Trump skips fraud court as Rudy Giuliani trial begins: Live

Donald Trump backed out of testifying in his New York civil fraud trial on Monday when he was expected to return to the stand as his legal team wraps up his defence in the case that threatens to topple the Trump Organization.

But, in an all-caps Truth Social rant on Sunday, the former president announced that he would no longer attend claiming he had already “VERY SUCCESSFULLY & CONCLUSIVELY TESTIFIED”.

Meanwhile, in the federal election interference case brought against Mr Trump by the special counsel, Jack Smith has asked the Supreme Court to immediately take up the former president’s claim that he’s immune from criminal prosecution.

The court has given Mr Trump until 20 December to respond to the special counsel’s petition and agreed to consider whether to take up the issue on an expedited basis.

Also in Washington, DC, the defamation trial of Trump lawyer and former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani got underway following the selection of an eight-person jury.

A judge has already found Mr Giuliani liable for defaming Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss by falsely claiming they committed election fraud.

Key Points

• Jack Smith asks US Supreme Court justices to rule on Trump immunity — and quick

• Trump backs out of testifying at New York fraud trial

• Giuliani defamation trial: Day one

• Appeals court upholds Trump’s gag order in election conspiracy case

• NY fraud trial: Bartov earning almost $900k for Trump defence testimony

• Trump says he will be a dictator ‘on day one’ if elected

Federal prosecutors preview their expert witness list in Trump’s election conspiracy case

09:00 , Oliver O'Connell

Federal prosecutors have previewed their expert witness list in Donald Trump’s election conspiracy case. The list includes:

• An expert who “plotted the location history data for Google accounts and devices associated with individuals who moved, on January 6, 2021, from an area at or near the Ellipse to an area encompassing the United States Capitol building” and whose testimony “will describe and explain the resulting graphical representations of that data, and it will aid the jury in understanding the movements of individuals toward the Capitol area during and after the defendant’s speech at the Ellipse.”

• Another expert “will testify about: the process of determining device location; the collection and use of location history data by Google, LLC; and location history data produced in response to a search warrant and included in the graphical representation prepared by Expert 1.”

• And another will “testify that he/she: (1) extracted and processed data from the White House cell phones used by the defendant and one other individual (Individual 1); (2) reviewed and analyzed data on the defendant’s phone and on Individual 1’s phone, including analyzing images found on the phones and websites visited; (3) determined the usage of these phones throughout the post-election period, including on and around January 6, 2021; and (4) specifically identified the periods of time during which the defendant’s phone was unlocked and the Twitter application was open on January 6.”

Read the full summary of anticipated expert witnesses

NY fraud trial: What happened in court on Monday?

08:00 , Oliver O'Connell

The short answer is... not a lot.

Alex Woodward explains why:

Trump backs out of fraud trial testimony after failing to block gag order

Full story: Jack Smith asks US Supreme Court justices to rule on Trump immunity — and quick

06:00 , Oliver O'Connell

Special counsel Jack Smith is asking the US Supreme Court to quickly determine whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in an election subversion case the former president wants dismissed.

An answer would mark the first time the nation’s highest court has weighed in on the criminal prosecutions of the former president, who was charged in a grand jury indictment for his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Mr Trump has argued that he is protected from prosecution for crimes committed while in office, citing “presidential immunity” that the federal judge overseeing the case has rejected.

The former president has appealed that ruling.

In a filing to the Supreme Court on Monday, Mr Smith’s team with the US Department of Justice asks for the justices to determine “whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”

“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” according to the filing. “This is an extraordinary case.”

Alex Woodward reports.

Jack Smith asks SCOTUS to rule on Trump immunity in election case — and quick

Analysis: Will young voters deliver the fatal blow to Biden’s campaign?

04:00 , Oliver O'Connell

Andrew Feinberg writes:

Unfortunately for Mr Biden, his 2024 campaign is flying into what looks to be hurricane-force headwinds, as detailed by an Emerson College poll released on Friday.

The survey found that voters under 30 years of age are turning away from the 81-year-old president, with 76 per cent of younger voters complaining that their parents had more or better economic opportunities than their generation does.

According to the survey, Mr Trump holds a four-point lead over the man who defeated him in 2020, with 47 per cent support to Mr Biden’s 43 per cent. Another nine per cent of voters surveyed said they are still undecided at this point.

The results get worse for the 46th president when GOP favourite and professed spoiler Robert F Kennedy Jr’s independent bid is included in the survey, along with third-party candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein.

Read on...

