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3.48pm EST

15:48

Russia plans ‘very graphic’ fake video as pretext for Ukraine invasion, US claims

3.28pm EST

15:28

Trump Israel ambassador spills beans on embarrassing meeting

1.48pm EST

13:48

‘The answer is not to defund the police’ – Biden

1.39pm EST

13:39

Joe Biden considering executive order to implement police reform – White House

12.30pm EST

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Today so far

12.18pm EST

12:18

Russia plans staged attack to justify invasion of Ukraine – reports

10.40am EST

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Isis leader detonated bomb to avoid US capture, Biden says

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4.37pm EST

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The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, became similarly defensive earlier today when a reporter pressed for more details about the deaths of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and his family members.
Joe Biden said that Qurayshi detonated a bomb to avoid capture by the US troops who carried out a special forces raid last night, and the explosion killed the Islamic State leader and several of his family members.
NPR reporter Ayesha Rascoe asked Psaki whether the White House would present evidence to substantiate Biden’s claims that a suicide bomb killed Qurayshi and his family.
“Obviously, these events just happened overnight. And so, I’m going to let the Department of Defense do a final assessment, which I’m certain they will provide additional detail on once it’s finalized,” Psaki said.
Rascoe continued to press the issue, telling Psaki, “The US has not always been straightforward about what happens with civilians. And, I mean, that is a fact.”
The US military initially described a Kabul drone attack carried out last year as a “righteous strike,” but Pentagon leaders were later forced to admit that the attack had actually killed 10 civilians and no Islamic State combatants.
“The president made clear from the beginning, at every point in this process, that doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties was his priority and his preference,” Psaki said.
“Given these events just happened less than 24 hours ago, we’re going to give [the Pentagon] time to make a final assessment. And they’ll provide every detail they can.”

4.14pm EST

16:14

The State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, clashed with a reporter at his press briefing after the journalist demanded evidence to substantiate US claims of Russia’s plans to stage an attack to justify an invasion of Ukraine.
“You’ve made an allegation that they might do that. Have they actually done it?” AP reporter Matt Lee asked Price.
“What we know, Matt, is what I just said, that they have engaged in this activity,” Price said. “We told you a few weeks ago that we have information indicating Russia also has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine. So that, Matt, to your question is an action that Russia has already taken.”

The Hill
(@thehill)
Reporter: “It’s an action that you say they have taken, but you have shown no evidence to confirm that. […] This is like – crisis actors? Really? This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now.”Must-watch exchange between @APDiploWriter Matt Lee and @StateDeptSpox. pic.twitter.com/RPIPb2zwf5

February 3, 2022

Lee pointed out that the administration has not presented evidence to support the allegation of a planned false-flag operation either, and he pressed for concrete proof of Russia’s schemes in Ukraine.
Specifically on the allegation of a planned fake video to justify an invasion, Lee said, “This is like – crisis actors? Really? This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now.”
Pointing to his decades of experience covering US foreign policy, Lee noted that the Pentagon has previously made wrong assertions about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the potential of Kabul falling to the Taliban.
Price became defensive, telling Lee, “If you doubt the credibility of the US government, of the British government, of other governments and want to, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do.”

3.48pm EST

15:48

Russia plans ‘very graphic’ fake video as pretext for Ukraine invasion, US claims

The Guardian’s Julian Borger and Shaun Walker report:
US officials claim they have evidence of a Russian plan to make a “very graphic” fake video of a Ukrainian attack as a pretext for an invasion.
The alleged plot would involve using corpses, footage of blown-up buildings, fake Ukrainian military hardware, Turkish-made drones and actors playing the part of Russian-speaking mourners.
“We don’t know definitively that this is the route they are going to take, but we know that this is an option under consideration,” the deputy national security adviser, Jonathan Finer, told MSNBC, adding that the video “would involve actors playing mourners for people who are killed in an event that they would have created themselves”.
Finer added: “That would involve the deployment of corpses to represent bodies purportedly killed, of people purportedly killed in an incident like this.”
The Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said the video would have purported to show a Ukrainian attack on Russian territory or Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine and would be “very graphic”. He added that the US believed that the plan had the backing of the Kremlin.
“Our experience is that very little of this nature is not approved at the highest levels of the Russian government,” Kirby said.

