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Cassidy Hutchinson says Republicans face ‘make-or-break’ moment on Trump

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The former Donald Trump White House aide who became a crucial witness to the January 6 attack says she believes the Republican party is facing a “make-or-break moment” over whether to nominate him in the 2024 presidential race.“We’re talking about a man who at the very essence of his being almost destroyed democracy in one day, and he wants to do it again,” Cassidy Hutchinson said of Trump during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow on Monday, a clear reference to the assault on the US Capitol that the ex-president’s supporters staged after his electoral defeat to his Democratic rival Joe Biden nearly three years ago.“He wants to run for president to do it again.”Alluding to the more than 90 charges pending against Trump across four separate criminal indictments, Hutchinson added: “He has been indicted four times since January 6. I would not have a clear conscience and be able to sleep at night if I were a Republican … that supported Donald Trump. And I think that if they’re not willing to split with that, then we’re in serious trouble.”In a separate notable portion of her interview with Maddow, Hutchinson addressed and summarily dismissed rumors that she had dated Matt Gaetz, the far-right Republican US congressman from Florida who helped spread the claims himself.“I will say on behalf of myself – I never dated Matt Gaetz,” said Hutchinson, who appeared on Maddow’s show to promote her memoir Enough, hitting bookshelves on Tuesday. Explaining that the pair had an “amicable working relationship” and “were good friends at points”, she added: “I have much higher standards in men.”Those remarks seemingly build on a cameo from Gaetz in Enough, in which the congressman is shown to unexpectedly take Hutchinson up on an offer to meet several Washington DC political aides out for drinks one night. Later that evening, according to Enough, Gaetz brushes his thumb across Hutchinson’s chin and tells her: “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a national treasure?”Despite the prominence of men like Trump and Gaetz in her party, Hutchinson reiterated that she still considered herself a Republican, though more in the mold of Senator Mitt Romney or the late president Ronald Reagan, whom some see as more moderate conservatives in retrospect.“I do not believe that Mr Trump is a strong Republican,” Hutchinson said. “In this election cycle, in my opinion, it’s a make-or-break moment for the Republican party. Now is the time if these politicians [in the party] … want to make the break and want to take the stand – they have to do it now.”Under subpoena, Hutchinson gave some of the most dramatic testimony about the Capitol attack during live congressional hearings in the summer of 2022. One key moment she described being told about was Trump’s accosting of a Secret Service agent and his lunging for the steering wheel of the car he was in when he was told he would not be driven to the Capitol on the day of the attack.That wasn’t all she endured that day. In Enough, Hutchinson recounts how on January 6 she was groped by Rudy Giuliani, the Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor.A short while after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell”, they mounted the January 6 attack on the Capitol in a desperate but unsuccessful maneuver aimed at preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election weeks earlier.The uprising has been linked to nine deaths. More than 1,100 people have been charged in connection with the attack, and the majority of them have either pleaded guilty or been convicted by judges or juries at trial.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges filed against him. The various charges collectively accuse him of retaining classified documents after his presidency, hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, and efforts to subvert his 2020 defeat which led to the January 6 attack.Despite the legal peril, Trump maintains dominant polling leads over other candidates pursuing the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.Enough plots out the 27-year-old Hutchinson’s trek from being an earnest believer in Trump to disenchantment with him. She was working for Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, at the time of the January 6 attack.Martin Pengelly contributed reporting More

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    Cassidy Hutchinson says Republicans face ‘make-or-break’ moment on Trump