Young voters could deliver the fatal blow to Biden’s campaign

Trump gaffes ‘not intentional’ and ‘no question’ he has ‘lost a step’, says Megyn Kelly

03:00 , Oliver O'Connell

Following her return as a moderator on 6 December, Megyn Kelly called into Glenn Beck’s show to talk about the fourth Republican debate and the current state of the GOP field.

After praising the performance of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for having “his best debate yet” and saying that Nikki Haley did not do well because “she shrunk away” and giving her take on the more divisive figures of Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie, Kelly was then asked about Donald Trump.

Beck asked whether the former president and current frontrunner in the race to be the Republican Party’s nominee for 2024 “has faded from where he was in 2020”.

Read the full article

Earlier: Appeals court upholds Trump’s gag order in election conspiracy case

02:00 , Oliver O'Connell

A federal appeals court has upheld key parts of a gag order that blocks Donald Trump from attacking witnesses in his election conspiracy case.

The gag order put in place by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan prohibited the former president from launching a “pretrial smear campaign” as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination for president, the judge wrote in October.

Federal appellate court judges in Washington DC on Friday agreed that some of Mr Trump’s public statements “pose a significant and imminent threat to the fair and orderly adjudication of the ongoing criminal proceeding, warranting a speech-constraining protective order,” but said that the initial order “sweeps in more protected speech than is necessary.”

Mr Trump’s attorneys argued that the order unconstitutionally interferes with his “core political speech” as he runs for president while defending himself from several lawsuits and four criminal prosecutions, including two cases surrounding his alleged attempts to unlawfully overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Appeals court upholds Trump’s gag order in election conspiracy case

Trump contacted ex-Mar-a-Lago employee turned witness, report claims

01:53 , Josh Marcus

Donald Trump and his associates allegedly repeatedly contacted a former Mar-a-Lago employee who knew of key conversations and moments in the federal classified documents case against the former president.

According to multiple human sources and other material accessed by CNN, Mr Trump took a rare step and reached out to the employee a few days after he quit working at the Florida estate to inquire why he was leaving.

Trump associates later allegedly offered the former employee free tickets to a golf tournament.

The employee, who later spoke about the contacts with the federal special counsel’s office investigating the documents case, even allegedly got an offer from Mr Trump’s lawyer for assistance in finding legal representation, with the lawyer mentioning in a voicemail he was aware the former employee had been subpoenaed to provide information to a grand jury.

More details in our full story.

Trump contacted ex-Mar-a-Lago employee turned witness, report claims

Fraud trial expert witness paid almost $900,000 by Trump

01:00 , Oliver O'Connell

The final defence expert witness for Donald Trump and his co-defendants in a trial stemming from a blockbuster fraud lawsuit was paid nearly $900,000 for his testimony.

Across two days of testimony inside New York County Supreme Court this week, New York University accounting professor Eli Bartov labeled the complaint against the former president, his adult sons and associates under the Trump Organization umbrella “absurd”.

On Thursday, he told the court that he went through New York Attorney General Letitia James’s complaint “allegation by allegation” to “try to find at least something, some proof, that would provide some basis” for them.

“Most of their claims were simply unsupported,” he said. “My main finding is that there is no evidence whatsoever of any accounting fraud.”

Trump fraud trial defence witness was paid nearly $900,000 for testimony

ICYMI: After seeing courtroom sketch, Trump says he needs to lose weight

00:00 , Oliver O'Connell

There are only two defence witnesses left in Donald Trump’s fraud trial, and the former president is one of them.

He returned to New York County Supreme Court on Thursday for the first time in more than a month, but not as a witness. He sat with his attorneys inside Judge Arthur Engoron’s courtroom in lower Manhattan to watch testimony intended to bolster his defence – his first courtroom appearance since leaving his own chaotic day on the witness stand on 6 November.

After a morning break, Mr Trump paused to chat with two courtroom sketch artists seated behind the team of lawyers for New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose fraud lawsuit against the former president, his two oldest sons and their chief business associates launched a trial that is now in its 10th week.

The artists, hired by news organisations to capture the inside of the no-photos-allowed courtroom, got his approval. “Nice,” he said.

He told them “it looks like I need to lose some weight” as he gestured to his neck, they told The Independent.

Read the full article

Giuliani trial: Today in court

Monday 11 December 2023 23:19 , Oliver O'Connell

In a hearing in front of state lawmakers in Georgia on 11 December 2020, Rudy Giuliani baselessly accused a mother-daughter pair of election workers in the state of “quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they are vials of heroin or cocaine”.

He smeared Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss as criminals whose workplaces and homes should be searched for evidence of voter fraud.