3.28pm EST

15:28

Trump Israel ambassador spills beans on embarrassing meeting

Martin Pengelly

Meeting then-Israeli president Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem in May 2017, Donald Trump stunned advisers by criticising the then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for being unwilling to seek peace while Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, was “desperate” for a deal. More

Rudy Giuliani doesn’t need a monster costume to scare childrenSam WolfsonTrump’s lawyer was revealed to be a contestant on The Masked Singer – and when Robin Thicke storms off in protest, you know you’ve got problems It’s like something from a Guillermo del Toro film: a grotesque fantasy creature disrobes, only to reveal an even more horrifying monster underneath. But that’s what viewers will see when the US version of The Masked Singer, Fox’s incognito singing competition, returns at the end of this month.Rudy Giuliani’s surprise reveal on Masked Singer led to judges walking offRead moreThe show, in which a panel of judges and the audience try to guess the identity of celebrity vocalists dressed in furry theme-park costumes, is taped in advance of airing. But Deadline reports that at the first episode’s climax, when the eliminated singer reveals their true identity, it was Rudy Giuliani whose head popped out of the costume. Judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke walked off the set in protest. Quite a good reflection of how bad a guy you have to be when rape-culture chanteur Thicke, the singer of Blurred Lines, decides you’re beyond the pale.The disbarred attorney and former mayor of New York, who played one of the largest roles in trying to end 250 years of American democracy, is now under investigation for bribing foreign powers to investigate his political opponent, lying about election fraud, and trying to actively overturn votes, in some cases by seizing voting machines or ignoring electoral counts. It would be fair to say that the only reason the results of a democratic presidential election were not overturned is because Giuliani’s attempts were thwarted.So what better place for this cuddly henchman to hide from law enforcement than on a cosplay singing show. No footage has yet been released of what outfit Giuliani was wearing, although he doesn’t need a monster costume to scare children. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how the producers came up with something more grotesque than his own smirking face, seen recently on the Borat sequel making creepy sex eyes at an actor he believed was a young journalist as he thrust his hand down his trousers.The Masked Singer began in Korea, but has been exported round the world and become one of the most successful non-scripted series in the US of the last decade. Stars from every era, including Gladys Knight, T-Pain, Jojo and Jewel, have found career rejuvenation after appearing on the show as furrier versions of themselves.But the masks have also been a way on sneaking controversial figures who may not normally be accepted on primetime TV. Logan Paul, who uploaded footage of a suicide victim to his YouTube channel, was eliminated in season five, and in season three a cuddly pink bear that rapped Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back was revealed to be former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Palin later commented that her appearance was “a walking middle finger to the haters out there”.Reality TV provides a fantastic and powerful form of reputation-washing, in which all participants are celebrated “for being able to laugh at themselves”, as if that was a greater attribute than not being a fascist.There is a reason Giuliani, Palin, Sean Spicer (Dancing with the Stars), Anthony Scaramucci and Omarosa Manigault Newman (Celebrity Big Brother) have attempted to use entertainment, rather than politics, to revive their reputations, and it’s not just because they enjoying turning network television into a moral-less Hunger Games universe where propagandists with blood on their hands shimmy in sparkles in between adverts for pharmaceuticals and Tostitos. Shows like The Masked Singer encourage viewers to think of politicians’ personalities as somehow separate from their political positions.We’ll have to wait until next month to find out what Giuliani wore. Until then, we’re left to imagine what stench uncontrolled flatulence might create in a costume that producers have previously warmed can get dangerously hot.TopicsRudy GiulianiTelevisionUS politicsTrump administrationUS televisioncommentReuse this content More

