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      Mike Pence will enter presidential race ‘well before late June’ – if he does at all

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      Mike Pence has not decided whether to enter the Republican presidential primary but if he does he will enter “well before late June”.The former congressman, Indiana governor and vice-president to Donald Trump has been moving towards a run for months, releasing a memoir, visiting early voting states and establishing a political staff.He made his less-than-bold prediction in an interview with CBS Face the Nation.“I think if we have an announcement to make, it’ll be well before late June,” Pence said, adding: “Anyone that would be serious about seeking the Republican nomination would need to be in this contest by June.“If we have an announcement to make it will be well before then.”Pence must perform a balancing act, distancing himself from Trump, the rival candidate whose supporters chanted for Pence to be hanged when they attacked the US Capitol, while trumpeting their achievements together in office.It seems a doomed effort in a party and primary dominated by Trump, particularly as Pence recently dropped attempts to avoid testifying in the justice department investigation of the January 6 attack.In March, in perhaps his boldest break from Trump, Pence told a Washington dinner: “President Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”On CBS, asked if he was “leaning in or leaning away”, Pence said: “Well, I’m here in Iowa.”His interviewer, Robert Costa, said: “Sounds like you’re leaning in.”Pence said: “I would tell you that I’m very humbled by the encouragement that we’re receiving. And I promise when we have something to announce, you’ll be among the first to know.”Pence spoke on Saturday at an event in Clive, Iowa, staged by the Faith & Freedom Coalition, a rightwing nonprofit.Trump also addressed the event. Responding to a recent rebuke from a leading anti-abortion group, which called his opposition to a federal abortion ban “morally indefensible”, the former president highlighted the decision by which a supreme court including three justices he named removed the right to abortion last year.“Those justices delivered a landmark victory for protecting innocent life,” Trump said, in a speech delivered by video. “Nobody thought it was going to happen. They thought it would be another 50 years. Because Republicans had been trying to do it for exactly that period of time, 50 years.”The Roe v Wade decision which protected the right to abortion came in 1973 – 49 years before it was overturned by Dobbs v Jackson.The Iowa caucuses will kick off the Republican primary in February. Ten months out, Trump enjoys clear leads in polling.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has maintained a hold on second place without declaring a run.But DeSantis’s numbers are tanking. The governor faces his own difficulties at state level while Trump surfs a wave of support generated by his criminal indictment in New York, over a hush money payment to an adult film star, and other forms of legal jeopardy including a civil rape trial due to open next week.Trump denies wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of Democratic witch-hunts: a potent combination for attracting donations and support. On Sunday, an NBC poll said 68% of Republican voters thought Trump was the victim of politically motivated attacks and it was important to support him.Pence is contesting third place with Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who declared her run in February. Both are at around 4% support.The other mainstream Republican to have declared, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, struggles to break 1%. The South Carolina senator Tim Scott has all but declared a run but remains all but invisible in polling.Polls do not provide uniformly good news for Trump. A poll this week from the Associated Press and the University of Chicago said 44% of Republicans (and 70% of Americans) do not want him to be the nominee.The Dispatch, a conservative anti-Trump site, said Pence was planning a launch in Indiana, followed by another trip to Iowa.Pence, the site said, “plans to campaign as the traditional conservative he is, eschewing momentary cultural flashpoints that inflame passions and attract eyeballs … [to] instead focus on wonky topics fraught with political peril, like how to address the ballooning federal debt and reforming popular programs like Social Security and Medicare.“On abortion, Pence is eager to highlight his opposition – and his commitment to signing federal legislation limiting the procedure.”Such positions have proved unpopular with general election voters. The Dispatch also said Pence planned to “aim fire directly at” Trump. More

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      New York trial could confer new title on Donald Trump: rapist

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      Donald Trump won’t be there to see it, but the former US president’s deeply tarnished reputation may be about to take another serious hit as a New York jury decides whether he is a rapist.E Jean Carroll, a former advice columnist and author, will finally get her day in court this week, nearly four decades after she alleges that Trump pinned her against the wall of a New York department store and sexually assaulted her.Carroll is suing Trump for damages under a recent New York state law opening a one-year window for adult victims of sexual assault to file civil cases after the statute of limitations has expired. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in a Manhattan court on Tuesday.The trial comes as Trump already faces criminal fraud charges over the payment of hush money to the porn star Stormy Daniels, and the prospect of looming federal and state prosecutions over attempts to fix the 2020 election, the January 6 storming of the Capitol and the hoarding of classified documents.But Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said the case stands out even amid Trump’s myriad legal problems because it revives memories some of his most egregious behavior as he once again runs for president.“One of the things that happened because of Trump’s election in 2016 was this collective outrage from women across the country for a whole host of reasons, but in many ways encapsulated by that video of him talking about grabbing women by their genitalia. There was this moment for many women who thought it would not be possible for someone caught saying that to ever become president of the United States. And then he was,” she said.“This case brings all that up and in some ways adds to that outrage that women feel about him. He has been accused of this kind of behaviour so many times and he’s never been held accountable. This time it seems like he may in fact be held accountable.”Carroll accuses Trump of raping her in a dressing room of the New York department store, Bergdorf Goodman, some time in late 1995 or early the following year. She claims that the New York businessman recognised her as she shopped and asked for help in choosing a present for a woman who is not named in the litigation.Carroll told National Public Radio she thought it was “just charming” that Trump wanted advice on buying a present. But then he led the way to the lingerie department.“He had grabbed up from the counter a little see-through bodysuit and told me to go try it on,” said Carroll. “And that’s where I got into trouble, because we went into the dressing room and he closed the door and that was it.”Carroll alleges that Trump pushed her against a wall and forcibly kissed her until she pushed him away.“Then he pressed her against the wall once more, pulled down her tights, and forcibly raped her for several minutes until she managed to push him off and fled the store,” according to the lawsuit.Carroll said that she immediately told one friend about the assault and a second in the following days. Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin have since corroborated the account.But Carroll did not file a complaint with the police because she “was in shock and did not wish to think of herself as a rape victim”.“The two friends in whom she confided gave her conflicting advice about reporting the event. Ultimately, she was persuaded by the advice of the friend who advised her to keep quiet. That friend stressed that Mr Trump was powerful and would ‘bury’ Ms Carroll if she came forward,” the complaint alleges.Carroll changed her mind when Trump was elected president and following the accusations against the film producer Harvey Weinstein that led to the #MeToo movement. She wrote a book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, detailing abuse of one kind or other by a number of men, including Trump. Excerpts were published in New York magazine.Trump responded with his usual vigor, claiming never to have met Carroll even though there is a photograph of the pair with their respective spouses a few years before the alleged assault. He called her allegations “a complete con job” and said Carroll’s book “should be sold in the fiction section”.“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a Hoax and a lie,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social.“And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!”Trump said that Carroll’s inability to pin down an exact date for the assault was evidence that it never happened.“Now all I have to do is go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name of her and her lawyer’s phoney attacks on me. This can only happen to ‘Trump’!”Trump’s defence team appears likely to accuse Carroll of a politically motivated attack on the former president. The judge is permitting the defence to submit evidence that her lawsuit is funded in part by the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, who is a harsh critic of Trump.The former president told the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan, that he would not be attending the hearing as he did not want to disrupt New York’s traffic with his motorcade. Kaplan scoffed at that explanation.But Carroll will give testimony along with the two friends who corroborate her account that she sought their advice immediately after the alleged assault.Walsh said this could be a dangerous moment for Trump because Carroll is likely to make a highly credible witness.“It’s not that you hear this story from her, and you go, ‘Oh, that couldn’t be. That’s not him.’ It fits a pattern with him,” she said.Nonetheless, Walsh is not sure if the Carroll trial will prove the moment of reckoning she says Trump deserves to face.“It’s sometimes quite astonishing to watch how much he can get away with. Is this all a moment of reckoning? With these other cases that are pending, could this be the moment where he finally can’t talk himself out of this stuff? I don’t know,” she said.Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said that if the jury finds that Trump did rape Carroll, there will be a political consequence but it will not be immediate.“It will not affect his base that is powering him potentially to another nomination. They don’t care. Not only will this not hurt him, it’s going to reinforce the image that his core supporters have that he is being persecuted. So, for the nomination, it could even be a plus, I’m sorry to say,” he said.“But it’ll hurt him in a general election. Carroll is very believable and it should have some effect on Americans who are not in the Maga base.”Walsh agrees, saying that, combined with Trump’s other legal problems, it will remind white female Republican voters, who supported him in 2016 despite the comments about grabbing genitalia, why they then turned away from him four years later and played an important part in his defeat.“It’s one thing when you are boasting to your buddy and showing off. It’s another thing when you have a woman stepping forward saying ‘you raped me’,” she said.“College-educated white women who are Republicans have pulled away from the party. In the past, the party sort of trumped everything. In a way, that’s what happened in 2016. But after watching Trump be the president, it became harder and harder for those women to continue to pull the lever for Donald Trump. These women who used to be pretty solid Republican women voters couldn’t go there. I think these women would have a very hard time if he is the nominee again.”Carroll has two separate cases against Trump. The first accuses him of defaming her in 2019 when he denied her accusations.But that case is on hold pending the second lawsuit made possible after New York passed the adult survivors act last year opening the window for people who were sexually assaulted as adults to bring legal actions against their attackers in the wake of the #MeToo movement. More

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      Ron DeSantis is flaming out – and Trump is on course for a Republican coronation | Lloyd Green

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      The Ron DeSantis boomlet is done. He consistently trails Donald Trump by double-digits. A Wall Street Journal poll out Friday pegs Florida’s governor in severe retrograde, slipping 27 points since December. DeSantis mistakenly conflates his campaign’s bulging war chest with adulation. Wrong!He forgot that working-class Americans dominate the Republican party and that mien matters. Voting to gut social security comes with fatal backlash, and eating pudding with your fingers is gross. Said differently, largesse from the party’s donor base coupled with little else is a losing recipe.Charles Koch has but a single vote and David Koch is gone. Before he goes any further, DeSantis needs to be reminded of past campaign flame-outs – Jeb Bush, John Connally and Mike Bloomberg – if he is to avoid their inglorious endings.In 2016, Trump bludgeoned Bush to an early primary exit. His name recognition bought a ton of campaign donations but little else. A son and brother to presidents and a grandson to a US senator, Bush left the race with a grand total of four convention delegates and zero primary victories.He sat in the Florida governor’s mansion between 1999 and 2007. The gig doesn’t scream springboard.Connally is another cautionary tale. Lee Harvey Oswald seriously wounded him as he was riding with President Kennedy that fateful November day in Dallas. Fast forward, Ronald Reagan left Connally in the dust in 1980.The jut-jawed former Texas governor garnered just a single convention delegate after parting with $500,000 from his own pockets and nearly $12m from everyone else’s.And then there’s Mayor Bloomberg. He dropped $900m of his own money, netted 58 delegates and a lone victory – American Samoa. As a coda, he tussled with campaign staff over unpaid wages.If primaries were held tomorrow, DeSantis would probably suffer beatings in New Hampshire, Georgia and South Carolina, and lags in Florida. And if he can’t win in the Sunshine state, he is not likely to win anywhere else.Home-state losses are fatal. Just ask Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. Joe Biden resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Warren and Klobuchar continue to toil in the Senate.Don’t expect DeSantis to regain traction any time soon. He has not benefited from Trump’s legal woes. DeSantis also remains plagued by a likability deficit, and his war on “woke” is beginning to bite him.When news broke in March of Trump’s indictment, DeSantis reflexively rushed to his defense. In the moment, he accused Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s district attorney, of pushing an “un-American” political “agenda”. DeSantis also stood ready to fight Trump’s extradition to New York, a meaningless gesture. Trump voluntarily surrendered days later.Subsequently, DeSantis took a swipe at Trump’s extracurricular hobbies, but it was too little, too late. Subtlety doesn’t work on Trump. To be the man, you need to beat the man.This coming week, E Jean Carroll’s defamation and sexual assault civil case against Trump begins in a Manhattan courtroom. Trump is noncommittal about attending. Expect the infamous Access Hollywood tape to be re-aired. The circus is back.Regardless, there is no indication that DeSantis will have much to say about any of that. Whether Casey DeSantis, his wife, offers any empathetic words for Ms Carroll or Melania Trump is also unknown. A former television broadcaster, Casey DeSantis knows how to wield a shiv with a smile, not a snarl.On that score, DeSantis’s lack of social skills has cost him plenty. At Politico, the headline blares: “How to lose friends and alienate people, by Ron DeSantis.”This past week, his gambit to woo Florida’s House Republicans flopped. He flew up to Washington only to be met by a passel of Trump endorsements.“A great group of supportive Florida Congressmen and Congresswomen, all who have Endorsed me, will be coming to Mar-a-Lago,” the 45th president posted. “Our support is almost universal in Florida and throughout the USA.”Trump takes the time to wine, dine and threaten. DeSantis can’t be bothered. Voters in early primary states expect to be stroked or entertained. The governor appears incapable of doing either.Last, Disney is fighting back, to DeSantis’s chagrin and Trump’s delectation. To burnish his stock with social conservatives, DeSantis attempted to put the torch to one of his state’s biggest business and largest employers. By contrast, when Trump taunted the National Football League, he was playing with other people’s money.Right now, Mickie, Minnie and Trump are winning. The path to the 2024 Republican nomination looks ever more like a coronation.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Mike Lindell ordered to pay $5m to man who debunked data used to push big lie

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      Mike Lindell must make good on a promise and pay $5m to a software expert who debunked data the conspiracy theorist touted in advancing Donald Trump’s lie that his 2020 election defeat was the result of voting fraud, an arbitration panel decided.In its decision, the panel said: “The data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data.”Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 was conclusive: by more than 7m votes and a clear margin in the electoral college.But Lindell, chief executive of MyPillow, has spent millions in support of Trump’s lie.He announced his “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge” at a “cyber symposium” in South Dakota in 2021, saying he would give $5m to anyone who could disprove what he claimed was genuine election data he had obtained.On Thursday, CNN quoted from a deposition in which Lindell said: “The symposium was to get the big audience and have all the media there and … the cyber guys saying, ‘Yes this data is from the 2020 election and you better look at how they intruded into our machines, our computers,’ and that was the whole purpose.”If he put up $5m, he said, “it would get news, which it did”.On Wednesday, a panel of the American Arbitration Association ruled in a dispute between Lindell and Robert Zeidman, an expert who took up the challenge.Based on its analysis, the panel said, “Mr Zeidman performed under the contract … Failure to pay Mr Zeidman the $5m prized was a breach of the contract, entitling him to recover.”An attorney for Zeidman, Brian Glasser, told CNN: “The lawsuit and verdict mark another important moment in the ongoing proof that the 2020 election was legal and valid, and the role of cybersecurity in ensuring that integrity.“Lindell’s claim to have 2020 election data has been definitively disproved.”Lindell used “a brief phone interview” with CNN to “slam the media and profess the need to get rid of electronic voting machines”. He also said the arbitration decision would “end up in court”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCarl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, told the Guardian: “The contest rules provided in the arbitration stated that disputes were to be ‘resolved exclusively by final and binding arbitration’ and observed that arbitration ‘is subject to very limited review by courts’. Thus, Lindell cannot directly appeal the arbitration panel ruling to a court.“Lindell can request that a federal court nullify the decision, if he can show that it reflected ‘manifest injustice’. Nevertheless, federal courts rarely rule that litigants satisfy that exceedingly high standard.”Lindell already faces lawsuits arising from his claims about electoral fraud, including a $1.3bn suit from Dominion Voter Systems, which this week reached a $787.5m settlement with Fox Corp over its broadcast of election-related lies.Lindell’s counter-suits against Dominion and another voting machine company, Smartmatic, were dismissed by a judge as “frivolous” and “groundless”.On Thursday, the law professor and former White House ethics tsar Richard Painter said: “Pay up, Pillow Man. People who don’t believe in objective truth are being told to write some big checks this week, and you’ll be one of them.” More

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      Trump rebuked by judge over jury request in New York civil rape trial