    The former Donald Trump White House aide who became a crucial witness to the January 6 attack says she believes the Republican party is facing a “make-or-break moment” over whether to nominate him in the 2024 presidential race.“We’re talking about a man who at the very essence of his being almost destroyed democracy in one day, and he wants to do it again,” Cassidy Hutchinson said of Trump during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow on Monday, a clear reference to the assault on the US Capitol that the ex-president’s supporters staged after his electoral defeat to his Democratic rival Joe Biden nearly three years ago.“He wants to run for president to do it again.”Alluding to the more than 90 charges pending against Trump across four separate criminal indictments, Hutchinson added: “He has been indicted four times since January 6. I would not have a clear conscience and be able to sleep at night if I were a Republican … that supported Donald Trump. And I think that if they’re not willing to split with that, then we’re in serious trouble.”In a separate notable portion of her interview with Maddow, Hutchinson addressed and summarily dismissed rumors that she had dated Matt Gaetz, the far-right Republican US congressman from Florida who helped spread the claims himself.“I will say on behalf of myself – I never dated Matt Gaetz,” said Hutchinson, who appeared on Maddow’s show to promote her memoir Enough, hitting bookshelves on Tuesday. Explaining that the pair had an “amicable working relationship” and “were good friends at points”, she added: “I have much higher standards in men.”Those remarks seemingly build on a cameo from Gaetz in Enough, in which the congressman is shown to unexpectedly take Hutchinson up on an offer to meet several Washington DC political aides out for drinks one night. Later that evening, according to Enough, Gaetz brushes his thumb across Hutchinson’s chin and tells her: “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a national treasure?”Despite the prominence of men like Trump and Gaetz in her party, Hutchinson reiterated that she still considered herself a Republican, though more in the mold of Senator Mitt Romney or the late president Ronald Reagan, whom some see as more moderate conservatives in retrospect.“I do not believe that Mr Trump is a strong Republican,” Hutchinson said. “In this election cycle, in my opinion, it’s a make-or-break moment for the Republican party. Now is the time if these politicians [in the party] … want to make the break and want to take the stand – they have to do it now.”Under subpoena, Hutchinson gave some of the most dramatic testimony about the Capitol attack during live congressional hearings in the summer of 2022. One key moment she described being told about was Trump’s accosting of a Secret Service agent and his lunging for the steering wheel of the car he was in when he was told he would not be driven to the Capitol on the day of the attack.That wasn’t all she endured that day. In Enough, Hutchinson recounts how on January 6 she was groped by Rudy Giuliani, the Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor.A short while after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell”, they mounted the January 6 attack on the Capitol in a desperate but unsuccessful maneuver aimed at preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election weeks earlier.The uprising has been linked to nine deaths. More than 1,100 people have been charged in connection with the attack, and the majority of them have either pleaded guilty or been convicted by judges or juries at trial.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges filed against him. The various charges collectively accuse him of retaining classified documents after his presidency, hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, and efforts to subvert his 2020 defeat which led to the January 6 attack.Despite the legal peril, Trump maintains dominant polling leads over other candidates pursuing the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.Enough plots out the 27-year-old Hutchinson’s trek from being an earnest believer in Trump to disenchantment with him. She was working for Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, at the time of the January 6 attack.Martin Pengelly contributed reporting More

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    US Capitol rioter who attacked photographer sentenced to five years

    A man who attacked an Associated Press photographer and threw a flagpole and smoke grenade at police officers guarding the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, was sentenced in a federal court on Friday to five years in prison.Rodney Milstreed, 56, of Finksburg, Maryland, “prepared himself for battle” on January 6 by injecting steroids and arming himself with a four-foot wooden club disguised as a flagpole, prosecutors said.“He began taking steroids in the weeks leading up to January 6, so that he would be ‘jacked’ and ready because, he said, someone needed to ‘hang for treason’ and the battle might come down to hand-to-hand combat,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.A prosecutor showed US district judge James Boasberg videos of Milstreed’s attacks outside the Capitol, as supporters of Donald Trump marched on and later invaded the Capitol in the vain hopes of preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.“I know what I did that day was very wrong,” he said.Capitol police officer Devan Gowdy suffered a concussion when Milstreed hurled his wooded club at a line of officers.“January 6 is a day that will be burned into my brain and my nightmares for the rest of my life,” Gowdy told the judge. “The effects of this domestic terrorist attack will never leave me.”Gowdy told Milstreed that he “will always be looked at as a domestic terrorist and traitor” for his actions on January 6. The officer has since left the police.Milstreed was arrested in May 2022 in Colorado and pleaded guilty in April to assault charges and possessing an unregistered firearm.A cache of weapons and ammunition was found at Milstreed’s Maryland home and in his Colorado hotel room investigators found 94 vials of probably illegal steroids.Milstreed spewed violent, threatening rhetoric on social media in the weeks before the insurrection.He attended Trump’s rally near the White House earlier on January 6 and then, with the president urging his supporters to overturn the election result, followed the crowd of supporters of the Republican to the Capitol.Milstreed was “front and center” as rioters and police clashed outside the Capitol, prosecutors said. He tossed his wooden club at a police line and a video captured him retrieving a smoke grenade from the crowd and throwing it back at police across a barricade.Milstreed then joined other rioters in attacking an AP photographer, grabbing the photographer’s backpack and yanking him down some steps.Milstreed used Facebook to update his friends on the riot in real time.“Man I’ve never seen anything like this. I feel so alive,” he wrote, sharing photos of blood on a floor outside the Capitol, also writing it “felt good” to punch the photographer.More than 1,100 people have been charged with January 6-related federal crimes. More

