George W Bush has called the Republican party under Donald Trump “isolationist, protectionist and … nativist” – a judgment unlikely to make the former US president new friends on the American right.
Related: George W Bush is back – but not all appreciate his new progressive image
Continue reading...US justice department accuses Trump ally and Republican operative of using a commercial entity to hide income
The US Department of Justice has sued Roger Stone, saying the close ally of former president Donald Trump owes about $2m in unpaid federal income taxes, according to a court document.
The civil lawsuit, filed in federal court in Florida on Friday, alleged that Stone and his wife, Nydia, used a commercial entity to “shield their personal income from enforced collection and fund a lavish lifestyle despite owing nearly $2m in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties”.
Continue reading...Jon Ryan Schaffer gave a guilty plea in hopes of getting a lighter sentence and will be considered for a witness security program
A member of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group and heavy metal guitarist has become the first defendant to plead guilty to federal charges in connection with the insurrection at the US Capitol.
Jon Ryan Schaffer, the frontman of the band Iced Earth, has agreed on Friday to cooperate with investigators in hopes of getting a lighter sentence, and the Justice Department will consider putting Schaffer in the federal witness security program, a US district judge said.
Continue reading...Previously undisclosed internal report reveals how officials sought to re-establish order during 6 January attack
A previously undisclosed document prepared by the Pentagon for internal use reveals dramatic new details about how authorities sought to quell the attack on the Capitol on 6 January and re-establish order – and how such help took agonising hours in coming.
Related: Why aren't we calling the Capitol attack an act of treason?
Continue reading...The Florida congressman Matt Gaetz insisted on Friday “the truth will prevail” over allegations of sex trafficking and illegal drug use which have pitched him into the centre of a congressional scandal.
Related: Republican Matt Gaetz faces calls to resign from member of his own party
Continue reading...As talks resume, Iran and the signatories to the 2015 agreement face a web of sanctions to untangle
A joint commission responsible for overseeing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is looking for a way for the US to rejoin the agreement – abandoned under Donald Trump – and lift its sanctions on Tehran, and for Iran to end its retaliatory breaching of the limits placed on its nuclear programme.
Continue reading...As the pandemic forced us inside and online, Room Rater was one Twitter account giving doomscrollers a well-needed levity break. A year on, co-founder Claude Taylor explains how he plans to keep going
With its stately lamp and verdant window view, Hillary Clinton’s “Zoom room” is nicer than most. So when Room Rater – a Twitter account which scores the video conference backgrounds of high-profile figures – gave it nine out of 10 last spring, Clinton took her disappointment to social media: “I’ll keep striving for that highest, hardest glass ceiling, the elusive 10/10,” she tweeted at the account.
Judging the backgrounds on video calls has been the armchair sport of the past year. Room Rater just happened to screengrab these moments. As we doomscrolled through bleak statistics online, it was cheering to see shots of Meryl Streep’s sterile shelves or the copies of Fahrenheit 451 and The Twits propped up behind Boris Johnson at a school in Leicestershire. Scrolling through the posts a year after it launched, these images have become emblematic of just how quickly coronavirus forced all of us inside and online.
Continue reading...Alessandro Bazzoni’s bank account was closed after he faced sanctions in a case of mistaken identity
A small business owner in Italy is preparing to sue the US Treasury after accidentally being put on a sanctions blacklist before Donald Trump left the presidency.
Alessandro Bazzoni, who owns a graphic design company in Sardinia, has been unable to trade since 19 January, when his business was slapped with sanctions as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on blacklisted Venezuelan crude oil.
Continue reading...While the richest got spectacularly richer during the pandemic, the ex-president plummeted nearly 300 places in the Forbes list
It’s been a glorious pandemic for the world’s richest people. Forbes annual billionaire poll includes a record-breaking 2,755 billionaires, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once again topping the list, the media company said on Tuesday.
The ranks of the super wealthy swelled as the coronavirus pandemic threatened the lives and livelihoods of millions across the planet but stock markets continued to hit new highs.
Continue reading...Donald Trump is reportedly working on a social media platform of his own, after being banned from Twitter and Facebook for inciting the Capitol riot.
Related: Dominion: will one Canadian company bring down Trump's empire of disinformation?
Continue reading...Dominion has filed defamation lawsuits against several Trump allies for pushing election ‘radioactive falsehoods’ – could it triumph?
