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      Trump prosecutor Fani Willis tells misconduct hearing: ‘I’m not on trial. These people are on trial for stealing an election’ – as it happened

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      In one furious outburst, Fani Willis is angrily pushing back at what she says are personal attacks on her and Nathan Wade, and says opposing attorneys should focus their attention elsewhere.Asked if she objected to records of flights she took with Wade being demanded, she said:
      I object to you getting records. You’ve been intrusive into people’s personal lives. You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.
      Willis is also defending Wade’s character, saying they are “good friends”.The judge has ordered another short break.We’re closing the US politics blog now after what was an extraordinary day, on two fronts, in the various legal cases against Donald Trump.
      In Georgia, the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis gave testimony in a fiery first day of a misconduct hearing that could see her removed from the election interference case against the former president. “I’m not on trial here,” she insisted in one of many angry exchanges over her affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
      Willis tussled with Trump lawyer Steve Sadow over the “tough conversation” she had with Nathan Wade ending their relationship and, crucially, when it occurred. Telling Sadow “you don’t have to yell at me,” Willis said their relationship was over before she indicted Trump last August.
      Willis insisted she paid Wade back for money he spent on two cruises and other trips he took with her in 2022 and early 2023.
      Willis accused Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for another Trump co-defendant, of telling lies about her in another heated exchange.
      Wade also took the stand, confirming their relationship ended last summer.
      Robin Yeartie, a former friend of Willis who worked in her office, testified the relationship began before Wade was hired.
      In New York, a judge set a 25 March start date for Trump’s trial on charges he made illegal hush-money payments to adult movie star Stormy Daniels, and Playboy model Karen McDougal.
      The two stories dominated the day.Also today:Join us again tomorrow, when we’ll have more from the second day of the Fani Willis misconduct hearing.A fiery first day of the misconduct case against Fani Willis, in which a judge will decide if the Fulton county district attorney will be disqualified from prosecuting the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump, has just wrapped up for the day.The final exchange was Harry MacDougald, lawyer for Trump co-defendant Jeffrey Clark, asking Willis about any financial gifts above $100 she received from Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired for the case, and with whom she had a romantic relationship.Willis says she never received any, other than him paying for dinner. She says she reimbursed him for everything, and pushed back when McDougald said there was nothing to prove she had withdrawn any cash to do so.“That’s not accurate,” Willis replied.It was a tamer exchange than those that preceded it. In one particularly hostile moment, Willis accused an attorney of repeatedly lying about her, and in another furiously exclaimed: “I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”Judge McAfee has told all parties to reconvene at 9am ET on Friday. It’s been quite a day.Steve Sadow’s questioning of Fani Willis has now concluded, and the judge overseeing the misconduct hearing, Scott McAfee, says there’s time for a few more questions before he wraps the hearing up for the day.Next up is Allyn Stockton, lawyer for Trump’s co-defendant and former attorney Rudy Giuliani, who opened with questions about travel Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade might have made together, including trips to Washington DC that Willis has already denied took place.Next, he’s wondering about Willis’s hiring practices and contract-issuing procedures as Fulton county district attorney.It’s not yet clear where he’s going with it, but he seems to be suggesting there might be something improper about the status of employment of two of Wade’s colleagues who reportedly did work for her Willis’s office.Steve Sadow and Fani Willis are now tussling over the “tough conversation” she had with Nathan Wade ending their relationship and, crucially, when it occurred.“The physical relationship was over pre-indictment,” Willis aid, referring to the criminal election interference charges she brought, aided by special prosecutor Wade, against Donald Trump in Georgia in August 2023.But she said women and men “think differently” about what might constitute the end of a relationship. She also said there was a good deal of tension in her relationship with Wade towards the end:
      He told me one time only thing a woman can do for him is make him a sandwich. We would have brutal arguments about the fact that I am your equal.
      I don’t need anything from a man. A man is not a plan. A man is a companion. And so there was tension always in our relationship, which is why I always gave him his money back.
      I don’t need anybody to foot my bills. The only man who’s ever footed my bills completely is my daddy.