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      Donald Trump on Thursday was rebuked by the judge in his looming civil rape trial over a request for jurors to be told that if the former president did not testify, it would be out of concern that his presence would adversely affect New York City.This week, a lawyer for Trump, Joe Tacopina, first tried to delay the trial then requested the jury instruction.In a letter to federal judge Lewis A Kaplan on Wednesday, Tacopina said jurors should be told: “While no litigant is required to appear at a civil trial, the absence of the defendant in this matter, by design, avoids the logistical burdens that his presence, as the former president, would cause the courthouse and New York City.“Accordingly, his presence is excused unless and until he is called by either party to testify.”The next day, Kaplan responded: “The decision whether to attend or testify is [Trump’s] alone to make.”Noting that Trump’s accuser, the writer E Jean Carroll, has said she does not intend to call him, Kaplan said: “There is nothing for the court to excuse.”Kaplan also said he did not accept Trump’s claim about “alleged burdens on the courthouse or the city”, because he was confident the US Secret Service – which protects all former presidents – and the US Marshals Service, in charge of federal courthouse security, would cope.Trump, Kaplan said, “will speak at a campaign event in New Hampshire on 27 April, the third day of the scheduled trial in this case. If the Secret Service can protect him at that event, certainly the Secret Service, the Marshals Service, and the city of New York can see to his security in this very secure federal courthouse.”The case concerns an alleged rape in the changing rooms of a New York department store in the mid-1990s, a claim Carroll made in 2019.Trump denies it. Carroll sued him for defamation, then sued again, for defamation and battery, under New York state’s Adult Survivors Act, a law that eliminates civil filing deadlines for alleged victims of long-ago sexual assaults.The trial in the first suit has been delayed while lawyers wrangle over whether Trump’s remarks were part of his duties as president, and thus protected. The trial next week concerns the second suit.Kaplan said the start date had been known since early February.“There has been quite ample time within which to make whatever logistical arrangements should be made for [Trump’s] attendance,” he said, “and certainly quite a bit more time than the five or six days between recent indictment on state criminal charges and his arraignment on that indictment approximately one block from the site of this case.”In the other case mentioned by Kaplan, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records, related to his hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claims an affair he denies.Since then, Trump has surged in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, notwithstanding the fact he also faces state and federal investigations of his 2020 election subversion, a federal investigation of his handling of classified material, and a civil suit in New York over his business and tax affairs.In the Carroll case, Kaplan stressed, “the question of the requested jury instruction is premature. Mr Trump is free to attend, testify or both. He is free also to do none of these things.”Trump’s attorneys, Kaplan said again, would not be allowed to tell the jury he wanted to testify but had chosen to spare court and city the “burdens” of his presence. More

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      ‘Most pro-life president’: Trump’s stance on a federal abortion ban isn’t what you think

