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    Trump news at a glance: president denies he was briefed about raid on aide-turned-critic John Bolton’s home

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    Donald Trump has said he did not know a raid by the FBI on the home of his former adviser turned critic, John Bolton, was planned and that he expected to be briefed by the justice department on it.“I tell the group I don’t want to know, but just you have to do what you have to do. I don’t want to know about it,” Trump said, adding “I’m not a fan of John Bolton. He’s a real sort of a lowlife. He’s not a smart guy. But he could be very unpatriotic. I’m going to find out.”JD Vance denied the raid was politically motivated. “We don’t think that we should throw people – even if they disagree with us politically, maybe especially if they disagree with us politically – you shouldn’t throw people willy-nilly in prison,” the vice-president told NBC. “You should let the law drive these determinations, and that’s what we’re doing.”Here are the key Trump administration news stories of the day:FBI raids home of Trump’s ex-national security adviserThe FBI raided Bolton’s home on Friday morning.The federal search of Bolton’s house in the Washington DC area was as part of an investigation involving the handling of classified documents, the Associated Press reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. A government source confirmed the raid to the Guardian, but did not disclose further details.Read the full storyDoJ releases Ghislaine Maxwell interview transcriptsThe US Department of Justice has released the transcript and audio recording of an interview conducted by Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, with the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.Read the full storyTrump targets Chicago and New York as Hegseth orders weapons for DC troopsDonald Trump has threatened to take his federal crackdown on crime and city cleanliness to New York and Chicago, as the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered that national guard troops patrolling the streets of Washington DC under federal control will now be armed.Read the full storyHegseth fires top US general after Iran assessment angers TrumpPete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes angered Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.Read the full storyUS man wrongly deported released to await trialKilmar Ábrego García has been freed from criminal custody in Tennessee so he can rejoin his family in Maryland while awaiting trial on human smuggling charges, after a court ordered his release.Read the full storyCanada to drop counter-tariffs on some US goods Canada will drop its counter-tariffs on some American goods in the coming days, Mark Carney has said, as the country’s prime minister looks to end a protracted trade war with the US.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    The US government has taken an unprecedented 10% stake in Intel under a deal with the struggling chipmaker and is planning more such moves, according to Donald Trump and the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, in the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America.

    Current and former Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) officials are concerned over a new agency rule requiring disaster victims to have an email address in order to apply for federal aid.

    The Trump administration has unilaterally stripped hundreds of thousands of federal workers of their union contracts after a federal appeals court overruled an injunction which halted the plans.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 21 August 2025. More

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      Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts: Epstein associate says she ‘never’ saw Trump receive a massage – live

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      The transcripts are more than 300 pages, but here it goes …

      Blanche said, on record, that their conversation wasn’t “promising to do anything” for Maxwell. But that anything she said couldn’t be used against her, unless she provided false statements or there was a retrial in her case.

      According to Maxwell, Epstein didn’t have any video or photographic evidence of any high-profile individuals committing sexual offences. And to that point, Maxwell said she didn’t hear or witness any instances of Epstein blackmailing powerful people.

      Maxwell recruited a number of masseuses for Epstein but “never checked their age or credentials”. She added that, throughout her time with Epstein, she never heard any examples of “sexually inappropriate contact” between Epstein’s guests and in-house masseuses.

      Despite her claims that Epstein didn’t extort anyone, Maxwell does not believe that Epstein died by suicide. She chalked that up to “mismanagement” at the bureau of prisons.

      In the interview Maxwell said she does believe that Epstein “did a lot of, not all, but some of what he’s accused of”. But she maintains that “he became that man over a period of time”.

      Maxwell said that she “never” saw Donald Trump receive a massage. She also said that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” adding that he was “a gentleman in all respects” whenever she saw the president.

      Maxwell also didn’t recall former president Bill Clinton receiving a massage while travelling with Epstein.

      One notable point is that Maxwell denied ever recruiting masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she told Todd Blanche. A reminder that Trump claimed his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club.