Donald Trump’s former attorney, who launched spurious lawsuits to overturn 2020 presidential election results, also appeared on podcasts and television shows to falsely claim those women wheeled a suitcase loaded with fraudulent ballots into a vote-counting centre and used a flash drive to manipulate the results to ensure Joe Biden’s victory.

Three years and one day after he introduced those bogus claims to Georgia lawmakers, Mr Giuliani sat with his attorneys for the first day of a civil trial in a federal courtroom in Washington DC, where an eight-member jury will determine how much he owes for defaming them.

Alex Woodward reports on today’s proceedings.

Rudy Giuliani lied about election workers. A jury will decide what he owes them

Trump 2024 campaign responds to special counsel Supreme Court request

Monday 11 December 2023 23:06 , Oliver O'Connell

The ABCs of Donald Trump

Monday 11 December 2023 23:00 , Kelly Rissman

Donald Trump is well-known for a lot of things: his divisiveness, his career in real estate, The Apprentice, his lawsuits, for being the only president to be impeached twice. But perhaps nothing has infiltrated society more than Mr Trump’s unique linguistic style.

Whether he’s posting on Truth Social, speaking at a campaign rally, or testifying in court, Mr Trump never seems to be at a loss for words — and sometimes, he even makes up new ones.

From uttering gaffes to tweeting typos (like “covfefe”) to misreading words (like “Nambia”) to dismissing his opponent with a harsh nickname, his terminology quickly turns iconic.

Here, The Independent offers a dictionary guide to the Mr Trump’s most memorable phrases:

C is for Covfefe: The ABCs of Donald Trump

Federal prosecutors preview their expert witness list in Trump’s election conspiracy case

Monday 11 December 2023 22:57 , Oliver O'Connell

Federal prosecutors have previewed their expert witness list in Donald Trump’s election conspiracy case. The list includes:

• An expert who “plotted the location history data for Google accounts and devices associated with individuals who moved, on January 6, 2021, from an area at or near the Ellipse to an area encompassing the United States Capitol building” and whose testimony “will describe and explain the resulting graphical representations of that data, and it will aid the jury in understanding the movements of individuals toward the Capitol area during and after the defendant’s speech at the Ellipse.”

• Another expert “will testify about: the process of determining device location; the collection and use of location history data by Google, LLC; and location history data produced in response to a search warrant and included in the graphical representation prepared by Expert 1.”

• And another will “testify that he/she: (1) extracted and processed data from the White House cell phones used by the defendant and one other individual (Individual 1); (2) reviewed and analyzed data on the defendant’s phone and on Individual 1’s phone, including analyzing images found on the phones and websites visited; (3) determined the usage of these phones throughout the post-election period, including on and around January 6, 2021; and (4) specifically identified the periods of time during which the defendant’s phone was unlocked and the Twitter application was open on January 6.”

Read the full summary of anticipated expert testimony.

Full story: Jack Smith asks US Supreme Court justices to rule on Trump immunity — and quick

Monday 11 December 2023 22:00 , Oliver O'Connell

Special counsel Jack Smith is asking the US Supreme Court to quickly determine whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in an election subversion case the former president wants dismissed.

An answer would mark the first time the nation’s highest court has weighed in on the criminal prosecutions of the former president, who was charged in a grand jury indictment for his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Mr Trump has argued that he is protected from prosecution for crimes committed while in office, citing “presidential immunity” that the federal judge overseeing the case has rejected.

The former president has appealed that ruling.

In a filing to the Supreme Court on Monday, Mr Smith’s team with the US Department of Justice asks for the justices to determine “whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”

“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” according to the filing. “This is an extraordinary case.”

Alex Woodward reports.

Jack Smith asks Supreme Court to rule on Trump immunity in election conspiracy case

Voices: House Republicans are about to begin their half-baked impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden

Monday 11 December 2023 21:30 , Oliver O'Connell

Eric Garcia writes:

The House of Representatives has a mountain of work that it needs to complete. After buying itself some time by passing a “laddered” continuing resolution wherein half of the spending bills expire in January and the other in February, the House is still not on track to pass spending bills. The package it passed to aid Israel was little more than a right-wing gimmick that would have stripped funding from the IRS, something it knew Democrats in the Senate would never agree to passing.

But instead of focusing on the business of governing, the House will go down another boodoggle and begin the process of opening up an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. This is, of course, a continuation of the boondoggle attempt to impeach the sitting president that began during former speaker Kevin McCarthy’s tenure, which in and of itself was an attempt to appeal to the most extreme factions in the House Republican conference.

On Tuesday, the House Rules Committee will hold a hearing on the resolution to begin the impeachment inquiry. But the fact remains that the House Republican conference so far has not definitively made the case to the American public that any of Mr Biden’s actions have amounted to the level of a crime worthy of impeachment.