After decrying Republican election rigging, Democrats embrace it in New York Democrats propose new redistricting maps that would give the party three additional seats in CongressNew York Democrats are plowing ahead with an aggressive effort to rig the state’s electoral maps to give the party as many as three additional seats in Congress, a move that comes as the party has denounced similar Republican-led efforts in other states as anti-democratic.Democrats currently have a 19-8 advantage in New York’s delegation to the US House of Representatives. Their proposed districts, unveiled on Sunday, would give them up to three additional seats, increasing their advantage to 22-4. (There is one fewer seat overall in New York because of population shifts.)The plan puts Democrats in an awkward political position. “Democrats have given up any high ground they had over Republicans on gerrymandering,” Pat Kiernan, the popular local news anchor, tweeted on Sunday. “These maps are the most brazen and outrageous attempt at rigging the election to keep Nancy Pelosi as speaker,” Nick Langworthy, the chairman of the state Republican party, said in a statement. “What they’re doing is textbook, filthy, partisan gerrymandering.”Over the last few months, Democrats in Congress have led efforts calling for an end to excessive partisan gerrymandering – an effort that failed last month when Republicans filibustered a sweeping voting rights bill. They’ve watched as Republican legislatures across the US have carved up district lines to their advantage to help the GOP as they try to take control of the US House later this year. But New York is one of the few places where Democrats have complete control of the process and a chance to gain Democratic seats. Nationally, Republicans have complete control over the drawing of 187 districts and Democrats have control over just 75. More than a third of the districts Democrats will draw are in New York. Here’s how they’re doing it in one of them.@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Regular.woff2) 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‘Apartheid state’: Israel’s fears over image in US are coming to pass The likening of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to white-ruled South Africa is growing more widespread in the US mainstreamAt the beginning of the year, Israel’s foreign minister Yair Lapid reflected on the diplomatic challenges for 2022.“We think that in the coming year, there will be debate that is unprecedented in its venom and in its radioactivity around the words ‘Israel as an apartheid state’,” he told Israeli journalists. “In 2022, it will be a tangible threat.”Lapid pointed to two United Nations investigations he said were likely to conclude that Israel’s governance of occupied Palestinian territory amounts to the crime of apartheid under international law.Amnesty International calls Israel’s actions against Palestinians apartheidRead moreSeveral Israeli and international human rights organisations have reached exactly that view, including Amnesty International with the release of a report this week, Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: a Cruel System of Domination and a Crime Against umanity.Israel is also facing an international criminal court investigation into actions in the occupied territories, such as the confiscation of Palestinian land to build Jewish settlements, that Amnesty International and others have said breach international laws against apartheid.But Israel is also concerned that the breaking of the longstanding taboo in the US on comparing its rule over the Palestinians to white South Africa’s racist repression of its black population is evidence of a slower-moving – but potentially more dangerous –threat: the fracturing of once rock-solid backing for Israel within its most important ally.The Israeli foreign ministry’s director general, Alon Ushpiz, placed protecting longstanding bipartisan support for the Jewish state in the US at the top of a list of Israel’s diplomatic priorities this year as opinion polls show eroding support among Democrats, in part driven by changing narratives about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.For years, polls showed that Democrats sympathised with the Israelis at twice the rate of support for the Palestinians. But since the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014, backing for the Jewish state has fallen and support is now about evenly divided.That change is accentuated among younger Americans, with adults under 35 far less well-disposed towards Israel than older generations.A separate survey last June found that half of Democrats want Washington to shift policy toward more support for the Palestinians.Support for Israeli government policies is even falling within the US Jewish community, with a poll last year finding that 25% of American Jews agreed that “Israel is an apartheid state”.There is little evidence that Washington’s backing for Israel, including the largest amount of (mostly military) US aid given to any country, is in any immediate danger. But pro-Israel groups are increasingly concerned at the diminishing effectiveness of their attempts to portray the Jewish state as yearning for peace but confronted by Palestinian terrorism.That claim has increasingly been challenged by what Americans can now see on social media, particularly video of Israeli attacks and maltreatment of Palestinians. Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza – when it killed more than 2,000 Palestinians and destroyed schools and homes in response to Hamas rocket attacks that killed three Israeli teenagers – helped solidify the view of an all-powerful state unleashing destruction against a largely defenceless population.Black Lives Matter protesters make Palestinian struggle their ownRead moreThe rise of Black Lives Matter has fuelled the drive to frame the Palestinian cause as a civil rights issue of resistance to Israeli domination.“People can see for themselves what’s happening in a way they didn’t before,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the former director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division who worked on the group’s report, A Threshold Crossed, Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.