Trump news - live: Trump hails Herschel Walker ‘greatness’ as candidate flails amid abortion scandal
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Legal experts have spoken out strongly against Donald Trump after he filed a $475m lawsuit against CNN for defamation, describing his case as “garbage” and “not worth the paper it’s written on”.
Mr Trump’s lawsuit, and his claims that the network “fears” he will run again in 2024, come as his lawyers also sought to delay a hearing in the case of classified documents recovered from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home.
Meanwhile, Herschel Walker, the Donald Trump-backed Republican nominee for the Georgia Senate seat who has previously supported a total ban on abortions, has denied reports of paying for a woman’s abortion in 2009.
The former football star has also vowed to sue the news outlet that published the report of him having paid for one woman’s abortion years ago. He labelled the report a “flat-out lie”.
And it has been claimed the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislane Maxwell left Mr Trump anxious she might raise his name to investigators or the press.
That’s according to a new book by reporter Maggie Haberman, which The Independent obtained ahead of publication today.
Key points
Trump sues CNN for defamation claiming network ‘fears’ his political comeback
Stewart Rhodes urged allies to reject 2020 outcome hours after Election Day, trial hears
Trump-backed GOP candidate denies paying for abortion
Ex-president nicknames Maggie Haberman ‘Maggot’ after serving as source for her book
Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest spooked Trump, prompted Oval Office meeting inquiry
34 Capitol riot defendants sign letter asking to be moved to Guantanamo
05:00 , John Bowden
Dozens of defendants in the Capitol Riot investigation have asked to be moved from their Washington DC jail to Guantanamo Bay as they claim they’d be treated better there.
As many as 34 defendants awaiting court dates or serving sentences linked to the insurrection on January 6 2021 signed a letter slamming the conditions in the federal correctional facility in the US capital.
The letter is likely to be ammunition for far-right members of the House like Marjorie Taylor Greene who have rallied behind the accused participants in the deadly attack on Congress and depicted them as political prisoners.
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34 Capitol riot defendants sign letter asking to be moved to Guantanamo
Biden apologises to family of dead congresswoman for ‘Where’s Jackie?’ gaffe
04:00 , John Bowden
Joe Biden continues to deal with the consequences of his most recent embarrassing gaffe.
During a recent White House event on hunger, the president briefly called out for a congresswoman who was not in the room. The member in question, Jackie Walorski, actually had died in a widely-publicised car accident earlier this year.
The president on Friday apologised to the Indiana Republican’s 83-year-old mother Martha Walorski and her widowed husband Dean Swihart in the Oval Office of the White House.
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Biden apologises to family of dead congresswoman for ‘Where’s Jackie?’ gaffe
Video shows ‘steady stream’ leaving Trump rally after just 15 minutes
03:00 , John Bowden
Many of Donald Trump’s fans appeared to have had enough of his recent Michigan rally just a few minutes after the festivities began.
Attendees began leaving the venue after only 15 minutes as Mr Trump launched into a list of his familiar grievances, Detroit Free Press reporter Paul Egan said.
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Video shows ‘steady stream’ leaving Trump rally after just 15 minutes
Florida Gov Ron DeSantis claims ‘regime media’ wanted Hurricane Ian to hit Tampa
02:00 , John Bowden
Ron DeSantis is joining in on Donald Trump’s frequent baseless claims about the US news media, now claiming that reporters were rooting for a storm to strike the Sunshine State.
It’s a callous accusation that demeans those who have put themselves in tough situations to report on the deadly storm, which is thought to have killed dozens of people.
“Quite frankly, you have national regime media that… wanted to see Tampa, because they thought that would be worse for Florida. That’s how these people think,” Mr DeSantis said. “They don’t care about the people of this state. They don’t care about the people of this community. They want to use storms and destruction from storms as a way to advance their agenda.”
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Florida Gov Ron DeSantis claims ‘regime media’ wanted Hurricane Ian to hit Tampa
Alex Jones says he may plead the fifth in Sandy Hook hoax trial because he’d get jailed for telling the truth
01:00 , John Bowden
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones says he may invoke the 5th Amendment when he takes the stand at his Sandy Hook defamation trial to avoid going to jail.
It’s the latest sign that the Infowars host is completely untethered from reality. He is not facing jail time; defamation does not carry that penalty.
“[The judge] says if I tell the truth, she’ll put me in the Waterbury jail for six months. That’s what she can do,” he ranted to reporters outside of the courtroom.
Read more;
Alex Jones says he may plead the fifth in Sandy Hook hoax trial
Biden to meet with DeSantis and tour hurricane damage in Florida on Wednesday
00:00 , John Bowden
Joe Biden will meet with Florida’s Ron DeSantis and tour damaged areas of Florida’s coastal and other communities on Wednesday.
