Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Wall Street Journal says prosecutors interested in loans relating to four Manhattan properties
While there was good news for Donald Trump in Washington on Saturday, as his second impeachment trial ended in acquittal, troubling news came out of his native New York.
The Wall Street Journal reported that prosecutors in the city are investigating about $280m in loans to the Trump Organization, related to four buildings in Manhattan: Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue; a skyscraper at 40 Wall St; a hotel and residential building on Columbus Circle near Central Park; and an apartment building on the Upper East Side.
The former president and his supporters are likely to claim victory as they did after his first impeachment trial a year ago
Donald Trump’s highly anticipated acquittal at his US Senate impeachment trial is the least surprising twist in American politics since … well, his acquittal at his first US Senate impeachment trial a year ago.
Lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin has taken the floor again to push back against some of the comments from Michael Van der Veen.
Raskin noted that the arguments from Donald Trump’s team have been very inconsistent.
Michael Van der Veen, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers, leveled a series of serious accusations (without evidence) against the House impeachment managers.
Van der Veen accused the managers of having “fabricated evidence” and committed “fraud” in its presentations during the impeachment trial.
Five Senate Republicans voted with the Democrats on Saturday, that the Senate should call witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
Before the 55-45 vote, Trump’s impeachment lawyer Michael van der Veen warned senators that if Democrats wished to call a witness, he would ask for at least 100 witnesses and insist they give depositions in person in his office in Philadelphia – a threat that prompted laughter from the chamber.
Lawyers claim Trump’s ‘fight like hell’ rhetoric on 6 January was no different than the language politicians frequently use
Impeachment lawyers for Donald Trump accused the prosecution of waging a “politically motivated witch-hunt” against the former president, vehemently denying the charge that his words and actions incited the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol as they concluded their sharply partisan defense and prepared for a swift conclusion to the trial.
Confident that Trump’s unprecedented second impeachment trial would again result in acquittal, the defense lawyers channeled the former president’s bombastic style – and his loose relationship with the facts – to denounce the case against him as an “unconstitutional act of political vengeance” fueled by Democrats’ longstanding “hatred” of their client. They claimed the House managers had grievously mischaracterized Trump’s remarks to his followers at a rally on 6 January, when he exhorted them to “fight like hell” during a rally just before they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington and attacked the US Capitol.
As we gear up for Trump’s lawyers to present their defense, here’s a handy clip of congressman Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, making the case that Trump incited his supporters on January 6.
Yesterday Raskin wrapped up the House’s case against the president, asking senators:
Some people online are getting very excited about events at the White House, where Jill Biden has installed some heart-shaped signs ahead of Valentine’s Day.
Overnight, the First Lady’s surprise Valentine messages to the country were installed on the north lawn of the White House for the weekend! Happy Valentines, America...from @FLOTUSpic.twitter.com/HPHjFbDfhD
President Biden: "#ValentinesDay is a big. Jill's favorite day. For real."
Q: "What inspired you to do this?"@FLOTUS: "I just wanted some joy. With the pandemic, just everybody's feeling a little down. So, it's just a little joy. A little hope. That's all." pic.twitter.com/JW0S1cclNO
House impeachment managers concluded their case against Donald Trump on Thursday by saying that the deadly Capitol assault he stands accused of inciting was the culmination of a presidency beset by lies and violent rhetoric. They also said he would remain a threat to US democracy if not convicted and barred from holding future office
House impeachment managers rested their case against Donald Trump on Thursday, concluding that the deadly Capitol assault he stands accused of inciting was the culmination of a presidency beset by lies and violent rhetoric, and warning gravely that he would remain a threat to American democracy if not convicted and barred from holding future office.
Joe Biden has criticised Donald Trump’s handling of the US Covid vaccination program after confirming the country had ordered an additional 200m vaccine doses to be delivered by the end of July. Speaking at the National Institutes of Health on Thursday, the president spoke of the efforts his team had gone through to ensure high vaccination numbers and criticised Trump’s strategy for distributing vaccines. ‘My predecessor, to be very blunt about it, did not do his job,’ Biden said. ‘He didn’t order enough vaccines. He didn’t mobilise enough people to administer the shots’
Officials feared president would need a ventilator as he faced extremely low oxygen levels, New York Times reports
Donald Trump was reportedly much more ill with Covid-19 in October than the White House publicly admitted at the time, with some officials concerned that he would need to be put on a ventilator.
Trump experienced “extremely depressed blood oxygen levels” and a lung problem commonly associated with pneumonia caused by Covid-19, according to a report in the New York Times citing four people familiar with the former president’s condition.
House impeachment managers warned that more political violence could occur if Trump is not held accountable. Representative Diana DeGette argued the vote to impeach would make sure this would never happen again.
The managers rested their case on the third day of the trial after presenting arguments for convicting Donald Trump.
In their prosecution of Donald Trump for inciting the 6 January attack on the United States Capitol in Washington DC, Democratic impeachment managers have focused on videos of the event, including previously unseen footage.
The managers, who act as prosecutors in the case, have shown clips to their audience of senators, who are in effect acting as jurors.
The shocking footage shown on Wednesday revealed the full scale and danger of the attack on the Capitol, including threats to some senators who were now sitting in the chamber during the trial
Welcome to our live coverage of US politics for Thursday. It’s been a busy week. The Senate impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump is set to continue today, after yesterday Democrats set out their case to impeach him for ‘incitement of insurrection’. Here’s a catch-up on where we are, and what we might expect to see today…
Breakaway group would run on ‘principled conservatism’ platform, say those involved in discussions
Dozens of former Republican officials who view the party as unwilling to stand up to Donald Trump and his attempts to undermine US democracy are in talks to form a centre-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions have said.
The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, George W Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved told Reuters.
Police bodycam footage showing officers under attack at the US Capitol attack has been released during the second impeachment trial for Donald Trump. Democrat congressman Eric Swalell played footage captured from the officer's perspective showing the crowd attacking police with whatever items were at hand, including crutches and a Trump flag. Swalell also revealed vision showing the evacuation of representatives including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer being ushered away by security
The country began the pandemic with a degraded public health infrastructure, leading to more deaths than other high-income countries
The US could have averted 40% of the deaths from Covid-19, had the country’s death rates corresponded with the rates in other high-income G7 countries, according to a Lancet commission tasked with assessing Donald Trump’s health policy record.
Almost 470,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus so far, with the number widely expected to go above half a million in the next few weeks. At the same time some 27 million people in the US have been infected. Both figures are by far the highest in the world.
Hossein Dehghan criticises continuing sanctions by US and says Tehran’s approach to nuclear issue will change
The only declared candidate in Iran’s presidential elections this June has accused Joe Biden of continuing Donald Trump’s international policies, and warned that Tehran is preparing retaliatory measures to force the US to change its diplomatic trajectory.
In an interview with the Guardian, Hossein Dehghan, a military adviser to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Washington was not in a position to set preconditions for Iran’s return to the 2015 nuclear deal and called for guarantees that the US will not leave the agreement again.
Democrats revealed disturbing new recordings of the mob attack on the US Capitol last month as they presented their case on Wednesday in the historic second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
House impeachment managers constructed a timeline which they said showed that the former president was “singularly responsible” for the deadly assault, which brought a violent mob within footsteps of the nation’s political leaders.
New video shown during the second impeachment trial for Donald Trump has revealed Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman leading Senator Mitt Romney away from the rioters as well as the evacuation of former vice-president Mike Pence.
Representative Stacey Plaskett presented the previously unreleased security footage from the 6 January Capitol breach documenting Romney's close call as well as Pence and his family's escape as rioters chanted ‘hang Mike Pence’
Prosecutors in Fulton county, Georgia, have reportedly launched a criminal investigation of Donald Trump’s phone call to Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state, about the presidential election.
On Wednesday, Fani Willis, the recently elected Democratic prosecutor in Fulton County, sent a letter to numerous officials in state government, including Mr. Raffensperger, requesting that they preserve documents related to Mr. Trump’s call, according to a state official with knowledge of the letter. The letter explicitly stated that the request was part of a criminal investigation, said the official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The inquiry makes Georgia the second state after New York where Mr. Trump faces a criminal investigation. And it comes in a jurisdiction where potential jurors are unlikely to be hospitable to the former president; Fulton County encompasses most of Atlanta and overwhelmingly supported President Biden in the November election. The Fulton County investigation comes on the heels of a decision Monday by Mr. Raffensperger’s office to open an administrative inquiry.
House impeachment managers are preparing to introduce new visual evidence during their presentation on Wednesday, as the trial begins in earnest following a vote to move forward with the proceedings.
The Democratic managers will lay out their case for why Donald Trump should be impeached, arguing that the former president committed “the most heinous constitutional crime possible” according to a senior aide on the impeachment manager’s team.