‘‘I did a use a colorful phrase, but of course I don’t believe that the president is a card-carrying member of the KKK,’’ Jeffries said. ‘‘But it did capture a troubling pattern of racially insensitive and outrageous, at times, behavior that spans not months, not years, but decades.’’

Jeffries, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, was pressed during a CNN interview about comments made this week at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in Harlem at which he referred to the term for the leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

WASHINGTON — Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, on Wednesday defended his characterization of President Trump as the ‘‘grand wizard of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,’’ saying Trump has exhibited racially insensitive behavior for decades.


Jeffries, elected to his leadership post in November, cited several examples, including Trump’s insistence that the ‘‘Central Park Five’’ were guilty, even though DNA evidence exonerated them in the notorious 1989 rape case in New York.

Jeffries also cited Trump’s advocacy of the ‘‘racist lie’’ that President Barack Obama was born abroad as well as comments Trump made after a deadly clash at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

Jeffries noted he has ‘‘consistently said no’’ when asked whether he considers Trump a racist. But he said Trump’s ‘‘series of racially insensitive remarks’’ should not be ignored. ‘‘We cannot whitewash that. We cannot hide it,’’ he said. — WASHINGTON POST

Buttigieg joins 2020 race

Pete Buttigieg, 37, mayor of South Bend, Ind., announced Wednesday that he’s entering the Democratic presidential primary, a long-shot campaign that may test the appeal of a youthful, Midwestern profile.

In an e-mail to potential supporters, Buttigieg said he was forming an exploratory committee and cast himself as a candidate of the future, stressing his generational identity and calling for policies “untethered to the politics of the past” on issues like climate and economic opportunity.


“What will America look like in 2054, when I reach the age of the current president?” Buttigieg said. “How will we look back on 2020?”

A veteran of the Afghanistan war, Buttigieg was a consultant at McKinsey before entering politics.

It is unclear if a municipal executive who oversees a city of about 100,000 people can be a viable candidate for president. While several other current or former mayors are considering campaigns, they hail from iconic cities like Los Angeles, New Orleans, and New York and have records of managing sprawling bureaucracies or navigating crises. Buttigieg has a far more modest record.

He began to draw notice in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, delivering an essay, “A Letter from Flyover Country,” that counseled Democrats on how to recover from their defeats that year. He ran unsuccessfully to chair the Democratic National Committee, withdrawing before the vote in 2017. Buttigieg, who is gay, also chided Democrats for being overly focused on the presidency, at the expense of key state and local offices. — NEW YORK TIMES

Clearance policy to be probed

WASHINGTON — House Democrats will investigate the White House’s security clearance practices and what they call ‘‘grave breaches’’ that gave potentially compromised individuals access to the country’s most sensitive secrets.

The investigation, announced by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s chairman, Representative Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, is seeking to expose why the White House cleared certain individuals and to close loopholes.


Among those whom the panel plans to scrutinize are former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians; Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who failed to disclose several contacts with foreign officials; and former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who was accused of spousal abuse. — WASHINGTON POST

Lawyers: Manafort didn’t lie

WASHINGTON — Paul Manafort’s attorneys on Wednesday rebutted allegations the former Trump campaign chairman lied to investigators and broke his plea deal, saying any misstatements he made in special counsel Robert Mueller III’s probe of Russian interference in the presidential election were unintentional.

In a redacted version of a 10-page document filed under seal, Manafort’s attorneys told a judge ‘‘a fair reading’’ of the government’s allegations ‘‘does not support the conclusion that Mr. Manafort intentionally provided false information.’’

Rather, ‘‘placed in proper context, much of the evidence presented by [Mueller’s office] merely demonstrates a lack of consistency in Mr. Manafort’s recollection of certain facts and events. Indeed, many of these events occurred years ago, or during a high-pressure US presidential campaign,’’ which Manafort left under fire.

Prosecutors said they are ready to back up their accusations with witnesses at a hearing Friday before US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson. — WASHINGTON POST