When Donald Trump and his allies pushed the “big lie” of voter fraud and a stolen election, it seemed nothing could stop them spreading disinformation with impunity.
Related: Trump 'money bomb' scheme raised millions from unwitting donors – report
Continue reading...Practice that used pre-checked boxes and obscure design on fundraising emails condemned as ‘unethical and inappropriate’
Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign used pre-checked boxes and obscure design on fundraising emails to wring millions of dollars out of unwitting supporters, detonating a “money bomb” which allowed the Republican to compete against Joe Biden in the last months of the race.
Related: Trump and Carlson lead backlash as MLB pulls All-Star Game from Georgia
Continue reading...Biden’s first full cabinet meeting was a return to the staid old way of doing things – not worshipping the president like Trump’s cabinet
Poor old Joe Biden. He might have won the electoral college and the popular vote but he’ll never feel the love of his underlings like Donald Trump did.
The former president’s first full cabinet meeting in June 2017 remains an unparalleled opera of oleaginousness. Secretary after secretary all but flung themselves at his feet, sang songs of praise and paid homage to the divine emperor of the universe.
Continue reading...Former US president has been banned from the platform since early January after the violent insurrection of the Capitol
Facebook on Wednesday removed a clip of an interview with Donald Trump from its platform, according to the former president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump.
In a post shared to her Instagram account, Lara Trump, who is a Fox News commentator, shared a message from Facebook officials alerting her they had removed a video teaser of an upcoming interview with her father-in-law on Fox News.
Continue reading...In a keenly awaited memoir, Joe Biden’s son Hunter attacks Donald Trump as “a vile man with a vile mission” who plumbed “unprecedented depths” in last year’s US presidential election.
Related: Want to book Donald or Melania for an event? Trump has a website for that
Continue reading...Ex-president praised couple at Mar-a-Lago – after complaining about Biden’s Iran and China policy, the border and the election
Donald Trump took the microphone at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night, to praise a couple getting married at his Florida resort. Nearly 400 words later he did so, according to video published by the website TMZ, after a rambling complaint about Joe Biden’s policy towards Iran and China, the situation at the border with Mexico and the supposed fraud he claims caused his election defeat.
Continue reading...With the ex-president gone, the site is launching a flurry of new features – yet its reputation for abuse may endure
In January, Twitter committed what was at first glance a massive act of self-sabotage: it gave its star attraction, Donald Trump, a lifetime ban. This brought to an end a five-year faustian relationship between the two; some observers wondered if the platform would wither without him, yet, to many, Trump was Twitter’s problem writ large.
If YouTube has creators and Instagram has influencers, then what does Twitter have? Few of the words that might jump to mind for regular users are especially positive: there is frequent talk of Twitter storms, Twitter mobs and Twitter pile-ons.
Continue reading...Trump congratulated Georgia on its recent legislative move, which critics have slammed as a major blow to Black voters’ rights
A Republican lawyer who advised Donald Trump on his campaign to overturn the 2020 election results is now playing a central role coordinating the Republican effort to tighten voting laws around the country.
The moves comes as Trump himself signaled his support for new Republican-pushed legislation in Georgia which critics have slammed as being a major blow to voting rights for communities of color, especially Black voters. Joe Biden called the Georgia laws “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” and “an atrocity”.
Continue reading...Lawyers for Sidney Powell argued conspiracies she laid out constituted legally protected first amendment speech
A key member of the legal team that sought to steal the 2020 election for Donald Trump is defending herself against a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit by arguing that “no reasonable person” could have mistaken her wild claims about election fraud last November as statements of fact.
Related: Senate filibuster reform would produce 'nuclear winter', says Mitch McConnell
Continue reading...As senior US officials arrive in Mexico for talks experts say deal to send Covid vaccine shows that migrants are still a bargaining chip
Joe Biden took office promising to put a friendlier face on US immigration policy. He put an end to a scheme requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico, promised to restore the US asylum system and pledged to spend $4bn on addressing the root causes of migration in Central America.
But as ever-increasing numbers of unaccompanied minors arrive at the US southern border and create a domestic political crisis for the US president, he is turning to a tactic used by his predecessors – including Donald Trump: outsourcing immigration enforcement to Mexico.
Continue reading...