Trump improperly took away classified material, National Archives says

Archives says it has alerted Department of Justice about former president’s removal of files from White House

The US National Archives confirmed on Friday that officials found classified materials in boxes of documents Donald Trump improperly removed from the White House – and that they had alerted the Department of Justice (DoJ).

The disclosure is expected to escalate an investigation by the House oversight committee into whether Trump violated the Presidential Records Act of 1978 by removing and destroying White House documents.

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What does it mean to ‘plead the fifth’ – and will Donald Trump do it?

The ex-president has been ordered to testify in a New York fraud case. Will he invoke his constitutional right to remain silent?

Donald Trump and his two eldest children have been ordered by a New York judge to appear for a deposition within 21 days, as part of an investigation into the Trump family finances. The development presents the former US president with a dilemma: should he invoke his right to silence by pleading the fifth?

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Trump and two eldest children must testify in New York case, judge rules

Ruling forces ex-president, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr to comply with subpoenas as Letitia James investigates Trump Organization

Donald Trump and two of his children have been ordered by a New York judge to appear for a deposition within the next three weeks, as part of the billowing investigation over alleged fraud in the valuation of assets belonging to his family business.

The ruling by Judge Arthur Engoron to force Trump and his two eldest children – Donald Jr and Ivanka – to comply with subpoenas amounts to a sharp escalation of the legal perils that are rapidly tightening around the former president.

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Trump interior secretary Zinke broke ethics rules and lied, watchdog finds – live

While lawmakers were unable to come to a consensus on a sanctions bill for Russia this week, it looks like we may have some movement on the issue here:

The interior department’s inspector general said in a report made public today that Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary under Donald Trump, misused his position to advance a development project in his Montana hometown and lied to an agency ethics official about his involvement.

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Trump Organization’s accountants cut ties, calling years of filings unreliable

Mazars, Donald Trump’s longtime accountancy firm, sever links amid criminal and civil investigations of ex-president’s business

Donald Trump’s longtime accountancy firm cut ties with his business last week, saying that nearly a decade’s worth of Trump’s filings should “no longer be relied upon”.

The move comes amid ongoing criminal and civil investigations into whether Trump illegally inflated the value of his assets.

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Bipartisan members on Capitol attack panel say they expect Giuliani to testify

Comments come after report that Trump ally is in talks about options, including in-person interview or submitting a deposition

Bipartisan figures on the congressional committee investigating Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat said on Sunday they expected the former president’s close ally, Rudolph Giuliani, would comply with a subpoena to give testimony.

Giuliani is among a number of Trump sphere insiders who have so far refused to cooperate with the bipartisan House panel looking into Trump’s subversion efforts and the January 6 Capitol insurrection the then president incited that claimed five lives. Giuliani was scheduled to testify last Tuesday, after the committee issued a subpoena last month, but did not appear.

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Viktor Orbán invites Trump to Hungary to boost re-election campaign

Thinktank linked to government has extended an invitation to the former US president

Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán is hoping Donald Trump will travel to Budapest in the coming weeks to boost his reelection campaign.

A thinktank linked to the Orbán government, the Centre for Fundamental Rights, has issued an invitation to Trump, a government source told The Guardian.

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Capitol attack inquiry narrows on Trump as panel subpoenas top aide

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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Cultivating conspiracy: how Boris Johnson amplified the far right

Prime minister follows Donald Trump playbook by tacitly endorsing wild conspiracy theory to score points

What started out as a conspiracy meme on the outer reaches of the internet has, with the help of Boris Johnson, swiftly established itself amid the cocktail of ideas and conspiracies that define the new extreme right.

The protesters who surrounded Keir Starmer on Monday night mostly shouted the word “traitor” – once a term of abuse against pro-EU MPs during the Brexit crisis – as well as “paedophile protector”, a reference to false claims about the Labour leader’s links to the Jimmy Savile case.

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Romney won’t criticise niece for calling Trump lies and Capitol riot ‘legitimate political discourse’

Senator says he has texted with ‘terrific’ Ronna McDaniel, RNC chair who oversaw censure of Cheney and Kinzinger

Mitt Romney and his niece, Ronna McDaniel, exchanged texts after the Republican National Committee she chairs called Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat and the Capitol riot “legitimate political discourse”.

Romney, the Utah senator, 2012 presidential nominee and only Republican to twice vote to convict Trump at his impeachment trials, told reporters on Monday he “expressed his point of view”.

