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Rolling coverage of the former president’s latest legal woes
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Former Trump lawyer believes ex-president is in legal jeopardy
Donald Trump has been spotted arriving at Dulles Airport , just outside Washington, DC, in an unexplained journey from his New Jersey residence.
Filmed from a distance in indistinct footage, he arrived in casual clothes and golfing shoes alongside his Secret Service detail. Speculation over the visit is rife, but no clear explanation has been given.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s legal team have asked that taxpayers foot half the bill for the special master they have requested to review the papers seized at Mar-a-Lago. The Department of Justice, conversely, is proposing that the president pay for the process himself since he requested it.
A new book on his presidency from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman claims that after the 2020 election, Mr Trump repeatedly insisted to aides that he would “never” leave the White House. “How can you leave when you won an election?” he is quoted saying.
Following the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, questions are being raised after footage taken in May 2021 has reemerged showing Donald Trump decamping from Palm Beach, Florida, to his New Jersey golf club for the summer.
In the video, originally filmed for The Daily Mail, the former president can be seen alongside a private jet as up to nine cardboard storage boxes are loaded onto the aircraft.
Oliver O’Connell reports.
‘This could be nothing, but again, it could be highly significant’
Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Mike Pence, appeared on Fox News yesterday to discuss the state of play in the Mar-a-Lago affair – and even for someone who has said that Mr Trump bears responsibility for the 6 January insurrection, his remarks were surprisingly blunt.
“It’s certainly baffling as to why a lot of those documents are at Mar-a-Lago,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like it’s the most secure environment. And I think there’s also a question about why Trump’s lawyers, apparently, were so misleading — potentially lying in the affidavit saying they’d returned all the information. I think there’s a difference between playing a lawyer on TV and actually having to legal counsel.”
Watch his remarks below.
CNN has an exclusive report from Maggie Haberman’s upcoming book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, and it includes one of the juiciest quotes yet from the soon-to-be-released volume.
According to the author, Mr Trump told one aide after the 2020 election that “I’m just not going to leave”. To another he apparently said: “We’re never leaving. How can you leave when you won an election?”
The book will be released on 4 October. Read the full report here.
Shaky, blurred footage of Donald Trump touching down at Washington’s Dulles Airport yesterday is fuelling rampant speculation about why the former president might have shown up in DC – with speculators shooting down each other’s theories at a rapid clip:
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned on Sunday that the US must remain vigilant of the threat posed by extremism “of any kind” as the country marked the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Without naming Donald Trump, Ms Clinton said in an interview on CNN: “We have … been reminded about how important it is to try to deal with extremism of any kind, especially when it uses violence to achieve political and ideological goals.”
In an interview last year with NBC’s Willie Geist, the former presidential candidate said that a bid by Mr Trump for the White House in 2024 could be the final nail in coffin of US democracy.
“If he’s not held accountable and he gets to do it again, I think that could be the end of our democracy,” she said at the time.
John Bowden reports:
Former presidential candidate echoes Biden’s warning
Jimmy Kimmel has praised an Indian news channel for fact-checking Donald Trump’s “clearly fake” statements during a recent interview.
The former US president sat down for an exclusive interview with NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain, which aired last week on Thursday (8 September).
“Can all Trump’s interviews be like this?” Kimmel quipped, adding, “He makes a clearly fake statement and cut to a graphic disproving it, with funky music behind it.”
Maanya Sachdeva has more:
Oh man, I hope he didn’t see the edited version of that interview,
The January 6 committee is planning to resume public, televised hearings on Capitol Hill later this month as the lawmakers’ investigation continues to acquire witness testimony and relevant documents.
Lawmakers on the panel spent much of July laying out in public for the first time the extent of Donald Trump and his team’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election even when it became clear that a massive, armed crowd was present or gathering in Washington and the potential for violence was high.
The testimony of witnesses and records obtained by the panel illustrated the far-reaching Republican effort to subvert the lawful 2020 election results and stir up anger on the right against Democrats and members of their own party who refused to go along.
Now, the lawmakers are set to return.
Televised hearings drew millions of viewers
Donald Trump spoke with British broadcaster Nigel Farage to share more of his thoughts about Queen Elizabeth II, whom he called an “extraordinary woman” that he had “good chemistry” with.
“Well it is a sad day. It’s sad all over the world,” said the former president when asked by Mr Farage on GB News on Thursday night what his immediate impressions were upon learning of the monarch’s passing. “She was a woman that was extraordinary…. she did it so long so well,” he added, noting that “she never made any mistakes.”
Johanna Chisholm reports on the former president’s memories of the Queen.
“She’s somebody that will be very, very sadly missed,” the former president said about the Queen
A Florida federal judge has tossed out the voluminous and wide-ranging lawsuit ex-president Donald Trump filed against his 2016 election rival and a host of other figures associated with the investigation into whether his presidential campaign had improper ties to the Russian government.
US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks on Thursday dismissed the former president’s case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled, against most of the myriad defendants named in the lawsuit.
Andrew Feinberg reports.
A federal judge says Mr Trump’s claims were “unsupported by any legal authority”
Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project said he welcomed former president Donald Trump’s threats to sue the group of former Republican strategists who have released ads that sharply criticised him.
Mr Trump threatened legal action on his social networking platform Truth Social over a new ad, which aired on a local Fox affiliate and not Fox News proper.
“The Perverts and Lowlifes of the Lincoln Project are back on, where else, Fox News,” Mr Trump said. “I thought they ran away to the asylum after their last catastrophic campaign, with charges made against them that were big time sleaze, and me getting many more votes in 2020 than I got in 2016.”
Eric Garcia has the story.
’We’re delighted by the thought you would try to sue us, Donald’, the former Republican operative says
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