Jack Smith accuses Trump of aiming to try election case in media

Florida Gov Ron DeSantis admitted in an interview with NBC News that former president Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, as he seeks to recalibrate his campaign.

Mr DeSantis initially told NBC News’s Dasha Burns that whoever is inaugurated on 20 January is considered the winner, in a dodge answer.

“Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on Jan 20 every four years is the winner,” he said. When pressed, Mr DeSantis said that President Biden defeated Mr Trump.

“No, of course he lost,” he said of Mr Trump. “Joe Biden’s the president.”

But Mr DeSantis still said that the election did have irregularities, citing the proliferation of mail-in ballots during the Covid-19 pandemic and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s distribution of grants to election administrators.

Mitch McConnell was heckled with chants of “retire” as he spoke at an event in Kentucky over the weekend – just days after he sparked concerns for his health with his freezing episode.

The Senate minority leader, 81, was interrupted with loud jeers, boos and shouts of “retire” as he appeared at the 143rd Annual St. Jerome Fancy Farm Picnic in his home state on Saturday.

“My friends, I’ll be honest, it’s not hard for Republicans to look good these days,” Mr McConnell said, while the crowd roared with heckles around him.

“We’re up against the folks that gave you record high inflation, that closed schools…”

The Republican senator tried to ignore the ruckus, while the crowd’s chants escalated and grew ever louder.

Donald Trump is on the defence after his third criminal indictment was handed to him this past week, lashing out at several people, including Nancy Pelosi, for providing commentary on his federal charges.

“I purposely didn’t comment on Nancy Pelosi’s very weird story concerning her husband, but now I can because she said something about me, with glee, that was really quite vicious,” Mr Trump wrote.

Ms Pelosi told MSNBC on Friday that when she saw Mr Trump emerge from his car for the arraignment in Washington DC she saw “a scared puppy” who “knows the truth that he lost the election”.

Mr Trump appeared in federal court on Thursday to face four charges related to his alleged efforts and conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results.

The ex-president responded to Ms Pelosi’s comments, saying that he wasn’t “scared” of his arraignment and he thought her comment was “mean.”

The reigning champions had not been at their best throughout the tournament in Australia and New Zealand, only narrowly escaping their group before losing 5-4 on penalties in a hard-fought battle against the Swedes on Sunday.

Rapinoe, a late substitute, was one of three players to miss a crucial spotkick.

The outcome was doubly cruel for the veteran winger as it came in what proved to be her final appearance for the USWNT, her glittering career on the world stage ending in bitter disappointment.

The 38-year-old, a prominent LGBT+ rights activist and campaigner for equal pay in the women’s game, had previously announced her plan to retire at the end of the domestic season, where she plays for OL Reign in Seattle, Washington.

Her misfortune was met with utter glee by the twice-impeached, thrice-indicted Mr Trump, who took a timeout from his myriad of legal problems to troll the team on Truth Social, suggesting their disappointing World Cup run was symptomatic of a broader national decline under President Joe Biden.

“The ‘shocking and totally unexpected’ loss by the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team to Sweden is fully emblematic of what is happening to the our [sic] once great Nation under Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump posted on Sunday evening.

“Many of our players were openly hostile to America – No other country behaved in such a manner, or even close. WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot Megan, the USA is going to Hell!!! MAGA.”

Property records and court documents confirm his address is the same listed by Sotheby’s Realty. While the listing says the building “is distinctive for its magnificent gothic-inspired terra cotta and brick façade” the three-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment is also distinctive for being raided by the FBI in April 2021 over Mr Giuliani’s alleged dealings with Ukraine.

The apartment was put up for sale just days after Mr Giuliani’s ex-client and ally, Mr Trump, was indicted for the third time.

Mr Giuliani himself is facing a number of legal woes. A lawyer for the 79-year-old last week acknowledged to the New York Times that his client appeared to be the person identified as “Co-Conspirator 1” in the federal indictment accusing Mr Trump of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election in his favour.

Robert Costello, Mr Giuliani’s attorney, said the indictment “eviscerates the First Amendment,” and denounced the filing as “election interference.”

The ex-president’s legal team also asked Judge Tanya Chutkan to allow ‘volunteers’ to access discovery materials.

Many years after leaving the presidency in disgrace, Richard Nixon spoke to CNN about his time as Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president and said that a vice president should consider themselves dispensible “and should do what the man wants.”

“Because otherwise, the man’s got to get down there in the ring,” Mr Nixon said. Those words resonate when it comes to his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris. Like Mr Nixon, Ms Harris spent only a brief time in the United States Senate before a presidential candidate who was considered an elder statesman picked her to be his vice president.

No vice president has probably struggled more with their image than Ms Harris. But recently, she’s assumed one of the more traditional roles of a vice president: the attack dog. Essentially, vice presidents engage in the fights that the president don’t to keep the boss’s hands clean and to make sure “the man” doesn’t have to “get down in the ring.”

Former president Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is asking supporters whether they think he should participate in the first Republican primary debate – in a not-so-subtle way.

On his campaign site, it provides a poll: “Should President Trump show up to the GOP debate?” The clickable choices are: “Yes” or “No – let all of the many other candidates attack each other while President Trump unites the rest of our party to focus on the important battle of beating Biden.”

A judge has dismissed former President Donald Trump’s counter-lawsuit against writer E Jean Carroll.

Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in an order made public on Monday that Mr Trump hadn’t proven that Ms Carroll’s statements on CNN the day after a civil trial jury found that the ex-president had sexually abused Ms Carroll and subsequently defamed her were false or “not at least substantially true”.

Mr Trump sued Ms Carroll in June following her CNN appearance the previous month. Ms Carroll was asked about the verdict – the jury found that while Mr Trump sexually abused her, they didn’t state that Mr Trump had raped her under New York state law, to which Ms Carroll said, “Oh, yes he did”.

The latest indictment against Donald Trump for conduct growing out of the post-election efforts to retain power reveals what a formidable adversary Trump has collided with in Jack Smith.

The supposed watchword of Smith’s investigation from the start has been to treat Trump like any other defendant. Indeed, a chief charge in the indictment – obstruction of an official proceeding – already has been brought against some 300 of the marauders; how could a fair justice system give a pass to the man who spearheaded it?

But this conventional storyline overlooks the several ways in which Smith has acted with careful attention to Trump’s qualities and weaknesses. Smith is the very antithesis of a generic prosecutor: he has sussed out his quarry as meticulously as Ahab sussed out the white whale.