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      Barack Obama to hit campaign trail for Kamala Harris to woo swing-state voters – US elections live

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      On Thursday evening, Kamala Harris enlisted the help of Republican former senator Liz Cheney for a campaign event in Wisconsin. The pair focused their speeches on Trump’s 2020 election lie.The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports this from the event:Liz Cheney, one of Donald Trump’s most prominent conservative critics, appealed to the millions of undecided Americans who could decide the outcome of the 2024 election, asking them to “reject the depraved cruelty” of the former president.The daughter of Dick Cheney, the Republican former vice-president, said she had never voted for a Democrat before, but would do so “proudly” to ensure Trump never holds a position of public trust again. Her father will join her in casting his ballot for Harris.“I know that the most conservative of conservative values is fidelity to our constitution,” Cheney said, speaking from a podium adorned with the vice presidential seal. The crowd broke into a chant: “Thank you, Liz!” A large sign looming over them declared: “Country over party.”Cheney and Harris agree on little politically – only that Trump should not be allowed to serve a second term. But their union is part of an effort by the Harris campaign to win over Republican voters who, like Cheney, believe in “limited government” and “low taxes” but are repelled by Trump and his Maga movement.“No matter your political party, there is a place for you with us and in this campaign,” Harris said. “I take seriously my pledge to be a president for all Americans.”Good morning US politics readers.Former US president Barack Obama will crisscross the battleground states for Kamala Harris, with a kickoff in all-important Pennsylvania next week.According to a senior Harris campaign official, Obama will hold his first event in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania next Thursday, the beginning of blitz across the handful of rust belt and Sun belt states that will likely decide the 2024 election.Obama remains one of the Democrats’ most powerful surrogates, second perhaps only to his wife, Michelle Obama. His return to the campaign trail follows a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, where he cast Harris as a forward-looking figure and a natural heir to his diverse, youth-powered political coalition. Harris was one of Obama’s earliest supporters of what seemed like a long-shot presidential bid against Hillary Clinton. She knocked doors for him ahead of the Iowa caucuses in 2008. More than 15 years later, he will return the favor.With just 32 days away to the election, here’s what else is happening today:

      Kamala Harris will hold a rally in Flint, Michigan, this evening – one of the swing states critical to her winning the presidency. Her event comes a day after Donald Trump promised to make Michigan the “car capital of the world again”.

      Trump and Georgia governor Brian Kemp will visit Evans, Georgia, to receive a briefing on the devastation of Hurricane Helene. They’ll give a press conference at 3.45pm ET.

      JD Vance is in Lindale, Georgia, and will deliver remarks at 1 pm.

      Trump hosts a town hall in Fayetteville, North Carolina, at 7 pm. More

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      Bruce Springsteen endorses Kamala Harris for president while criticising ‘dangerous’ Trump

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      Bruce Springsteen has officially thrown his support behind Kamala Harris, endorsing her for president and simultaneously opposing Donald Trump, calling him “the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime”.The Born to Run singer made the announcement in a video posted to his Instagram on Thursday evening (US time) in which he described the upcoming election as “one of the most consequential elections in our nation’s history”.“Perhaps not since the Civil War has this great country felt as politically, spiritually and emotionally divided as it does at this moment. It doesn’t have to be this way.”Springsteen, who was a vocal supporter of Barack Obama and Joe Biden in their respective presidential campaigns, is the latest high-profile endorsement for Harris, joining Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey and Barbra Streisand.In the video, he praised Harris and Walz’s commitment to “a vision of this country that respects and includes everyone, regardless of class, religion, race, your political point of view or sexual identity, and they want to grow our economy in a way that benefits all, not just a few like me on top”.“That’s the vision of America I’ve been consistently writing about for 55 years.”Trump, by contrast, “doesn’t understand the meaning of this country, its history or what it means to be deeply American”, the singer said.“His disdain for the sanctity of our constitution, the sanctity of democracy, the sanctity of the rule of law and the sanctity of the peaceful transfer of power should disqualify him from the office of president ever again.”Concluding, Springsteen said: “Now, everybody sees things different, and I respect your choice as a fellow citizen. But like you, I’ve only got one vote, and it’s one of the most precious possessions that I have. That’s why come November 5 I’ll be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Thanks for listening.” More

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      Trump falsely claims Helene victims had no federal help despite Biden-Harris sending $20m in aid – live

