Category Archives: Donald Trump

‘Smartest one gets to the top’: Trump again praises Putin at Georgia rally

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Ex-president also had warm words for Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un at event as primary races heat up before midterms elections

Donald Trump chose a rally in Georgia on Saturday night once again to praise Vladimir Putin, calling the Russian president “smart” even as he said the invasion of Ukraine amounted to a “big mistake”.

The Republican former president also had warm words for China’s president Xi Jinping and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and referred to such leaders collectively by saying: “The smartest one gets to the top.”

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Ginni Thomas urged Trump’s chief of staff to overturn election results

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In texts to Mark Meadows, the wife of supreme court justice Clarence Thomas pushed Trump’s ‘big lie’

In the weeks following the 2020 election, the conservative activist Ginni Thomas – who is married to the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas – repeatedly implored Donald Trump’s chief of staff to help overturn the results, according to text messages obtained by the Washington Post and CBS News.

In one of 29 messages seen by the news outlets, Thomas wrote to Mark Meadows on 10 November: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! … You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”

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Trump sues Hillary Clinton, alleging ‘plot’ to rig 2016 election against him

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Clinton, James Comey and others accused of orchestrating Russia conspiracy that makes Watergate ‘pale in comparison’

Donald Trump has sued Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and other people and entities tied to the investigation of Russian election interference in 2016, claiming that in a bid to rig the election they orchestrated a conspiracy which made Watergate “pale in comparison”.

The suit came a day after the release of a letter from a prosecutor in New York who said he believed Trump was “guilty of numerous felony violations” in his business affairs, despite the district attorney in Manhattan choosing not to indict.

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Republican says Trump asked him to ‘rescind’ 2020 election and remove Biden from office

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Mo Brooks of Alabama appeared at the rally before the Capitol assault and is under scrutiny by January 6 committee

The Alabama Republican congressman Mo Brooks said on Tuesday Donald Trump asked him to “rescind” the 2020 election, remove Joe Biden from the White House and reinstate Trump.

The extraordinary statement came in an angry response to a withdrawn endorsement in a US Senate race. Trump was angered that Brooks was insufficiently toeing his line on calling the 2020 election a fraud.

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Liz Cheney does not regret vote against Trump Ukraine impeachment

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January 6 committee member splits from fellow Republican Adam Kinzinger but says first impeachment informs panel’s work

Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the January 6 committee, does not regret her vote against Donald Trump’s first impeachment, for withholding military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to extract dirt on rivals including Joe Biden.

But Cheney also said on Sunday she was focused on lessons learned from that impeachment as she pursues the investigation of the deadly Capitol attack, the event which led to Trump’s second Senate trial.

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Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows investigated for voter registration fraud

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North Carolina authorities are investigating claims Mark Meadows did not reside, visit or own the address he is registered at

Mark Meadows, who served as former President Donald Trump’s final chief of staff and has echoed his false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, is being investigated in North Carolina over his voter registration, state authorities said.

North Carolina’s state bureau of investigation was assigned to lead the inquiry after a district attorney referred the matter to the state department of justice special prosecutions section, a department spokeswoman, Nazneen Ahmed, said in an email.

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Proud Boys leader had plans to ‘storm’ government buildings on 6 January

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Enrique Tarrio possessed document titled ‘1776 Returns’, with details to invade and occupy seven buildings, New York Times says

The former leader of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right nationalist group whose members were prominent in the January 6 riot, was found in possession of comprehensive plans to “surveil and storm” government buildings, prosecutors said.

Enrique Tarrio, the group’s former chairman who was arrested last week and charged with conspiracy over the deadly attack, had a nine-page document entitled “1776 Returns”, named for the year of American independence, the New York Times reported.

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Trump accused of campaign finance violations in FEC complaint

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Democratic Pac alleges former president is raising campaign money without announcing candidacy

A Democratic fundraising organization has announced that it is filing a complaint to the Federal Election Commission in which it accuses former president Donald Trump of violating campaign finance laws by spending political funds for a 2024 presidential bid without officially declaring his 2024 candidacy.

The American Bridge Super Pac, which filed the complaint on Monday, said in the complaint that “Trump has been illegally using his multi-candidate leadership PAC to raise and spend funds in excess of Commission limits for the purpose of advancing a 2024 presidential campaign.

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Barr: Trump should not be president but ‘lesser of two evils’ compared to US left

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Ex-attorney general excoriates old boss in book but refuses to budge from vow to vote for him if he is Republican nominee again

Doubling down on his vow to vote for Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee in 2024 despite writing in his new book that Trump is dangerously unsuited for the job, William Barr said: “Elections are binary choice, and unfortunately sometimes it’s choosing the lesser of two evils.”

Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump’s second attorney general added: “I believe that the progressive wing of the Democratic party is dangerous for the United States.”

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‘Would-be tyrant’: Republican targeted by Trump at rally hits back

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Tom Rice faces Trumpist challenger because of vote to impeach over the deadly Capitol attack

A Republican congressman attacked by Donald Trump at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday called the former president a “would-be tyrant”.

Tom Rice voted to impeach Trump over the deadly Capitol attack and will face a Trump-endorsed challenger later this year.

