Category Archives: Trump administration

Ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro indicted for defying Capitol attack panel

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Navarro in custody after indictment on two counts of contempt of Congress after he defied subpoena issued by January 6 committee

Peter Navarro, a top former White House adviser to Donald Trump, was taken into custody after being indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena issued by the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.

The indictment against Navarro marks the first time that the justice department has pursued charges against a Trump White House official who worked in the administration on January 6 and participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

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Trump aide Peter Navarro ordered to testify before grand jury over January 6

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Former White House adviser reveals federal subpoena, which also calls for documents to be handed over, in court filing

Peter Navarro, a top White House adviser to Donald Trump, revealed in a court filing on Monday that he had been ordered to testify before a federal grand jury and produce to prosecutors any records concerning January 6, including communications with the former president.

The grand jury subpoena to Navarro, which he said was served by two FBI agents last week, compels him to produce documents to the US attorney for the District of Columbia and could indicate widening justice department action ensnaring senior Trump administration officials.

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Judge blocks Biden plan to lift Trump-era restrictions on asylum seekers

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Title 42, which cites the pandemic, is behind nearly 2m expulsions since March 2020

Pandemic-era restrictions on people seeking asylum on the southern border must continue, a judge ruled Friday in an order blocking the Biden administration’s plan to lift them early next week.

The ruling is just the latest instance of a court derailing the president’s proposed immigration policies along the US border with Mexico.

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US withdrawal triggered catastrophic defeat of Afghan forces, damning watchdog report finds

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Report by special inspector general blames Trump and Biden administrations, as well as the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani

Afghan armed forces collapsed last year because they had been made dependent on US support that was abruptly withdrawn in the face of a Taliban offensive, according to a scathing assessment by a US government watchdog.

A report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar) on the catastrophic defeat that led to the fall of Kabul on 15 August, blamed the administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden as well as the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani.

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US sues casino mogul Steve Wynn to compel him to register as an agent of China

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Justice department says Wynn lobbied the Trump administration for China to protect his business interests in Macau

The US Department of Justice on Tuesday sued Steve Wynn, the billionaire former casino mogul and senior Republican fund raiser, to compel him to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as an agent of China.

The department said Wynn, 80, had contacted then-US president Donald Trump and members of his Republican administration in 2017 to convey China’s request to cancel the visa of or otherwise remove a Chinese businessperson who had sought political asylum in the United States.

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US secretly issued subpoena to access Guardian reporter’s phone records

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Newspaper decries ‘egregious’ move by DoJ to obtain details of Stephanie Kirchgaessner as part of investigation into media leaks

The US justice department secretly issued a subpoena to gain access to details of the phone account of a Guardian reporter as part of an aggressive leak investigation into media stories about an official inquiry into the Trump administration’s child separation policy at the southern border.

Leak investigators issued the subpoena to obtain the phone number of Stephanie Kirchgaessner, the Guardian’s investigations correspondent in Washington. The move was carried out without notifying the newspaper or its reporter, as part of an attempt to ferret out the source of media articles about a review into family separation conducted by the Department of Justice’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.

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Trump sought strike on top Iran military figure for political reasons – Esper book

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Robert O’Brien told top general shortly before 2020 election that Trump wanted to kill unnamed official, according to Esper memoir

Shortly before the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, “stunned” the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff by saying the president wanted to kill a senior Iranian military officer operating outside the Islamic Republic.

“This was a really bad idea with very big consequences,” Mark Esper, Trump’s second and last secretary of defense, writes in his new memoir, adding that Gen Mark Milley suspected O’Brien saw the strike purely in terms of Trump’s political interests.

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Esper book details Trump rage at Pence and proposal to hit Mexico with missiles

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Memoir from ex-defense chief Mark Esper details extraordinary outbursts he says he helped to defuse

In the heated summer of 2020, thwarted in his desire for a violent crackdown on protesters for racial justice, Donald Trump included his vice-president in a complaint that senior advisers were “losers”.

Trump’s second defense secretary, Mark Esper, details the Oval Office outburst in a new book. A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

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Militia group leader tried to ask Trump to authorize them to stop the transfer of power

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The justice department has alleged that Oath Keepers leadership called the president’s confidant to allow them to use force

Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers militia group leader charged with seditious conspiracy over the January 6 attack on the Capitol, asked an intermediary to get Donald Trump to allow his group to forcibly stop the transfer of power, the justice department has alleged in court papers.

The previously unknown phone call with the unidentified individual appears to indicate the Oath Keepers had contacts with at least one person close enough to Trump that Rhodes believed the individual would be a good person to consult with his request.

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January 6 committee set to subpoena Trump allies, Republican Kinzinger says

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Members of Congress involved in attempt to overturn election have refused to testify voluntarily before June public hearings

The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol will decide “in the next week or two” whether to issue subpoenas trying to force Republican lawmakers to testify about Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, one of two Republicans on the panel said on Sunday.

“If that takes a subpoena, it takes a subpoena,” Adam Kinzinger said.