“It’s made it harder, particularly in the United States, for the emotional defenders of Israel, who’ve had this mythology about Israel and the kibbutz and sowing the land and this sort of fantasy of what Israel’s like, confronted with the reality of what they see in front of their faces.”Israel’s attempts to push back against the shifting narrative have been undermined by its own actions, including the passing of the “nation state” law in 2018 which enshrined Jewish supremacy over the country’s Arab citizens. Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, and members of his cabinet have a long history of opposition to a Palestinian state.Israel can still count on solid support at the top of the American power structure. But Democratic sympathies were not strengthened by Israel’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was openly hostile to President Barack Obama while publicly aligning with the Republican leadership in Congress.His embrace of Trump’s “peace plan” two years ago further alienated some Democrats who denounced it as a smokescreen for Israeli annexation in the West Bank that would create Palestinian enclaves reminiscent of “Bantustan”, black homelands in South Africa.Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer who has spent decades exposing Israel’s land grab and settlement policy in occupied East Jerusalem, recently travelled to Washington to gauge Israel policy.“The sands are shifting in the United States, in the Congress, in public opinion, and in the American Jewish community, and the apartheid discourse is part of it. There is a centre but that centre is not going to hold,” he said.“Increasing numbers of people abroad are beginning to see Israel as an apartheid state and a pariah state, and Israelis are increasingly fearing that.”TopicsIsraelUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Trump risked disaster with Abbas praise in key Israel meeting, ambassador saysIn new book, David Friedman recounts private meeting with Israeli president in which Trump also knocked Netanyahu – and how he says he turned his man around Meeting then-Israeli president Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem in May 2017, Donald Trump stunned advisers by criticising the then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for being unwilling to seek peace while Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, was “desperate” for a deal.‘Apartheid state’: Israel’s fears over image in US are coming to passRead moreThe comment “knocked everyone off their chairs”, David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, writes in a new book.“Although the meeting was private and off the record, we all envisioned a headline tomorrow that Trump had praised Abbas and criticised Netanyahu – the worst possible dynamic for the president’s popularity or for the prospects of the peace process.“Fortunately, and incredibly, the event wasn’t leaked.”Friedman now describes the incident, and how he says he changed Trump’s mind, in Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, a memoir which will be published next week by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins. The Guardian obtained a copy.Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer was a hugely controversial choice for ambassador. As well as being a hardline pro-settler rightwinger, during the 2016 campaign he called Barack Obama an antisemite and J Street, a liberal US Jewish group, “worse than kapos”, Jewish prisoners who worked as guards in Nazi concentration camps.He was confirmed as ambassador by a 52-46 Senate vote. US ambassadors to Israel are usually confirmed unanimously.In his book, he says the “worse than kapos” remark was not a political or policy mistake but a tactical one, as it gave ammunition to critics in the Senate.Describing four “murder boards”, sessions in which nominees are grilled over potential problems, he says he first said he used the controversial phrase “because I felt that J Street had betrayed the Jewish people”.That, he writes, caused a “firestorm of reaction” and he was told he could not speak that way. His settled-on answer was: “In the heat of a political campaign I allowed my rhetoric to get the best of me. I regret these comments and assure you that if confirmed, my remarks will be measured and diplomatic.”Describing his confirmation process, Friedman reproduces private conversations with Democratic senators including Kirsten Gillibrand of New York (a “bad joke”), Cory Booker of New Jersey (“delightful” in person, only, Friedman writes, to turn on him in hearings), and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader.Friedman says he had donated to Schumer and the two New Yorkers spoke amicably before Friedman made a pitch for his vote, which he said would send “a strong message of bipartisanship on Israel, which you have advocated on numerous occasions”.Schumer, he says, smiled and answered: “I’m not giving Trump the win. Sorry.”Friedman also recounts an angry meeting with Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, who he accuses of “siding with terrorists over one of America’s strongest allies”.But his description of the meeting between Trump and Rivlin and how Friedman says he turned his president round makes for more surprising reading, not least in how it appears to show how eager Trump was for a deal.Friedman describes how during Trump’s next meeting, with Netanyahu, he manoeuvred all present into viewing a “two-minute collection of Abbas’s speeches that I thought was worth watching”.The tape contained “two minutes of Abbas honouring terrorists, extolling violence, and vowing never to accept anything less than Israel’s total defeat”.“After the tape ended,” Friedman writes, “the president said, ‘Wow, is that the same guy I met in Washington last month? He seemed like such a sweet, peaceful guy.’“The tape had clearly made an impact.”Friedman writes that he was rebuked by Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state, and HR McMaster, Trump’s second national security adviser.“They thought it was a cheap propaganda trick,” he writes. He told them, he writes, “I work for the president, and nobody else … I am going to make sure that he is well informed so that he gets Israel policy right.”Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new bookRead moreFriedman emphasises his role in such policy, prominently including closeness to Netanyahu; support for Israeli settlers on Palestinian land; cutting aid to Palestinians; recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and moving the US embassy there; and diplomacy that led to the Abraham Accords, the normalisation of Israeli relations with four Arab countries.Aides to Trump, Steve Bannon famously among them, have often suffered from being seen to claim too much credit for his successes. Friedman is sure to repeatedly praise Trump, while bragging of how close to “the boss” he became.Nonetheless, his description of Trump’s private meeting with Rivlin – behaviour Friedman says would have been embarrassing had it been leaked – could prove embarrassing itself.Trump has been repeatedly burned by books on his time in power, even those written by loyalists like Friedman.In December, the Guardian was first to report that Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, described how the president tested positive for Covid-19 before his first debate with Joe Biden – and how the result was covered up.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpBenjamin NetanyahuIsraelMahmoud AbbasTrump administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Havana Syndrome could be caused by pulsed energy devices – US expert reportConcealable devices with ‘modest energy requirements’ which could emit pulsed electromagnetic energy and ultrasound exist A US intelligence report by a panel of expert scientists has named pulsed electromagnetic energy and ultrasound as plausible causes for the mystery Havana Syndrome symptoms suffered by US diplomats and spies in recent years.The report found that a group of cases could not be explained by health or environmental factors or by psychosomatic illness. It also said that devices exist with “modest energy requirements” which were concealable and could produce the observed symptoms and be effective over hundreds of meters or through walls.The panel, established last year by the director of national security, Avril Haines, and the CIA director, William Burns, said the investigation was not tasked to identify a culprit, but in a statement accompanying the report, Haines and Burns said it would help sharpen the search for the origins of the mysterious ailments.“We will stay at it, with continued rigor, for however long it takes,” they said.In a redacted executive summary of its report published on Wednesday, the panel of experts said that the signs and symptoms of the syndrome were “diverse and may be caused by multiple mechanisms” but that a subset of them “cannot be easily explained by known environmental or medical conditions”.The expert panel report clashed in tone to a briefing given by the CIA last month which said that in the majority of cases, there was no sign of a malignant campaign by a foreign power. That briefing, possibly aimed at limiting the further spread of psychosocial illness among US officials, did caution that in some two dozen cases the symptoms could not be easily explained.Microwave weapons that could cause Havana Syndrome exist, experts sayRead moreThe latest panel narrowed its review of the hundreds of reported cases by defining four “core characteristics”: the sudden onset of sound or pressure in one ear or one side of the head; near simultaneous symptoms like vertigo, loss of balance and ear pain; a “strong sense of locality or directionality” – the feeling of being assailed from a particular direction; and the absence of known environmental or medical conditions that might otherwise explain the symptoms.The summary did not go into details of cases, but the description of symptoms matched the earliest cases in 2016 reported among US and Canadian diplomats stationed in Havana, from which the syndrome got its name.The expert panel found “the combination of the four core characteristics is distinctly unusual and unreported elsewhere in the medical literature, and so far have not been associated with a specific neurological abnormality.”When looking at probable causes, the panel – which includes experts on medicine and engineering – pointed towards some form of external energy source.The report found that: “Pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radio frequency range, plausibly explains the core characteristics, although information gaps exist.”It added that “sources exist that could generate the required stimulus, are concealable, and have moderate power requirements.”Using what the report described as “nonstandard antennas and techniques”, electromagnetic pulsed energy could be directed at a target “through air for tens to hundreds of meters, and with some loss, through most building materials”.Pulsed electromagnetic energy had been “credibly demonstrated” to cause the observed symptoms, the panel found, and that “persons accidentally exposed to radio frequency signals described sensations similar to the core characteristics”.However, the report said there was a “dearth of research” on the effects of such pulsed electromagnetic energy on humans.Havana syndrome: NSA officer’s case hints at microwave attacks since 90sRead moreEngineers who had been working on a potential weapon for the US marines two decades ago, known as Medusa, said that one of the reasons it was discontinued was that it was ethically impossible to conduct human tests on the prototype.A large part of the section on pulsed electromagnetic energy was redacted in the published expert panel report.The executive summary said that ultrasound energy was also a plausible explanation for the symptoms but only in situations where the source was close to the target.“The required energy can be generated by ultrasonic arrays that are portable, and produce a tight beam,” it found, but noted that “ultrasound propagates poorly through air and building materials”.The report said that psychosocial factors could not explain the cases exhibiting the four core characteristics of Havana Syndrome but could have made them worse. Such factors could also explain other incidents which “could be due to hypervigilance and normal human reactions to stress and ambiguity, particularly among a workforce attuned to its surroundings and trained to think about security”.A victims group issued a statement on Wednesday arguing the new report “reinforces the need for the intelligence community and the broader US government to redouble their efforts to fully understand the causes of … Havana Syndrome”.Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney representing victims from multiple federal agencies, said: “These piecemeal agency reviews at times reveal inconsistent and even contradictory results that undermine the effort to resolve this controversy.”TopicsUS newsHavanaUS politicsCIAnewsReuse this content More

