Trump ejects heckler from rally as SNL mocks his legal team: Live updates

Mr Trump was mocked in an SNL cold open skit over his legal troubles and attorneys, specifically Alina Habba, who is representing the former president in his defamation trial against columnist E Jean Carroll.

In the skit, which premiered on TV on Saturday, Mr Trump’s character, played by James Austin Johnson, refers to his legal team as “the bottom of the barrel, folks. This is who said yes.” He added: “I’m in the lead for president and this is the best I can get. Feels like a red flag, no?”

This week, Ms Habba received criticism of her cross-examination of Ms Carroll, resulting in a sidebar and sustained objections.

“I don’t know if you saw, but a few months ago, I took a cognitive test my doctor gave me,” Mr Trump told supporters at the Saturday event.

“I said, ‘give me a cognitive test, just so we can you know,’ because you know what the standards were, and I aced it,” Mr Trump continued.

Read more about Mr Trump’s comments:

“You can get him out of here. Get out of here. Go ahead,” the former president can be heard saying in footage of the event. “You can throw him out,” the former president said from the podium.

The man was then escorted from the event by four security guards.

Ms Willis has been issued a subpoena to sit for a pretrial deposition in the divorce case of special prosecutor Nathan Wade and his wife Joycelyn Wade on 23 January. On Thursday, Ms Willis’s lawyer said in a filing that the subpoena should be dismissed.

Attorney Cinque Axam, representing Ms Willis, argued that Ms Wade “has conspired with interested parties in the criminal election interference case to use the civil discovery process to annoy, embarrass and oppress District Attorney Willis”.

“People don’t think like I do and that’s the situation” could encapsulate the predicament the entire Republican Party faces. For the last few months, we at Inside Washington have said Republicans — all the way down from the squirreliest congress critters to the wealthiest donors to candidates — are engaged in a collective kind of magical thinking. Such wishful thinking has allowed the GOP to behave like they’re living in a world they would prefer, rather than the world as it is.

This week finally shattered that.

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“The special prosecutor has said from the beginning that he thinks public interest requires a speedy trial, which I agree with,” Mr Garland said.

Ariana Baio reports on the attorney general’s remarks:

The 74-year-old was found guilty of two charges of contempt in September last year after he refused to testify or hand over documents after receiving a House subpoena in February 2022.

The former South Carolina governor said Mr Trump’s personal attacks mean he is feeling “threatened” and “insecure” as they head towards the state’s 2024 GOP presidential contest.

Martha McHardy has the story:

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, who served in the US House as a Florida Republican between 1995 and 2001, said on MSNBC on Friday morning that “Donald Trump is not well, we know this”.

“He really does think that Barack Obama is still president of the United States,” he added.

Gustaf Kilander has the story: