Trump received millions from foreign governments during presidency, report finds

The Five co-host Jessica Tarlov told her colleagues, “This idea that Trump is blowing him out of the water is just not supported by the data.”

“If you believe that Trump will win by 20 points of the Black vote, I have many, many bridges to sell you. Or the youth vote. The guy had Vanilla Ice at his New Year’s Eve party and you think he’s winning the youth vote?”

Kelly Rissman has the story.

[Warning: Vanilla Ice lyrics ahead]

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear reached across the partisan divide Wednesday night to urge a unified effort with Republican lawmakers to uplift education, health care and the economy, saying Kentucky has an opportunity to assert itself as an “economic and a moral leader.”

Beshear, who raised his national profile by winning reelection last year in the GOP-leaning state, renewed his pitch for higher salaries for teachers, state-backed pre-K education for every 4-year-old, increased funding for roads and bridges and efforts to meet the state’s health needs.

Touting a record pace of economic development, the governor said Kentucky has an unprecedented opportunity to build a top 10 economy offering the security of good-paying jobs. Noting that he’s now term-limited, the governor said it’s a chance to set politics aside. It’s an acknowledgement that he needs support from GOP legislative supermajorities to pass his priorities.

“This is our chance to push away the division,” Beshear said in his annual State of the Commonwealth speech. “To prove that we can govern without name-calling or scapegoating. To do it without anger, without fear and without hatred. That we can not only talk about our collective faith, we can live it.”

Donald Trump has spent a portion of his morning posting about E Jean Carroll, the writer he defamed after she accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.

Almost all of the posts are old social media posts from Twitter and Facebook in which Ms Carroll writes about sex, many likely linked to her role as an advice columnist for Elle from 1993 to 2019.

In May 2023, a jury found Mr Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation of Ms Carroll and awarded her $5m in damages.

Then in September in a separate case, a judge ruled the former president was liable for defaming her a second time.

Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a “partial summary judgment” that the former president had made defamatory statements with “actual malice” about Ms Carroll in 2019 after she went public with claims he had raped her decades earlier.

A civil trial scheduled for 15 January will only determine how much the former president should pay her in monetary damages.

Here’s what you need to know about the upcoming trial:

A Republican congressman known for occasional clashes with Trump-aligned conservatives in his own party is now at war with Fox News host Jesse Watters.

Dan Crenshaw took aim at Watters in a multi-post Instagram story that went up on Wednesday after the Fox News talking head used a photo of Mr Crenshaw during a segment about members of Congress profiting through the stock market.

Some members of Congress have faced growing scrutiny from members of both parties in recent years over their holdings of large stock portfolios while in office — in many cases those investments include stakes in companies which are parts of industries that those members have direct or indirect roles in regulating, such as health care, financial services or aerospace technology.

Speaking to Fox News yesterday, attorney Alina Habba appeared to confirm reporting by Maggie Haberman of The New York Times that Trump privately fears the US Supreme Court could rule against him in the Colorado case if its justices are inclined to “shy away from being pro-Trump.”

“That’s a concern he’s voiced to me, he’s voiced to everybody publicly, not privately. And I can tell you that his concern is a valid one,” Habba told Martha MacCallum.

“You know, Republicans are conservative, they get nervous. They unfortunately… sometimes shy away from being pro-Trump because they feel that even if the law is on our side, they are swayed much like the Democratic side, right? So they’re trying so hard to look neutral that sometimes, they make the wrong call.”

An attempt to pressure the highest court in the land by whipping up pre-emptive outrage from the MAGA media ecosystem in anticipation of an unfavourable decision? Who’s to say?

Donald Trump’s legal team is seeking to hold Special Counsel Jack Smith in contempt for purportedly violating the court’s order staying proceedings in the federal election subversion case “that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation on Defendant”.

Lawfare’s Anna Bower observes: “This motion strikes me as exceedingly frivolous.”

She continues: “Proceedings in Trump’s federal election interference case are stayed — i.e., paused — while the appeals court considers Trump’s immunity claim. But the special counsel isn’t enjoined from filing motions or handing over information.”