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    Ex-Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson claims Rudy Giuliani groped her on January 6

    Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump aide turned crucial January 6 witness, says in a new book that she was groped by Rudy Giuliani, who was “like a wolf closing in on its prey”, on the day of the attack on the Capitol.Describing meeting with Giuliani backstage at Donald Trump’s speech near the White House before his supporters marched on Congress in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Hutchinson says the former New York mayor turned Trump lawyer put his hand “under my blazer, then my skirt”.“I feel his frozen fingers trail up my thigh,” she writes. “He tilts his chin up. The whites of his eyes look jaundiced. My eyes dart to [Trump adviser] John Eastman, who flashes a leering grin.“I fight against the tension in my muscles and recoil from Rudy’s grip … filled with rage, I storm through the tent, on yet another quest for Mark.”Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, was Hutchinson’s White House boss. Hutchinson’s memoir, Enough, describes her journey from Trump supporter to disenchantment, and her role as a key witness for the House January 6 committee. It will be published in the US next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.Since Trump left office, Giuliani has landed in extraordinary legal and financial trouble. Like Trump, Giuliani has pleaded not guilty to 13 criminal racketeering and conspiracy charges in Georgia, over attempted election subversion. Giuliani was also found liable for defamation of two Georgia election workers. The Washington DC Bar Association has recommended he be disbarred.Struggling to pay his legal expenses, his luxury New York apartment up for sale, and Giuliani also faces a $1.3m lawsuit from his own lawyer, seeking unpaid fees, and a $10m suit from a former personal assistant. In that suit, Giuliani is accused of offences including abuse of power, wage theft, sexual assault and harassment.A representative for Giuliani did not immediately respond to a Guardian request for comment about Hutchinson’s description of her interaction with the former mayor.Describing the events on January 6, the deadly culmination of Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden, Hutchinson writes that she “experience[d] anger, bewilderment, and a creeping sense of dread that something really horrible [was] going to happen”.“I find Rudy in the back of the tent with, among others, John Eastman,” she continues. “The corners of his mouth split into a Cheshire cat smile. Waving a stack of documents, he moves towards me, like a wolf closing in on its prey.“‘We have the evidence. It’s all here. We’re going to pull this off.’ Rudy wraps one arm around my body, closing the space that was separating us. I feel his stack of documents press into the small of my back. I lower my eyes and watch his free hand reach for the hem of my blazer.“‘By the way,’ he says, fingering the fabric, ‘I’m loving this leather jacket on you.’ His hand slips under my blazer, then my skirt,” Hutchinson writes.
    Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html More

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    CCTV appears to show Lauren Boebert vaping during Beetlejuice musical – video

    Newly released surveillance video from a Denver theater appears to show Lauren Boebert vaping, singing, filming and disturbing other patrons during a Beetlejuice musical play. The US congresswoman has issued an apology after being kicked out of the performance in Denver for inappropriate behavior, an experience she has called ‘difficult and humbling’ More

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    ‘We’re not asking to be millionaires’: workers strike at US car giants – video

    Car workers have launched a series of strikes after their union failed to reach agreement on a new contract with the three largest US vehicle manufacturers, kicking off the country’s most ambitious industrial action in decades.
    The deadline for talks between the United Auto Workers union (UAW) and the car manufacturers Ford, General Motors and Stellantis expired at midnight on Thursday, with the sides still far from agreement on UAW’s contract priorities More

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    Active-duty US marine sentenced for participation in January 6 Capitol attack

