Recovered records include material even senior Biden officials were not authorized to view, Washington Post reports
The FBI recovered a document describing a foreign government’s nuclear capabilities during its search of Mar-a-Lago, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The Post, citing unnamed sources, did not identify the foreign government named in the document describing the country’s military defenses.
Continue reading...US midterms campaigns kick into high gear after Labor Day as Senate returns from month-long break
Legal pressure on Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department lawyer who schemed with Donald Trump and others to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states, is expected to rise with the cooperation of another ex-DoJ lawyer who worked with him, say former prosecutors.
The cooperation from the ex-lawyer, in tandem with other evidence obtained by prosecutors, could help spur charges against Clark – a close ally of then president Trump – and benefit prosecutors as they go after bigger targets.
Continue reading...Injection of $1.3bn for former president’s media company looks set to be derailed because of lackluster investor support
Donald Trump’s beleaguered social media company is facing further financial turmoil after a long-awaited $1.3bn cash injection looks set to be derailed due to lackluster investor backing.
Shareholders of the special purpose acquisitions firm, which last year brokered a deal to take the Trump Media and Technology Group public, have not backed a one-year extension to complete the transaction, which threatens to spoil the merger.
Continue reading...Federal court accepts ex-president’s call for official to set aside materials potentially subject to privilege protections
A federal judge has granted Donald Trump’s request to have a “special master” appointed to review documents the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate that could be subject to privilege protections in the investigation into unauthorized retention of government secrets.
The order from the US district court judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, also temporarily barred the justice department from reviewing the documents for its criminal inquiry until the special master completes its work, in a decision that marked a procedural victory for the former president.
Continue reading...A string of favorable outcomes for the party, coupled with backlash from supreme court’s abortion ban, could galvanize Biden supporters
Joe Biden travels to the battleground states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on Monday, determined to reframe America’s midterm elections as a defining choice between democracy and the extremism of Donald Trump.
Fighting for every vote, the US president will mark Labor Day with growing confidence as opinion polls suggest that, while Republicans still have the lead, Democrats now have the momentum heading into the home stretch.
Continue reading...Congressman says of former vice-president, ‘I would assume he is going to come forward and testify voluntarily’
The January 6 committee assumes the former vice-president Mike Pence will testify before it, a panel member said on Sunday.
“I would assume he is going to come forward and testify voluntarily,” Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, told CBS’s Face the Nation.
Continue reading...Former president also calls Joe Biden’s Philadelphia address the ‘most vicious, hateful, divisive speech’
Speaking in Pennsylvania on Saturday, at his first rally since the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for top-secret material taken from the White House and since Joe Biden used a primetime address to warn that Republicans were assaulting US democracy, Donald Trump lashed out.
The former president said: “The FBI and the justice department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do.”
Continue reading...‘The actions of the department look more understandable,’ Trump’s attorney general tells the New York Times in an interview
Former attorney general William Barr came to the defense of the FBI and the justice department’s (DoJ) judicial request to search Donald Trump’s Florida home and country club compound last month, saying Friday that documents seized in the search appeared to support the department’s claims of a national security risk.
“As more information comes out, the actions of the department look more understandable,” Barr told the New York Times in an interview.
Continue reading...Biden speaks at White House and takes swipe at former president, but says not all Trump supporters are threat to America
At the White House press briefing just now, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke on Joe Biden’s speech last night where he warned that Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans” are a threat to democracy.
“The president was trying to give the American people a choice: how do we move forward in this inflection point?” Jean-Pierre said. “When it comes to the soul of the nation, that is something the president has talked about for years… He has been concerned about where our democracy is going.”
Continue reading...The former Republican House speaker is believed to have repeatedly contacted White House aides about fake electors
The House January 6 select committee on Thursday asked former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich to testify about his repeated contacts with White House aides in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, even in the evening after the Capitol attack had taken place.
The request to Gingrich was for voluntary cooperation – though the select committee showed it now appears to believe he was involved in a potential conspiracy planned ahead of time to lay the groundwork that would lead to reversing Trump’s defeat on January 6.
Congressman Bennie Thompson, the committee chair, said in a letter to Gingrich that investigators were interested in him counseling Trump aides to make TV ads about debunked election fraud conspiracies to pressure state legislators into decertifying Biden electors.
The letter detailed that it had communications that showed he tried to liaise with former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone about the fake elector scheme, asking whether anyone was coordinating Trump slates to Congress so that he could be declared the winner.
The select committee noted that Gingrich then furthered that effort as he emailed Meadows at 10.42pm on January 6 – hours after the Capitol attack had already largely concluded and Congress was preparing to confirm Biden’s win – asking whether there were “letters from state legislators about decertifying electors”.
“Surprisingly, the attack on Congress and the activities prescribed by the Constitution did not even pause your relentless pursuit. On the evening of January 6, you continued to push efforts to overturn the election results,” the letter said.
The select committee stopped short of issuing a subpoena to Gingrich, but also asked him to preserve his communications with Trump, the White House and the Trump legal team led by Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, as well as anyone else connected to January 6.
