Category Archives: Donald Trump

Biden touts efforts to boost electric vehicles at Detroit auto show – as it happened

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President is in Detroit to promote the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes incentives for buying electric cars

A presidential run may be Mike Pence’s best hope of getting back into the White House. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that Donald Trump has thoroughly disavowed his former vice president:

Donald Trump will not pick Mike Pence as his running mate if he runs for the presidency again, according to an interview with the authors of a new book on his time in the White House.

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Trump feared assassination by Iran as revenge for Suleimani death, book says

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Revelation about former president’s concern reported in new book The Divider by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser

In December 2020, Donald Trump told friends he was afraid Iran would try to assassinate him in revenge for the death of Qassem Suleimani, an Iranian general killed in a US drone strike nearly a year before.

The startling news is reported in a new book by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, a husband-and-wife team who write for the New York Times and the New Yorker.

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Democrats condemn Lindsey Graham’s nationwide abortion ban proposal – live

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Indiana to ban abortion on Thursday

As the news cycle today has focused on senator Lindsey Graham’s proposals for a national abortion ban from 15 weeks, its worth remembering that Republican-controlled Indiana will bring in its almost total ban on Thursday.

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Senate panel to investigate Trump allies’ alleged meddling in prosecutions

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Judiciary committee notifies justice department of investigation into claims made by fired US attorney Geoffrey Berman

The US Senate judiciary committee has said it will investigate claims made in a recent book that allies of Donald Trump politically interfered with a prominent US attorney’s office.

William Barr, Donald Trump’s second attorney general, fired Geoffrey Berman from the powerful southern district of New York (SDNY) five months before the 2020 election. In a memoir – Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and its Battle with the Trump Justice Department – which is published in the US on Tuesday, Berman alleges interference both on behalf of Trump allies and against Trump enemies.

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Trump threatened not to leave White House after election loss, book says

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Defeated president told aide ‘we’re never leaving’ despite Biden’s win, according to new book Confidence Man

In the days after Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Donald Trump told an aide he was “just not going to leave” the White House, according to a new book on his presidency and its chaotic aftermath.

“We’re never leaving,” he vowed to another aide, says the book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman titled Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. “How can you leave when you won an election?”

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Trump lawyers reject US government’s arguments against special master – as it happened

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Democrats have grown increasingly upbeat about their prospects in the upcoming midterms, pointing to the outrage over the end of nationwide abortion rights, declining gas prices and the passage of major pieces of legislation intended to help Americans.

Indeed, polls in recent battleground states have shown Democratic Senate candidates ahead of their Republicans challengers, including in closely divided races such as those in Wisconsin, Nevada and Georgia.

The apparent Democratic edge in Senate races in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio would evaporate. To take the chamber, Republicans would need any two of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada or Pennsylvania. With Democrats today well ahead in Pennsylvania and Arizona, the fight for control of the chamber would come down to very close races in Nevada and Georgia.

Regardless of who was favored, the race for Senate control would be extremely competitive. Republican control of the House would seem to be a foregone conclusion.

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Senate intelligence chair urges judge to allow briefing on Trump Mar-a-Lago search

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Democrat says clarification from judge urgently needed and the mishandling of state secrets could have disastrous consequences

The Democratic chair of the US Senate intelligence committee has demanded that a federal judge allows the committee to be briefed on the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago and the potential damage caused by Donald Trump hoarding top secret documents at his private club.

Mark Warner, the US senator from Virginia, said that there was confusion over whether the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the FBI were allowed to brief the Senate committee on their review of classified documents held at the former president’s club-resort and residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

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Hillary Clinton laments US extremism and calls for unity on 9/11 anniversary

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Former US secretary of state makes an impassioned attack on turn towards extremism and divisiveness in American politics

Hillary Clinton seized the opportunity presented by Sunday’s 21st anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington to make a thinly-veiled attack on the extremism and divisiveness stoked by Donald Trump, as she called for a return to national unity.

The former US secretary of state and first lady invoked the bipartisan mood of the country in the wake of the 9/11 attack in which almost 3,000 people were killed.

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Trump ‘deeply wounded narcissist’ says former White House lawyer

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Ty Cobb served during the ex-president’s administration and claimed it was one of his two toxic traits dictating his actions

A lawyer who served in the White House during Donald Trump’s administration, said the ex-president is a “deeply wounded narcissist”, claiming that’s one of the two toxic traits that dictate his actions and decision making.

Ty Cobb, who stepped down in 2018 because of Trump’s disapproval of his “conciliatory” approach, also said Trump is “incapable of acting other than in his perceived self-interest or for revenge”.

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Two Trump officials subpoenaed for fundraising to undermine elections

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Stephen Miller and Brian Jack were summoned as authorities investigate funds related to the Save America Pac, currently sitting at $100m

Two of Donald Trump’s top officials are facing subpoenas for an investigation against him regarding fund-raisers following the 2020 elections that aimed to undermine the results of the election.

Stephen Miller, once one of the former US president’s most senior aides, and Brian Jack, his former director of political affairs at the White House, were part of a large group of Trump’s officials and allies who were subpoenaed by the grand jury this week, the New York Times reported.