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      As Joe Biden visits the wreckage of Hurricane Helene, Donald Trump has been baselessly suggesting that the administration has ignored Republican victims and that federal aid is scarce because funds are being given to immigrants.“They’re dying, and they’re getting no help from our federal government because their money has been spent on people that should not be in our country,” Trump told his supporters.The Biden-Harris administration said that the government has provided $20m in “flexible, upfront funding” and deployed 5,000 federal personnel to aid in recovery.Donald Trump repeated lies about the Biden administration’s hurricane response, going so far as to claim that the president and vice-president were “stealing” Fema funds to give to immigrants.“They stole the Fema money like they stole it from a bank so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season,” he said.Trump and his allies have been repeatedly claiming that Fema is out of money because it allocated funds to help communities receiving an influx of immigrants at the border.Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, did warn that Fema is underfunded for the remainder of hurricane season. That’s in part because the stop-gap government funding bill did not contain enough funding for Fema, which is facing a $2bn deficit.Fema’s Shelter and Services Program allocated $300m during the 2024 fiscal year to help communities “offset the costs of providing food, shelter and other supportive services after receiving an influx of migrants”. That’s a small fraction of the agency’s overall budget. For 2025, it has requested a total of $33.1bn.At his rally, Trump also claimed he “had the best four years with hurricanes”.During his tenure …

      Trump imposed a hiring freeze at the National Weather Service, resulting in more than 200 of vacancies within the agency that predicts and oversees extreme weather warnings. The Washington Post reported in 2017: “Some of those Weather Service vacancies listed in the document, obtained by the Sierra Club through a Freedom of Information Act and shared with The Washington Post, were in locations that would be hit by the major hurricanes that barreled through the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.”

      Trump falsely claimed that Hurricane Maria’s death toll was being inflated by his Democratic rivals. In fact, studies suggest that far more people died than the official death toll suggested at the time. A report by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health estimates up to 4,600 people were killed.

      In 2021, a report by the housing department’s office of the inspector general found that Trump administration delayed more than $20bn in hurricane relief aid for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

      An internal report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency also found that it failed to properly prepare for hurricane season.
      In a review of Trump’s record responding to natural disasters, E&E also found a discrepency in aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, which primarily affected Florida; and Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
      On March 9, 2019, Trump signed an order directing FEMA to pay 100 percent of most disaster costs in Florida. As a result, FEMA paid roughly $350 million more than it would have without Trump’s intervention, according to an E&E News analysis.
      But less than two months earlier, Trump threatened to veto a disaster-aid measure in Congress that would have FEMA pay 100 percent of all disaster costs in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands after Hurricane Maria killed more than 3,000 people.
      According to Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s book, Trump said: “They love me in the Panhandle … I must have won 90 percent of the vote out there. Huge crowds. What do they need?”The voting habits of residents did play into Donald Trump’s decision-making about disaster relief when he was president, reports E&E News.The outlet interviewed Mark Harvey, Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council, who revealed that the former president refused to approve disaster aid for California after deadly wildfires in 2018.From E&E:
      But Harvey said Trump changed his mind after Harvey pulled voting results to show him that heavily damaged Orange County, California, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.
      ‘We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,’ said Harvey, who recently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris alongside more than 100 other Republican former national security officials.
      California’s governor Gavin Newsom, reacted to the report on Twitter/X, calling it a “glimpse into the future” if Trump is re-elected.Joe Biden, meanwhile, wrote: “You can’t only help those in need if they voted for you. It’s the most basic part of being president, and this guy knows nothing about it.”As Joe Biden visits the wreckage of Hurricane Helene, Donald Trump has been baselessly suggesting that the administration has ignored Republican victims and that federal aid is scarce because funds are being given to immigrants.“They’re dying, and they’re getting no help from our federal government because their money has been spent on people that should not be in our country,” Trump told his supporters.The Biden-Harris administration said that the government has provided $20m in “flexible, upfront funding” and deployed 5,000 federal personnel to aid in recovery.“His competition that night? He cannot be president. He cannot be president of the United States,” Donald Trump said of JD Vance’s vice-presidential opponent, Tim Walz.“How good did JD Vance do the other night?” Trump added, praising his running mate as the crowd descended into a cheers of “JD! JD!”“I drafted the best athlete,” Trump continued.Donald Trump pledged to bring back drilling in the Alaska arctic wildlife refuge if he becomes president.Trump said:
      We would have supplied the entire Asian continent. We would have supplied Asia. We would have supplied everybody. But we’ll have it redone very quickly … I actually got it approved in Congress as part of …the biggest tax cuts in history for this country. I got that approved in Congress. We got ANWR [Alaska National Wildlife Refuge] so they didn’t kill it in Congress, and I don’t think they ever could. So we’ll get it back very quickly. It’s going to be back very fast.
      Trump added:
      And it would have been great for Alaska but it would have also … been great for our country but we’ll have it approved very quickly.
      In 2021, Trump’s administration auctioned off portions of ANWR to oil drillers but failed to attract much bidders.Donald Trump has switched his attacks on Joe Biden, calling him “the worst foreign policy president”.The former president then went on to say: “We have to be too big to rig” before going on to repeat the falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.The crowd, highly energized, descended into a chant of “Trump! Trump! Trump!”Donald Trump has walked on stage to Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA.“We’re going to make America great again,” Trump said in his opening remarks before launching into a tirade against Kamala Harris, calling her a slew of names including “Lying Kamala”.Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a rally shortly in Saginaw, Michigan.Stay tuned as we bring you the latest updates.Here are some images coming through the news wires of Hurricane Helene and its aftermath across the country:The Biden administration has provided nearly $4m directly to individuals and families in need of critical financial assistance, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said onboard an Air Force One gaggle as the president was en route to Tallahassee, Florida.She went on to add:
      Yesterday, we announced that the president approved 100% federal cost share for emergency response activities in Florida and Georgia, as well as Tallahassee [Tennessee] and North Carolina. This means that the federal government will cover 100% of the costs associated with things like debris removal, first responders, search and rescue, shelters, and mass feeding.
      This latest announcement builds the president’s previously approved requests for major disaster declarations from the governors of Florida and Georgia, which unlocked additional assistance for residents on their road to recovery. More