Thomas Webster was given a 10-year prison time for six charges, including assaulting an officer with a metal flagpole
A retired New York police department officer has received a record-setting 10- year sentence for his involvement in the Capitol attack, during which he used a metal flagpole to assault one of the police officers trying to hold off a mob of Donald Trump supporters.
Thomas Webster was sentenced on Thursday, and his prison time will represent the longest punishment so far for the roughly 250 people facing punishment for their role in the January 6 attack.
Continue reading...In overnight court filing, DoJ says it was ‘likely’ efforts had been made to move and hide documents
Donald Trump’s former White House counselor, Kellyanne Conway, does not think Republicans should move on from her former boss, despite signs his control of the party could cost it the chance to take Congress in November.
Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday, Conway said: “Those who want to move on from Trump: You go first.”
Continue reading...Inventory of what was seized at Mar-a-Lago caused ‘transatlantic freakout’ between Paris and Washington
Donald Trump boasted to close associates that he knew secrets about Emmanuel Macron’s sex life from US intelligence sources, it has been reported.
The report in Rolling Stone magazine comes in the wake of the release of court documents on the classified and national defence documents found in a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on 8 August, which mention a file referred to as “info re: President of France”.
Continue reading...Court filing alleges files were found despite Trump lawyers saying all documents had been returned
The FBI searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after it obtained evidence there was probably an effort to conceal classified documents in defiance of a grand jury subpoena and despite Trump’s lawyers suggesting otherwise, the Department of Justice said in a court filing late on Tuesday night.
The filing, opposing Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized, amounted to the most detailed picture of potential obstruction of justice yet outlined by the DoJ.
Continue reading...President details his Safer America Plan in Pennsylvania speech and says funding police provides ‘peace of mind’
The White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is holding a gaggle aboard Air Force One, as Joe Biden heads to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to talk about gun safety.
The first topic in the gaggle is the flooding in Mississippi and the failure of the Jackson area water treatment services, which has caused a crisis over clean drinking water.
US Secret Service official Tony Ornato, a figure of intense interest to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, has retired from the agency. He was an eyewitness to some of the most critical incidents involving Donald Trump in the hours leading up to the deadly assault on the US Capitol.
NBC News reported that Trump has hired a criminal attorney who was once Florida’s solicitor to his legal team. Chris Kise is expected to make his first appearance in federal court in West Palm Beach on Thursday when district judge Aileen Cannon mulls Trump’s request for a special master to oversee the justice department’s review of classified materials seized by the FBI at his home.
We’re awaiting at any moment the justice department’s legal response to Trump’s request, which will be a lengthy filing running up to 40 pages after Cannon waived a 20-page limit imposed by the court.
Incumbent Democratic Arizona senator Mark Kelly leads Republican challenger Blake Masters by more than three points in a poll released today, appearing to confirm a growing belief within the party that pro-choice messaging on abortion will be vote-winner in November’s midterms.
Continue reading...Tony Ornato, who reportedly told aide Trump lunged for steering wheel as Capitol attack was starting, was key figure to committee
Top US Secret Service official Tony Ornato, who has become a figure of intense interest to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, has retired from the agency.
Ornato was thrust into the center of the January 6 furor as an eyewitness to some of the most critical incidents involving Donald Trump in the hours leading up to the deadly assault on the US Capitol.
Continue reading...Justice department faces deadline for detailed inventory of files while ex-president’s team must argue for review by special master
More from Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe on the legal case around the FBI search and seizure of classified documents from former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club-resort and home.
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Continue reading...Party spent years chanting ‘lock her up’ at Hillary Clinton for private email system, says congressman, a vocal critic of Trump
Congressman Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican who has been one of the most vocal critics of Donald Trump, called out his party for criticizing Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while continuing to defend the former president’s decision to take sensitive government information to his home at Mar-a-Lago.
Kinzinger’s comments came days after the FBI released a redacted version of the affidavit the agency submitted to a federal judge to justify a search of Trump’s home. The document details how Trump retained classified material at Mar-a-Lago and that the government had been working for more than a year to retrieve those materials. A batch of documents returned earlier this year contained 184 documents marked as classified, including 25 marked as top secret.
Continue reading...A Ukrainian woman posed as a Rothschild to gain access to the Florida resort, heightening fears over security lapses
A second foreign national is being investigated by US authorities for gaining access to Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida resort which is at the center of an FBI probe over missing classified documents, heightening fears over security lapses both during and after his presidency.
According to an article from the Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a Ukrainian woman posing as a member of the Rothschild banking dynasty is under bureau investigation after infiltrating the private members club under a false pretense.
Continue reading...The quiet workings of a Georgia grand jury hearing evidence of election fraud could represent the ex-president’s greatest danger
Donald Trump’s lawyers are earning their keep.
The former president’s attorneys have raced to put out one fire after another in recent months as they defend Trump from investigations into the squirrelling away of secret documents at Mar-a-Lago, his part in the storming of the Capitol during his last days in office, and twin probes into his business dealings in New York.
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