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      The surest sign that Donald Trump is back? Ivanka is being seen in public with him | Arwa Mahdawi

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      There’s a decent chance that, come January 2025, Donald Trump will either be in the White House or in a prison cell. Last November, my money was on the prison cell. The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, was the Republicans’ golden boy and Trump was experiencing a major slump; for one thing, he had a mindboggling number of legal problems to deal with.He seemed to have lost his last crumbs of credibility: an embarrassing number of candidates he’d backed were defeated in the midterms, making the former president look like a loser and causing his allies to turn on him. “TRUMPTY DUMPTY” crowed the once-loyal New York Post on its front page. “Trump has no political skills left,” a Trump campaign insider said in messages seen by the Guardian. “His team is a joke. The ship is sinking.”First offboard that sinking ship? Ivanka Trump. The entrepreneur and women’s empowerment champion has always excelled in putting her own interests first. As soon as it seemed as if her dad had gone from a powerbroker to a liability, she fled to Miami with her family and kept a low profile. When Trump officially announced that he would be running for the 2024 nomination, Ivanka made sure that everyone knew she was staying out of it. “I do not plan to be involved in politics,” she said in a statement. She also skipped the official announcement at Mar-a-Lago.Several months on, the political landscape looks drastically different. DeSantis has gone from being feted as the future of the Republican party to being the butt of many jokes. His far-right policies may play to some voters’ fascist fantasies, but his creepy demeanour and Disney villain laugh have rendered him unelectable. There has been report after report about his odd behaviours – like consuming chocolate pudding cups with his fingers and eating “like a starving animal who has never eaten before”. DeSantis is off-putting, even to extremists.Trump, meanwhile, is back on top of the polls. A New York Times/Siena College poll published this week found that 71% of Republican voters still stand with the former president amid the multiple investigations he’s facing. That’s partly because many of them don’t seem to believe his many legal troubles are a big deal: 91% of people who have Fox News as their main source of information don’t think the former president committed serious crimes, the poll revealed. In any case, Trump is trouncing his competition and has a 37% lead over DeSantis. He’s the clear favourite for the Republican nomination.The biggest sign that Trump’s fortunes may be reversing, however? Ivanka and Jared Kushner, the most fair-weather of family, are now being seen in public with Trump again. “They’ve been spotted more frequently this summer,” one top campaign strategist told Vanity Fair. “They’ve made it clear they’re supportive. They pop into meetings to say hi.” The pair also set tongues wagging after they showed up at a recent screening of the child-trafficking movie Sound of Freedom that Trump hosted at his Bedminster golf club.Vanity Fair’s sources didn’t mince their words about why they reckon the power couple are suddenly so family-oriented. “Now that the president is 40 points ahead, of course Jared is pretending he’s involved,” a former Trump administration official told the outlet. “If he’s president again, Jared needs to protect his turf, especially in the Middle East.” We can’t have anyone else claiming the Middle East now, can we?One imagines that Ivanka also wants to protect her turf and finish what she started in 2017. The former first daughter had big dreams, after all. She was going to be the first female president! She was going to run the World Bank! She was going to empower every woman in the world, starting with herself! And then democracy got in the way.Unfortunately for Trump, democracy is still in the way. He may be the Republican favourite, but he still has to battle his way through numerous lawsuits and face off against Joe Biden (the presumptive Democratic nominee) to regain his place on the world stage. I won’t even begin to speculate about whether he might be able to pull that off, but I can tell you this: if you want to know how close Trump is to regaining power don’t look at the polls, look at Ivanka. If she’s keeping her distance, he’s in trouble. But if she’s cosying up to her dad? Then we’re all in a lot of trouble. More

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      Trump increases Republican primary lead despite swirling legal peril

