen and paid her no heed as they wandered past an honor guard.
He also kept her waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour….and then had the front to deny it.
QUEEN
Which brings us neatly on to the people that President Trump uses Stalininist and dangerous language to describe as the enemy of the people.
His war on a free, independent press guaranteed by the first amendment to the American constitution has been unrelenting over the past year….and is likely to intensify in the twenty nineteen.
There was no more appalling moment than his confrontation with Jim Acosta of CNN who simply wanted to know why the President during the country's mid-term election campaign had lied in claiming an invasion of the US by Latin American immigrants was imminent.
ACOSTA
Simply disgraceful behavior by a President who - since he came to power - has made more than seven thousand five hundred false or misleading claims as chronicled by The Washington Post which fact-checks everything he says.
Even Fox News was onto him in the days leading up to the mid-term elections…..Fox News anchor Shepherd Smith.
SHEP SELF
But the President's use of that immigration caravan to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment in the US paid off.
In the mid-term elections the Republicans extended their majority in the US Senate….but they lost control of the House of Representatives.
There, the Democrats will run things from January and they will have the power to launch as many investigations of the Trump Presidency as they want.
Want to know what Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law, texted to Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, following the murder of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi?
From January, the Democrats can find out.
Want to know more about Ivanka Trump's use of a private e-mail account to conduct official government business?
You can bet the Democrats will be all over that one.
And they may be able even to get their hands on that most elusive document of all: Donald Trump's tax returns, which he's so far refused to put into the public domain.
Constitutionally they'll also be empowered to begin impeachment proceedings against him….further fueling the notion that the net is closing in and raising questions about the President's ability to see out his term in the White House.
But admit it: when he's gone, you'll miss Presidential moments like these.
WATER
BRAIN
KANYE
Kanye West, in the Oval Office there….he is indeed a special guy.
Days after his ranting appearance in the White House he said he'd been "used" by the President to spread messages he "doesn't believe in".
Other more serious accusations are likely to be made when Robert Mueller publishes his report into ties between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and the President's attempts to obstruct justice.
Can Donald Trump's Presidency survive twenty nineteen?
You'll just have to stay tuned to find out.