      Maxwell did not remember whether Trump submitted a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday album, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. She also couldn’t remember asking Trump to contribute.
      Donald Trump announced that he named Sergio Gor to be the next US ambassador to India and special envoy for South and Central Asian affairs, according to a post on Truth Social.Gor is currently the director of the White House presidential personnel office, and is slated to remain in that position until his confirmation.“For the most populous Region in the World, it is important that I have someone I can fully trust to deliver on my Agenda and help us, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote on Friday.Carol Alvarado, a Texas Democratic senator from Houston, says she intends to filibuster tonight in the Texas senate to delay Republicans from passing a redrawn congressional map.“Republicans think they can walk all over us. Today I’m going to kick back.I’ve submitted my intention to filibuster the new congressional maps. Going to be a long night,” she wrote in a post on X, accompanied by a picture of sneakers.Democrats have gone back and forth with Phil King, the bill’s GOP sponsor, since this morning, trying to get him to admit that he considered race in drawing the maps.The local television station KVUE has more on the rules Alvarado will have to follow as she filibusters the new congressional map.Alvarado will not be able to eat or drink and must stand at her desk the whole time without breaks for the bathroom, the outlet reported.The national guard personnel deployed on the streets of Washington DC will now be armed, a defense official confirmed to The Guardian.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the nearly 2,000 of the national guard members to carry “service-issued weapons,” the official said.“The Interim Commanding General of the D.C. National Guard retains the authority to make any necessary force posture adjustments in coordination with the D.C. Metropolitan Police and Federal law enforcement partners,” said the defense official.The Pentagon and the US army had said last week that troops would not carry weapons.In a Truth Social post, President Donald Trump announced that his administration is undergoing a “major tariff investigation” into imported furniture and is expected to release its findings within 50 days.Trump said the US will impose tariffs (at a rate still to be determined) on foreign-made furniture, in efforts to revive the industry in states including North Carolina, South Carolina, and Michigan.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth fired ​​Lt Gen Jeffrey A Kruse​, the military’s top intelligence officer. The Washington Post first reported the story.Kruse, who served as Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director, is the second senior Air Force general in a week to be forced out or retire unexpectedly. On Monday, Air Force chief of staff Gen David Allvin announced he was stepping down after just two years in the role, a position typically held for four years.A spokesperson for the DIA told CBS News that deputy director Christine Bordine will assume the role of acting director “effective immediately.”“The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” said senator Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in a statement.The firing comes a few months after details of the agency’s preliminary assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from US strikes leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the US strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.The transcripts are more than 300 pages, but here it goes …

      Blanche said, on record, that their conversation wasn’t “promising to do anything” for Maxwell. But that anything she said couldn’t be used against her, unless she provided false statements or there was a retrial in her case.

      According to Maxwell, Epstein didn’t have any video or photographic evidence of any high-profile individuals committing sexual offences. And to that point, Maxwell said she didn’t hear or witness any instances of Epstein blackmailing powerful people.

      Maxwell recruited a number of masseuses for Epstein but “never checked their age or credentials”. She added that, throughout her time with Epstein, she never heard any examples of “sexually inappropriate contact” between Epstein’s guests and in-house masseuses.

      Despite her claims that Epstein didn’t extort anyone, Maxwell does not believe that Epstein died by suicide. She chalked that up to “mismanagement” at the bureau of prisons.

      In the interview Maxwell said she does believe that Epstein “did a lot of, not all, but some of what he’s accused of”. But she maintains that “he became that man over a period of time”.

      Maxwell said that she “never” saw Donald Trump receive a massage. She also said that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” adding that he was “a gentleman in all respects” whenever she saw the president.

      Maxwell also didn’t recall former president Bill Clinton receiving a massage while travelling with Epstein.

      One notable point is that Maxwell denied ever recruiting masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she told Todd Blanche. A reminder that Trump claimed his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club.