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      Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia, is “ready to go” with indictments in her investigation of Donald Trump’s election subversion. In Washington, the special counsel Jack Smith is expected to add charges regarding election subversion to 40 counts already filed over the former president’s retention of classified records.Trump already faces 34 criminal charges in New York over hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels. Referring to Trump being ordered to pay $5m after being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, a judge recently said Carroll proved Trump raped her. Lawsuits over Trump’s business affairs continue.Yet a month out from the first debate of the Republican presidential primary, Trump’s domination of the field increases with each poll.On Monday, the first 2024 survey from the New York Times and Siena College put Trump at 54% support. His closest challenger, Ron DeSantis, was at 17%. No one else – including Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley – was higher than 3%.DeSantis’s hard-right campaign is widely seen to be out of fuel and on a glide path to destruction. Trump dominates early voting states and in national averages leads the Florida governor by more than 30 points.Heading for trials in primary season, Trump denies wrongdoing and claims political persecution. But his chaos-agent campaign, which he has said he will not abandon even if convicted and sentenced, does not just threaten the national peace. It threatens his own party.Trump is demanding Republican support for impeaching Joe Biden over corruption allegations against Hunter Biden, the president’s surviving son.“Any Republican that doesn’t act on Democrat fraud should be immediately primaried and get out,” Trump told a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.Republicans hold the US House, where impeachment would start, by just five seats. GOP members in Democratic areas seem likely to suffer at the polls next year.“If they’re not willing to do it,” Trump said, “we’ve got a lot of good, tough Republicans around. People are going to run against ’em, and people are going to win. And they’re going to get my endorsement every single time. They’re going to win ’cause we win almost every race when we endorse.”Factcheckers dispute that. Surveying the 2022 midterms, the New York Times said: “Mr Trump endorsed more than 250 candidates, and his 82% success rate is, on the surface, impressive. But the vast majority of those endorsements were of incumbents and heavy favorites to win.”The paper added: “In the 36 most competitive House races … Mr Trump endorsed candidates in five contests. All five lost.”Trump’s influence on key Senate races won by Democrats has been widely discussed.In Pennsylvania, Trump also called for conditioning aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia on White House cooperation with investigations of Hunter Biden. Trump’s own first impeachment was for withholding aid to Ukraine in an attempt to uncover dirt on the Bidens. Pundits noted the irony.“So much for denying the quid pro quo, as he did in 2019,” said Peter Baker, the Times’ chief White House correspondent.In that impeachment, Trump was acquitted when Republican senators stayed loyal, Mitt Romney of Utah the sole GOP vote to convict.Trump beat his second impeachment, for inciting the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, despite 10 House Republicans and seven senators voting to convict.Thousands have been arrested over the Capitol attack and hundreds convicted, some of seditious conspiracy. Smith, the special counsel, is homing in on indictments regarding Trump’s election subversion, though as the Guardian revealed, likely charges do not directly relate to January 6.In Fulton county, Willis, the district attorney, seems confident of winning convictions over attempts to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia.Speaking to WXIA, a CNN affiliate, she said: “I made a commitment to the American people – but most importantly the citizens of Fulton county – that we were going to be making some big decisions regarding the election investigation and that I would do that before 1 September 2023. I’m going to hold true to that commitment.“The work is accomplished. We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”Previous Trump indictments in New York and Washington have not fueled significant protests or violence. But in Atlanta, barriers surround the Fulton courthouse.“I think the sheriff is doing something smart in making sure that the courthouse stays safe,” Willis said. “I’m not willing to put any of the employees or the constituents that come to the courthouse in harm’s way.”In Georgia on Monday, a judge rejected Trump lawyers’ attempt to block use of a grand jury report in prosecutions and remove Willis from the case. In Florida, Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate, made his first court appearance in the classified records case. He did not enter a formal plea.In general election polling, Biden and Trump are closely matched.On Sunday, the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, a rank Republican outsider, told CBS it was “inappropriate” to float a pardon for Trump, as other candidates, DeSantis included, have done.Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer who went to jail then turned on Trump, told MSNBC Trump’s likely nomination posed a genuine threat to the nation.“I’m your retribution,” Cohen said, quoting Trump’s message to supporters. “They’re indicting me, I’m protecting you, I’m the only one between you and them.“It’s right out of Mein Kampf, which allegedly Donald used to keep on his bedside table.”In 1990, Vanity Fair said Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed. Trump told the magazine it was Mein Kampf, Hitler’s autobiography. The friend who gave Trump the book said it was the speeches.Cohen continued: “This is not a joke. And to anybody who thinks for a quick second there’s no way he’s going to win, that was a pretty packed audience in Erie, Pennsylvania.” More