Trump charges $250,000 for midterms forum – to boost his own Super PacFebruary event notionally focused on 2022 midterms Former president has amassed huge war chest of $122m Donald Trump will charge top-paying guests $250,000 to attend a “Take Back Congress Candidate Forum” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida this month – with proceeds going to his own Super Pac, rather than Republicans who will actually try to take back Congress.Nor is the top price tag, which guarantees a private dinner and picture with Trump as well as VIP seating at the forum, necessarily the full cost for any couple who chooses to pay it. On Twitter on Wednesday, the New York Times reporter and Trump watcher Maggie Haberman said: “$250k lets you pay for a Mar-a-Lago guest room.”Trump and his enablers unwittingly offer Democrats the best hope in the midterms | Robert ReichRead moreFurther down the menu, a couple paying $100,000 will get a photo with Trump and seating at a private dinner with endorsed candidates, with comments from Trump. For $50,000, guests will get the dinner and the Trump comments, but a picture only with “endorsed candidates”.Price tags descend to $5,000 per couple, for attendance – but presumably less than primo seating – at the dinner with comments from Trump.Emphasising Trump’s grip on the Republican party, Haberman pointed out that the former president “is spending almost no money on other Republicans so far. But he’s trying to raise for his group using congressional Republicans.”The Mar-a-Lago event is notionally aimed at the midterm elections in November this year, when Republicans are favoured to take back the House and possibly the Senate.A House takeover would see Trump well positioned to dictate to loyalists in party leadership, under Kevin McCarthy, the current minority leader.They are expected to pursue aggressive investigations of the Biden administration including a revenge impeachment and even, should the former speaker and McCarthy adviser Newt Gingrich be believed, the attempted jailing of members of the committee currently investigating the January 6 insurrection.Trump has his eyes on the 2024 presidential election, when he has strongly hinted he will run for the White House again.At a rally in Texas last week, he promised to pardon January 6 rioters and urged supporters to stage huge protests against prosecutors in New York and Georgia investigating his business affairs and election subversion.Trump has amassed a huge campaign war chest, of $122m.In a statement this week, spokesman Taylor Budowuch said the former president had “built a political organisation that continues to capture and define the future of the Republican party.“There is no question that the Make America Great Again (Maga!) wave is set to crash across the midterms and carry forward all the way through 2024.”But Trump’s leadership committee, Save America, this week declared donations of just $205,000 to endorsed candidates in the second half of 2021 – $45,000 less than the tag for a top-priced ticket to the dinner and forum at Mar-a-Lago on 23 February (not including guest room).CNN also reported that Trump’s Make America Great Again, Again! committee has spent around $1.7m on legal expenses as Trump fights investigations and congressional oversight. It has been widely reported that the Republican National Committee has helped to pay Trump’s legal bills.Trump’s Super Pac includes among its officers Pam Bondi, a former attorney general of Florida to whom Trump once controversially donated; the former ambassador to Germany and controversial former acting director of national intelligence Ric Grenell; and Matt Whitaker, briefly and controversially acting attorney general in the Trump administration.Kimberley Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr’s fiancee, is national finance chair.TopicsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More