      Maxwell did not remember whether Trump submitted a letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday album, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. She also couldn’t remember asking Trump to contribute.
      In Ghislaine Maxwell’s first interview with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, on 24 July, she said that she “may have met” Donald Trump in 1990, before meeting Jeffrey Epstein.Maxwell went on to describe the relationship between the president and Epstein as “friendly”, although she didn’t know how the two men met or how they became friends.She added that she “never” saw the president receive a massage:
      I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.
      Maxwell also contested Trump’s claims she recruited masseuses from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. “I’ve never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago for that, as far as I remember. I can’t ever recollect doing that,” she said in the interview with Blanche.A reminder that the president said in July that his falling out with Jeffrey Epstein stemmed from the convicted sex offender’s efforts to hire workers away from Trump’s Florida club. “People were taken out of the spa, hired by him, in other words, gone,” the president said.The Department of Justice has released the transcripts and audio recordings of the interviews between Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of child sex-offender Jefrrey Epstein, and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche.The interviews between Blanche and Maxwell took place on 24 and 25 July 2025, with her legal representatives present. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking.The justice department will also send the first tranche of records from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation to the House oversight committee, after receiving a subpoena for the files. Earlier this week, the committee chair, Representative James Comer, a Republican, said that his aim is to make the files public – while protecting the safety and identities of the victims.A court has ordered the release of Kilmar Ábrego García from criminal custody in Tennessee.On Friday, magistrate judge Barbara Holmes issued an order allowing the Maryland father of two to leave custody for the first time since his return to the US in June, after his wrongful deportation to El Salvador earlier this year.The 30-year-old was initially wrongfully deported by federal immigration officials in March. According to the Trump administration, Ábrego was affiliated with the MS-13 gang, a claim Ábrego and his family vehemently deny.During his detention at El Salvador’s so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), Ábrego was physically and psychologically tortured, according to court documents filed by his lawyers in July.Following Ábrego’s wrongful deportation, the Trump administration faced widespread pressure to return him back to the US, including from a supreme court order that directed federal officials to “facilitate” his return.In June, the Trump administration returned Ábrego from El Salvador, only to hit him with a slew of human smuggling charges, which his lawyers have rejected as “preposterous”. His criminal trial is expected to begin in January.An update from the Texas senate, where Molly Cook, a Democratic lawmaker from Houston, is now questioning Phil King about the new Texas map.Her line of questioning appears designed to highlight that the senator is not completely blind to race in Texas. She points out that he’s likely done polling in his own races that breaks down results by race and has analysed other statewide racial data as part of his job as a legislator.“I have not drilled into racial data with regard to redistricting,” King says.When asked about the ongoing discussions about a possible bilateral meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president said it will be “interesting to see” whether that goes ahead.Earlier he explained his decision to let the two leaders have a meeting together: “I could have been at the meeting, but a lot of people think that nothing’s going to come out of that meeting.”Trump went on to say that he’ll know “one way or the other” about his next steps in two weeks. “It’s going to be a very important decision. And that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs, or both, or do we do nothing and say ‘it’s your fight,’” he said.Earlier the president said he was “not happy” when asked about a US factory being hit during a Russian strike in Ukraine.The president just confirmed that he has spoken with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader, John Thune, about a plan to raise $2bn from Congress to help fund his ‘beautification’ plans for DC.“I think it’s going to be very easy to get it’s going to be not a lot of money. I wouldn’t even know where to spend the number that you mentioned, but it’s going to be money to beautify the city,” he said in response to a reporter’s question in the Oval Office.“I’m not a fan of John Bolton. I thought it was a sleazebag, actually, and he suffers major Trump derangement syndrome,” the president said, speaking about the raid on his former national security adviser’s home.Trump repeated that he tries to “stay out of that stuff”, and that when it came to the search of Bolton’s home, he “purposefully” didn’t want to get involved. “I saw that just like everybody else,” he added.The president then spent time talking about how he too was subjected to a raid, referring to the FBI search of the his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 during an investigation into the handling of presidential and classified documents.“They went through everything you can imagine,” Trump said. More

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      John Bolton raid shows weaponization of FBI against Patel’s ‘gangsters’ list