That matters because, despite what proponents will say, impeachment is and always will be a political act. The public needs to at least believe that the president committed a crime.

Continued...

Read the full article

Giuliani trial - First witness: Regina Scott, Jensen Hughes

Monday 11 December 2023 21:16 , Oliver O'Connell

The first witness for the plaintiffs in the Rudy Giuliani defamation trial is Regina Scott, a senior consultant with Jensen Hughes.

The company has provided threat and reputational monitoring as well as physical security for Ms Freeman and Ms Moss since late 2020.

A spreadsheet is introduced documenting public references to the two plaintiffs since they began appearing on 3 December 2020 when Mr Giuliani spoke to the Georgia State Senate. There are repeated objections to basic questions about the document to the annoyance of Judge Howell.

The document was compiled in May 2023 and reports there were more than 710,000 mentions of the pair between 21 November 2020 and 1 May 2023. More than 600,000 (approximately 90 per cent) were on Twitter and analysis shows they found “largely negative sentiment trends”.

Ms Scott reads out one of the mentions of Ms Freeman in which the poster says they would die happy if she were convicted of treason and they would love to see her executed. Another mentions the “Day of the Rope” a reference to mass hangings in a white supremacist book.

Another report finds that between August and November of this year, there were a further 320,000 mentions of the two women. During this same period, Ms Scott says Mr Giuliani has referenced them a total of 20 times including as recently as last Monday.

She says of the case: “The type of violent, and racist, and graphic material, that’s on a level that we don’t see at all in our work."

What would need to happen for Tucker Carlson to be Trump’s running mate?

Monday 11 December 2023 21:00 , Oliver O'Connell

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said God would have to “yell” at him before he would consider joining Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign as a running-mate.

Carlson was speaking at a fundraiser for the American Principles Project in Virginia and was asked by an audience member about a report published in Axios claiming that Melania Trump wanted him to join her husband on his 2024 ticket.

“God would have to yell at me very loud,” he told the audience, according to The Messenger.

Regarding Ms Trump, he said he didn’t “know her, really,” and recognised the absurdity of him seeking elected office.

Graig Graziosi reports.

Tucker Carlson reveals what would need to happen for him to be Trump’s running-mate

Giuliani attorney lays out defence

Monday 11 December 2023 20:40 , Oliver O'Connell

In his opening statement, Mr Giuliani’s attorney Joseph Sibley admitted his client did something wrong and there was “no question” Ms Freeman and Ms Moss were harmed.

However, he contended that Mr Giuliani’s role was minimal because of the “breadth and scope” of the action against the mother and daughter.

“You’re going to see a lot of evidence that these women were harmed, but not much evidence that Mr Giuliani was the cause,” said Sibley.

He said that what they are asking for in damages dwarfs what Johnny Depp was awarded in his 2022 defamation case ($10m) — Judge Howell asked him to stick to the facts of the case.

Sibley said at the end of the trial he would suggest a damages amount that is “fair and proportional” to his client’s role but did not say what that figure was.

“If you award the damages they are asking for, it will be the end of Mr Giuliani.”

Man arrested for allegedly threatening to assassinate Vivek Ramaswamy

Monday 11 December 2023 20:30 , Oliver O'Connell

A man has been arrested after allegedly threatening to kill Vivek Ramaswamy and his supporters at an event on Monday, according to newly released court records.

The suspect, 30-year-old Tyler Anderson, was first reported to police by the Republican presidential hopeful’s staff last week after he allegedly responded to one of the campaign’s texts about an upcoming campaign event.

“We are grateful to law enforcement for their swiftness and professionalism in handling this matter and pray for the safety of all Americans,” Ramaswamy campaign spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement shared with The Independent.

Read more...

Man arrested for allegedly threatening to assassinate Vivek Ramaswamy

Attorney describes damages Freeman and Moss are seeking from Giuliani

Monday 11 December 2023 20:13 , Oliver O'Connell

Michael Gottlieb, who is also representing Ms Freeman and Ms Moss explained to the jury about the damages that the mother and daughter are seeking from Mr Giuliani.

Their suit seeks between $15.5m and $43m in both compensatory damages for emotional and reputational harm and punitive damages due to the outrageous conduct of the defendant.

Gottlieb explained that since Mr Giuliani began targeting the two women, the “vile, racist, hateful comments” have never stopped.

One witness, Dr Ashlee Humphreys of Northwestern University, will testify that the statements made by the former mayor of New York generated anywhere between 146-400 million impressions online.

“We will ask you to think about how needless, how cruel, it is for powerful figures like Mr Giuliani to target election workers and volunteers and brand them as fraudsters and criminals without evidence,” said Gottlieb.