    One of three active-duty US marines who stormed the nation’s Capitol together was sentenced on Monday to probation and 279 hours of community service – one hour for every marine who was killed or wounded fighting in the American civil war.The US district judge Ana Reyes said she could not fathom why Dodge Hellonen violated his oath to protect the constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” – and risked his career – by joining the 6 January 2021 riot that disrupted Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.“I really urge you to think about why it happened so you can address it and ensure it never happens again,” Reyes said.Dodge Hellonen, now 24, was the first of the three marines to be punished for participating in the Capitol attack. Reyes also is scheduled to sentence his co-defendants Micah Coomer on Tuesday and Joshua Abate on Wednesday.The three marines – friends from the same unit – drove together from a military post in Virginia to Washington DC on 6 January, when then president Donald Trump spoke at his “Save America” rally near the White House. They joined the crowd that stormed the Capitol after Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell”.Before imposing Hellonen’s sentence, Reyes described how marines fought and died in some of the fiercest battles in American history. She recited the number of casualties from some of the bloodiest wars.Prosecutors recommended short terms of incarceration – 30 days for Coomer and 21 days for Hellonen and Abate – along with 60 hours of community service.A prosecutor wrote in a court filing that their military service, while laudable, makes their conduct “all the more troubling”.Reyes said she agreed with prosecutors that Hellonen’s status as an active-duty marine did not weigh in favor of a more lenient sentence. But she ultimately decided to spare him from a prison term, sentencing him to four years of probation.Reyes said it “carried a great deal of weight” to learn that Hellonen maintained a positive attitude and stellar work ethic when he was effectively demoted after the January 6 attack. He went from working as a signals analyst to a job that few marines want, inventorying military gear.“The only person who can give you a second chance is yourself,” she told him.“I take full responsibility for my actions and I’ll carry this with me for the rest of my life,” Hellonen told the judge.Hellonen, Coomer and Abate pleaded guilty earlier this year to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of six months behind bars. Hundreds of Capitol rioters have pleaded guilty to the same charge, which is akin to trespassing.More than 600 people have been sentenced for Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 100 of them have served in the US military, according to an Associated Press review of court records. Only a few were active-duty military or law enforcement personnel on January 6.As of Friday, all three marines were still on active-duty status, according to the Marine Corps. But all three could be separated from the Marine Corps “on less than honorable conditions”, prosecutors said. More

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    Trump asks judge to recuse herself in federal 2020 election subversion case

    Donald Trump’s legal team on Monday asked the federal judge overseeing the 2020 election interference prosecution against him to remove herself from the case, arguing that her previous public comments about the former president’s culpability in the January 6 Capitol attack was disqualifying.The recusal motion, filed to and against the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, faces major legal hurdles: to succeed, Trump must show a “reasonable person” would conclude from just her remarks – but not any of her actual rulings – that she was unable to preside impartially.Trump has long complained that the judge assigned to the case was biased against him because of her previous comments about Trump in other January 6 riot defendant cases and his legal team weighed filing the motion for weeks, according to two people familiar with deliberations.The nine-page motion identified two episodes where Chutkan remarked on her opinion about Trump’s responsibility in instigating the Capitol attack, which Trump’s lawyers argued gave rise to the appearance of potential bias or prejudice against the former president.The first instance came in October 2022 when she said, referring to January 6: “And the people who mobbed that Capitol were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man… It’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.”Trump’s lawyers argued that those remarks, which came during sentencing of a rioter who stormed the Capitol, suggested Chutkan believed Trump should have been prosecuted and jailed in a pre-judgement of guilt that alone was disqualifying.The second instance was when the judge told another January 6 rioter in December 2021: “The people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged,” adding, “I have my opinions,” but that was out of her control.Trump’s lawyers argued that those remarks suggested Chutkan agreed with that rioter’s defense attorney, who had said Trump had falsely convinced his supporters that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that they needed to take steps to stop the peaceful transition of power.It was uncertain whether the judge’s two public statements would satisfy the high bar for removal. Notably, the motion did not complain about any of Chutkan’s pre-trial rulings to date, perhaps because in a handful of instances, she has ruled against prosecutors.The judge, an Obama appointee, came into the case with a reputation of being particularly tough in January 6-related prosecutions after she handed down sentences in some prosecutions that were longer than had been requested by the justice department.Still, Chutkan is far from the only federal judge in DC – or elsewhere in the country, for that matter – who has suggested Trump might have culpability for the Capitol attack during sentencing hearings.In June, US district judge Amy Berman Jackson told the January 6 rioter Daniel Rodriguez, who she sentenced to 12 years in jail for using a Taser on DC Metropolitan police officer Michael Fanone, that he had been radicalized by “irresponsible and knowingly false claims that the election was stolen”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFiling a recusal motion is not necessarily uncommon and federal judges tend not to take offense, former prosecutors and defense attorneys have said, even if Trump files them almost as a matter of routine. Recently, Trump sought to recuse the state court judge in his Manhattan criminal case, which was denied.Should the judge decline to remove herself, legal experts said Trump could seek to have the decision reviewed and petition the US court of appeals for the DC circuit for a writ of mandamus, a judicial order to a lower-court judge compelling an action such as recusal.The appeal could be accompanied with a motion to stay Chutkan’s rulings pending appeal, which could delay the pre-trial process and push back the current trial date set for March 2024 while that litigation continues.That kind of postponement would be beneficial to Trump, who has made clear that his overarching legal strategy for each of his criminal cases is to seek delay – preferably until after the 2024 presidential election as part of an effort to insulate himself from the charges.The consequences of an extended delay could be far-reaching. If the case is not adjudicated until after the 2024 election and Trump is re-elected, he could try to pardon himself or direct the attorney general to have the justice department drop the case in its entirety. More