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      Major US firefighter union declines to endorse Trump or Harris for president

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      The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) has declined to endorse a candidate ahead of next month’s US presidential election, despite efforts by both the Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaigns to court the union.“This decision, which we took very seriously, is the best way to preserve and strengthen our unity,” the IAFF said in a statement.The union, which has almost 350,000 members, was a key part of the coalition built by Joe Biden – and the first union to back the president’s run for election in 2020.It is the second leading trade union to refrain from endorsing either Harris or Trump as tens of millions of Americans prepare to cast their votes. The Teamsters International, a US transportation workers union that represents more than 1.3 million workers, also announced it would not back a candidate.Both campaigns had sought the IAFF’s support, with Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, and JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, addressing the union’s convention in August.Walz claimed in his speech that he had signed “the most comprehensive firefighter legislation in the nation” as governor of Minnesota. Vance, who grappled with boos from the audience, claimed that he and Trump represented a “new kind of Republican party” and would “never stop fighting” for first responders.On Thursday, the IAFF said its executive board had voted by a margin of 1.2% to not endorse a presidential candidate. “We encourage our members – and all eligible voters – to get out and make their voices heard in the upcoming election,” said Edward Kelly, the union’s president.It is not the first time the IAFF has refrained from backing a candidate. While it endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, it reportedly shelved plans to publicly support Hillary Clinton, the Democrat presidential candidate in 2016. More

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      Musk’s millions in rightwing gifts began earlier than previously known – report

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      Elon Musk has given tens of millions of dollars to rightwing groups in recent years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, revealing his backing for Republican groups began earlier than was previously known.Musk endorsed Trump earlier this year and has been a prolific booster of misinformation in support of the president’s re-election bid on X, the website he owns. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that Musk had said he planned to donate $45m each month to a Super Pac backing Trump (Musk has denied the report).But the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Thursday revealed that Musk has already been spending tens of millions of dollars to back conservative causes. In 2022, he spent more than $50m to fund anti-immigrant and anti-transgender advertisements by a group called Citizens for Sanity. The group’s officers are employees of America First Legal, a non-profit led by Stephen Miller, a close former Trump aide.Musk also has donated millions to another rightwing group, Building America’s Future, Reuters reported on Thursday. The outlet reported the timeline and exact amount he has given were not clear.The group has focused on reducing Kamala Harris’s support among Black voters, according to NBC News. The group has also launched advertising criticizing Joe Biden and Harris for their support at the border.A Super Pac started by Musk, America Pac, has spent at least $71m on the presidential election, according to Bloomberg. The Trump campaign has largely outsourced its get-out-the-vote operation to the Pac.In 2023, Musk also gave $10m to support the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, in his bid for president, the Wall Street Journal reported. Musk publicly said in 2022 he would support DeSantis for president.“My preference for the 2024 presidency is someone sensible and centrist. I had hoped that would the case for the Biden administration, but have been disappointed so far,” he said at the time.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMusk’s donations to the groups were kept quiet, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported. He funneled money through social welfare groups that are not required to disclose their donors. People involved in his donations to Citizens for Sanity would use Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to discuss the transactions, the Wall Street Journal reported. More

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      What is Melania Trump’s game in suddenly defending abortion rights?

