Trump GOP allies could return him to White House, Cheney warns: Live

Specifically, he believes that other GOP lawmakers may also soon exit the lower chamber of Congress.

He called the expulsion of Mr Santos “tactically stupid” in the context of the narrow majority.

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday attempted to turn the tables on his likely rival in November, President Joe Biden, arguing that the man whose election victory Trump tried to overturn is “the destroyer of American democracy.”

Trump’s allegations about Biden, a Democrat, echo the ones that Biden has been making for years against his predecessor. As Trump has dominated the Republican presidential primary and talked about targeting his rivals and the news media if he wins the White House again, Biden has stepped up his own warnings, contending Trump is “ determined to destroy American democracy.”

On Saturday, Trump made his most explicit argument to date on why voters should instead see his rival as the bigger democratic threat. Trump repeated his longstanding contention that the four criminal indictments against him show Biden is misusing the federal justice system against his rival.

Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman and one of Donald Trump’s greatest foes, has given a dire warning about the possibility of the former president returning to the White House.

Speaking on CBS Sunday Morning she even went as far as saying she would like the GOP to lose its House majority to prevent “collaborator” Mike Johnson from holding onto his role as speaker.

Ms Cheney spoke with John Dickerson of CBS News about the looming danger to democracy posed by Mr Trump as explored in her new book Oath and Honor.

It comes as a long-awaited federal appeals court ruling also determined that Mr Trump can be held civilly liable for inciting the riots at the US Capitol on 6 January, 2021 in the wake of his 2020 loss.

Lawyers for Mr Trump had also tried to use his presidential “immunity” as a shield from the litigation.

In her ruling on Friday, Judge Chutkan said: “[The] defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.”

The decision tees up a legal fight over the scope of presidential power that could ultimately reach the US Supreme Court.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was third in line to the presidency just a few months ago. Soon, he may not be in Washington at all.

The California congressman endured a grinding nine months as leader of a fractured and bitter Republican caucus, one that may have been destined to cast him aside from the very beginning. Following a last-minute deal with Democrats to avert a government shutdown in October, he was unceremoniously ousted by one of his most polarising foes: Matt Gaetz of Florida, leading a cadre of Republican malcontents with their own varying complaints about Mr McCarthy’s leadership.

John Bowden reports from Washington, DC.

The state-level criminal investigation into the 2020 election “fake electors” plot in Nevada has secured the cooperation of a key witness — Kenneth Chesebro, the lawyer who orchestrated the scheme to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state.

Both CNN and The Washington Post report that Mr Chesebro has agreed to meet with investigators in the state in a bid to avoid prosecution there.

He pleaded guilty to charges relating to the plot in Georgia and as part of that plea deal has agreed to cooperate with the prosecution in the sprawling racketeering case against former president Donald Trump and 14 other co-defendants.

Mr Chesebro also agreed to cooperate with any relevant cases in the future both inside and outside the state.

Just over one month before a critical test for his campaign, Ron DeSantis is watching his presidential bid become mired in personal conflicts, disagreement on strategy and the shadow of two surging opponents who appear to be slowly bleeding his campaign dry.

On Sunday, CNN reported that his allied Never Back Down PAC — the vessel for outside spending in support of his bid and more barbed attacks against his opponents — was losing its CEO after just nine days on the job. Two other senior operatives are also out, according to CNN, with one source describing the incident as “firings”, according to the network.

The end of their service to Never Back Down comes following a profile of the sputtering DeSantis presidential movement in The Washington Post, which described the Florida governor’s bid as in “extraordinary turmoil”. Senior campaign staffers were described as “gloomy” by a close ally of Mr DeSantis, the Post reported.

John Bowden has the story for The Independent.

Mark Fisher, who was formerly associated with a Rhode Island BLM group, endorsed Mr Trump on Tuesday in an interview posted online.

He added that he likes Mr Trump and thinks “who we have sitting in the Oval Office is a deep disappointment.”

The Black Lives Matter organisation condemned Mr Fisher’s comments as a “publicity stunt.”