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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
The Justice Department has said it is willing to accept one of Donald Trump’s candidates for a “special master” in his legal dispute with the FBI.
Federal prosecutors submitted a legal filing on Monday evening signing off on the suggestion of Raymond Dearie, a 78-year-old former US District Court judge appointed by Ronald Reagan in1986.
The special master is a trusted third party who will review top-secret documents taken from Mr Trump’s Florida home at Mar-a-Lago to determine whether any should be excluded from the case.
It came after the Department of Justice‘s investigation into the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021 expanded in dramatic fashion as dozens of current and former Trump aides were subpoenaed for testimony and documents, with some even having their phones seized.
It was the first concrete step taken by the DoJ to centre the agency’s January 6 probe around the White House and the president, rather than just the riot iself.
A QAnon follower and election denier killed his wife and injured one of his children after “falling down the conspiracy rabbit hole,” his daughter says.
Igor Lanis, 53, was gunned down by the Walled Lake, Michigan, Police Department on Sunday after he allegedly fatally shot his wife Tina, 56, and shot his daughter Rachel in the leg and back. Officers were talking to a neighbour in the 1200 block of Glenwood Court when they heard the shots and returned fire from Lanis, according to The Detroit News.
Rebecca Lanis, who was at a party at the time of the shooting, said her father’s mental health had declined due to his obsession with conspiracy theories. Here’s here post from the r/QAnonCasualties subreddit:
This is far from the first incident of violence committed by a QAnon follower, and nor is it the first that has seen a murder within a family.
Andrea Blanco has the story.
Igor Lanis, 53, was gunned down by police on Sunday after he allegedly killed his wife Tina, 56, and shot his daughter Rachel
Longtime Trump advocate and top Fox News host Sean Hannity last night went on an extended monologue about the supposed “witch hunt” directed at the former president, and in the course of it, he offered his viewers a scrolling list of the myriad investigations into Mr Trump, his allies, and his business affairs.
The shocking list of investigations – many of them far from concluded – was less a reminder of how “persecuted” the former president is than an exposition of just how many legal threats he faces as he contemplates a 2024 campaign.
Monday saw a major development in the Justice Department’s investigation into January 6, which now reportedly encompasses at least some of the efforts by Donald Trump and his team to overturn the election.
Boris Epshteyn, a stategic adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign, had his phone seized by federal agents while he and dozens of others received subpoenas for testimony or information.
The development is troubling for Mr Trump’s inner circle as the former president already faces a separate investigation into his retention of apparently classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, while state investigators in Georgia are also probing his campaign’s work to reverse the results in that state.
Read more in The Independent from Andrew Feinberg:
The Department of Justice investigation into the January 6 attack is entering a new and more active phase
Donald Trump has insisted that an unannounced visit to Washington DC is a “working trip” amid a mountain of online speculation about the reason for his visit to the US capital region. He was seen with Trump organisation officials at his Sterling, Virginia property, though at no point was he seen actually golfing.
In an apparent bid to stamp out speculation about his activities, he wrote on Truth Social: “Working today at Trump Washington DC on the Potomac River. What an incredible place!”
Twitter, meanwhile, ran rampant with theories about the visit and heated debate regarding the president’s lack of golf clubs during the visit.
Read more from Gino Spocchia in The Independent:
‘Look, it’s kind of weird that Trump flew to DC tonight and no one seems to know why,’ says government ethics watchdog amid radio silence on Truth Social
A US Customs and Border Protection division in Texas is off social media after its account used a homophobic slur to attack Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The account also favourited and retweeted messages from Stephen Miller, a far-right member of the Trump White House.
“The tweets do not reflect the values of this administration and our work to rebuild a humane, orderly, and secure immigration system,” a spokesperson for the agency said of the messages, one of which claimed that President Joe Biden had “ended nearly 250 years of constitutional government”.
Read more about this developing scandal in Texas:
West Texas CBP office has its Twitter account deactivated over ‘offensive’ tweets
Lawmakers on the January 6 committee will discuss the potential of calling Donald Trump and/or Mike Pence to testify when they meet in person today on Capitol Hill.
The gathering will be the first of the panel’s members since the August recess. Preparations are underway for the select committee’s next set of public hearings on Jan 6 and the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Read more in The Independent from John Bowden:
Investigation has proceeded for months with testimony from other witnesses
Joe Biden is predicting a major showdown in Washington if Republicans take the House and/or Senate in November’s midterm elections.
Analysts say Republicans are favoured to take the lower chamber while issues developing within the campaigns of some of the party’s Senate nominees has dampened the party’s fortune somewhat.
The president is hoping to rally his party to keep either of those possibilities from coming true, and urged supporters as much at a fundraiser.
“If we lose the House and we lose the Senate it’s going to be a really difficult two years,” he told a crowd of about 30 donors and guests. “I’ll be spending more time with the veto pen than getting anything done.”
Read more in The Independent:
President Joe Biden says if Democrats lose the upcoming midterm elections, it’s going to be a “difficult two years,” and he’s going to be spending a lot of time “with the veto pen.”
Joe Biden has toned down his rhetoric vowing to battle consumer prices as he attempts to drive the focus on his recent legislative wins — as well as the embarassing criminal investigations into his likely 2024 opponent.
The president is re-tooling his strategy ahead of a midterm fight that will determine whether he has any shot of continuing to pursue his legislative agenda past November.
Read more in The Independent:
In recent speeches, President Joe Biden has stopped talking so much about inflation worries
Donald Trump’s pick for US Senate in Ohio is the latest Republican struggling to perform against a Democrat as his party faces a crucial midterms election test.
JD Vance, the author of Hillbilly Ellegy, currently trails his Democratic opponent Tim Ryan by single digits. It’s a close race, but a lot closer than Republicans were hoping for given that the seat is currently held by a retiring GOP senator, Rob Portman.
If Republicans lose this seat in November, they will stand almost no chance of taking the Senate from Democrats.
Read more from The Independent’s Eric Garcia:
Former president Donald Trump will hold a rally with Mr Vance in Youngstown on Saturday
CNN host Jake Tapper’s comments about Joe Biden potentially extending an invite for Donald Trump to attend the Queen’s funeral was loudly pilloried over the weekend.
The comment, which the primetime host made during a Friday night panel discussing the state funeral scheduled for 19 September at Westminster Abbey in London, drew the ire of individuals who described themselves as longtime viewers of his program. It even led to the hashtag #boycottCNN to begin trending over the weekend.
Read more from The Independent’s Johanna Chisholm:
Jake Tapper’s comments that it would be “clever” for President Biden to invite his predecessor have been met with vitriole
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