Letitia James calls former president’s appearance at civil trial a ‘political stunt’ and a ‘fundraising stop’
The New York attorney general, Letitia James, told reporters on Wednesday that “the Trump show is over” as the third day of the former US president’s civil fraud trial wrapped up in Manhattan.
James and Trump both returned to the trial a day after Trump ran afoul of the judge by denigrating a key court staffer in a social media post.
Continue reading...Jim Jordan confirms his run while Steve Scalise, House majority leader, reportedly sounds out support
Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio emerged as leading contenders to succeed Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the US House of Representatives, after the Californian was brutally removed by his own Republican party on Tuesday.
Scalise is House majority leader, Jordan chair of the powerful judiciary committee. In the aftermath of McCarthy’s defeat, both were widely reported to be making calls and sounding out support. On Wednesday morning, speaking to reporters, Jordan confirmed his run.
Continue reading...Former House speaker tells colleagues he will not go for the job again; Republican Patrick McHenry takes over as temporary speaker
In brief comments to reporters after meeting with Republican lawmakers, Kevin McCarthy sounded fatalistic about surviving the motion to remove him as speaker of the House brought by far-right insurgents.
“If five Republicans go with Democrats, then I’m out,” McCarthy said.
Joe Biden’s son Hunter is set to be arraigned in a Delaware court on Tuesday in a politically fraught case that could unfold in the heat of the US president’s 2024 re-election campaign.
Hunter, 53, the first child of a sitting president to be indicted, is expected to plead not guilty to unlawfully possessing a gun as an illegal drug user and lying about his drug use on a background check form when he bought a Colt Cobra revolver in 2018.
Continue reading...The second day of Trump’s trial got off to another combative start after Trump branded the case a ‘fraud’ and ‘scam’
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial issued a gag order on Tuesday after the former president made comments about the judge’s clerk.
“Consider this statement a gag order forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any of my staff,” the judge, Arthur Engoron, said on Tuesday afternoon. “Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them in any circumstances.
Continue reading...Ex-president rails against judge and prosecutors accusing him of years-long fraud they say inflated his wealth by as much as $2.2bn
Donald Trump attacked the judge and New York prosecutors who have charged him with orchestrating a years-long fraud on Monday as state prosecutors accused the former president of using the scam to inflate his wealth by as much as $2.2bn.
Trump arrived at a New York court just a few miles south of Trump Tower on Monday for the first day of a fraud trial that could see the former president and his family business paying hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and that has already threatened to end his business career in the city where it started.
Continue reading...Argument for a ‘red Caesar’ to rule US may seem esoteric but conservative thinktank behind idea has connections to Trump
In June, rightwing academic Kevin Slack published a book-length polemic claiming that ideas that had emerged from what he called the radical left were now so dominant that the US republic its founders envisioned was effectively at an end.
Slack, a politics professor at the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan, made conspiratorial and extreme arguments now common on the antidemocratic right, that “transgenderism, anti-white racism, censorship, cronyism … are now the policies of an entire cosmopolitan class that includes much of the entrenched bureaucracy, the military, the media, and government-sponsored corporations”.
Continue reading...Former president and frontrunner for GOP nomination also warns ‘this country will die’ if Joe Biden wins election
Donald Trump called for shooting store robbers on Friday in a bleak speech to California Republicans –and warned “this country will die!” if Joe Biden remained president.
During the address to GOP members, Trump also railed that wealthy Beverly Hills residents smell because of water denials, and repeated election fraud lies, according to the Associated Press.
Continue reading...Prosecutors asked the judge to restrict Trump’s ability to attack them and potential witnesses ahead of a hearing about the issue
Special counsel prosecutors reiterated Friday to the federal judge overseeing the 2020 election interference prosecution against Donald Trump the need to impose a limited gag order against the former president to curtail his ability to attack them and potentially intimidate trial witnesses.
The sharply worded, 22-page filing, submitted ahead of a hearing scheduled for 16 October in federal district court in Washington, accused Trump of continuing to make prejudicial public statements even after they had first made the request three weeks ago.
Continue reading...Scion of US political dynasty, who had been challenging Joe Biden for Democratic nomination, expected to announce on Sunday
Robert F Kennedy Jr is reported to be ending his challenge to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination and run instead as an independent candidate, in a move that could upset the 2024 race for the White House.
Kennedy, 69 and a scion of a famous political dynasty – a son of the former US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, and a nephew of the former president John F Kennedy – will announce his run in Pennsylvania on 9 October, according to Mediaite.
Continue reading...Faced with stagnant approval ratings, president ups ante in what may become a central theme of his re-election campaign
Joe Biden dramatically raised the ante in the forthcoming US presidential election campaign on Thursday with a stark and impassioned warning that American democracy is imperiled by a vengeful Donald Trump, his likely opponent next year.