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      When Kash Patel, the FBI director, faced senators during his confirmation hearings on 30 January, he bristled at suggestions that his 2023 book contained an “enemies list”. The appendix to Government Gangsters, which included a list of names for 60 people, was simply documentation of those who had “weaponized” the government, he insisted.Seven months later, that denial appears increasingly hollow. Friday’s FBI search of the former national security adviser John Bolton’s home and office, reportedly to find classified documents, marks the fifth investigation targeting people from Patel’s book.Bolton now joins a growing list of Trump critics from Patel’s roll the administration has targeted with what appear to be retaliatory federal investigations: James Comey, the former FBI director, John Brennan, the former CIA director, Miles Taylor, the ex-homeland security official and Lt Col Alexander Vindman. All five people, investigated in just seven months, were on Patel’s 60-name list.Typically, federal prosecutors open cases based on tips, evidence or ongoing criminal activity. They don’t work their way through the index of a political book. While there is no public evidence that the book itself or any outside group is directing investigations, the overlap appears more than coincidence. The Biden justice department definitively closed both civil and criminal proceedings against Bolton in 2021 over his memoir about his time in the Trump White House. Bringing that investigation back to life requires a deliberate decision to re-litigate an already settled matter.Bolton’s investigation, like those into the other four on Patel’s list, is unprecedented in how it is calculated to target a critic. The justice department acknowledged opening criminal investigations into Comey and Brennan over their 2016-2017 Russia investigation roles. Taylor faced presidential orders revoking his security clearance and demanding investigations into his anonymous anti-Trump writings. The DC interim US attorney pressed representative Eugene Vindman for business records tied to Ukraine aid, targeting the twin brother of Alexander Vindman, who testified against Trump during his first impeachment.When asked for details about the raids and the reasoning behind them, a spokesperson for the FBI did not answer directly.“The FBI is conducting court authorized activity in the area,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “There is no threat to public safety. We have no further comment.”The systematic nature of these investigations exposes the fundamental contradiction in the administration’s approach. Officials claim to be combating the “weaponization” of justice while at the same time weaponizing it against a pre-compiled list of critics.Notably, Patel’s targets are both “deep state” bureaucrats and former Trump allies. Along with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton, they include Trump’s own former officials like the former defense secretary Mark Esper and Stephanie Grisham, the press secretary, a suggestion that the list features anyone who crossed or flipped on the president, regardless of their previous loyalty. Patel on Friday morning posted on social media that “NO ONE is above the law”.Trump’s reaction to the Bolton investigation undermines claims of prosecutorial independence. Asked about the raids, the president claimed ignorance while launching familiar attacks: Bolton was “sort of a lowlife” and “could be a very unpatriotic guy – we’re going to find out”, he told reporters on Friday.By systematically investigating critics while claiming to restore justice department integrity, the administration is creating an environment in which political opposition becomes presumed as evidence of criminal behavior.This marks another example of evolution from Trump’s first term, when efforts to weaponize federal law enforcement were often chaotic and ultimately unsuccessful. The current approach appears more disciplined, with Patel’s book providing targets and Bondi’s working group providing bureaucratic cover. More

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      John Bolton rips into Trump’s pick for counter-terrorism chief Sebastian Gorka

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      Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has laid into Sebastian Gorka, the president-elect’s pick for counter-terrorism chief, as a “conman” whose selection is not “going to bode well for counter-terrorism efforts when the [national security council’s] senior director is somebody like that”.Trump praised Gorka, an immigrant from Hungary, as a “tireless advocate for the America First Agenda and the MAGA Movement”.But Bolton came out swinging at Gorka on Friday. The neocon, who served in the Reagan, George W Bush and first Trump administrations, has set out his stall against many of Trump’s picks, including former Democrat and Iraq veteran Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and told CNN that he “wouldn’t have him in any US government”.Earlier this week, Bolton told NewsNation’s The Hill that up until Gorka was nominated by Trump as a deputy assistant to the president and the senior director for counter-terrorism, he would have said that Gabbard’s nomination “was the worst cabinet appointment in recent American history”.Bolton’s not alone in his criticism. Democratic National Committee spokesperson Alex Floyd called Gorka “a far-right extremist who is as dangerous as he is unqualified to lead America’s counter-terrorism strategy”.Gorka is outspokenly pro-Israel and supportive of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and has faced allegations of Islamophobia for supporting Trump’s 2017 Muslim travel ban that barred travel to the US for 90 days for visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.Gorka also claimed that Islam is “not a religion of peace”. He’s come under fire for showing up at Trump’s 2017 inaugural ball wearing an honorary medal from the Hungarian nationalist organization Vitézi Rend and for a previous position serving as an adviser to the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.Bolton said Gorka “needs a full FBI field background investigation” and his “education claims” need to be investigated.“I think he is a perfect example of somebody who owes his position purely to Donald Trump,” Bolton told the outlet. “He doesn’t display loyalty. He displays fealty. And that’s what Trump wants. …“He doesn’t want Gorka’s opinions, he wants Gorka to say ‘yes, sir’, and I’m fully confident that’s exactly what will happen no matter what it is Trump says.” More

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      ‘Fascist’, ‘conman’, ‘predator’, ‘cheat’: what 11 former Trump staffers say about him now

