Trump could testify in E Jean Carroll case Monday: Live

Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley has warned against the prospect of November’s election becoming a rematch of the 2020 contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, asking: “Do we really want to have two 80-year-olds running for president when we have a country in disarray and a world on fire?”

Speaking at a CNN town hall event at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire, ahead of next Tuesday’s state primary, Ms Haley told host Jake Tapper that both the GOP frontrunner and the president were so “distracted by their own investigations and their own grievances” that a renewed contest between them would not be in the best interests of the country.

Mike Bedigan has the story:

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:

This jury is considering whether Mr Trump owes additional money to Ms Carroll after a previous jury awarded her $5 million when they ruled Mr Trump sexually abused the former columnist in 1996 and later defamed her in 2022.

Now, the former president could testify as soon as Monday, just hours ahead of the New Hampshire primary election on Tuesday, per the AP.

“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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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”.