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      Donald Trump considers a federal abortion ban as a losing proposal for Republicans as the party prepares to enter the first presidential election since the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade and is unlikely to support such a policy, according to people close to him.The former president has told allies in recent days that his gut feeling remains leaving the matter of reproductive rights to the states – following the court’s reasoning in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that ended 50 years of federal abortion protections.But Trump’s crystallizing stance appears to be, in essence, a recognition that a federal abortion ban could cost him in the 2024 election should he become the Republican nominee, mainly because a majority of Americans simply do not support making abortion mostly or entirely illegal.The thinking is informed in part by Republicans’ losses in the midterm elections they were supposed to dominate, which interviews showed were tied to the supreme court ruling. And in the six states where abortion-related questions were on the ballot in 2022, voters chose to reject further limits.The issue has emerged as an early litmus test for Republican presidential candidates, and Trump’s reluctance to endorse national restrictions would put him squarely at odds with prominent leaders of the anti-abortion movement who are demanding federal action.Yet his refusal to embrace the most hard-line position of party activists provides an opening for potential rivals such as Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and his former vice-president, Mike Pence, to run to his right on an issue.Worried about the political risks of being viewed as over draconian on abortion, Trump’s allies told him that they were surprised last week to see DeSantis, his expected rival in the 2024 race, sign into law and become the face of the state’s six-week abortion ban.The feedback to Trump – which is shaping his stance – was that for all the claims by DeSantis that he was supposedly an electable alternative to Trump for the GOP nomination, the Florida governor would undermine his chances in general elections by becoming the face of a six-week abortion ban.Trump has talked about striking a balance, people close to him said: leaving abortion up to the states, while endorsing exceptions for rape, incest and in cases of harm to the mother, as well as appointing conservative judges to the federal bench and removing federal funds for planned parenthood, which he did as president.Trump’s less extreme stance on abortion underscores the enduring potency of one of America’s most politically charged issues. But his posturing could prove risky in the Republican primary, where social conservatives have outsized influence in the early-voting states, especially in Iowa.On Saturday, Trump is scheduled to speak at Iowa’s Faith and Freedom Coalition event – one of the most conservative conferences in the country – where he may be pressed on his abortion stance.Asked about Trump’s stance on abortion for 2024, the campaign reiterated his White House policies. “President Trump believes that the supreme court, led by the three justices which he supported, got it right when they ruled this is an issue that should be decided at the state level.”“Republicans have been trying to get this done for 50 years, but we were unable to do so. President Trump, who is considered the most pro-life president in history, got it done. He will continue these policies when re-elected to the White House,” the statement said.Trump’s political thinking was also on display when the draft supreme court decision to overturn Roe v Wade was leaked last year, the people said, when he turned to friends and said it would anger suburban women and lead to a backlash against Republicans in the midterms.He initially demurred about taking credit for the ruling – unusual for someone typically so keen to claim any credit – and was silent even as his former vice-president Mike Pence and other conservatives from his administration declared victory for the anti-abortion movement.Later, Trump made sure to issue a statement applauding himself for sticking with his three nominees to the supreme court, who all ended up in the 6-3 majority opinion reversing Roe v Wade. “Today’s decision … only made possible because I delivered everything as promised,” he said.Trump has described himself as the “most pro-life president” in history, though he is also a former Democrat from New York who once supported abortion rights until around the time that he ran for president in 2016.While in office, Trump paved the way for the post-Roe legal landscape, also appointing to the federal bench in Texas US district court judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, whose recent ruling revoked the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion drug, mifepristone. The decision has been temporarily stayed.Trump’s comments about abortion being a political liability for Republicans have angered former allies. When Trump blamed the party’s midterm losses on “the abortion issue”, prominent anti-abortion groups fired back with a pointed warning that the former president still needed to earn their support.Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America group, told reporters prior to the March For Life in January that any candidate who did not support national restrictions on abortion had “disqualified him or herself as a presidential candidate in our eyes”.Jon Schweppe, policy director of the conservative American Principles Project, said Trump was not wrong that abortion had hurt Republicans in recent elections. But he said the answer was not to abandon the push for a nationwide ban, rather it was to build consensus within the party around a federal standard, such as a prohibiting the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.“I think [Trump] sees abortion as why we lost the midterms and he’s not totally wrong,” Schweppe said. “But the answer is not: ‘There’s no federal role. We’er not going to do anything any more – I delivered you Dobbs.’ It’s gotta be: ‘This is the next step.’”“The pro-life movement still has quite a bit of sway,” he added, “and it’s going to have a major sway in the presidential primary.” More

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      Top Trump adviser to be interviewed by special counsel prosecutors

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      Donald Trump’s senior adviser and legal counsel Boris Epshteyn is scheduled to be interviewed on Thursday by special counsel prosecutors investigating the former president’s retention of classified-marked documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and his role in the January 6 Capitol attack.The investigation Epshteyn is being asked to talk about – potentially both – remains unclear, according to a person familiar with the matter who confirmed the meeting on the condition of anonymity. His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.But the interview, which was requested by special counsel prosecutors, marks a moment of potential peril for Trump given Epshteyn has been one of his closest advisers in recent years, with more knowledge about the former president’s legal entanglements than perhaps anyone else.Throughout the Mar-a-Lago documents case, Epshteyn has simultaneously been a member of Trump’s inner circle as a senior adviser on the 2024 campaign, and a member of the Trump legal team as the project-manager-esque person leading the civil and criminal lawyers as the in-house counsel.The dual roles mean Epshteyn is considered to have the most insight into decisions taken by Trump and others as the investigation has progressed – the sort of behind-the-scenes knowledge most prized by prosecutors in high-profile criminal cases.Whether Epshteyn has legal exposure himself remains unclear. But he played a role in the Trump legal team’s botched response to a grand jury subpoena last year that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents before the FBI seized 101 such papers at Mar-a-Lago.In that episode, Epshteyn coordinated the two Trump lawyers who were involved in turning over some classified-marked documents to the justice department and signing an attestation letter certifying compliance with the subpoena, which later turned out to be false.The scheduled interview with Epshteyn was the topic of conversation among some of the Trump lawyers on Wednesday morning, who have made their dislike of working with him known internally, complaining that he acts as a gatekeeper to Trump and gave him poor predictions in the Manhattan hush-money case.But Trump has prized Epshteyn’s personal loyalty to him, and despite asking associates at the start of the year whether he was doing a “good job” after a series of legal defeats in court and having his phone seized by the FBI in the January 6 investigation, has kept him as a trusted member of his inner circle.The documents case has proved tricky for the entire Trump legal team, with prosecutors unusually focused on the behavior of the lawyers.Epshteyn’s interview makes him the fifth Trump lawyer to have formally spoken with justice department officials or testified before the grand jury in Washington hearing evidence about the former president’s potential mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of justice.The grand jury most recently heard testimony from Evan Corcoran, who led the initial search of Mar-a-Lago after Trump received the subpoena and was ordered to turn over detailed notes, because of the so-called crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege protections.Before Corcoran testified, his co-counsel Tim Parlatore was subpoenaed to testify about additional searches of Mar-a-Lago he led after the justice department believed Trump might have additional classified-marked documents in his possession. Alina Habba and Christina Bobb have also testified to the grand jury. More