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Trump backed failed campaign coup against Kushner, Navarro book says

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Ex-adviser says president in 2020 agreed that his son-in-law had to be replaced by Steve Bannon but did not dare try to fire him

In June 2020, less than five months before polling day, Donald Trump agreed to a “coup d’état” to remove his son-in-law Jared Kushner from control of his presidential re-election campaign and replace him with the far-right provocateur Steve Bannon.

The coup had support from Donald Trump Jr but according to a new book by the former Trump aide Peter Navarro it did not work, after Trump refused to give Kushner the bad news himself.

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Doug Mastriano prayed for Trump to ‘seize the power’ before Capitol attack

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The Republican candidate for Pennsylvania’s governor spoke during a video call hosted by a Christian nationalist group member

A week before the Capitol attack, on a video call organised by a member of a Christian nationalist group, a Pennsylvania state senator who is the Republican candidate for governor in the battleground state prayed that supporters of Donald Trump would “seize the power” on 6 January 2021.

Doug Mastriano attended the pro-Trump rally in Washington that day, after which supporters, told by Trump to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat, stormed Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

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DoJ bids to regain access to classified documents seized in Trump search – as it happened

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Joe Biden is in the intriguingly named Licking county, Ohio, where he’s at the groundbreaking ceremony of a new Intel factory and about to deliver remarks about the Chips Act, which will boost US production of semiconductors.

The White House says this particular groundbreaking is a different occasion from the usual “scripted, backslapping affairs for political dignitaries”.

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Judge rejects Trump lawsuit against Hillary Clinton over 2016 Russia claims

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Court ‘not the appropriate forum’ for former president’s complaint that Democrats unfairly linked his winning campaign to Russia

A US judge has dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit against his 2016 rival Hillary Clinton, saying the former Republican president’s allegations that Democrats tried to rig that election by linking his campaign to Russia was an attempt to “flaunt” political grievances that did not belong in court.

In throwing out Trump’s lawsuit on Thursday night, judge Donald Middlebrooks of the US district court for the southern district of Florida said the lawsuit was not seeking “redress for any legal harm” and that the court was “not the appropriate forum” for the former president’s complaints.

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‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book says

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Gabriel Debenedetti, author of book on Biden’s relationship with Obama, reports call on night of 2018 midterms

On the night of the 2018 midterm elections, as a wave of anti-Trump sentiment swept Democrats to take control of the House, top Republican Mitt Romney urged Joe Biden to run for president.

“You have to run,” said Romney, the Republican presidential nominee Biden and Barack Obama defeated in 2012, speaking to the former vice-president by phone.

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Justice department appeals special master ruling for Trump documents

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Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, had granted a request for an independent figure to review records from Mar-a-Lago

The US justice department has demanded that a federal judge restore its access to documents seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort that carried classification markings, saying that if not, it would appeal to a higher court.

The demands came in a three-page notice of appeal filed by the justice department on Thursday in the case involving Trump’s request for a so-called special master, and paves the way for the government to submit a detailed appeals brief to the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.

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Steve Bannon ‘stole millions of dollars to line his own pocket,’ New York attorney general says – as it happened

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Steve Bannon has now been formally indicted, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports.

Bannon was charged with money laundering and conspiracy in connection with his role in a fundraising effort to privately underwrite the construction of the US-Mexico border wall, according to the indictment unsealed on Thursday.

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‘Unhinged’ Rudy Giuliani drank and ranted about Islam, new book claims

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Ex-mayor derailed ‘train wreck’ dinner with clients and colleagues, then was later considered for secretary of state

At a law firm dinner in New York in May 2016, an “unhinged” Rudy Giuliani, then Donald Trump’s suggested pick to head a commission on “radical Islamic terrorism”, behaved in a drunken and Islamophobic manner, horrifying clients and attorneys alike.

According to a new book by Geoffrey Berman, a former US attorney for the southern district of New York (SDNY), at one point Giuliani turned to a Jewish man “wearing a yarmulke [who] had ordered a kosher meal” and, under the impression the man was a Muslim, said: “I’m sorry to have tell you this, but the founder of your religion is a murderer.”

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Nuclear secrets reportedly found at Mar-a-Lago are ‘gamechanger’, experts say – as it happened

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Report appears to confirm security officials’ worst fears about the nature of the material Trump refused to hand back

Former Trump administration defense secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark Esper have joined a group of retired military officers who have written an open letter warning of an “extremely adverse environment” for the military – a thinly-veiled attack on the former president’s efforts to use servicemen and women to advance his political goals.

“Military officers swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not an oath of fealty to an individual or to an office,” the letter, published by the online security analysis website War on the Rocks, states.

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Steve Bannon to be indicted on fresh fraud charges over border wall – sources

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Former Trump strategist to face state charges over fundraising for the wall that likely mirror a federal case in which he was pardoned

Top former Trump strategist Steve Bannon is expected to be indicted on Thursday on state fraud charges connected to his role in a fundraising scheme to build a border wall, according to two sources familiar with the matter, years after he received a presidential pardon in the federal case.

The expected move by the Manhattan district attorney’s office was quietly communicated to Bannon in recent days, the sources said of the sealed indictment, and indicated the state charges will likely mirror the federal case in which he was pardoned.

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