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      When news broke on Wednesday evening that Melania Trump supports abortion rights – and apparently has for her entire adult life – it was greeted with surprise and confusion.Melania’s husband, Donald Trump, is trying to rapidly recalibrate his approach to abortion as he races towards election day. Is his wife trying to help him? Hurt him? Or neither?In her forthcoming memoir, Melania Trump went into extensive detail about her support for the procedure.“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?” she wrote. “A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.”Shortly after the Guardian broke the news, Trump uploaded a black-and-white video of herself to social media, set to stirring music.“Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth,” she said. “Individual freedom. What does my body, my choice really mean?”The news of Melania Trump’s support for abortion rights comes at a time when her husband is striving to convince voters that he can be trusted to protect abortion rights.In the years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, abortion has become Republicans’ achilles heel. It cost Republicans victories in the 2022 midterms, while abortion rights supporters have won a string of ballot measures even in states as red as Kentucky, Kansas and Ohio.Earlier on in his campaign, Trump attempted to be all-things-abortion to everybody, alternately bragging about his role in overturning Roe – by appointing three of the justices who voted for its demise – and grousing that hardline positions on abortion were costing the GOP elections. But since Kamala Harris, an extraordinarily effective messenger on abortion, became the Democratic nominee for president, he has abandoned that approach in favor of garbled support for abortion rights.“WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTH, CONFIDENT AND FREE!” Trump recently posted on Truth Social. “YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION, BECAUSE IT IS NOW WHERE IT ALWAYS HAD TO BE, WITH THE STATES.”Melania Trump’s revelation, then, could be intended to reassure undecided voters who are disinclined to vote for Harris but support abortion rights – as a majority of Americans do. But Tresa Undem, a pollster who has surveyed people on abortion for more than two decades, said the odds of such comments appealing to moderates or abortion-supporting conservatives were “fairly slim”.After all, regardless of her personal convictions, it seems unlikely that Melania Trump has any real sway over her tempestuous husband’s policies. Her pro-abortion rights beliefs did not stop Donald Trump from helping to demolish Roe. It also doesn’t help that Melania and Donald Trump’s relationship is, at least in public, far from cozy. (He recently indicated, despite having written the foreword, that he hasn’t read the book.)“Nothing Republicans say will distract the American people from the reality they see with their own eyes: story after story of victims of rape and incest being forced into pregnancy, doctors forced to turn away patients during miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies and women literally dying because of Trump’s abortion bans,” Emilia Rowland, Democratic national committee press secretary, said in a text.View image in fullscreenMelania Trump’s disagreement with her husband is also not as novel as it may seem. Betty Ford, the wife of the Republican president Gerald Ford, was an adamant supporter of abortion rights, said Mary Ziegler, a University of California Davis school of law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. It didn’t end up making much of a difference in Gerald Ford’s campaign.“I think people understand that Melania and Donald Trump are very different people,” Ziegler said. “I could see independent and swing voters saying: ‘Wow. It’s bad that even Donald Trump’s wife doesn’t like Donald Trump’s position.’”What Melania Trump’s news seems to have done is anger the anti-abortion activists who have made up some of Trump’s most reliable supporters. These activists were already annoyed by Trump’s recent attempts to paint himself as an abortion rights champion.“Melania Trump’s support of abortion is anti-feminist and clearly outside the teaching of our Catholic faith. She is wrong,” Kristan Hawkins, president of the pro-life organization Students for Life of America, posted on X. “What a lost opportunity to inspire a generation of young women.”Melania Trump’s strategy, such as it is, may be much more straightforward than activists and politicos may think. She has never seemed particularly interested in being first lady, and she doesn’t appear to be invested in winning the job back, seeing as she has largely disappeared from the 2024 campaign trail.But Trump does seem interested in doing at least one thing: selling books. Suggesting that there is controversy within her memoir’s pages probably helps move copies.Or not. In her post, Hawkins added: “I won’t be buying Melania’s book.” More

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      Seth Meyers on JD Vance’s debate performance: ‘Brazen and shameless’