“In the United States of America, behaviour like Rudy Giuliani’s is not the inevitable result of politics. It is not acceptable, and it will not be tolerated.”

Jan 6 rioter spouts conspiracies as he’s jailed for 11 years

Monday 11 December 2023 20:00 , Oliver O'Connell

Former California police chief Alan Hostetter went on a conspiratorial rant moments before a federal judge sentenced him to more than 11 years in prison for conspiring to bring weapons to the US Capitol during the January 6 riot.

The 58-year-old, who represented himself at trial, told the court on Thursday that the January 6 insurrection was an “obvious set up” that was faked by “crisis actors,” and claimed that Ashli Babbitt, a rioter killed by a police officer at the Capitol, was actually still alive.

The former chief of the La Habra Police Department was convicted in July on four felony counts, including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and carrying a dangerous or deadly weapon onto Capitol grounds.

Hostetter joined the Capitol riot with a hatchet in his backpack, and incited others to violence with a bullhorn on January 6, according to prosecutors. He was not accused of entering the Capitol building itself.

“Through his words and deeds on January 6, Alan Hostetter was a terrorist and it’s important that be said,” assistant US attorney Anthony William Mariano said during the sentencing, WUSA9 reports.

After his incendiary testimony, Hostetter was reportedly confronted by Babbit’s mother, and claimed, “This feels like it’s staged,” according to the station.

Read the full article

Attorney describes how Giuliani’s words led to ‘vicious’ and ‘racist’ abuse of Freeman and Moss

Monday 11 December 2023 19:53 , Oliver O'Connell

Von DuBose, representing Ms Freeman and Ms Moss, delivered his opening statement to the jury, emphasising how Mr Giuliani “stole the lives” of his clients by “destroying their names”.

A montage of voicemails they received is played to the court involving offensive, violent, and racist language directed at the mother and daughter. They are referred to as prostitutes and in one call the n-word is chanted again and again.

Following the montage, a clip is played of Mr Giuliani making his false claims set to a video timeline of his tweets. This culminates with his claim to the Georgia State Senate about the two using “USB ports” to somehow flip the election.

“As you will hear, none of that – none of that – was true. But the millions of people who heard the lies didn’t wait for confirmation,” said DuBose.

He added that the response to Mr Giuliani’s words was “swift, it was racist, and it was vicious”.

Returning to the topic of the USB drive, DuBose told the jury there is no video of them handing it around as it doesn’t exist. They were exchanging a pack of ginger mints, which he held up in court.

DuBose added that there was a “strategic communications plan” for Trump and his surrogates to use the claims about the mother and daughter as part of their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In audio of Trump's call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger the jury heard how he mentioned Ms Freeman and Ms Moss 18 times. He called Ms Moss “a professional vote scammer and hustler”. Trump also mentioned Fulton County in his January 6 speech in Washington,

Wisconsin secretary of state calls for removal of fake Trump elector from elections commission

Monday 11 December 2023 19:30 , AP

Wisconsin’s Democratic secretary of state on Monday called for a Republican who served as a fake elector for former President Donald Trump and admitted that their work was used in an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election to be removed from his position on the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Bob Spindell was one of 10 Republicans who signed certificates in 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won Wisconsin. President Joe Biden won the battleground state.

Spindell and other nine fake electors conceded in a legal settlement last week that Biden had won the state and agreed to not serve as electors in next year’s election or in any in which Trump is running. They also agreed that their actions were “part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results.”

But they also avoided paying any damages and didn’t accept any liability or admit any wrongdoing for their actions.

Spindell, who didn’t respond to voicemails or text messages left last week and on Monday seeking comment, is one of three Republicans on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which also has three Democratic members. The commission is tasked with administering the state’s elections, but it is Wisconsin’s more than 1,800 local election clerks who actually run elections.

On Monday, Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski became the latest Democrat to call for Spindell to lose his seat on the bipartisan elections commission.

“He is clearly not fit,” Godlewski said in an interview. “He doesn’t have the moral compass or ability to follow the law and he needs to be removed.”

Giuliani defamation trial gets underway

Monday 11 December 2023 19:15 , Oliver O'Connell

Rudy Giuliani's civil defamation trial has begun with the defendant seated beside his attorney, Joseph Sibley.

Judge Beryl Howell is presiding over the case and instructed the jury that the former mayor of New York has already been found liable for defamation and that their job is only to determine damages.

She says that as a consequence of his failure to provide discovery, they must assume he intentionally tried to hide financial information to deflate his worth and intentionally tried to hide information about his podcast to deflate the reach of his words.