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    Georgia special grand jury recommended charges against Lindsey Graham and former senators – live

    From 1h agoThe special grand jury investigating the attempt to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results recommended bringing charges against the state’s former senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler as well as the current South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham.None of the three were named in the indictment Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis unveiled last month, which targeted Donald Trump and 18 others with racketeering charges related to their attempt to stop Joe Biden from collecting Georgia’s electoral votes despite his victory there.According to the report, the jurors recommended the three senators be charged over “the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election”.All told, the special grand jurors in Georgia recommended charges against 39 people for trying to overturn the state’s elections, but Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s indictment only targeted 19 people, Donald Trump among them.Among those who were named in the report, but not charged:David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler were Georgia’s Republican senators, until both were ousted from office by the Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in elections held the day before the January 6 insurrection.The special grand jury in Fulton county recommended that Perdue be charged “over the persistent, repeated communications directed to multiple Georgia officials and employees between November of 2020 and January of 2021” – the period when Donald Trump was trying to overturn his election loss. The vote was 16 jurors in favor, one against, and one abstention.The jurors also recommended charges against both Loeffler and Perdue for “the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election”. However there was more dissent on this count. For Perdue, the vote was 17 in favor and four against, while for Loeffler, the vote was 14 in favor, 6 against, and one abstention.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis ultimately did not indict either of the former lawmakers.Lindsey Graham’s name appeared early as Donald Trump’s attempts to stay in the White House began shortly after his re-election defeat in November 2020.Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger told the press that the South Carolina senator had called him to ask if it was possible to throw away mail-in ballots in counties crucial to Joe Biden’s win in Georgia. From the Guardian’s Lauren Gambino’s report at the time:
    Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has said that Senator Lindsey Graham asked whether it was possible to invalidate legally cast ballots after Donald Trump was narrowly defeated in the state.
    In an interview with the Washington Post, Raffensperger said that his fellow Republican, the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, questioned him about the state’s signature-matching law and asked whether political bias might have played a role in counties where poll workers accepted higher rates of mismatched signatures. According to Raffensperger, Graham then asked whether he had the authority to toss out all mail-in ballots in these counties.
    Raffensperger was reportedly “stunned” by the question, in which Graham appeared to suggest that he find a way to throw out legally cast absentee ballots.
    “It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” he said.
    Graham confirmed the conversation to reporters on Capitol Hill but said it was “ridiculous” to suggest that he pressured Raffensperger to throw out legally cast absentee ballots. According to Graham, he only wanted to learn more about the process for verifying signatures, because what happens in Georgia “affects the whole nation”.
    “I thought it was a good conversation,” Graham said on Monday after the interview was published. “I’m surprised to hear he characterized it that way.”
    Trump has refused to accept results showing Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, falsely blaming rampant fraud and irregularities that election officials in both parties have dismissed as meritless.
    The special grand jury investigating the attempt to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results recommended bringing charges against the state’s former senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler as well as the current South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham.None of the three were named in the indictment Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis unveiled last month, which targeted Donald Trump and 18 others with racketeering charges related to their attempt to stop Joe Biden from collecting Georgia’s electoral votes despite his victory there.According to the report, the jurors recommended the three senators be charged over “the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election”.The full report of the special grand jury whose investigation led to the indictment of Donald Trump and 18 others for trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result has been released.We’re digging into it and will let you know what it says.The special grand jury report that was used in the indictment of Donald Trump and 18 others in Georgia for trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results is expected to be released any minute now.While parts of it have already been unsealed, we will finally be getting a look at the full report by the jurors empaneled by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis. There are two main pieces of news expected from the report:
    Whether the grand jurors recommended charges be brought against people who Willis ultimately opted not to pursue.
    The vote counts for each person the jurors said should be indicted, and whether there were any significant splits within the panel.