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      They range from top generals to reality stars to lawyers, but one thing all these people have in common: they have worked closely with Donald Trump and have gone public with their warnings on what they really think of him.John KellyChief of staff, 2017-19View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: A retired US Marine Corps general, Kelly served first as Trump’s secretary of homeland security in 2017, then was appointed White House chief of staff, a role he held from July 2017 to January 2019. Kelly’s departure from the White House followed reports of the general’s declining relationship with Trump and alleged frequent disagreements. In 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump told an associate to “stop calling John for anything”. According to the veteran journalist Bob Woodward in his 2018 book Fear, Kelly called Trump an “idiot” and the head of a “Crazytown” administration.What he says now: Kelly recently said his former boss fitted “into the general definition of fascist” who “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government”.Mark MilleyChair of joint chiefs of staff, 2019-23View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: A retired US army general, Milley served as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under Trump and Joe Biden. Under Trump, Milley became the national focus in June 2020 when he participated in Trump’s photo op at St John’s church in Washington DC wearing military fatigues, amid ongoing demonstrations following the police murder of George Floyd. He publicly apologized for the appearance, saying: “I should not have been there.” Reports later emerged that Milley “yelled” at Trump and refused to be in charge of the federal response to the racial justice protests.What he says about Trump now: Milley has called Trump a “fascist to the core” and was doing “great and irreparable harm”.Mark EsperSecretary of defense, 2019-20View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: The politician and marketing executive served as defense secretary under Trump from July 2019 until November 2020, when Trump fired him with a tweet. During his tenure Esper repeatedly clashed with Trump, refusing to send “missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs” and to to deploy troops across the country amid the 2020 racial justice protests. Esper publicly opposed Trump’s threat to levy the military against protesters using the 1807 Insurrection Act, telling journalists: “The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used … in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations.”What he says about Trump now: Esper said Trump “has those inclinations” towards fascism: “I think it’s something we should be wary about.”James MattisSecretary of defense, 2017-19View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: As Trump’s first defense secretary, Mattis clashed with Trump over the US’s treatment of allies and its approach to “malign actors and strategic competitors” across the world. He resigned in December 2018 a day after Trump announced the abrupt withdrawal of US troops from Syria. In 2020, Mattis publicly condemned Trump’s handling of the racial justice protests, saying: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us.”What he says about Trump now: Mattis said Trump makes a “mockery of our constitution”.John BoltonNational security adviser, 2018-19View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: Bolton served as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. Trump reportedly began excluding him from meetings about the Afghanistan war, and eventually ousted him completely after Bolton attempted to stop Trump from inviting the Taliban to Camp David for peace talks (an idea Trump eventually scrapped).What he says about Trump now: Bolton has said Trump is “unfit to be president” and “hasn’t got the brains” for a dictatorship.Rex TillersonSecretary of state, 2017-2018View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: A former Exxon Mobil Corp chief executive, Tillerson served as secretary of state under Trump from February 2017 to March 2018, when Trump fired him with a tweet. During his time as secretary of state, reports emerged that Tillerson once called Trump a “moron”, leading Trump to challenge him to an IQ test. The two men also publicly disagreed on US foreign policy surrounding North Korea, with Tillerson saying: “We do talk to them.” In response, Trump tweeted that Tillerson was “wasting his time” trying to negotiate with Kim Jong Un.What he says about Trump now: Tillerson has called Trump “pretty undisciplined – doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports” and added: “His understanding of global events [and] his understanding of US history was really limited.”Omarosa Manigault NewmanWhite House aide, 2017-2018View image in fullscreenWhat she did under Trump: A former participant on The Apprentice, the TV show Trump hosted, Newman was hired as top aide for Trump in January 2017 until she was fired a year later by John Kelly. She later released secretly recorded White House conversations, including one in which Trump expressed his surprise at her being fired.What she says about Trump now: “I fell for a conman – a conman who turned out to be the biggest fraud.”Mike PenceVice-president, 2017-2021View image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: Pence served as Trump’s vice-president and was his closest confidant for years. Following the January 6 Capitol Hill riots in 2021, a crowd of Trump supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” after Trump egged them on because he was angry Pence had refused to overturn the election results in Trump’s favor by refusing to certify the vote (a power the vice-president does not even have).What he says about Trump now: “Anyone who puts themselves over the constitution should never be president of the United States, and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the constitution should never be president again.”Michael CohenTrump’s former lawyer and fixerView image in fullscreenWhat he did under Trump: Once Trump’s attorney and fixer, Cohen had such a tight relationship with the billionaire real estate mogul that he once described himself as Trump’s “attack dog with a law license”. Cohen later became the star witness in Trump’s criminal trial over his hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, in which Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in an effort to interfere with the 2016 election.What he says about Trump now: “A cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator and a conman.”Cassidy HutchinsonAide to Trump’s chief of staff, 2020View image in fullscreenWhat she did under Trump: A former aide to Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Hutchinson became the focus of national attention in 2022 when she testified to the January 6 House investigative committee that Trump knowingly directed armed supporters to storm the Capitol.What she says about Trump now: “As an American, I was disgusted” she said of Trump’s role in the mob’s attempt to overturn the election. “It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”Alyssa Farah GriffinWhite House communications director, April-December 2020View image in fullscreenWhat she did under Trump: Griffin, the former communications director for Trump, joined the White House in April 2020 and served until her resignation in December of that year. Describing her resignation to Politico in 2021, Griffin said: “I made the decision to step down in December because I saw where this was heading, and I wasn’t comfortable being a part of sharing this message to the public that the election results might go a different way.”What she says about Trump now: She has called his messaging to women “creepy” and “infantilizing”, and predicted Trump is “going to try to steal the election” again. More