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      Trump property manager Carlos De Oliveira appears in court in Florida

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      The property manager of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate made his first court appearance on Monday on charges in the classified documents case against the former president, but he did not enter a plea because he has not found a Florida-based attorney to represent him.Carlos De Oliveira is accused of scheming with Trump to try to delete security footage sought by investigators probing the former president’s hoarding of classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, club.De Oliveira was added last week to the indictment with Trump and the ex-president’s valet, Walt Nauta, and faces charges including conspiracy to obstruct justice and lying to investigators.A magistrate judge in Miami’s federal court read De Oliveira the charges against him and ordered him to turn over his passport and sign an agreement to pay $100,000 if he does not appear in court. The judge scheduled his arraignment for 10 August in Fort Pierce.The developments in the classified documents case come as Trump braces for possible charges in another federal investigation into his efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election. Trump, the early frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, has received a letter from special counsel Jack Smith indicating that he is a target of that investigation, and Trump’s lawyers met with Smith’s team last week.Trump pleaded not guilty in June and has denied any wrongdoing. He posted on his Truth Social platform last week that the Mar-a-Lago security tapes were voluntarily handed over to investigators and that he was told the recordings were not “deleted in any way, shape or form”.Prosecutors have not alleged that security footage was actually deleted or kept from investigators.Nauta has also pleaded not guilty. Federal judge Aileen Cannon had previously scheduled the trial of Trump and Nauta to begin in May, and it is unclear whether the addition of De Oliveira to the case may affect its timeline.The latest indictment, unsealed on Thursday, alleges that Trump tried to have security footage deleted after investigators visited in June 2022 to collect classified documents Trump took with him after he left the White House.Trump was already facing dozens of felony counts – including willful retention of national defense information – stemming from allegations that he mishandled government secrets with which he was trusted as commander-in-chief. Experts have said the new allegations bolster the special counsel’s case and deepen the ex-president’s legal jeopardy.Video from Mar-a-Lago would ultimately become vital to the government’s case because, prosecutors said, it shows Nauta moving boxes in and out of a storage room – an act alleged to have been done at Trump’s direction and in an effort to hide records not only from investigators but also from Trump’s own lawyers.Days after the US justice department sent a subpoena for video footage at Mar-a-Lago to the Trump Organization in June 2022, prosecutors say, De Oliveira asked an information technology staffer how long the server retained footage and told the employee “the boss” wanted it deleted. When the employee said he did not believe he could do that, De Oliveira insisted the “boss” wanted it done, asking, “What are we going to do?”Shortly after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago and found classified records in the storage room and Trump’s office, prosecutors say, Nauta called a Trump employee and said words to the effect of “someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good”.The indictment says the employee responded that De Oliveira was loyal and would not do anything to affect his relationship with Trump. That day, the indictment alleges, Trump called De Oliveira directly to say that he would get De Oliveira an attorney.Prosecutors allege that De Oliveira later lied in interviews with investigators, falsely claiming that he had not even seen boxes moved into Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House. More

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      ‘A rerun of a soap opera’: Republican governor warns against Trump 2024 bid