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      Late-night hosts talk JD Vance’s many lies during the vice-presidential debate and a new special counsel report detailing how Donald Trump tried to steal the 2020 election.Seth MeyersDonald Trump is “a bad liar”, said Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s Late Night, but he chose as his running mate “someone who is much more polished at it”. JD Vance, Ohio senator, is “brazen and shameless, but he’s admittedly very smooth. He’s like a slick used car dealer, and can be very convincing until you remember the car he’s trying to sell you is an AMC Gremlin with raccoons in the engine.”For instance, during the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday evening, Vance claimed that he was not in favor of a national abortion ban, but did support a “minimum national standard”.“That’s a ban,” Meyers corrected. “A ‘minimum national standard’ is just a bullshit way of describing a national abortion ban. It’s like when I go to the coffee shop on my block and they say they sell all-natural, gluten-free breakfast biscuits. That’s a cookie, dude. Except now you’ve guaranteed that my kids won’t stop asking me why they can’t have it.”Vance has said multiple times that he favors a national abortion ban. On a rightwing podcast in 2022, he said: “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.”“That’s what happens when you say yes to every rightwing podcast in the universe,” said Meyers. “JD Vance is on record contradicting every thing he says now. Politicians used to be worried about being caught on a hot mic. But now they go into every McMansion basement they can find like they’re on a hot mic scavenger hunt.”Vance also refused to say whether Trump lost the 2020 election. When asked point blank by his opponent, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, Vance deflected with: “I’m focused on the future.”“If you ask someone a straightforward question and they say ‘I’m focused on the future’ that’s how you know they’re caught in a lie,” said Meyers. “Vance may have delivered a slick performance last night, but it was just that – a performance.”Stephen Colbert“We are all still struggling to digest last night’s vice-presidential debate – which is surprising, because usually I have no trouble eating two slices of white bread,” joked Stephen Colbert on Wednesday night.The Late Show host described the debate as a “frosty cup of ZzzQuil”, as the two politicians performed civility and appeared to frequently agree with each other.The Atlantic described the debate as “a vision of what American politics could be without the distorting gravitational field generated by Donald Trump”.“I would love that,” said Colbert, “but here’s the thing: Donald Trump hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still the main character. This is like a scene from It without Pennywise on camera, and everyone is suddenly like, ‘Welp, guess there’s no more scary clowns in Derry. Ooh, free sewer balloon!’”Colbert took particular aim at Vance’s answer to a question on Obamacare, which Trump tried to destroy numerous times: “I think you could make a really good argument that [Trump] salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along.”“That kind of junior high debate team sophistry is exactly the worst kind of behavior that intelligent people use to justify evil,” added Colbert. “You know, when you think about it, it could be argued that Godzilla really spearheaded Tokyo’s urban renewal.”Colbert was also incensed at Vance’s characterization of January 6: “It’s really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January the 20th.”“Yeah, 14 days after his plot to overthrow the election ended in a violent coup that failed,” said Colbert. “That’s like saying to your ex: ‘Barbara, I think it’s rich that you’re calling me psychotically obsessed with our relationship, when I left your and Brad’s wedding peacefully. You’re the one who won’t stop talking about me setting fire to the DJ.’”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel looked ahead to election day: “We are 34 days away from Trump saying the election was rigged, just as he did four years ago.” Trump’s efforts to overturn the election four years ago are detailed in a new report from special counsel Jack Smith.The judge overseeing the January 6 case in Washington unsealed a 165-page court filing containing a “mountain” of testimony and evidence against Trump. “All the stuff we know happened, we now have in writing,” said Kimmel.The filing lays out “the increasingly desperate ways Trump tried to steal the election”, Kimmel explained. “You know, sometimes I would wonder, does Trump really believe that this election was stolen from him? And the answer is no, he doesn’t. The plan all along was to declare himself the winner even he if wasn’t, which he did. And then when he realized he was going to lose, he made up these claims of fraud.“He called governors and election officials,” he continued. “He hammered Mike Pence. He deliberately spread lies, even though he privately admitted they were crazy lies. He was directly involved in the fake elector scheme. And he stole all the Oreos from the White House snack cabinet.”The report also detailed just how many times Trump pressured Mike Pence to try to decertify the election, though he had no authority to do so. “There were meetings, phone calls, text messages – Pence was basically Trump’s Baby Reindeer,” Kimmel joked. More

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      Trump January 6 case: five key points in the latest filing against former president