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      John Bolton says he will write in Dick Cheney instead of voting for Biden

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      John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Donald Trump who wrote a tell-all book and now campaigns against him, will cast a write-in vote for the former vice-president Dick Cheney instead of Joe Biden this year – despite saying Trump must not be re-elected.Bemoaning Trump’s focus on the 2020 election, which he lost conclusively but falsely insists was won with electoral fraud, Bolton told CNN that four years ago: “I voted for Dick Cheney.“And I’ll vote for Dick Cheney again this November. He was a principled Reaganite conservative and he still is. Age is no longer a factor in American presidential politics, so his age doesn’t disqualify him.”Cheney, 83, has suffered five heart attacks, the first aged just 37. In 2001, at the beginning of his vice-presidency to George W Bush, he prepared a resignation letter lest he become too ill to do the job. He went on to be by most judgments the most powerful vice-president of all but also an architect of the disastrous invasion of Iraq which cost hundreds of thousands of lives and sparked chaos across the Middle East.Three years after leaving office, in 2012 and aged 71, Cheney was given a new heart.Bolton said: “I think he’d do an immensely better job than either Trump or Biden.”Biden is 81. Trump is 77. Both are subject to doubts about their mental and physical capacity to be president.Trump faces unprecedented legal jeopardy, from 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar civil penalties. Biden does not.Trump was impeached twice, for blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt and for inciting an insurrection in the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021. Attempts to impeach Biden, over alleged corruption involving his son, have failed to produce evidence or momentum.On CNN, Bolton was asked if he had considered writing in Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney’s daughter who lost her seat in Congress over her opposition to Trump and who has flirted with a presidential run.Bolton said: “Well, I like Liz a lot. And, you know, maybe someday she’ll get my write-in vote too. But right now I’ll stick with her father.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I hope it sways the electorate and prevents both Trump and Biden from being the successful candidate and if I could start a nationwide write-in campaign for Dick Cheney, maybe I should do that.”Trump v Biden round two promises to be settled by razor-thin margins in a small number of battleground states. Both candidates fear the impact of third-party candidates or voters deserting the major party picks in any way.Among other anti-Trump conservatives, Bolton’s choice did not land well.“I think this is so wrong,” said Joe Walsh, a former Tea Party congressman who ran for the presidential nomination against Trump in 2020.“Bolton believes Trump is unfit, yet he won’t vote for Joe Biden, the only person on the ballot this year who can keep Trump out of the White House. Instead he does this. This is wrong.” More

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      Ex-Trump adviser says former president ‘hasn’t got the brains’ for dictatorship