Neither of the plaintiffs, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss will have to provide evidence that they were harmed by Mr Giuliani’s false claims of election fraud, which is already presumed, but they will have to show they suffered damages in emotional distress for one of the counts.

It has already been found that Mr Giuliani engaged in a conspiracy with former president Donald Trump, his 2020 campaign, rightwing network OAN and one of its on-air personalities to defame Ms Freeman and Ms Moss.

Trump gaffes ‘not intentional’ and ‘no question’ he has ‘lost a step’, says Megyn Kelly

Monday 11 December 2023 19:00 , Oliver O'Connell

Following her return as a moderator on 6 December, Megyn Kelly called into Glenn Beck’s show to talk about the fourth Republican debate and the current state of the GOP field.

After praising the performance of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for having “his best debate yet” and saying that Nikki Haley did not do well because “she shrunk away” and giving her take on the more divisive figures of Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie, Kelly was then asked about Donald Trump.

Beck asked whether the former president and current frontrunner in the race to be the Republican Party’s nominee for 2024 “has faded from where he was in 2020”.

Continued...

Read the full article

Bad news for Biden as Trump leads in swing states

Monday 11 December 2023 18:40 , Oliver O'Connell

Former President Donald Trump leads incumbent President Joe Biden in both Georgia and Michigan, polling by CNN has found.

Mr Trump leads Mr Biden in Georgia by 49 to 44 per cent and in Michigan by 50 to 40 per cent. Survey respondents in both states hold negative views of Mr Biden’s policies, job performance, and sharpness.

In Michigan, 10 per cent said they don’t support either candidate. Mr Trump’s lead is increased by voters who say they didn’t vote in 2020 – this group breaks for the former president by 26 points in Georgia and by 40 in Michigan. Respondents who say they voted in 2020 reported having broken for Mr Biden in the last election but they now lean in Mr Trump’s direction in both swing states. Mr Biden is currently retaining fewer of his 2020 supporters compared to Mr Trump.

While Mr Trump faces the challenge of getting politically disengaged people to turn up to the polls, Mr Biden is confronted with having to convince those who backed him in the past to do so again, despite their negative views of his leadership.

Gustaf Kilander reports:

Trump leads Biden in swing states amid terrible ratings for incumbent

ICYMI: Appeals court upholds Trump’s gag order in election conspiracy case

Monday 11 December 2023 18:20 , Oliver O'Connell

A federal appeals court has upheld key parts of a gag order that blocks Donald Trump from attacking witnesses in his election conspiracy case.

The gag order put in place by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan prohibited the former president from launching a “pretrial smear campaign” as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination for president, the judge wrote in October.

Federal appellate court judges in Washington DC on Friday agreed that some of Mr Trump’s public statements “pose a significant and imminent threat to the fair and orderly adjudication of the ongoing criminal proceeding, warranting a speech-constraining protective order,” but said that the initial order “sweeps in more protected speech than is necessary.”

Alex Woodward reports.

Appeals court upholds Trump’s gag order in election conspiracy case

Full story: Jack Smith asks Supreme Court to rule on Trump immunity in election conspiracy case

Monday 11 December 2023 18:00 , Oliver O'Connell

Special counsel Jack Smith is asking the US Supreme Court to quickly determine whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in an election subversion case the former president wants dismissed.

An answer would make the first time the nation’s highest court has weighed in on the criminal prosecutions of the former president, who was charged in a grand jury indictment for his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Mr Trump has argued that he is immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office, citing “presidential immunity” that the federal judge overseeing the case has rejected.

The former president has appealed that ruling.

Alex Woodward has the latest:

Jack Smith asks Supreme Court to rule on Trump immunity in election conspiracy case

The ABCs of Donald Trump

Monday 11 December 2023 17:50 , Kelly Rissman

Donald Trump is well-known for a lot of things: his divisiveness, his career in real estate, The Apprentice, his lawsuits, for being the only president to be impeached twice. But perhaps nothing has infiltrated society more than Mr Trump’s unique linguistic style.

Whether he’s posting on Truth Social, speaking at a campaign rally, or testifying in court, Mr Trump never seems to be at a loss for words — and sometimes, he even makes up new ones.

From uttering gaffes to tweeting typos (like “covfefe”) to misreading words (like “Nambia”) to dismissing his opponent with a harsh nickname, his terminology quickly turns iconic.

Here, The Independent offers a dictionary guide to the Mr Trump’s most memorable phrases:

C is for Covfefe: The ABCs of Donald Trump

Special counsel asks Supreme Court to rule quickly on whether Trump is immune from prosecution

Monday 11 December 2023 17:49 , Oliver O'Connell

Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked the Supreme Court of the United States to weigh in on whether former president Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office relating to efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election.