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Republican Kinzinger: I should have voted to impeach Trump over Ukraine

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Member of House January 6 committee admits regret that he voted against former president’s first impeachment

One of two Republicans on the House January 6 committee has said he regrets his vote against the first impeachment of Donald Trump, for withholding military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to obtain dirt on rivals including Joe Biden.

In tweets posted on Friday, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continued, with cities besieged and bombarded, Adam Kinzinger said: “I want to be honest, in Congress I have only a few votes that in hinds[igh]t, I regret. My biggest regret was voting against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.

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Judge blocks Donald Trump’s effort to countersue rape accuser E Jean Carroll

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New York judge accuses ex-president of ‘bad faith’ in tactics that would have further delayed defamation lawsuit

Donald Trump cannot countersue the US writer E Jean Carroll, who says he raped her in the mid-1990s, a federal judge ruled on Friday. The former president had argued that her defamation lawsuit against him violated a New York state law intended to protect free speech.

US district judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said a ruling for the one-term Republican would needlessly cause further delays for Carroll’s lawsuit, which began in November 2019.

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Trump thought US troops were in Ukraine in 2017, ex-ambassador says in book

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Marie Yovanovitch, who was fired by Trump in 2019, reveals details of then president’s Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian counterpart

At an Oval Office meeting with the then Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, in 2017, Donald Trump asked his national security adviser if US troops were in Donbas, territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists, which Vladimir Putin last month used as pretext for a full and bloody invasion.

Describing the meeting in a new book, the then US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, writes: “An affirmative answer to that question would have meant that the United States was in a shooting war with Russia.”

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Plane carrying Trump reportedly made emergency landing after engine failure

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Incident occurred over Gulf of Mexico as former president returned to Florida from rally in New Orleans on Saturday night

A plane carrying former US president Donald Trump was reportedly forced to make an emergency landing on Saturday night after suffering engine failure over the Gulf of Mexico.

The Dassault Falcon 900 had flown about 75 miles from a New Orleans airport before turning back to the city, an unnamed source told the Reuters news agency.

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‘Traumatised and terrified, with nowhere else to go’: huge numbers of people stuck at US border

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Title 42, enacted under Trump and kept in place by Biden, has led to hundreds of thousands being denied their right to asylum since the start of the pandemic

When Henry Ruiz* and Raquel Hernandez boarded a bus heading north to America with their two young children, they knew there would be no going back.

It was June 2021, and a few weeks earlier Ruiz, a 28-year-old banana farmer from central Mexico, had been abducted by a group of armed men and taken to an isolated ranch where 15 others – 13 men and two women – were being held.

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Texas man could become first Capitol rioter convicted by jury as trial ends

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Department of Justice lawyers make closing arguments against Guy Reffitt, first of 750 people charged with joining riot to face trial

Federal prosecutors on Monday finished presenting testimony against a Texas man who is the first person to be tried on charges related to the riot at the US Capitol on 6 January last year.

Guy Reffitt told US district judge Dabney Friedrich he would not be testifying at his trial on charges that he stormed the Capitol armed with a holstered handgun and interfered with police.

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William Barr: Trump is full of bull – but I’ll vote for him

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Barr’s book reveals he told Trump he was ‘like a bull in a bull ring’ – in return, Trump calls his former attorney general a ‘horse’

Donald Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, told the former US president he was “like a bull in a bull ring” and “someone’s going to come and put a sword through your head”.

In return, Trump called Barr a “horse” who had been “broken” by the radical left.

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Trump’s private schedule reveals no plans for him to join 6 January march

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Ex-president said he would join crowd to US Capitol but his schedule indicates he deliberately lied to his supporters

Donald Trump was aware long before he took the stage at the “Save America” rally on 6 January that he would not march to the Capitol to protest the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win, according to his White House private schedule from that day.

The former president started his nearly 75-minute long speech at the Ellipse by saying he would go with the crowd to the Capitol, and then repeated that promise when he said he would walk with them down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol.

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Trump strikes deal to evade deposition in New York investigation – for now

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Agreement with attorney general Letitia James covers two eldest children but seeks to speed up civil legal proceedings

Donald Trump has reached an agreement with the the New York attorney general’s office that will temporarily spare him from having to answer questions under oath as part of an investigation into his business, as the former president’s appeal process in the case continues.

In February, a New York judge ordered that Trump and his two eldest children, Donald Jr and Ivanka, must appear for a deposition as part of New York state’s civil investigation into Trump Organization’s business practices, including allegations the family company fraudulently inflated the value of its assets.

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White House announces new sanctions on Russian oligarchs and Putin’s ‘cronies’ – live

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Leaders of the Quad grouping of countries - the US, India, Australia and Japan - agreed today that what is happening to Ukraine should not be allowed to happen in the Indo-Pacific, Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida said.

Reuters reports:

A virtual meeting of the four-country grouping was held at a time of increased concern about Taiwan, a self-ruled island claimed by China, which has stepped up its alert level, wary of China taking advantage of a distracted west to move against it.

“We’ve agreed that unilateral changes to the status quo with force like this should not be allowed in the Indo-Pacific region,” Kishida said, referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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