Trump team fights to toss Georgia case in first court hearing: Live

Former President Donald Trump is under four criminal indictments that will proceed through the GOP primary season, an overlap of legal and political calendars with no precedent in American politics. Fifteen states and American Samoa hold their GOP primaries on 5 March, known as Super Tuesday, which is also the day after his first trial is scheduled to begin in Washington on charges that he unlawfully sought to overturn the 2020 election.

Trump is dominating the Republican field and may secure much of the support he needs by Super Tuesday, by which time almost half of the delegates who select the nominee at the GOP convention will have been awarded. Even if he were to be convicted in Washington or another trial, top party leaders and many voters have indicated they would stand by Trump anyway. And Trump and his allies are pushing to dismiss and delay the trials and have worked with state parties to craft rules favourable to him.

The RNC rules don’t include any provisions specific to the unprecedented scenario unfolding.

Multiple people familiar with a conversation between the former speaker and the ex-president after Mr McCarthy’s removal have told The Washington Post that he was so hurt by the ordeal that he exploded at Mr Trump for not ordering Mr Gaetz to back down.

“F*** you,” the Post reports those persons as quoting the former speaker.

John Bowden has the full story.

Mr Higgins issued the ominous warning during an appearance on far-right media outlet Newsmax on Wednesday. He painted a recent court filing Mr Smith made to obtain a list of accounts that liked or retweeted Mr Trump’s Twitter account as a back-door tactic for spying on regular Americans.

According to the network, he directed further questions about his future role to the Trump campaign.

“We love Brian,” Tricia McLaughlin, Mr Ramaswamy’s communications director, told CBS. “It’s a good move for Brian and we’re happy for him.”

A state appellate court judge temporarily froze the orders earlier this month, “considering the constitutional and statutory rights at issue”.

On Thursday, the appeals court allowed the gag orders to stand.

News networks should be taken off air and investigated for treason. The nation’s top military official should be executed. A state judge presiding over a trial against him, and the attorney general suing him, should be arrested. People seeking asylum in the US are “poisoning the blood of our country” and should be turned away if they don’t accept “our religion.” Drug dealers should get the death sentence. “Liberal Jews” are voting to “destroy America and Israel.” The regime will “root out” political opponents who “live like vermin”.

Donald Trump’s latest violent, authoritarian visions in his 2024 campaign for the presidency are building on his platform of self-described retribution.

They are also increasingly colliding with the multiple criminal investigations and lawsuits against him, as prosecutors and judges hope to rely on gag orders to rein in his rhetoric, which has invited hundreds of abusive messages and credible death threats from his supporters against the judges and prosecutors involved.

Friday may prove an interesting day in the Georgia election subversion case as Judge Scott McAfee will hear motions for the dismissal of the case, evidence sharing, and whether to extend the deadlines for discovery and pretrial motions.

It is also expected to be the first major appearance of Steven Sadow, the lead attorney in the defence of Donald Trump in the case. So far he has kept a low profile in the state election interference case as it has played out in the Fulton County Courthouse, listening as lawyers representing other defendants have argued points before the judge.

The quiet period may soon be coming to an end. This week, Mr Sadow filed a motion arguing that before any trial, the Georgia courts should weigh whether the 13 felony charges against Mr Trump should be thrown out because his claims about voting fraud after he lost the 2020 election were protected by the First Amendment.

And on Friday, Mr Sadow is expected to make his first significant court appearance in the case, to argue that Mr. Trump should be granted access to evidence gathered by federal prosecutors in his separate election interference case in Washington.

The hearing could provide early hints of Mr Sadow’s long-game strategy, and how he might incorporate lessons learned over decades of defending a colorful roster of clients including rappers and the occasional tabloid demi-celebrity.

The former president is one of 15 co-defendants in the sprawling racketeering case. Four others have struck plea deals with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and are cooperating with the prosecution.

The ex-president was touting his endorsement from Mark Fisher, a founder of a small Black Lives Matter offshoot group in Rhode Island, in a Truth Social posting when he made the claim. It was just the latest in a long line of remarks from the former president that have betrayed a poor understanding of American history (at a minimum) while also provoking its own racist narrative — namely, that the end of slavery was inconsequential compared to Mr Trump’s presidency.

John Bowden reports on the latest baffling, egomaniacal claims from the former president.

The president’s son called the bluff of House Republicans by agreeing to appear before the panel on 13 December at the invitation of committee Chair James Comer.

Earlier this month, Mr Comer issued subpoenas compelling testimony from Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden, as part of a long-running probe into President Joe Biden’s family — an investigation which has thus far produced no evidence that the 46th president violated any laws or was improperly influenced by any family member’s business interests. Mr Biden’s team has issued their own subpoenas.

The younger Mr Biden’s response, delivered via his lawyer this week, forced Republicans to quickly backtrack and insist that it was important to first have a closed-door deposition from the younger Mr Biden.

Each side took to morning cable news shows to argue their case before each party held their weekly congressional press conference to further push their point.

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy believed that Donald Trump had accepted his defeat in the 2020 election and was going through the “five stages of grief” in the days immediately following the contest, according to a new book by Liz Cheney.

The former House Republican conference chair is out with a new book, publishing on 5 December, revealing new insights from her time in the GOP caucus in the days leading up to and following the January 6 attack on Congress. In Oath and Honor, Ms Cheney writes that Mr McCarthy summed up then-president Trump’s mood to her after a meeting at Mar-a-Lago between the two men.

“He knows it’s over,” said the former speaker, according to excerpts published on Wednesday by CNN. “He needs to go through all the stages of grief.”