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      Donald Trump’s campaign for president is a far cry from his victorious run for the White House in 2016, his fellow Republican and New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu said on Sunday.“This is not the Donald Trump of 2016, don’t fool yourself,” Sununu – who recently passed on an Oval Office run of his own in part to elevate his credibility in speaking out against the ex-president – said during an interview on ABC’s This Week. “He doesn’t have the energy, he doesn’t have the fastball, he basically is droning on for 90 minutes in his long-form speeches about his legal battles, as opposed to talking about the future of this country.”By a wide margin and even as he faces mounting criminal charges, Trump continues to lead the Republican field seeking to oust the Democratic incumbent, Joe Biden, from the presidency in 2024. He received a warm reception during a 10-minute speech at the Iowa Republican party’s Lincoln Day dinner on Friday but gave the worst speech “without a doubt”, Sununu said.“Ever seen a soap opera?” Sununu continued. “They get kind of boring. The only thing worse is the rerun of a soap opera. And that’s what he’s bringing. A lot of drama to the table.”Sununu wasn’t the only American political conservative on Sunday who verbally attacked Trump’s aspirations for a second term.The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie also criticized Trump, saying new charges unveiled by special counsel Jack Smith this week showed how brazen and amateur the former president’s efforts to conceal classified documents from the US justice department were. The charges allege that Trump and two aides, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, attempted to delete security footage from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club the day after it was subpoenaed by the justice department.De Oliveira allegedly told an IT worker “the boss” wanted the footage deleted. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.Referring to the family in the mob movie series The Godfather, Christie said on CNN’s State of the Union, “These guys were acting like the Corleones with no experience.“The ‘I can declassify whatever I want’ defense is not a defense. You can declassify whatever you want when you’re president. You can’t do it by thinking about it, you can’t do it by mind melding with the documents. There’s a process you have to go through to declassify, and he knows that.”Vivek Ramaswamy, another GOP candidate, said again on Sunday that he would pardon Trump if he was elected. Doing so, Ramaswamy said, would move the country forward.“One of the right ways to do that is to pardon the former president of the United States from what is clearly a politicized prosecution,” he said on State of the Union.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Republican presidential hopeful, also said on Sunday that she would be inclined to pardon Trump if elected.“We have to move forward – we’ve gotta quit living in the past, and I don’t want there to be all of this division over the fact that we have a president serving years in jail over a documents trial,” she said during an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation. “I want all of this to go away.”The Florida governor and fellow Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis also suggested last week that he would pardon Trump.“Well, what I’ve said is very simple – I’m going to do what’s right for the country,” DeSantis remarked in an interview with Megyn Kelly. “I don’t think it would be good for the country to have an almost 80-year-old former president go to prison.” More

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      Trump’s latest charges will only deepen his determination to win in 2024