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Mark Meadows claims US Capitol attack panel leaked texts to ‘vilify’ him

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Argument made in federal court filing in Washington, where Trump’s chief of staff sued to invalidate subpoenas

Donald Trump’s last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has accused the congressional committee investigating the US Capitol attack of leaking all the text messages he provided in what he says is an effort to vilify him publicly.

The argument was made in a filing on Friday in federal court in Washington, where Meadows sued in December to invalidate subpoenas issued for his testimony and to Verizon for his cellphone records.

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Mark Meadows was warned of illegality of scheme to overturn 2020 election

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A former staffer testified that White House counsel said the scheme involving fake electoral college votes was not legally sound

Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows was warned the effort to overturn the 2020 election with fake electoral college votes was not legally sound – and yet proceeded anyway, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack said Friday.

In a court filing, the panel also said that Meadows went ahead with plans to have Trump speak at the Ellipse rally that descended into the Capitol attack, only days after being expressly told by the US Secret Service that there was potential for violence on 6 January 2021.

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Ex-Trump aide Stephen Miller testifies to House January 6 panel for eight hours

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Subpoenaed former White House adviser gives virtual deposition on whether Trump encouraged supporters to march on Capitol

Former White House aide Stephen Miller testified on Thursday to the House select committee investigating January 6 about whether Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The virtual deposition, which lasted for roughly eight hours and was earlier reported by the New York Times, also touched on Miller’s role in the former president’s schemes to overturn the results of the 2020 election and return him to office, the source said.

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House January 6 committee to consider holding two Trump aides in contempt

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Panel to meet next week after former senior White House advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino refused to appear for depositions

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack will consider holding in criminal contempt of Congress next week two of Donald Trump’s most senior White House advisers, Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro, the panel announced on Thursday.

The move to initiate contempt proceedings against the two Trump aides amounts to a biting rebuke of their refusal to cooperate with the inquiry, as the panel deploys its most punitive measures to reaffirm the consequences of noncompliance.

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Capitol attack inquiry narrows on Trump as panel subpoenas top aide

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Move to pursue Peter Navarro suggests the select committee is edging ever closer to examining potential culpability for Trump

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Wednesday subpoenaed Donald Trump’s former White House senior adviser Peter Navarro, escalating its inquiry into the former president’s efforts to return himself to office and the January 6 insurrection.

The move to pursue Navarro, who helped finalize the scheme to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win with political operatives at the Willard hotel in Washington DC, suggests the panel is edging ever closer to examining potential culpability for Trump.

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Rudy Giuliani doesn’t need a monster costume to scare children | Sam Wolfson

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Trump’s lawyer was revealed to be a contestant on The Masked Singer – and when Robin Thicke storms off in protest, you know you’ve got problems

It’s like something from a Guillermo del Toro film: a grotesque fantasy creature disrobes, only to reveal an even more horrifying monster underneath. But that’s what viewers will see when the US version of The Masked Singer, Fox’s incognito singing competition, returns at the end of this month.

The show, in which a panel of judges and the audience try to guess the identity of celebrity vocalists dressed in furry theme-park costumes, is taped in advance of airing. But Deadline reports that at the first episode’s climax, when the eliminated singer reveals their true identity, it was Rudy Giuliani whose head popped out of the costume. Judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke walked off the set in protest. Quite a good reflection of how bad a guy you have to be when rape-culture chanteur Thicke, the singer of Blurred Lines, decides you’re beyond the pale.

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Trump risked disaster with Abbas praise in key Israel meeting, ambassador says

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In new book, David Friedman recounts private meeting with Israeli president in which Trump also knocked Netanyahu – and how he says he turned his man around

Meeting then-Israeli president Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem in May 2017, Donald Trump stunned advisers by criticising the then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for being unwilling to seek peace while Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, was “desperate” for a deal.

The comment “knocked everyone off their chairs”, David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, writes in a new book.

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Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn to see honorary university degrees revoked

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University of Rhode Island board votes unanimously to revoke degrees given to key allies of Donald Trump in 2003 and 2014

The University of Rhode Island will revoke honorary degrees given to Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn, key allies of Donald Trump in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

The URI board of trustees on Friday voted unanimously to revoke the degrees, which were given to Giuliani in 2003 and Flynn in 2014.

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Trump held secret meetings in days before Capitol attack, ex-press secretary tells panel

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Stephanie Grisham gave more significant details than expected about what Trump was doing before 6 January, sources say

The former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack that Donald Trump hosted secret meetings in the White House residence in days before 6 January, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The former senior Trump aide also told House investigators that the details of whether Trump actually intended to march to the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse rally would be memorialized in documents provided to the US Secret Service, the sources said.

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Supreme court rejects Trump bid to shield documents from January 6 panel

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Court’s move leaves no legal impediment to turning National Archives documents over to congressional committee

The US supreme court has rejected a request by Donald Trump to block the release of White House records to the congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol, dealing a blow to the former president.

The order, which casts aside Trump’s request to stop the House select committee from obtaining the records while the case makes its way through the courts, means more than 700 documents that could shed light on the attack can be transferred to Congress.

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