The otherwise unremarkable visit will play an interesting dynamic given that Donald Trump remains a resident of Florida and will now have to endure his two biggest likely-rivals for the 2024 election appearing presidential and official during the visit. It’s an image that will likely reignite Mr Trump’s barely-hidden urge to criticise both men.
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Biden to meet with DeSantis and tour hurricane damage in Florida on Wednesday
Ron Johnson claims January 6 wasn’t ‘armed insurrection’ despite scores of guns at Capitol riot
23:20 , John Bowden
During a Tuesday talk before the Milwaukee Rotary Club, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin downplayed the extent of armed threats during the January 6 riots at the US Capitol, despite the numerous protesters who were found with guns and other weapons.
It’s the latest attempt by a Republican, particularly a vulnerable incumbent, to downplay the deadly riot that shocked millions of Americans and led to Donald Trump and his political movement being labeled a threat to democracy by Joe Biden and Mr Trump’s other critics.
“Some of the protesters did teach us all how you can use flog poles, that kind of stuff, as weapons,” he said. “To call what happened on January 6 an armed insurrection, I just think is not accurate. You saw the pictures inside the capitol I saw that day.”
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Ron Johnson says January 6 wasn’t ‘armed insurrection’ despite numerous guns at riot
Oath Keepers founder: Be 'ready to fight' after Trump loss
22:40 , John Bowden
Hours after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, the leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group was discussing how to push President Donald Trump to go further in his fight to cling to power, according to messages shown to jurors Tuesday in his US Capitol attack trial.
Stewart Rhodes and four other members of his organisation are charged with the most serious crime related to the breach on the Capitol thus far: Seditious conspiracy. Mr Rhodes has plead not guilty.
Tuesday was the first full day of testimony in the high-stakes case that’s expected to last several weeks.
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Oath Keepers founder: Be 'ready to fight' after Trump loss
Trump used slur to describe his first attorney general, book says
22:00 , John Bowden
A new book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman says former president Donald Trump routinely used a slur often employed to describe persons with intellectual disabilities when speaking of the first person to serve as attorney general in his administration, ex-Alabama senator Jeff Sessions.
Mr Sessions was eventually driven out of the Trump administration after clashing with the president privately over his recusal from the investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.
In Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Ms Haberman writes that Mr Trump’s fury with Mr Sessions was such that he would routinely rant to officials about the attorney general’s refusal to resign.
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Trump used slur to describe his first attorney general, book says
Trump asks Supreme Court to stop FBI from using classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago
21:20 , John Bowden
Attorneys for former president Donald Trump have asked the Supreme Court to reinstate a Florida judge’s order which effectively blocked the FBI and Department of Justice from using classified documents seized during the 8 August search of his home to further the criminal investigation against him.
The former president saw the appointment of three justices to the nine-member bench under his one term in office.
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Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene for him in Mar-a-Lago documents case
Biden reportedly says he’s running in 2024 after meeting with civil rights leaders
21:01 , John Bowden
President Joe Biden reportedly told MSNBC host and National Action Network leader Reverend Al Sharpton that he will be a candidate for the presidency in the 2024 election, according to a report by NBC News.
The Independent has not confirmed the report of Mr Biden’s statement, and the president has repeatedly said he intends to be a candidate in 2024. However, he has not made a formal declaration that he will run.
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Biden reportedly says he’s running in 2024 after meeting with civil rights leaders
20:20 , John Bowden
Former President Donald Trump isn’t backing down from his support of Herschel Walker.
The Republican Senate candidate in Georgia faces a stunning report from The Daily Beast claiming that Mr Walker paid for an abortion for a woman he was in a relationship with in 2009.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump stood behind his ally now facing a withering barrage of criticism on social media as well as statements from his own son, Christian Walker, who has accused him of being an absentee father.
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Trump backs Herschel Walker in abortion scandal: ‘True greatness in his future’
Herschel Walker’s son lashes out and calls father a liar over denial he paid for abortion
20:00 , John Bowden
Christian Walker, a right-wing influencer on Instagram and other platforms, released a video Tuesday morning in which he unloaded on his father, his own critics on the right and left and the media following roughly 12 hours of mayhem caused by the report, which dropped Monday evening.
In the video, the younger Mr Walker excoriated his father, Georgia US Senate candidate Herschel Walker, and called him a liar who does not live up to the “family values” image that he so frequently preaches in interviews.
“I’m done. Done. Everything has been a lie,” Mr Walker declares in his video. “I was silent lie after lie after lie. The abortion card drops yesterday. It’s literally his handrwriting in the card!”