Faced by stagnant approval ratings and worries about his advanced age, the US president attempted to stir his dormant supporters and animate the undecided by spelling out the dangers he insisted a second Trump presidency would pose to the US’s status as the world’s leading beacon of democratic government.
Continue reading...He may stand trial as soon as 23 October in case alleging he conspired to reverse 2020 presidential election loss in state
Donald Trump will not seek to move a criminal case alleging he conspired to reverse his 2020 presidential election loss in Georgia from state to federal court, his lawyers said on Thursday.
Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and 18 others are charged with pressuring Georgia election officials to overturn his 2020 loss in the state to the current president, Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Continue reading...Ocasio-Cortez also noted the witnesses were under oath, while the lawmakers on the panel could say what they want – including lies
The House oversight committee is about to hold its first hearing in the impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, the latest step in a months-long effort investigating the president and his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings that has yet to produce substantial evidence of wrongdoing.
Today’s hearing, titled The Basis for an Impeachment Inquiry of President Joseph R Biden Jr, comes two weeks after House speaker Kevin McCarthy launched the inquiry in response to demands from hard-right members of the House Republican conference.
Continue reading...Trump is effectively ‘out of business’ in New York, Michael Cohen says, after judge rules business fortune built on rampant fraud
Donald Trump’s real estate empire could collapse “like falling dominoes”, experts believe, following a New York judge’s ruling that the former president’s business fortune was built on rampant fraud and blatant lies.
According to Michael Cohen, his former attorney and fixer, Trump is already effectively “out of business” in New York after Judge Arthur Engoron on Tuesday rescinded the licenses of the Trump Organization and other companies owned by Trump and his adult sons, Eric and Don Jr.
Continue reading...Even a short shutdown would jeopardize the work of potentially thousands of air traffic controllers and other key employees, secretary Buttigieg says
US soldier Travis King, who fled to North Korea in July, is in American custody after being expelled by Pyongyang into China, according to US officials.
North Korea’s KCNA state news agency said King had been expelled after he confessed to illegally entering the country. It said the soldier harboured ill feelings over inhumane treatment and racial discrimination within the US army.
This is genuinely new – I don’t think it’s ever happened before, a president on a picket line. Candidates do it frequently and prominent senators, but not a president.
Continue reading...Seven candidates face off at Ronald Reagan library in Simi Valley, California, with Republican frontrunner again choosing to skip
Seven Republican presidential contenders gathered in California on Wednesday night for the second primary debate of the 2024 election season, but the absence of Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner in the race for the party’s nomination, again loomed large over the event.
Seven candidates qualified for the second debate, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute in Simi Valley, California. Those candidates were Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, the former vice-president Mike Pence, the former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and the North Dakota governor Doug Burgum.
Continue reading...Mike Lawler, New York Republican, says ‘colleagues refuse to do what we were elected to do’ as shutdown looms
Republicans pushing for a federal government shutdown are “stuck on stupid”, a party moderate said shortly before one rightwinger reported that the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, would not hold a vote on a bipartisan Senate plan advanced as a way to keep the government open.
“The American people elected a House Republican majority to serve as a check and balance and be able to govern,” Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, a heavily Democratic state, told CNN.
Continue reading...The 79-page stopgap spending bill would not include any border security measures, a major sticking point for House Republicans
In a major blow to Bob Menendez’s support, Cory Booker, his fellow Democratic senator from New Jersey, says he should resign following his indictment on corruption charges last week.
“I believe stepping down is best for those Senator Menendez has spent his life serving,” said Booker, who supported Menendez when he previously faced corruption charges in 2015.
Continue reading...On Tuesday judge Arthur Engoron refused to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former US president of illegally inflating assets and net worth
Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, a New York judge ruled on Tuesday in a strongly worded rejection of the former president’s bid to throw out a civil lawsuit against him.
Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump and executives from his company, including his sons Eric and Donald Jr, routinely and repeatedly deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork.
Continue reading...President to visit Detroit-area plant day before Donald Trump addresses workers in key 2024 battleground state
Joe Biden will make a rare presidential appearance on a picket line in Michigan on Tuesday to show solidarity with striking members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union locked in an escalating dispute with America’s three biggest carmakers.
In a high-stakes effort to steal a march on Donald Trump, Biden will offer his backing to strikers at a plant in the Detroit area as part of an all-out bid to retain the support of union members in Michigan, seen as a key presidential election battleground state.
Continue reading...The president standing ‘in solidarity’ with striking autoworkers is a powerful gesture that could resonate with key blue-collar voters
In the more than 150 years since workers first formed labor unions in the United States, no American president has ever stood “in solidarity” with workers on a picket line. Joe Biden has vowed to do exactly that with striking autoworkers in Michigan on Tuesday.
“This is genuinely new – I don’t think it’s ever happened before, a president on a picket line,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, a longtime labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Candidates do it frequently and prominent senators, but not a president.”
Continue reading...