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      A tunnel lit by torchlight. An attempt to delete incriminating camera footage. A “boss” whose orders must be obeyed. And all to no avail.The latest criminal charges against Donald Trump, the former US president, conjure images of the hapless Watergate burglars or a mob movie with elements of farce.But while they deepen Trump’s legal perils, analysts say, they will only harden his determination to regain the White House as his best chance of staying out of jail. Opinion polls show he remains the runaway frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024.Trump, who left office in January 2021, pleaded not guilty in Miami last month to federal charges of unlawfully retaining classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and obstructing justice. Prosecutors allege that he put some of America’s most sensitive national security secrets at risk.On Thursday they updated the indictment by accusing the former president of scheming with his valet, Walt Nauta, and a Mar-a-Lago property manager, Carlos De Oliveira, to hide surveillance footage from federal investigators after they issued a subpoena for it.It was left to others to dwell on the irony of Trump, who spent much of the 2016 campaign savaging rival Hillary Clinton for deleting emails from a computer server as secretary of state, now standing accused of trying to delete security footage at his home.Video from the property would play a significant role in the investigation because, prosecutors say, it shows Nauta moving boxes of documents in and out of a storage room – including a day before an FBI visit to the property – at Trump’s direction.According to the indictment, Nauta met De Oliveira at Mar-a-Lago on 25 June 2022. They went to a security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors and walked with a torch through a tunnel where the storage room was located, observing and pointing out surveillance cameras.Two days later, according to the indictment, De Oliveira walked through a basement tunnel with a Trump employee to a small room known as an “audio closet”. The two men had a conversation supposed to “remain between the two of them”.De Oliveira asked how many days the server retained footage. De Oliveira allegedly told the employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted and asked: “What are we going to do?”The indictment asserts that Trump called De Oliveira before and after the incident, and that Nauta and De Oliveira were also in contact.Prosecutors further allege that, during a voluntary interview with the FBI last January, De Oliveira lied when he said he “never saw nothing” with regard to boxes at Mar-a-Lago.De Oliveira was added to the indictment, charged with obstruction and false statements related to that FBI interview. This could impact the trial date, currently set for May next year, by which stage the Republican nomination may well have been decided.Along with two new charges of obstruction of justice, there was another new count of retaining classified material. Special counsel Jack Smith describes a July 2021 incident in which Trump bragged about a “plan of attack” against another country in an interview at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey.The former president then waved around the classified documents to his guests: a writer, publisher and two Trump staff members who all lacked security clearances “This is secret information,” he said, according to a recording cited in the documents, claiming that, “as president I could have declassified it” – but he had not.The indictment says the document was returned to the federal government on 17 January 2022, which is the date Trump provided 15 boxes of records to the National Archives.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump now faces 40 criminal counts in the classified documents case alone. Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer, told CNN: “I think this original indictment was engineered to last a thousand years and now this superseding indictment will last an antiquity. This is such a tight case, the evidence is so overwhelming.”The new charges were made public hours after Trump said his lawyers met with justice department officials investigating his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, in a sign that another set of criminal charges could come soon.Trump is the first former US president to face criminal charges. He has already been indicted twice this year, once in New York over hush-money payments to an adult film star and once already over the classified documents. He could also face charges in the state of Georgia over attempts to meddle in the 2020 election there.But in an interview on Friday he insisted being sentenced and convicted would not force him out of the race. Trump told conservative radio host John Fredericks: “Not at all. There’s nothing in the constitution to say that it could … And even the radical left crazies are saying not at all, that wouldn’t stop [me] – and it wouldn’t stop me either.”Such courtroom dramas would cast a long shadow over Trump’s candidacy among millions of voters during a presidential election with Joe Biden next year. Voters have repeatedly shown their apathy towards Trump and his Maga (“Make America Great Again”) extremism in elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022.As with previous legal developments, Biden remained silent on the issue on Friday, doubtless aware that any comment on Trump’s fate would be construed as political interference.But for now the legal woes have not hurt Trump standing in the race for the Republican nomination. Indeed, his lead over nearest rival Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has actually grown. A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll earlier this month showed Trump leading DeSantis 47%-19% among Republicans, a wider lead than his 44%-29% lead before the first indictment in New York in March.Many Republicans continue to rally to Trump’s defence, echoing his baseless allegations of a “deep state” conspiracy. Senator Josh Hawley told Fox News: “It’s so brazen right now, what they’re doing. It is really a subversion of the rule of law. I mean, they’re taking the rule of law, turning it on its head, and we cannot allow this to stand.”Even most of Trump’s rival in the Republican primary have been reluctant to criticise Trump for fear of alienating his base. But one of them, former congressman Will Hurd, let rip in an interview on CNN. He said: “I am not a lawyer. But if you are deleting evidence, it’s because you know you’re committing a crime.”Hurd added: “Donald Trump is running for president in order for him to stay out of jail. These are serious crimes. These are serious accusations. Donald Trump is a national security risk and he needs to be beaten in a primary so we can be done with him once and for all.” More

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      Trump, DeSantis and top Republican candidates to share stage at Iowa event