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Herschel Walker’s son calls his father a liar for denial he paid for abortion
CPAC deletes tweet criticising support for Ukraine against Russian invasion
19:20 , John Bowden
The Conservative Political Action Conference’s Twitter account deleted a tweet criticising Congress for passing aid to Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion on Friday.
On Friday evening, the account for the popular conservative gathering had tweeted about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of certain territories in Ukraine and Congress’s recent passage of additional aid to Ukraine.
Read more from Eric Garcia:
CPAC deletes tweet criticising support for Ukraine against Russian invasion
Judge expects Steve Bannon’s wall fraud trial in Nov. 2023
18:44 , John Bowden
Top Trump ally Steve Bannon could be spared from facing trial over charges that he defrauded investors in the “We Build the Wall” scheme until late next year.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan said he anticipates Bannon, former President Donald Trump’s longtime ally, will go to trial in November 2023 — about a year before the 2024 presidential election. The reason for the estimated wait is the time it will take for both sides to go through pretrial motions and the submitted evidence.
Prosecutors say so far they've turned over about four terabytes of material — the size equivalent of millions of written pages or hundreds of hours of video.
Read more in The Independent:
Judge expects Steve Bannon’s wall fraud trial in Nov. 2023
Trump nixed Taliban Camp David talks amid worries Ivanka would have to wear burqa
18:14 , John Bowden
Donald Trump decided against attending talks with Taliban leaders at Camp David over fears that his daughter Ivanka would have to wear a burqa, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman writes.
The revelation is one of many in the Trumpworld correspondent’s upcoming book, Confidence Man.
Read more in The Independent:
Trump nixed Taliban Camp David talks amid worries Ivanka would have to wear burqa
Trump asked aides if Ghislaine Maxwell had mentioned him after her arrest
17:28 , John Bowden
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman reports in her upcoming book Confidence Man that the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell caused a particular consternation for Donald Trump.
According to Ms Haberman, Mr Trump queried his advisers about the Post story during a meeting in the Oval Office, asking: “You see that article in the Post today that mentioned me?”
Ms Maxwell, the longtime boyfriend of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, was convicted of conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors and received a 20-year sentence; she did not cooperate with prosecutors or attempt to secure a plea deal, according to the DoJ.
Read more from Andrew Feinberg:
Trump asked aides if Ghislaine Maxwell had mentioned him after her arrest
Trump campaign lawyers mocked him for being broke in newly-revealed emails
16:57 , John Bowden
Attorneys working for former president Donald Trump’s failed 2020 re-election campaign mocked his lack of financial liquidity and his rampant violations of the US Constitution in emails released in a court filing by the House January 6 select committee.
In one exchange, attorney Bruce Marks told his colleague Kenneth Chesebro that it was “a shame” Mr Chesebro was not in Washington at Mr Trump’s hotel so he could “contribute to violation of the emoluments clause” of the US Constitution.
Read more from Andrew Feinberg in The Independent:
Trump campaign lawyers mocked him for being broke in newly-revealed emails
Herschel Walker rants about crime and inflation in bid to deflect from abortion scandal
16:11 , John Bowden
The Trump-backed US Senate candidate in Georgia was desperate to change the subject on Monday as he appeared on Fox News to answer an accusation raised in a story from The Daily Beast reporting that he paid for a woman to seek an abortion in 2009.
Sean Hannity’s questions about the evidence seemed to come as a surprise to Herschel Walker, who pivoted to talking about rising consumer prices and America’s immigration system when questioned about why an unnamed woman would have proof that he sent her a $700 check around the same time she sought an abortion procedure.
Read more from The Independent’s John Bowden:
Herschel Walker rants about inflation in bid to deflect from abortion scandal
Trump s claims CNN ‘fears’ him running in 2024
15:42 , John Bowden
Donald Trump claimed in his lawsuit against CNN that the network “fears” him running for president again in 2024.
In court filings, the former president accused its hosts and contributors of depicting him as the equivalent of the Nazi dictator and mass murderer Adolf Hitler.
“As a part of its concerted effort to tilt the political balance to the Left, CNN has tried to taint the Plaintiff with a series of ever-more scandalous, false, and defamatory labels of ‘racist,’ ‘Russian lackey,’’ ‘insurrectionist,’ and ultimately ‘Hitler,’” read the filings.
Take a look at Mr Trump’s newest battle against the media:
Trump sues CNN in $475million defamation lawsuit
Fact check: Trump allies claim Kamala Harris said racial ‘equity’ would decide Hurricane Ian support
14:42 , John Bowden
Kamala Harris’s conservative critics are once again wrapping themselves up in supposed outrage after the vice president made an observation about the effects of the climate crisis.
