Category Archives: Trump administration

Trump rails against Meadows for revealing Covid test cover-up – report

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  • Guardian revealed explosive claims in chief of staff’s memoir
  • Trump slams ‘fake news’ but in private says aide ‘fucking stupid’

In a blurb on the cover of Mark Meadows’ new book, Donald Trump calls the former congressman a “great chief of staff – as good as it gets” and predicts “a great future together”. The former president has also promoted the book to his followers.

Now the book is in the public domain, however, the former president reportedly thinks it is “garbage” and that Meadows was “fucking stupid” to write it.

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Trump’s ‘fact-free’ approach caused briefing challenges, CIA report says

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Ex-president’s chaotic style resulted in presidential daily briefing being delivered more regularly to Mike Pence

Donald Trump’s “fact-free” approach to the presidency created unprecedented challenges for intelligence officials responsible for briefing him, according to a newly released account from the CIA.

The 45th president’s chaotic and freewheeling style, and his disinclination to read anything put in front of him, resulted in the presidential daily briefing, or PDB – a crucial security update including information about potential threats to the US – being delivered more regularly to Vice-President Mike Pence instead, the report states.

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Ex-defense secretary sues over withheld material from Trump era memoir

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Mark Esper claims material being improperly held from ‘unvarnished’ memoir of dealings with ex-president

The former US defense secretary Mark Esper claims in a lawsuit against the defense department that material is being improperly withheld from him as he seeks to publish an “unvarnished and candid memoir” of his time in Donald Trump’s cabinet.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Sunday in the US district court in Washington, describes the memoir, A Sacred Oath, as an account of Esper’s tenure as army secretary from 2017 to 2019 and his 18 months as defense secretary, which ended when Trump fired him in a tweet just days after the president lost his reelection bid.

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Mnuchin and Pompeo discussed removing Trump after Capitol attack, book claims

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Two cabinet members considered invoking the 25th amendment, new book by the ABC White House correspondent says

Donald Trump’s secretary of state and treasury secretary discussed removing him from power after the deadly Capitol attack by invoking the 25th amendment, according to a new book.

The amendment, added to the constitution after the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963, provides for the removal of an incapacitated president, potentially on grounds of mental as well as physical fitness. It has never been used.

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Capitol attack panel faces pivotal moment as Trump allies stonewall

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Questions about Trump’s role in 6 January may go unanswered unless House investigators can secure a breakthrough to obtain documents and testimony

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is confronting a pivotal moment as resistance from top Trump administration aides threatens to undermine their efforts to uncover the extent of the former president’s involvement in the 6 January insurrection.

The select committee remains in the evidence-gathering phase of the investigation that now encompasses at least five different lines of inquiry from whether Donald Trump abused the presidency to reinstall himself in office or coordinated with far-right rally organizers.

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Trump files lawsuit to block release of Capitol attack records

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  • Ex-president challenges decision to waive executive privilege
  • White House says Trump ‘abused the office of the presidency’

Donald Trump has sought to block the release of documents related to the US Capitol attack to a House committee investigating the incident, challenging Joe Biden’s initial decision to waive executive privilege.

In a federal lawsuit, the former president said the committee’s request in August was “almost limitless in scope” and sought many records that were not connected to the siege.

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Pressure mounts on ex-DoJ official Jeff Clark over Trump’s ‘election subversion scheme’

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Former assistant attorney general faces possible disbarment and charges after report details machinations on Trump’s behalf

Jeffrey Clark, a former top environmental lawyer at the Trump justice department accused of plotting with Trump to undermine the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states, is facing ethics investigations in Washington that could lead to possible disbarment, as well as a watchdog inquiry that might result in a criminal referral.

The mounting scrutiny of the ex-assistant attorney general, who led the justice department’s environment division for almost two years and then ran its civil division, was provoked by a report from the Senate judiciary committee whose Democratic chairman, Richard Durbin, has asked the DC bar’s disciplinary counsel to examine Clark’s conduct and possibly sanction him.

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FDA expert panel endorses Moderna vaccine booster shot – as it happened

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The attorney general, Merrick Garland, will make his first appearance before the House Judiciary Committee next week. The testimony is likely to touch on everything from a severe near-total abortion ban in Texas to voting rights and gun violence.

Garland is scheduled to testify 21 October. His appearance was first reported by Politico.

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House Capitol attack panel ready to urge prosecution of Trump aides, says Schiff

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Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Steve Bannon and Kash Patel all defying subpoenas under instruction from Trump

The House select committee investigating the deadly assault on the US Capitol on 6 January is prepared to urge federal prosecution of former aides to Donald Trump who refuse to comply with subpoenas, a key panel member said.

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and Pentagon aide Kash Patel are defying subpoenas for documents and testimony, under instruction from the former president.

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If Trump wins in 2024 ‘he will be about revenge’, says former press secretary

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Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s third press secretary, says he will run for president again and presents a greater threat to democracy

The former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham thinks Donald Trump will run for president again in 2024, and will present a significantly greater danger to US democracy should he win than at any time in his four years in office.

