Trump tries to dismiss Jan 6 case as he mulls Capitol visit – latest

“You’re damn right I’m fundraising off of this right now because the establishment is coming after me,” Rep Nancy Mace said on Fox News.

The fundraising tactic is relatively common MAGA rhetoric; Donald Trump frequently fundraises by insisting to his supporters that he is being targeted by the media, Democrats, judges, or prosecutors, and needs donations to keep fighting them off.

It was not how Ms Mace fundraised that may land her in trouble, but rather where.

Graig Graziosi explains…

Donald Trump’s legal team is attempting to have his federal election subversion case dismissed in a Washington DC federal court on the basis of presidential immunity, arguing that all of his actions were within the “outer perimeter” of his work as the top public official in the US.

“The acts alleged in the indictment lie firmly within the ‘outer perimeter’ of the President’s official responsibility. Therefore, they cannot form the basis of criminal charges against President Trump,” the lawyers wrote in the motion to dismiss filed on Thursday.

The former president has pleaded not guilty to four counts in the case brought by the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith, including conspiring to defraud the United States and to obstruct an official proceeding.

Quoting previous cases, the lawyers wrote that “‘In view of the special nature of the President’s constitutional office and functions,’ a current or former President has ‘absolute Presidential immunity from [civil] damages liability for acts within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility’”.

“No court has addressed whether such Presidential immunity includes immunity from criminal prosecution for the President’s official act. The question remains a ‘‘serious and unsettled question’ of law,’” the filing stated.

Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as an aide to Mr Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, said the former president would “launch” food or crockery at the walls “once or twice a week” or following a bad news story.

It comes following the publication of Ms Hutchinson’s bombshell new book Enough, in which she has disclosed many shocking details about her time in the Trump administration.

Discussing the book on late night US talk show Jimmy Kimmel, Live!, Ms Hutchinson revealed the president’s cautionary habits with regard to eating.

…but isn’t getting a positive reaction.

The Biden administration has waived more than two dozen separate federal laws to permit the Department of Homeland Security to proceed with constructing a section of wall along a 20-mile section of the US-Mexico border in Texas, making use of authority granted to DHS in an effort to reduce the growing number of asylum seekers entering the country between legal ports of entry.

In a public notice released on Thursday, the department said Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had determined that waiving the myriad environmental and other laws was necessary “to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international land border in Starr County, Texas”.

The notice said Mr Mayorkas was employing authority granted to him by Congress in a series of laws dating back to 1996 which provide the department with the ability to “take such actions as may be necessary to install additional physical barriers and roads (including the removal of obstacles to detection of illegal entrants) in the vicinity of the United States border to deter illegal crossings in areas of ‘high illegal entry’ into the United States”.

Former President Donald Trump is in talks to visit Capitol Hill next week as Republicans debate who should be the next speaker of the House following Kevin McCarthy’s stunning ouster, according to three people familiar with the talks.

Some on the far right have floated the idea of Trump as a speaker candidate — perhaps on an interim basis. One of the people cautioned that if Trump goes ahead with the visit, he would be there to talk with Republican lawmakers and not to pitch himself for the role. Trump would most likely attend a closed-door candidate forum that Republicans plan to hold Tuesday evening, ahead of a vote that could happen as soon as Wednesday.

The people spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity ahead of an official announcement.

Trump is being encouraged to run by a small group of far-right allies including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. McCarthy, of California, lost his position this week when eight Republicans supported a motion introduced by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz to remove him from the speakership.

Gaetz and Greene are both Trump allies, though Greene voted against the motion to remove McCarthy.

The trip would be Trump’s first to the Capitol since leaving office and since his supporters violently stormed the building in a bid to halt the peaceful transition of power from him to Democrat Joe Biden on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has been indicted in both Washington and Georgia over his efforts to overturn the election’s results.

A person does not have to be a member of the House to serve as speaker, though that has historically been the case. From time to time lawmakers have thrown their vote to those outside of Congress, often as a protest of sorts against the candidates running.

Until a new speaker is chosen, all legislative work is the House is suspended.

The son of the former president said told Newsmax it would be “the coolest damn thing in the entire world” if his father were to replace Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House of Representatives after he was ousted on Tuesday in a historic move.

“I would make sure he got a bigger gavel than the small little one that they have,” he said, adding that ideally it would be a “huge gavel.”

It comes as House members are scrambling to find a new speaker, with no obvious replacement for Mr McCarthy.

He further claims that because the Senate acquitted him at his second impeachment trial, he can’t be criminally charged for similar conduct.

However, there is a big difference between the two cases. The current federal DC charges are based on evidence that emerged after the impeachment trial, making them completely different.

Further, Kyle Cheney, Politico’s senior legal affairs reporter, notes that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would find it interesting that Mr Trump thinks the decision to acquit him at the second impeachment trial now renders him immune from prosecution.

Senator McConnell said the very next day in floor remarks that Mr Trump could be held criminally accountable for January 6.

Here’s Mr McConnell speaking following the impeachment in January 2021:

Donald Trump was hit with a gag order by the judge in his civil fraud trial in New York after just a day and a half into a trial that is scheduled to run until almost Christmas.

Those familiar with the former president’s apparent inability to not speak his mind — sometimes to a person’s face — will not be even remotely surprised by this.

But what is a gag order and what are the potential repercussions for Mr Trump in this trial and in the myriad of legal proceedings he faces in the coming months?