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      Nearly every major Republican presidential candidate will share a stage in the early voting state of Iowa on Friday night, as Donald Trump continues to dominate in the polls despite his numerous legal liabilities.Thirteen candidates will appear at the Iowa Republican party’s 2023 Lincoln Dinner fundraiser, giving them an opportunity to address donors and local party leaders with less than six months left before the state’s crucial caucuses.Trump has cemented his lead in Iowa, even as the former president braces for a third criminal indictment. According to a Fox Business poll taken this month, Trump has the support of 46% of likely Iowa caucus-goers, giving him a 30-point advantage over his closest rival, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.DeSantis will also deliver remarks at the Lincoln Dinner on Friday, offering the governor an opportunity to reset his faltering campaign. DeSantis recently cut a third of his campaign staff, and was forced to cancel two fundraising events last weekend due to lack of donor interest. According to FiveThirtyEight’s average of national polls, DeSantis’s support among likely Republican primary voters has dipped by roughly 8 points since the beginning of the month.DeSantis’s recent stumbles appear to have emboldened some of his primary opponents to go on the attack against the governor. Speaking to reporters in Iowa on Thursday, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina criticized DeSantis over his support for new educational standards in Florida requiring middle school teachers to tell students that enslaved people learned skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit”.“What slavery was really about was separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives,” said Scott, who is the only Black Republican serving in the Senate. “It was just devastating. So I would hope that every person in our country – and certainly running for president – would appreciate that.”Scott’s primary prospects look to be on the rise, as polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, another early voting state, show him in third place behind Trump and DeSantis. But Trump remains the candidate to beat, as the former president leads DeSantis by 37 points in FiveThirtyEight’s average of national polls.Trump has maintained his frontrunner status even in the face of mounting legal threats. The former president was informed this month that he is a target in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of efforts to interfere in the 2020 election, suggesting an indictment could be on the horizon. On Thursday, Smith also filed a superseding indictment in Florida, expanding the scope of charges against Trump over his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Trump has already pleaded not guilty to a third set of criminal charges in New York, and prosecutors in Georgia may soon indict the former president for attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the battleground state.Trump will probably address the charges against him on Friday, as he has taken any opportunity to denounce the four criminal investigations as “witch-hunts”. Trump’s primary opponents have struggled in their attempts to address the indictments, torn between supporting a former president who remains popular with the Republican base and highlighting a major vulnerability of the current frontrunner for the nomination.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked last week about the news that Trump is a target in Smith’s investigation of election interference efforts, DeSantis said the then-president “should have come out more forcefully” when a group of his supporters violently stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.“But to try to criminalize that, that’s a different issue entirely,” DeSantis said. “We want to be in a situation where you don’t have one side just constantly trying to put the other side in jail, and that unfortunately is what we’re seeing now.” More

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      Ex-Trump lawyer says evidence against him ‘overwhelming’ in Mar-a-Lago case

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      A former Trump White House lawyer said the evidence against the former president over his handling of classified documents was now “overwhelming” and would “last an antiquity”, after new charges were filed in the case on Thursday.“I think this original indictment was engineered to last a thousand years and now this superseding indictment will last an antiquity,” Ty Cobb told CNN. “This is such a tight case, the evidence is so overwhelming.”In June, the special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump on 37 counts regarding his handling of classified records after leaving the White House.On Thursday, in a superseding indictment filed in a Florida court, four more charges were outlined. A second Trump staffer, the Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira, was charged, alongside Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet. Nauta previously pleaded not guilty.Trump was accused of attempting to destroy evidence and inducing someone else to destroy evidence. He also faces a new count under the Espionage Act, for keeping a document about US plans to attack Iran which he memorably discussed on tape.Trump denies all wrongdoing, in the documents case and in other cases including the criminal investigation in New York in which he faces 34 charges relating to hush-money payments to an adult film star.On Thursday night, on his Truth Social platform, the former president complained about another investigation, of Joe Biden’s own retention of classified material. Trump also called Smith “deranged”.A spokesperson called the new charges “nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration to “harass” Trump and “those around him”.On Thursday, Trump told the conservative radio host John Fredericks he had handed over security video footage prosecutors now say he ordered deleted.“These were security tapes,” he said. “We handed them over to them … I’m not even sure what they’re saying.”Smith is also expected to indict Trump over his attempted election subversion. So are prosecutors in Georgia, regarding the former president’s attempts to overturn his defeat by Biden there.Found liable for sexual abuse and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, and fined about $5m, Trump also faces investigations of his business affairs.But his legal problems have not dented his popularity with his party. In polling regarding the Republican nomination for president in 2024, Trump has clear leads in early voting states and is approximately 30 points ahead of his nearest challenger, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, in national polling.Trump told Fredericks he will not end his campaign even if he is convicted and sentenced.“They went after two fine employees yesterday, fine people,” Trump said. “They’re trying to intimidate people so that people go out and make up lies about me. Because I did nothing wrong.”Cobb represented Trump during the investigation by another special counsel, Robert Mueller, into Russian election interference in the 2016 election and links between Trump and Moscow. The attorney later told the Atlantic he did not regret working for Trump, saying: “I believed then and now I worked for the country.”On Thursday, he told CNN: “It’s very difficult to imagine how Trump said that his lawyers met with Jack Smith today to explain to him that he hadn’t done anything wrong [Trump’s claim in the election subversion case], on the same day that Jack Smith produces this evidence of overwhelming evidence of additional wrongdoing.“So this is, I think, par for the course.”Cobb also said he was sure Trump had been advised by his own lawyers “not to destroy, move [documents] or obstruct this grand jury subpoena in any way.“So this is Trump going not just behind the back of the prosecutors, this is Trump going behind the back of his own lawyers and dealing with two people” – Nauta and De Oliveira – “who are extremely loyal”. More