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      A former national security adviser in the Donald Trump White House has said that the ex-president “hasn’t got the brains” to helm a dictatorship, despite his admiration for such rulers.In an interview with the conservative French outlet Le Figaro, John Bolton, 75, was asked whether Trump had tendencies that mirror dictators like the ones he has previously praised. Bolton not only disparaged Trump’s intellectual capacity, he also disparaged the former president’s professional background, exclaiming: “He’s a property developer, for God’s sake!”Now a vocal critic of Trump, Bolton served as the former president’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019. Bolton had previously served as US ambassador to the UN during George W Bush’s presidency, developing a reputation as a foreign policy hawk.Bolton’s remarks to Le Figaro suggesting Trump is not smart enough to be a dictator will almost certainly do little to allay fears on the political left at home or abroad about a second Trump presidency.After all, Trump has suggested he plans to be a dictator, if only for the first day of his presidency if he were re-elected.Meanwhile, as seeks a second term in the White House, the incumbent Joe Biden has warned that Trump – the lone remaining contender for the Republican nomination – and his allies are “determined to destroy American democracy”. Trump recently provided fuel for that argument by hosting Hungary’s autocratic prime minister Viktor Orbán at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.Trump, furthermore, is known to have lavished praise on leaders considered opposed to US democratic ideals and foreign policy interests, including North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and China’s Xi Jinping.Bolton nonetheless claimed Trump – who is grappling with more than 80 pending criminal charges as well as multimillion-dollar civil penalties – lacks the kind of coherent political philosophy effective dictators require. He also said Trump does not like to “get involved in policy analysis or decision-making in the way we normally use those terms”.For Trump, Bolton added: “Everything is episodic, anecdotal, transactional. And everything is contingent on the question of how this will benefit Donald Trump.”Such disparagements from Bolton – who advocated for the Trump White House to withdraw from a deal with Iran aimed at dissuading it from developing nuclear weapons – are not new. In a new foreword to his account of his work for Trump’s presidency, The Room Where It Happened, Bolton warns that Trump was limited to worrying about punishing his personal enemies and appeasing US adversaries Russia and China.“Trump is unfit to be president,” Bolton writes. And though he may not think Trump can foster a dictatorship, Bolton has warned: “If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse.”Trump has seemingly leaned into such predictions. He stoked alarm at a campaign rally earlier in March when – while musing about how foreign car production affects the US auto industry – he said: “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”His use of the word “bloodbath” recalled provocative language Trump has used previously, including describing immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country”.He told a rally in New Hampshire last year that he wanted to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections”.After that remark, Biden attacked Trump for his use of the world “vermin”, saying Trump’s language “echoes language you heard in Nazi Germany” as Adolf Hitler rose to power and orchestrated the murders of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.In his interview with Le Figaro, Bolton said it was “very likely” that Trump would act on his threat to pull the US out of the Nato military alliance if he were re-elected. In recent months, Trump has repeated his threat not to protect countries whom he believes do not pay enough to maintain the security alliance, and he claimed that European members of the alliance “laugh at the stupidity” of the US.“Trump, when he has an idea, comes back to it again and again, then gets distracted, forgets, but eventually comes back to it and acts on it,” Bolton warned. “That’s why leaving Nato is a real possibility. A lot of people think it’s just a negotiating tool, but I don’t think so.” More

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      John Bolton suggests US will leave Nato if ‘erratic’ Trump wins in 2024

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      Ex-national security adviser John Bolton issued harsh remarks against his former boss and the leading 2024 Republican presidential candidate, saying that the US will likely withdraw from Nato if Donald Trump wins the election.In an interview with the Hill on Thursday, Bolton criticized the former president’s foreign policy after an op-ed he wrote earlier this week called Trump’s behavior “erratic, irrational and unconstrained”.“Donald Trump doesn’t really have a philosophy, as we understand it in political terms,” Bolton said. “He doesn’t think in policy directions when he makes decisions, certainly in the national security space.”Bolton, who was Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, also lambasted Trump for his foreign policy legacy with regard to the alliance, saying in the interview: “He threatened the existence of Nato, and I think in a second Trump term, we’d almost certainly withdraw from Nato.”He also criticized Republicans who have praised Trump for his foreign policy positions. He said: “Those who make these claims about what Trump did in his first term don’t really understand how we got to the places we did. Because many of the things they now give Trump credit for, he wanted to go in the opposite direction.”In Bolton’s op-ed published on Tuesday, he said Trump “disdains knowledge” and accused him of “seeing relations between the United States and foreign lands, especially our adversaries, predominantly as matters of personality”.“Foreign leaders, friend or foe, are far more likely see him as ignorant, inexperienced, braggadocious, longing to be one of the big boys and eminently susceptible to flattery,” Bolton wrote. “These characteristics were a constant source of risk in Trump’s first term, and would be again in a second term.”Bolton condemned Trump for his decision-making, saying: “Beyond acting on inadequate information, reflection or discussion, Trump is also feckless even after making decisions. When things go wrong, or when he simply changes his mind subsequently (a common occurrence), he invariably tries to distance himself from his own decision, fearing negative media coverage or political criticism.”Following his firing in 2019, Bolton published a book, The Room Where It Happened, in which he strongly criticized Trump’s leadership. Earlier this year, Bolton called Trump’s 2024 presidential bid “poison” to the Republican party.Since March, Trump has been criminally charged in connection with hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels, with his hoarding of classified documents at his Florida resort, and with allegedly having a hand in illegal efforts to overturn his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges filed against him. More