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      Ron DeSantis ally backs Trump for president in latest Florida defection

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      In a blow to Ron DeSantis, a prominent ally of the rightwing governor was on Tuesday one of two Florida Republicans in Congress to back Donald Trump for president, the latest in a string of such defections.The news came amid reports that DeSantis’s team has pressured US representatives from his state not to endorse Trump.Brian Mast told CNN he planned to endorse the former president and would chair a veterans committee in support of his re-election bid.Peter Schorsch, publisher of FloridaPolitics.com, said: “This is right up there with Byron Donalds picking Trump over DeSantis.”Donalds introduced DeSantis for his election night speech in November, after his landslide win over the Democrat Charlie Crist. Last week, though, Donalds told NBC he plumped for Trump because he was a candidate “ready for prime time”.Schorsch added: “Brian Mast has been DeSantis’s ally on environment and water issues in South Florida. Mast is at DeSantis’s hip during press conferences. They’re both veterans, too. Wow.”Mast and John Rutherford were the sixth and seventh congressional Florida Republicans to endorse Trump. Rutherford announced his decision in a tweet.“As a former sheriff,” he said, “I understand the importance of a fair and impartial system of justice. The systematic targeting of Americans with conservative ideals, especially our 45th president of the United States, disgraces our nation’s legacy.”He was referring to Trump’s criminal indictment in New York this month, on 34 counts of falsification of business records relating to his hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Trump also faces legal jeopardy over his election subversion and incitement of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, his handling of classified material, his business and tax affairs and an allegation of rape. He denies all wrongdoing.His sheriff-turned-congressman supporter added: “As strong Republicans, we must restore law, order and justice to our country … under President Trump’s leadership, America was more safe, more secure, and more prosperous.”Trump lost conclusively to Joe Biden in 2020, a year of chaos amid the Covid pandemic and protests for racial justice.For inciting an insurrection in his attempt to overturn that defeat, fueled by the lie that Biden won thanks to electoral fraud, Trump was impeached a second time. But he escaped conviction and is now the clear leader in the race for the GOP nomination, leveraging his legal predicament to boost fundraising and support.DeSantis has not declared his candidacy but is widely expected to do so. He is Trump’s closest challenger but his numbers have stagnated as he has come under fire for extreme policies including a six-week abortion ban, school book bans and a drawn-out fight with Disney. Last week, a major donor said he was pausing support.By Tuesday, Trump had secured endorsements from one governor (Henry McMaster of South Carolina), nine senators and 47 House members. Lance Gooden, a Texas Republican, released his endorsement of Trump shortly after what he called “a positive meeting” with DeSantis in Washington.NBC first reported DeSantis allies calls to Florida Republicans. An unnamed source said: “There is clearly some angst from the DeSantis camp that so many members of the state’s congressional delegation are throwing their support behind Trump.”Rutherford and Mast were not among Republicans named. The New York Times, however, cited an official “familiar with the effort” when it said “others in the 20-member Republican delegation from Florida are almost certainly on the call list”.One Republican named by NBC, Laurel Lee, endorsed DeSantis on Tuesday. Another, Greg Steube, declared for Trump on Monday. More