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      Trump faces more charges in classified documents case as second aide named

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      Federal prosecutors on Thursday expanded the indictment against Donald Trump for retaining national security documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, unveiling new charges against him and an employee over an attempt to destroy surveillance footage.The new charges – filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in Florida – were outlined in a superseding indictment that named Mar-a-Lago club maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira as the third co-defendant in the case. Trump’s valet Walt Nauta was previously indicted for obstruction with the former president last month.Trump’s legal exposure in the classified documents case grew after he was accused of attempting to destroy evidence and inducing someone else to destroy evidence, as well as an additional count under the Espionage Act for retaining a classified document about US plans to attack Iran that he discussed on tape at his Bedminster club in New Jersey.The expanded indictment added a new section titled “The Attempt to Delete Security Camera Footage” that alleged in detail how Trump engaged in a scheme with Nauta and De Oliveira to wipe a server containing surveillance footage that prosecutors subpoenaed which showed boxes of classified documents being removed from the storage room.According to the indictment, Trump seemingly instructed Nauta to unexpectedly travel to Mar-a-Lago to have the tapes destroyed. Nauta then enlisted the help of De Oliveira, and they walked to a security booth where the camera angles were displayed on monitors before walking down to the cameras and pointing them out with flashlights.The following week, De Oliveira asked the director of IT at Mar-a-Lago, described as “Trump Employee 4” but understood to be Yuscil Taveras, how long surveillance footage was stored for and then told him “the boss” wanted the server deleted.When the director of IT replied that he did not know how to delete the server and suggested De Oliveira ask the security supervisor at the Trump Organization, De Olivera again insisted that “the boss” wanted the server deleted, the indictment said.De Oliveira’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.For months, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel have viewed the surveillance footage at Mar-a-Lago as key to the case because it showed Nauta removing boxes of classified documents out of the storage room just before Trump’s lawyer was scheduled to search for any classified documents after receiving a subpoena.The close detail about the scheme to delete the server added to the evidence of Trump’s alleged efforts to obstruct the criminal investigation by concealing classified documents from that Trump lawyer, Evan Corcoran.Trump asked Corcoran something to the effect of “What happens if we just don’t respond at all?” and “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”, according to Corcoran’s notes that prosecutors obtained during the investigation.Ordinarily off limits to prosecutors, the notes came before the Washington grand jury hearing evidence in the case after a US appeals court pierced the attorney-client privilege Trump would otherwise have and ordered Corcoran to turn them over.Corcoran then told Trump that he would return on 2 June 2022 to look in the Mar-a-Lago storage room for documents. In the intervening period, the indictment said, Trump instructed Nauta to remove boxes containing classified documents from where Corcoran intended to search.Corcoran recounted in his notes that Trump also made a “funny motion” when they were discussing whether Corcoran should take the 38 documents back with him to his hotel. As Corcoran described it, Trump seemed to indicate he should “pluck” any documents that were “bad”, without saying it explicitly.The former president faces more than three dozen total charges in the case, including more than 30 violations of the Espionage Act. His trial is set for May 2024, at the end of the Republican presidential primary contest in which Trump is currently the frontrunner.A Trump spokesperson said the new charges were “nothing more than a continued desperate and flailing attempt” by the Biden administration “to harass President Trump and those around him”.The case is one of many compounding legal troubles that Trump faces as he vies for the Oval Office again. He faces possible additional indictments in Washington over his role in the January 6 insurrection and in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. In April, he was charged with 34 felony counts related to a hush-money scheme involving the adult film star Stormy Daniels. In May, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E Jean Carroll.In Fulton county, Georgia, a decision is expected shortly from prosecutor Fani Willis on whether to charge Trump over a phone call in which he attempted to push Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to win the 2020 election. More