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      John Bolton chose not to brief Trump on Russia Havana syndrome suspicion

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      John Bolton chose not to brief Trump on Russia Havana syndrome suspicionFormer national security adviser tells podcast ‘we didn’t feel we would get support’ from president during Russia investigationDonald Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, did not brief the president on suspicions Russia might be behind mysterious “Havana syndrome” attacks on US diplomats because he did not think Trump would support him.‘Havana syndrome’ not caused by foreign adversary, US intelligence saysRead more“Since our concern was that one of the perpetrators – maybe the perpetrator – was Russia,” Bolton said, “we didn’t feel we would get support from President Trump if we said, ‘We think the Russians are coming after American personnel.’”Bolton makes the startling admission in an interview for an episode of a podcast, The Sound: Mystery of Havana Syndrome, hosted by the former Guardian journalist Nicky Woolf and released on Monday.Bolton was national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, a period of intense scrutiny on Trump’s relations with Russia, primarily via special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Mueller issued his report in April 2019. He did not prove collusion between Trump and Moscow in his 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton but the former FBI director did secure indictments of figures close to Trump and lay out extensive evidence of possible obstruction of justice.Trump angrily rejected allegations of wrongdoing and claimed to be the victim of a witch-hunt. But he also closely courted Vladimir Putin, even seeming, in Helsinki in July 2018, to side with the Russian president against his own intelligence agencies.“Havana syndrome” refers to the investigation of more than 1,000 “anomalous health incidents” involving diplomats, spies and other US government employees around the world. The first cases emerged in 2016.Symptoms have included brain injuries, hearing loss, vertigo and unusual auditory sensations. Speculation about directed energy weapons has persisted, though earlier this month an official report said “available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported incidents”.Havana syndrome got its name because, as Bolton told The Sound, “the first reports came from Cuba [so] it would not be unreasonable to say the Cubans were doing it”.But, he said, “it becomes counterintuitive pretty quickly. If they wanted to keep the American embassy open, you wouldn’t attack it. That tended to show that it was some other government. And a government with more capabilities than we thought the Cubans had.”The Trump administration cracked down on Cuba anyway, returning it to the “state sponsor of terror” list, ending a diplomatic thaw begun by Barack Obama. Bolton, a famous rightwing foreign policy hawk, told The Sound he favoured taking that step anyway, regardless of the origin of the Havana syndrome attacks.He also said he and other national security staffers “felt that because it was possible – not certain, but possible – this emanated from a hostile foreign power and we had our ideas who that might be … we thought more needed to be done to consider that possibility and either find evidence to rule it in or rule it out”.If the attack theory was real, Bolton said, there was “no shortage of evidence that would point to Russia as … at least the top suspect”.Nonetheless, he said, he decided not to take that suspicion to Trump.“Who knows what he would’ve said,” Bolton said of his decision not to brief Trump on his suspicions about Russia and Havana syndrome.“He might’ve said, ‘Do nothing at all.’ I didn’t want to chance that, because I did feel it was serious.”Trump fired Bolton in September 2019. The following year, Bolton released a book, The Room Where It Happened, in which he was highly critical of his former boss. Trump sought to prevent publication. Bolton has said he could run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 if it is a way to stop Trump, who he has called “poison” to the Republican party.Speaking to The Sound, Bolton suggested the decision not to brief Trump about suspicions about Russia damaged attempts to investigate the Havana syndrome mystery.“When you don’t have the ability to bring the hammer down and say, ‘Find the answer out,’ … it’s much easier for the bureaucracy to resist.”TopicsDonald TrumpJohn BoltonTrump administrationTrump-Russia investigationUS politicsUS national securityUS foreign policynewsReuse this content More