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Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and Trump ally, to step down from Meta board

Thiel, a major donor to the Republican party, was seen by critics as part of the reason why Facebook did not censor Trump

Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, is stepping down from the board of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, after 17 years.

Thiel, Facebook’s longest-serving board member and a major donor to the Republican party, plans to focus on backing Donald Trump’s allies in the November midterm elections, according to the New York Times. He recently donated $10m each to the Senate campaigns of Blake Masters, who is running for a seat in Arizona, and JD Vance, who is running in Ohio. Masters is the chief operating officer of Thiel’s family office and Vance used to work at one of Thiel’s venture funds.

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Trump’s election advisers were like ‘snake oil salesmen’, ex-Pence aide says

Former chief of staff Marc Short joins several senior Republicans to defend the former vice-president in escalating feud with Trump

Mike Pence’s former chief of staff Marc Short joined several senior Republicans in rallying to defend the former vice-president on Sunday in his escalating feud with Donald Trump over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

Some of Trump’s advisers on the 2020 election were like “snake oil salesmen”, Short said on Sunday.

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‘Trump is not my God’: how the former president’s only vaccine victory turned sour

A rigid anti-vaccine stance among Trump’s supporters means Republicans can’t reap the benefits of Operation Warp Speed

She is fiercely loyal to Donald Trump. But when the former US president came to her home city and praised coronavirus vaccines, Flora Moore did something she never thought possible. She booed him.

“He said take the vaccine but we all booed and said no,” she recalled of Trump’s event with broadcaster Bill O’Reilly in Orlando, Florida. He heard us loud and clear because the Amway Center was packed. We let him know ‘no’ and a couple of us even hollered out, ‘It’s killing people!’

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

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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Trump and his enablers unwittingly offer Democrats the best hope in the midterms | Robert Reich

The former president and his allies may doom the Republicans by reminding the public of their attempted coup

The midterm elections are just over nine months away. What will Democrats run on? What will Republicans run on?

One hint came at a Houston-area Trump rally Saturday night. “If I run and if I win,” the former guy said, referring to 2024, “we will treat those people from January 6th fairly.” He then added, “and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.”

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Trump reportedly directed Giuliani to press officials to seize voting machines

Sources say Giuliani called Department of Homeland Security six weeks after Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden, New York Times reports

Donald Trump directed Rudy Giuliani to ask the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) if it could seize voting machines in three key states, the New York Times reported.

Citing three anonymous sources, the paper said Giuliani made the call six weeks after Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden but before the January 6 Capitol riot, by supporters trying to stop the certification of electoral college results.

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Quiet part loud: Trump says Pence ‘could have overturned the election’

In statement protesting against reform of Electoral Count Act, ex-president appears to admit Joe Biden won

Donald Trump was accused of “saying the quiet part loud” on Sunday night, when he protested that Mike Pence, his former vice-president, could have overturned his election defeat by Joe Biden.

Though he has appeared to admit Biden won before, Trump usually insists he won and his opponent stole the election through voter fraud – the “big lie” which animates rallies like one in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday.

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Trump pardon promise for Capitol rioters ‘stuff of dictators’ – Nixon aide

  • Trump makes promise at rally in Texas on Saturday
  • John Dean: ‘Failure to confront tyrant encourages bad behavior’

Donald Trump’s promise to pardon supporters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6 2021 was “the stuff of dictators”, Richard Nixon’s White House counsel warned.

Trump made the promise at a rally in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday.

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Trump tours the country endorsing candidates to reinforce the ‘big lie’

As thousands turn out to hear the former president, midterm candidates vie for his backing by pushing ‘stolen’ election myth

On a chilly open field in Texas, Dan Patrick was delivering prepared remarks about the spectre of socialism when the crowd broke into a chant about the 2020 presidential election.

“Well, we all know who won in 2020, don’t we?” the state’s lieutenant governor ad-libbed. “Who won?” There was apparently not a soul who believes the answer is Joe Biden.

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Capitol attack committee has spoken to Trump AG William Barr, chairman says

The chairman of the congressional committee investigating the US Capitol attack and Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election revealed on Sunday that the panel has spoken to the former attorney general William Barr, a further indication that the inquiry has moved closer to the ex-president’s inner circle.

Bennie Thompson told CBS’s Face the Nation that Barr, who was accused of making the justice department Trump’s tool but who resigned before Trump left office, had spoken more than once with the panel.

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