Rolling coverage of the former president’s latest legal woes
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Jen Psaki says Democrats ‘love to be opposed’ to Donald Trump ahead of midterms
A Florida judge has appointed Donald Trump’s nominee as special master in the FBI investigation into top secret papers seized by agents from his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Judge Raymond Dearie will now review materials seized during the raid of the former president’s estate after Mr Trump successfully demanded someone be appointed.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon also rejected the Justice Department’s request to resume its criminal investigation into the classified documents. Judge Cannon said that she was not willing to accept the government’s assertions that nearly 100 documents taken from Mr Trump’s estate were classified.
“The court does not find it appropriate to accept the government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion,” she ruled.
Earlier, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reportedly complied with a Justice Department subpoena tied to the investigation into the events surrounding the January 6 Capitol riot. He is the most senior member of the Trump administration to comply which such an order.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump took time to release a statement attacking “absolute loser” Mitch McConnell for being the Democrats’ “lapdog”.
A speech from right-wing commentator Tomi Lahren at the University of New Mexico ended in chaos on Thursday night, as a large, fiery crowd of student protestors prompted state and campus police to shut down the event and evacuate guests.
Josh Marcus has the story.
State and campus police broke up event
In the summer of 2020, as an obscure conspiracy ideology called QAnon began growing in prominence, then-president Donald Trump said he hadn’t really heard of the movement, but though its supporters were patriots and should be praised for backing his administration.
“I’ve heard these are people that love our country,” he said at a White House press briefing that August. “I don’t really know anything about it, except that they do supposedly like me,” he added.
The president didn’t seem deterred when a reporter laid out just how outlandish the movement’s claims really were: that a cabal of Satan-worshiping paedophile Democrats controlled the “deep state,” and could only be vanquished by Mr Trump.
“I haven’t heard that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?,” he said, continuing, “If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it.”
Two years later, the former president has gone full QAnon as he positions himself for a potential 2024 president run.
Josh Marcus reports for The Independent on what has changed.
QAnon supports have been linked to violent incidents across country, including US Capitol riot on January 6
Hillary Clinton has branded the situation in Martha’s Vineyard “literally human trafficking” after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis unexpectedly flew a group of migrants to the Massachusetts island.
The former secretary of state appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday morning where she agreed with host Joe Scarborough that the migrants were being “taken advantage of” by Republican lawmakers.
Ron DeSantis abandoned around 50 migrants on Martha’s Vineyard on Thursday without warning in a pushback against the Biden administration’s immigration policies
Richard Hall reports for The Independent on how Pennsylvania Democratic candidate for the Senate is hoping to chip away at Trump’s support in rural parts of the state.
Trump dominated in the rural area of Pennsylvania in the last two elections. John Fetterman, a different kind of Democrat, is hoping to chip away at that support. Richard Hall reports from Johnstown, Pennsylvania
After calling Mitch McConnell an “absolute loser” this morning, the former president has climbed further into the gutter by taking aim at former New Jersey governor Chris Christie with a nasty body-shaming post on Truth Social.
Axios reports that the January 6 committee is on a potential collision course with the midterm elections in November.
The panel investigating the attack on the US Capitol plans to hold at least one more hearing in late September and release early findings and recommendations before the 8 November election.
There is a virtual meeting today to set a schedule for upcoming hearings, keeping in mind that the committee has an expiration date of 31 December.
Committee members told Axios that the final report will likely come after the election, but there will be plenty of news before voters head to the ballot box.
Chairman Thompson told the outlet that the time between an expected 28 September hearing and the election “won’t be a quiet period”.
He added that “the goal is to have … some information pushed out, obviously, before the November election”.
The panel may release its interim report in that window.
Some committee members say that whatever they do will be denounced as partisan, but that they have a job to do and that’s too important to base on one date in November.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announced he plans to activate the National Guard, among the relief efforts his administration is supplying for the 50 migrants who were flown into Martha’s Vineyard under Governor Ron DeSantis’s controversial relocation program.
“The island communities are not equipped to provide sustainable accommodation, and state officials developed a plan to deliver a comprehensive humanitarian response,” said the governor’s office in a statement released Friday.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker said his administration plans to activate up to 125 members of the state’s National Guard as part of a relief effort
A new Fox News poll shows a solid two-thirds majority of voters believe it was “inappropriate” for former president Donald Trump to have taken a stash of more than 11,000 documents belonging to the government at the end of his term in the White House.
The survey also found that just 26 per cent of US voters believe Mr Trump’s actions were “appropriate,” compared with the 65 per cent who said it was not.
Andrew Feinberg takes a look at the latest data.
Only 26 per cent of voters surveyed say Mr Trump acted appropriately by taking more than 11,000 government documents home with him at the end of his term
Former president Donald Trump was so intent on firing the Department of Justice special counsel charged with investigating his 2016 campaign’s potential ties with Russia that he offered the job of attorney general to two members of his cabinet on condition that they would carrying out his wish.
In their upcoming book The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021, authors Peter Baker and Susan Glasser report how Mr Trump responded to then-White House counsel Don McGahn’s refusal to order the firing of ex-FBI Director Robert Mueller by asking members of his cabinet to relieve then-attorney general Jeff Sessions and promptly sack the widely-respected ex-prosecutor.
Andrew Feinberg has the latest excerpt from the soon-to-be-released book.
Authors Peter Baker and Susan Glasser report that Mr Trump offered the position of attorney general to his labour secretary and EPA administrator with the expectation that whoever accepted would fire then-special counsel Robert Mueller
Fox’s Tucker Carlson raged at “liberals” for what he perceived as their uneven and hypocritical reaction to migrants being flown into Martha’s Vineyard by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
In a segment on his Thursday night program, the right-wing pundit specifically took filmmaker Ken Burns to task over comments the American documentarian had made earlier that day that compared the Florida governor to an authoritarian leader.
Joanna Chisholm reports on Carlson’s comments.
On Thursday, the filmmaker Burns had said DeSantis’ actions were coming straight from the ‘authoritarian playbook’ and was treating human lives as ‘political pawns’
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