The question presented to the court is: “Whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”

Read the full petition.

Jury selected for defamation trial of Rudy Giuliani

Monday 11 December 2023 17:29 , Oliver O'Connell

An eight-person jury has been selected for the defamation trial of Rudy Giuliani. As it is a civil case only eight people were needed from the prospective group of Washington, DC residents.

The trial will now get started at 1.30pm.

It is almost three years ago to the day that the former mayor of New York appeared in front of Georgia lawmakers on 10 December 2020 to smear Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.

Here’s what you need to know about the case:

Rudy Giuliani goes on trial for defaming Georgia election workers

Last week in court: Trump watches expert defence testimony

Monday 11 December 2023 17:10 , Oliver O'Connell

Trump returned to New York County Supreme Court on Thursday for the first time in more than a month, but not as a witness. He sat with his attorneys inside Judge Arthur Engoron’s courtroom in lower Manhattan to watch testimony intended to bolster his defence – his first courtroom appearance since leaving his own chaotic day on the witness stand on 6 November.

After a morning break, Mr Trump paused to chat with two courtroom sketch artists seated behind the team of lawyers for New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose fraud lawsuit against the former president, his two oldest sons and their chief business associates launched a trial that is now in its 10th week.

The artists, hired by news organisations to capture the inside of the no-photos-allowed courtroom, got his approval. “Nice,” he said.

He told them “it looks like I need to lose some weight” as he gestured to his neck, they told The Independent.

Alex Woodward reports.

Trump says he needs to lose weight after seeing courtroom sketch

Congress is now the House of Maga

Monday 11 December 2023 16:50 , Oliver O'Connell

Eric Garcia writes:

Earlier this week, amid news that Kevin McCarthy would exit Congress at the end of the month, an unusual admission from the former speaker went viral.

“When you look at the Democrats, they actually look like America. When I look at my party, we look like the most restrictive country club in America,” he told the New York Times last month. He made similar comments in October while speaking at Oxford.

Plenty of people noted that Mr McCarthy was right: the House Republican conference is incredibly white with a smattering of some women and Latinos. However, Mr McCarthy has desperately tried to diversify the GOP. In many ways, he was trying to continue the mission that began as a member of the Young Guns: a group of fresh-faced, energetic young conservatives that included Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor.

This new crop would serve as an answer to Barack Obama’s election, himself a sign of a diversifying America. There was just one problem: while the GOP needed to grow its pool of voters, most of the base adamantly refused any kind of changes and wanted the GOP to move even further to the right, beginning first with the Tea Party and culminating in the election of Donald Trump.

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Kevin McCarthy’s exit shows how the GOP establishment failed to tame the radicals

With Iowa caucuses just weeks away, trump hits new high in Iowa

Monday 11 December 2023 16:30 , Oliver O'Connell

A new poll shows that a majority of likely Iowa caucusgoers support former president Donald Trump, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley trailing significantly.

The new NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll shows that 51 per cent of Republicans back the four-times-indicted-twice-impeached former president ahead of the 15 January caucus.

Mr Trump’s support has grown since October, when 43 per cent of likely caucusgoers backed him, it reveals.

Eric Garcia reports.

Trump hits new high in Iowa poll weeks before caucuses

Watch: Trump lawyer Alina Habba insisted Trump would testify today... he decided not to

Monday 11 December 2023 16:10 , Oliver O'Connell

‘America will burn’ if Trump is jailed before election, says Megyn Kelly

Monday 11 December 2023 15:50 , Oliver O'Connell

NewsNation debate moderator Megyn Kelly has a dire prediction for American politics should Donald Trump face actual consequences for any of the more than 90 felony charges he now faces in court.

Kelly spoke to far-right gadfly Glenn Beck this past week after she was part of the team moderating the fourth and final Republican primary debate of 2023; a handful have just been scheduled to occur over January and February.

In her conversation with Beck, Kelly explained that she thought there would be violence in the streets were Mr Trump to be convicted and imprisoned before the 2024 election occurs next November.

John Bowden reports.

Megyn Kelly says ‘America will burn’ if Trump is jailed before election

Jury selection underway at Giuliani defamation trial

Monday 11 December 2023 15:30 , Oliver O'Connell

Jury selection is underway at Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial in Washington, DC. The former mayor of New York was sued by plaintiffs Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss who he falsely accused of election fraud.

The court has already found Mr Giuliani is liable for defamation so the jury must now determine the amount of damages owed to Ms Freeman and Miss Moss.