Bower adds: “Of course, Trump’s legal team isn’t obliged to respond to the filings or accept service of discovery. And the district court won’t consider the motions until the DC Cir. resolves Trump’s appeal and the stay is lifted.”

“But there’s nothing contemptuous here,” she concludes.

Laying out how they feel the court should respond to their filing, Mr Trump’s legal team says they want the government to pay for having to keep up with filings in the case.

To remedy this outrageous conduct, the Court should issue an order to show cause why the prosecutors should not be: (1) held in contempt; (2) required to immediately withdraw their MIL and improper productions; (3) forbidden from submitting any further filing or production absent the Court’s express permission while the Stay Order is in effect; and (4) assessed monetary sanctions in the amount of President Trump’s reasonable attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred in responding to the prosecutors’ improper productions and filings, including in litigating this Motion (collectively, the “Requested Sanctions”).

Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, has again asked a federal appeals court to allow him to move his Georgia election interference case to federal court after it rejected his bid in December.

Mr Meadows faces two charges over accusations that he and 18 co-defendants, including Mr Trump, attempted to unlawfully overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the crucial swing state in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 presidential election but has pleaded not guilty.

His request to take his trial to federal court was rejected before Christmas by a three-judge panel in the Peach State’s 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals because the racketeering conduct with which his criminal indictment is concerned stands apart from the duties he carried out for the then-president at the White House in Washington, DC.

The former North Carolina congressman is now asking that the matter be reconsidered by the court as a whole.

Joe Sommerlad has the details:

President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign has released a new ad focused on the preservation of democracy in the face of “an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy”.

The ad features images of Americans voting juxtaposed with the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

Mr Biden is scheduled to make a speech in Philadelphia focused on January 6 and the threat to American democracy. It was scheduled for the third anniversary of the attack on Congress but has been brought forward a day due to an incoming weather system.

According to documentation House Democrats on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability received from Donald Trump’s accounts, this is the breakdown of the biggest spenders at Trump properties during his presidency based on just a small amount of information gathered before Republicans shut down the investigation:

• $5.6m from China to Trump Tower, Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, and Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas
• $615,422 from Saudi Arabia to Trump World Tower and Trump International Hotel in DC
• $465,744 from Qatar to Trump World Tower
• $303,372 from Kuwait to Trump World Tower and Trump International Hotel in DC
• $282,764 from India to Trump World Tower and Trump International Hotel in DC
• $248,962 from Malaysia to Trump International Hotel in DC
• $154,750 from Afghanistan to Trump International Hotel in DC

Donald Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8m from foreign governments during his presidency, a new report by House Democrats found.

The Committee on Oversight and Accountability’s ranking member Rep Jamie Raskin has been leading the investigation into how much money the former president made from overseas officials and entities during his administration.

In “White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump”, Mr Raskin writes:

By elevating his personal financial interests and the policy priorities of corrupt foreign powers over the American public interest, former President Trump violated both the clear commands of the Constitution and the careful precedent set and observed by every previous Commander-in-Chief.

Mr Raskin notes that it took years of aggressive litigation to obtain documentation from Mr Trump’s accountants, Mazars, but in January 2023, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer made the “abrupt and outrageous decision” to release them from having to continue complying with the Committee’s subpoena.

Nevertheless, the documentation they received before the investigation was shut down by Republicans “allows America to glimpse the rampant illegality and corruption of the Trump presidency”.

The report’s detailed findings make clear that we don’t have the laws in place to deal with a president who is willing to brazenly convert the presidency into a business for self-enrichment and wealth maximization with the collusive participation of foreign states. No other president had ever come close before to trying a rip-off like this simply based on vacuuming up foreign government money, which was the cardinal presidential offense and betrayal in the eyes of the Founders—an offense and betrayal made all the more striking here by the offender’s repeated laughable proclamations of “America First!”

The largest payments to Trump businesses were from China at $5.5m, with Saudi Arabia second at $615,000.

Payments were made to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC; Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas; Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York; and Trump World Tower at 845 United Nations Plaza in New York.