“He’s clearly the frontrunner in the Republican party,” Grisham told ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday. “Everybody’s showing their fealty to him. He’s on his revenge tour, for people who dared to vote for impeachment.

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House committee on Capitol attack subpoenas Trump’s ex-chief of staff and other top aides

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Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon and Dan Scavino among advisers called to testify over president’s connection to 6 January events

The House select committee scrutinizing the Capitol attack on Thursday sent subpoenas to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a cadre of top Trump aides, demanding their testimony to shed light on the former president’s connection to the 6 January riot.

The subpoenas and demands for depositions marked the most aggressive investigative actions the select committee has taken since it made records demands and records preservation requests that formed the groundwork of the inquiry into potential White House involvement.

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Top general feared Trump would launch nuclear war, Woodward book reports

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General Milley worried about Trump’s ‘trigger point’ after the election and monitored him to prevent catastrophic military strike

Before and after the assault on the US Capitol on 6 January, the most senior US general took steps to prevent Donald Trump from “going rogue” and launching a nuclear war or an attack on China, according to excerpts of an eagerly awaited new book by the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.

Related: Senate Democrats pitch new voting bill in effort to break filibuster logjam– live

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Antony Blinken in angry exchanges with Republicans over Afghanistan – video

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US secretary of state pushed back against criticism of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Blinked said the Biden administration inherited Donald Trump's deal with the Taliban but no plan for carrying it out

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Trump team thought UK officials ‘out of their minds’ aiming for herd immunity, book says

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Trump officials tried to convince him to take threat seriously and British experts ‘oddly pessimistic’ on defeating virus, says book

US officials thought their British counterparts “were out of their minds” in aiming for herd immunity as part of Boris Johnson’s initial policy on dealing with the coronavirus, according to a new book about the global response to the pandemic.

As the scale of the threat became increasingly clear in January and February 2020, officials in Donald Trump’s administration were trying to convince him to take the threat seriously, despite personal reassurances he had been given by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, that it was under control.

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What I learned from an unlikely friendship with an anti-masker

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Frank’s views were disturbing, a brazen assertion of white privilege. But with our fates more clearly tied together than ever, I needed to understand him

On 11 March 2021, I took a selfie at the Baltimore Convention Center and pressed send. I’d just received my first dose of a Covid vaccine. “Feels pretty momentous,” I texted an acquaintance. “It was exactly one year ago that our university shut down.” Frank wrote back immediately from his small town in southern Michigan. “Momentous, yes. But not for the reasons you subscribe to,” he wrote.

Related: Battle for the Soul: can Joe Biden beat Trump’s Republicans in the war of words?

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‘A madman with millions of followers’: what the new Trump books tell us

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Books show how close the US came to disaster, and document an unprecedented moment in US history that is not yet over

This week, the Guardian reported that what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents describe Donald Trump as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual”. Vladimir Putin, the documents say, therefore decided to assist Trump’s rise to power in 2016 as a way to weaken America.

Related: Frankly, We Did Win This Election review: a devastating dispatch from Trumpworld

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Drunken Giuliani urged Trump to ‘just say we won’ on election night, book says

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As key states started to slip away from Trump, Rudy Giuliani repeatedly urged former president to lie, according to new book

A drunken Rudy Giuliani repeatedly urged Donald Trump to “just say we won” on election night last November, according to a new book, even as key states started to slip away from the president and defeat by Joe Biden drew near.

Related: Landslide review: Michael Wolff’s third Trump book is his best – and most alarming

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US halts all federal executions amid review of capital punishment

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Attorney general orders temporary pause following historic use of death penalty under Trump administration

The US attorney general has imposed a moratorium on all federal executions while the justice department reviews its policies and procedures on capital punishment. Civil rights and criminal justice advocates have been pushing for a halt following a wave of controversial executions under the Trump administration.

Citing the disproportionate impact of capital punishment on people of color, and deep controversy over the drugs used to put people to death, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, ordered a temporary pause on scheduling executions.

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‘Pure insanity’: emails reveal Trump push to overturn election defeat

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  • White House chief of staff pushed debunked conspiracy claims
  • House committee releases emails sent to justice department
  • US politics – live coverage

Donald Trump tried to enlist top US law enforcement officials in a conspiracy-laden and doomed effort to overturn his election defeat, a campaign they described as “pure insanity”, newly released emails show.

Related: White House unveils first national strategy to fight domestic terrorism

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Pelosi: ‘beyond belief’ that Trump DoJ chiefs didn’t know of secret subpoenas

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House speaker says reported seizure of Democrats’ private phone data undermined ‘rule of law’

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Sunday it was “beyond belief” that the three top justice department officials of Donald Trump’s administration had been unaware of secret subpoenas seeking private data from the former president’s political opponents.

Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first pick as attorney general, his successor, William Barr, and the long-serving deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein have all claimed to have no knowledge of the alleged attempts by their department to harvest information covertly from leading Democrats during the investigation into whether Donald Trump and his campaign utilized links with Russia during the 2016 election, according to CNN.

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