Watch: Trump tells bizarre anecdote about general during New York Republican dinner

Monday 11 December 2023 15:15 , Oliver O'Connell

Special counsel rejects Trump claims of election fraud and interference

Monday 11 December 2023 14:58 , Oliver O'Connell

In another US District court filing, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office opposes a demand by attorneys for Donald Trump for an “unprecedented expansion of the Government’s discovery obligations” including the search of files of separate entities for information not relevant to the case. Such an undertaking would significantly delay the trial.

The lengthy filing gives this example of what the former president’s team is looking for:

In support of his Motion to Compel, the defendant suggests that the Government relied only on a selection of politically biased officials (ECF No. 167 at 1-2), but he does not and cannot substantiate this theatrical claim. To the contrary, as the defendant is aware from the discovery that has been provided, the Government asked every pertinent witness—including the former DNI, former Acting Secretary of DHS, former Acting Deputy Secretary of DHS, former CISA Director, former Acting CISA Director, former CISA Senior Cyber Counsel, former National Security Advisor (“NSA”), former Deputy NSA, former Chief of Staff to the National Security Council, former Chairman of the Election Assistance Commission (“EAC”), Presidential Intelligence Briefer, former Secretary of Defense, and former senior DOJ leadership—if they were aware of any evidence that a domestic or foreign actor flipped a single vote in a voting machine during the presidential election. The answer from every single official was no.

To create the false impression that there might actually be support for his lies about voting machines, the defendant, without context, threads his filing with discussion of irrelevant network breaches around the time of the 2020 election. See ECF No. 167 at 15, 26 (arguing that compromises of “several networks that managed some election functions” were enough to call into question the security of the election). In doing so, the defendant attempts to manufacture confusion by willfully ignoring the distinction between voting machines (charged in the indictment) and registration websites (not charged in the indictment). Voting machines, like those manufactured by Dominion, are the systems used to cast and tabulate votes. They are not connected to the internet, cannot be accessed remotely, and are secured through redundant protections, such as logic and accuracy testing, paper-ballot audits, forensic scans, robust physical security, and federal certification. The states also run voter registration databases, which can be remotely accessed but are not used for voting or tabulation. While no country or cyber actor changed a single vote in a machine, there were isolated cases of foreign countries stealing registration data to target voters with disinformation—actions that constituted foreign influence, not interference.

You can read the full filing here.

Jack Smith files response to keep federal election interference case on track

Monday 11 December 2023 14:35 , Oliver O'Connell

Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed a response with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia opposing Donald Trump’s motion to stay proceedings in his federal election crimes trial pending an appeal of a ruling that rejected his attempt to dismiss the case on presidential immunity grounds.

Granting a stay would seriously jeopardise the current case schedule with the trial set to begin on 4 March 2024.

The special counsel’s office is keen to keep things on track and argues in response that it would be better to proceed with the current schedule so that if the appeal was not in the former president’s favour then everything can proceed as planned.

You can read the full response here.

ICYMI: Trump backs out of fraud trial testimony after failing to block gag order

Monday 11 December 2023 14:15 , Oliver O'Connell

Donald Trump announced he is canceling plans for his return to the witness stand hours before he was due to testify for a second time at his fraud trial in Manhattan.

In two furious, all-caps posts on his Truth Social on Sunday, the former president revived his familiar false attacks directed at the judge overseeing the trial and the state attorney general suing him as Mr Trump maintained he did nothing wrong after he was found liable for defrauding banks and investors for over a decade.

The frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination for president has broadly characterised the case as part of a grand Democratic conspiracy to prevent him from reaching the White House after next year’s election, while he faces several lawsuits and criminal indictments to hold him accountable for his attempts to overthrow the last one.

Read the full story:

Trump backs out of fraud trial testimony after failing to block gag order

Election conspiracy case: Appeals court upholds Trump’s gag order

Monday 11 December 2023 13:30 , Oliver O'Connell

A federal appeals court has upheld key parts of a gag order that blocks Donald Trump from attacking witnesses in his election conspiracy case.

The gag order put in place by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan prohibited the former president from launching a “pretrial smear campaign” as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination for president, the judge wrote in October.

Federal appellate court judges in Washington DC on Friday agreed that some of Mr Trump’s public statements “pose a significant and imminent threat to the fair and orderly adjudication of the ongoing criminal proceeding, warranting a speech-constraining protective order,” but said that the initial order “sweeps in more protected speech than is necessary.”

Mr Trump’s attorneys argued that the order unconstitutionally interferes with his “core political speech” as he runs for president while defending himself from several lawsuits and four criminal prosecutions, including two cases surrounding his alleged attempts to unlawfully overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Alex Woodward reports.

Appeals court upholds Trump’s gag order in election conspiracy case