The vice president found herself at the center of a storm of controversy over the weekend after she declared that the Biden administration was considering the concept of equity as it sought to build a response to the global climate crisis.
But conservatives took Ms Harris’s answer and wrongly changed the meaning of what she was saying:
Did Kamala Harris really say racial ‘equity’ would decide Hurricane Ian support?
ICYMI: Trump asks appeals court to delay classified documents case until 2023
13:00 , Maroosha Muzaffar
Attorneys for former president Donald Trump have asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to deny a Department of Justice request to expedite its appeal of a Trump-appointed judge’s decision which has effectively blocked the criminal investigation into whether the ex-president broke the law by hoarding government-owned records at his Florida beach club.
Read the full story by Andrew Feinberg here:
Trump asks appeals court to delay classified documents case until 2023
ICYMI: National Archive says it is still missing some Trump administration records
12:30 , Maroosha Muzaffar
The National Archives and Records Administration sent a letter to Congress saying that it is still missing records from the Trump administration, despite the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
Read the full story by Eric Garcia here:
National Archive says it is still missing some Trump administration records
Trump under fire for CNN lawsuit
12:09 , Maroosha Muzaffar
After Donald Trump filed a $475m lawsuit against CNN for defamation, claiming the network “fears” that he will run again in 2024, several legal experts trashed the lawsuit, labelling it as “garbage”.
Brad Moss, the legal expert at the Above the Law website and a national security lawyer, called it a “garbage” lawsuit.
CNN legal analyst Renato Mariotti said that the lawsuit was “not worth the paper it’s written on” and called it “a media stunt, not a serious lawsuit”.
Attorney George Conway wrote that “local lying liar who lies claims reputation was damaged by news reports saying he lied.”
ICYMI: Trump thanks Ginni Thomas for sticking to stolen election lies
12:00 , Maroosha Muzaffar
Former president Donald Trump on Saturday offered a shout-out to the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for continuing to parrot his lies about the 2020 election in an interview with the House January 6 select committee.
Mr Trump praised Ms Thomas during remarks at his most recent political rally in Michigan, calling her “a great woman” who is the wife of “a great man”.
Read the full story here:
Trump thanks Ginni Thomas for sticking to stolen election lies
Trump-backed GOP candidate denies paying for abortion
11:46 , Maroosha Muzaffar
Herschel Walker, the Donald Trump-backed Republican nominee for the Georgia Senate seat who has previously supported a total ban on abortions, has denied reports of paying for a woman’s abortion in 2009.
The former football star has also vowed to sue the news outlet that published the report of him having paid for one woman’s abortion years ago. He labelled the report a “flat-out lie”.
The GOP candidate’s son, Christian Walker, took to Twitter to attack his father and said: “I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us.”
He continued: “You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.”
ICYMI: Journalist Maggie Haberman says Trump is driven to run again by desire for ‘revenge’ on Biden
11:30 , Maroosha Muzaffar
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, author of a book about Donald Trump, says Mr Trump misses the “pomp” of the presidency and wants revenge against Joe Biden.
Yet, she says Mr Trump may not have the drive or desire to run again, given the rigours of a presidential campaign.
Read the full story here:
Maggie Haberman says Trump is driven to run again by desire for revenge on Biden
Trump asked aides if Ghislaine Maxwell had mentioned him after her arrest
11:00 , Andrew Feinberg
The arrest of notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislane Maxwell left former president Donald Trump anxious that she might raise his name to investigators or the press, according to a new book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, which The Independent obtained ahead of publication.
In Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Ms Haberman writes that the then-president’s mind became occupied by a July 2020 story in the New York Post about Maxwell’s arrest on sex trafficking charges.
Trump asked aides if Ghislaine Maxwell had mentioned him after her arrest
ICYMI: Video shows ‘steady stream’ leaving Trump rally after just 15 minutes
10:30 , Maroosha Muzaffar
Donald Trump supporters reportedly started leaving the venue in large numbers just 15 minutes into his speech at a rally in Michigan on Saturday night.
Watch the video here:
Video shows ‘steady stream’ leaving Trump rally after just 15 minutes
National Archive says it is still missing some Trump administration records
10:00 , Eric Garcia
The National Archives and Records Administration sent a letter to Congress saying that it is still missing records from the Trump administration, despite the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
Acting Archivist of the United States Debra Streidel Wall sent a letter to House Oversight & Government Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney. “While there is no easy way to establish absolute accountability, we do know that we do not have custody of everything we should,” the letter stated.
Read more:
National Archive says it is still missing some Trump administration records
