Trump will not pursue Clinton over emails, says senior adviser

Donald Trump wants to help Hillary Clinton "heal" and will not pursue an investigation of her private email server, according to a senior adviser to the president-elect.

Kellyanne Conway said Mr Trump is setting a tone for congressional Republicans by refraining from calling for more investigations, adding: "He doesn't wish to pursue these charges."

Days earlier, he had said he wanted to think about whether to look more into Ms Clinton’s emails and the US justice department’s decision to not recommend charges against her.

But Ms Conway said on Tuesday: “If Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing.”

During the campaign he had vowed to put his Democratic presidential rival in jail over the matter. The phrase “Lock her up!” was a rallying cry for Trump supporters up to election day.

The change in stance came as Mr Trump abruptly cancelled a meeting with the New York Times, accusing the organisation of changing the conditions for the session "at the last moment".

The newspaper denied the charge and said his aides had tried to change the rules.

He had been scheduled to meet Times reporters, editors and columnists and did not give details of his complaint, saying in a morning tweet only that "the terms and conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment. Not nice".

After again hitting out at “the crooked media”, he said in another tweet: “Perhaps a new meeting will be set up with the @nytimes. In the meantime they continue to cover me inaccurately and with a nasty tone!”

Eileen M Murphy, the newspaper's senior vice-president for communications, said: "We did not change the ground rules at all and made no attempt to."

She said Mr Trump’s aides tried to alter the conditions, asking for a private meeting only, with nothing on the record, “which we refused to agree to”.

“In the end,” she said, “we concluded with them that we would go back to the original plan of a small off-the-record session and a larger on-the-record session with reporters and columnists.” That was followed by Mr Trump pulling out.

He held private meetings with representatives of the television networks on Monday.

Earlier, he confirmed he will take the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as he defended his worldwide business interests.

AP