    Yesterday, Ron DeSantis had a testy exchange with an audience member who accused the Republican governor of backing policies in Florida that enabled violence against Black people – such as last month’s shooting by a racist gunman in Jacksonville:Clearly smarting over the exchange, DeSantis later went on Fox News to call the questioner a “nutjob”:While Joe Biden is in India for a meeting of G20 leaders, Republicans angling to replace him next year are continuing their campaigns, including Ron DeSantis – who may have done himself more harm than good by skipping a meeting with the president after a hurricane struck Florida. Here’s the story, from the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe:One reality of Florida politics is that a bad hurricane for the state traditionally blows good fortune for its governor. It was true for Rick Scott, elected a senator in November 2018, one month after guiding Florida through Category 5 Hurricane Michael; and again for Ron DeSantis, whose landslide re-election last year followed his much-praised handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Ian.This year, however, DeSantis is struggling to shake the dark clouds of Hurricane Idalia, as his return to the national stage to try to rescue his flailing presidential campaign after an 11-day break has been further scarred by his “petty and small” snub of Joe Biden’s visit to Florida last weekend to survey the storm’s damage.Opponents seized on it as a partisan politicization of a climate disaster, contrasting the Republican Florida governor’s approach to a year ago after Ian, when DeSantis and Biden put their differences aside to praise each other and tour the worst-affected areas with their respective first ladies.“Your job as governor is to be the tour guide for the president, to make sure the president sees your people, sees the damage, sees the suffering, what’s going on and what needs to be done to rebuild it,” Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, and a rival for the Republican presidential nomination, told Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade.“You’re doing your job. And unfortunately, he put politics ahead of his job,” added Christie, who was applauded by Democrats and savaged by Republicans for working closely with Barack Obama after superstorm Sandy mauled his state in 2012.The Twitter/X account of Joe Biden, who is currently flying on Air Force One to New Delhi for a summit of G20 nations, just released video showing him touring the renovated situation room.That’s the space in the White House where the president goes to handle emergencies or highly sensitive operations:Perhaps the most famous appearance of a president in the situation room is Barack Obama’s from 1 May 2011, as he watched US soldiers kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. His photographer Pete Souza captured the scene:Yesterday, Donald Trump indicated he may ask that his trial in the Georgia election subversion case be moved to federal court, which the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported could have a number of advantages for the former president:Donald Trump’s lead defense lawyer notified a judge in Fulton county on Thursday that he could soon seek to remove to federal court the racketeering prosecution charging him with attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.The unusual filing, submitted to the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee, said only that the former president “may seek removal of his prosecution”, stopping short of submitting a formal motion to transfer the trial venue.Trump has been weighing for weeks whether to seek removal to federal court and, according to two people familiar with deliberations, is expected to make a decision based on whether his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is successful in his own effort.The idea with waiting on a decision in the Meadows case, the people said, is to use him as a test. If Meadows is successful in transferring to federal court, the Trump legal team is intending to repurpose the same arguments and follow a similar strategy.To have the case moved to the US district court for the northern district of Georgia, Trump would have to show that the criminal conduct alleged in the indictment involved his official duties as president – he was acting “under color of office” – and cannot be prosecuted at the state level.The rationale to seek removal to federal court is seen as twofold: the jury pool would expand beyond just the Atlanta area – which skews heavily Democratic – and a federal judge might be less deferential to local prosecutors compared with judges in the Fulton county superior court.The Georgia special grand jury report that is expected to be released at 10am ET today could reveal whether the investigative panel thought anyone else besides Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants should face charges for meddling in the state’s election result three years ago.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis convened the panel and used its subpoena power to compel witness testimony, and portions of its final report have already been released. The special grand jury did not indict Trump – that was done by one of the regular grand juries she convened in August.Good morning, US politics live blog readers. It’s going to be another big Friday in one of the criminal cases against Donald Trump, while US president Joe Biden is in India for G20 and a crucial bilateral with the prime minister, Narendra Modi.Here’s some of what’s ahead:
    The report of the special grand jury in Georgia that investigated Trump in the election subversion case – where the now-former president attempted to overturn the 2020 election in the swing state – is expected to be unsealed today.
    Biden is due to touch down in New Delhi, India, in under two hours, a day before the start of the G20 summit there. He and Modi will hold a bilateral meeting shortly after the US president arrives. The specter of Russia’s war in Ukraine looms over the event.
    Speaking of criminal cases against former US presidents, on this day 49 years ago Republican president Gerald Ford granted a “full, free, and absolute pardon” to former president Richard Nixon covering his entire term in office, the AP notes.
    Trump will attend a rally tonight in South Dakota and the state’s rightwing governor Kristi Noem is expected to endorse his run for the 2024 Republican nomination for the White House. Noem is considered a vice-presidential hopeful. More