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      In a court filing unsealed on Wednesday, federal prosecutors argue that Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution over the January 6 riots because he acted in a private capacity, and took advice from private advisers.The indictment seeks to make this case – that Trump acted in his private capacity, rather than his official one – because of a US supreme court ruling in July that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken as president.It also reveals further details about Trump’s alleged mood and actions (or lack of action) on the day, building on evidence that was provided in earlier briefs.In response to the new filing, the Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional”. On Truth Social, Trump, writing in all-caps, called it “complete and total election interference.”Here are some key points made in the filing:‘Fundamentally a private’ schemeThe new court filing, in which Trump is referred to as “the defendant”, alleges that Trump’s plan that day was “fundamentally a private one”, and therefore not related to his duties as president but instead as a candidate for office.It reads: “The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct. Not so. Although the defendant was the incumbent president during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one.“He extensively used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”The filing looks back to election day for Trump’s use of private advisers: “As election day turned to November 4, the contest was too close to project a winner, and in discussions about what the defendant should say publicly regarding the election, senior advisors suggested that the defendant should show restraint while counting continued. Two private advisors, however, advocated a different course: [name redacted] and [name redacted] suggested that the defendant just declare victory. And at about 2.20am, the defendant gave televised remarks to a crowd of his campaign supporters in which he falsely claimed, without evidence or specificity, that there had been fraud in the election and that he had won.”On 4 January, the filing says, a White House counsel was excluded from a meeting during which Trump sought to pressure Pence to help overturn the election result. Only a private attorney was present, the filing says: “It is hard to imagine stronger evidence” than this that Trump’s conduct was private.A presidential candidate alone in a dining room with Twitter and Fox NewsTrump’s day on 6 January started at 1am, with a tweet pressuring Pence to obstruct the certification of the results. Seven hours later, at 8.17am, Trump tweeted about it again. Shortly before his speech at the Ellipse, Trump called Pence and again pressured him to “induce him to act unlawfully in the upcoming session”, where Pence would be certifying the election results. Pence refused.At this point, according to the filing, Trump “decided to re-insert into his campaign speech at the Ellipse remarks targeting Pence for his refusal to misuse his role in the certification”.Trump gave his speech, and at 1pm, the certification process began at the Capitol.Trump, meanwhile, “settled in the dining room off of the Oval Office. He spent the afternoon there reviewing Twitter on his phone, while the dining room television played Fox News’ contemporaneous coverage of events at the Capitol.”It was from the dining room that Trump watched a crowd of his supporters march towards the Capitol. He had been there less than an hour when, at “approximately 2.24pm, Fox News reported that a police officer may have been injured and that ‘protestors … have made their way inside the Capitol.’“At 2.24pm, Trump tweeted, writing, ‘Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!’”The filing reads: “The content of the 2.24pm tweet was not a message sent to address a matter of public concern and ease unrest; it was the message of an angry candidate upon the realization that he would lose power.”A minute later, the Secret Service evacuated Pence to a secure location.Trump, when told Pence had been evacuated, said: ‘So what?’The filing states that Trump said: “So what?” after being told that Pence had subsequently been taken to a secure location.The indictment notes that the government does not intend to use the exchange at trial. It argues, however, that the tweet itself was “unofficial”.The filing states that Pence “tried to encourage” Trump “as a friend” when news networks forecast a Biden win on 7 November. This again goes to the assertion that Trump acted in a private capacity.Pence allegedly told Trump: “You took a dying political party and gave it a new lease on life”.‘Fight like hell’ regardless The filing states Trump was overheard telling family members, amid his efforts to overturn the election results: “It doesn’t matter if you lose … you have to fight like hell.”“At one point long after the defendant had begun spreading false fraud claims, [name redacted] a White House staffer traveling with the defendant, overheard him tell family members: ‘It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.’”Trump knew his claims were falseThe filing states: “The evidence demonstrates that the defendant knew his fraud claims were false because he continued to make those claims even after his close advisors – acting not in an official capacity but in a private or campaign-related capacity – told them they were not true.”Among these advisers was a person referred to as P9, a White House staffer who had been one of several attorneys who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial in the Senate in 2019 and 2020, according to the filing.In one private conversation, “when P9 reiterated to the defendant that [name redacted] would be unable to prove his false fraud allegations in court, the defendant responded, ‘The details don’t matter.’”P9 at one point after the election told Trump “that the campaign was looking into his fraud claims, and had even hired external experts to do so, but could find no support for them.
      He told the defendant that if the Campaign took these claims to court, they would get slaughtered, because the claims are all ‘bullshit’.” More