      Sadow tried again. “The romantic relationship ended before the indictment was returned. Yes or no?” he said.“To a man, yes,” Willis replied.Steve Sadow, an attorney for Donald Trump, is next to question Fani Willis, and their exchanges are even more hostile than those that preceded them.“You don’t have to yell at me. I’m able to understand. So I would ask you to not yell at me,” Willis replied when Sadow asked a question about her living arrangements during the period she was having a relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.Willis is also repeatedly claiming the phrasing of Sadow’s questions is “inaccurate”, as is definition of “romantic” to describe her relationship with Wade.“A romantic relationship doesn’t necessarily have to be just sex. It can be dating, it can be holding hands. It can be any of those things that one might call romantic. I’m asking you whether or not prior to November 1st 2021 there was a romantic relationship with Mr Wade,” Sadow said.Willis replied: “I do not consider our relationship to have become romantic until early 2022 … sometime between February and April.”Almost inevitably, Donald Trump has now weighed in with an emailed attack on Fani Willis, and almost as inevitably it’s a fundraising appeal from his campaign, which is clearly watching today’s courtroom drama closely:
      Fani Willis was responsible for taking my mugshot! First she coordinated with the Biden White House to take me down! Then she hired her lover to go after me and paid him with taxpayer dollars,” an email to supporters says, repeating numerous unverified allegations.
      But now, right now, her corruption is being broadcast live to the whole world. I told you she’s corrupt as hell.”
      The email concludes with the oft-heard claim of a “witch-hunt” and a request to “patriots” to chip in to defeat Willis.Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney questioning Fani Willis, is asking why she chose to run for district attorney, citing a claim that Willis said she didn’t want to be “finally effed-up again”.It appears relevant because Donald Trump has claimed Willis ran for the office because she was out to get him.Willis says she felt that with her experience she was “the appropriate person” for what was a tough job:
      It was a huge sacrifice to be district attorney in Fulton County. I was doing just fine. I had a municipal court judgeship that was paying me 100 something thousand a year, and we got to show up twice a week … [the] easiest thing I’ve ever done in life.
      I also had private clients that were paying me to represent them, so I was able to have a law practice and raise two daughters by myself. They were times in life where things were hard.
      So I was telling people I don’t really want to for DA. I’m in a good position right now, I got this easy job that I enjoy being the chief judge of the city of South Fulton, making money at the law firm, and I’m not sure that I want to make the sacrifice.
      Eventually, I prayed. I think that I was the appropriate person.
      Merchant’s questioning of Willis has now concluded.Judge Scott McAfee says the heated atmosphere in the courtroom needs to cool down, and ordered a short break.When the session resumed, with Fani Willis still on the stand, he admonished all parties to respect the decorum of the court.Here’s my colleague Sam Levine’s latest take on this afternoon’s fiery proceedings:In her time on the stand, Fani Willis has twice sought to remind the audience about the stakes of the case. At issue isn’t her relationship with Wade, but democracy. “Ms Merchant’s interests are contrary to democracy your honor, not to mine,” she said at one point.In a heated exchange later she said “You’re confused… I’m not on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020.”Willis’s testimony so far has sought to explain some of the biggest questions from Wade’s testimony this morning.Explaining why she repaid Wade in cash for travel, Willis explained that she has always kept significant amounts of cash wherever she lays her head. She took from that stash to repay Wade. She has also been blunter about calling out “lies” in motions seeking to disqualify her.By way of explanation, Ashleigh Merchant, mentioned above, is the attorney currently involved in the back-and-forth with Willis on the stand. She represents Michael Roman, one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the election interference case that Willis is prosecuting.In one furious outburst, Fani Willis is angrily pushing back at what she says are personal attacks on her and Nathan Wade, and says opposing attorneys should focus their attention elsewhere.Asked if she objected to records of flights she took with Wade being demanded, she said:
      I object to you getting records. You’ve been intrusive into people’s personal lives. You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.
      Willis is also defending Wade’s character, saying they are “good friends”.The judge has ordered another short break.There were only a handful of trips together with Nathan Wade, Fani Willis is now telling the court:
      We went to Aruba, I consider that one trip. On New Year’s Eve, we went on a cruise to the Bahamas. That’s the second trip.
      We went to Belize. That was my trip, that was, you know, his 50th [birthday] and then Napa Valley. We went around May. I don’t know the dates, but it seems to me like it was close to Mother’s Day.
      And those are the only trips.
      Fani Willis is talking about two cruises out of Miami that she took with Nathan Wade, one in October 2022.She says Wade booked and paid for the first one, but she reimbursed him “whatever it was”:
      He is the one that would book the travel. But we need to be clear when we’re talking about just because he’s booked it doesn’t mean I consider him ever having taken me any place.
      He paid for the cruise and the fights… whatever he told me it was, I gave him the money back.
      She was asked where the cash came from:
      I am sure that the source of the money is always the work sweat and tears of me.
      For many, many years, I have kept money in my house… on my worst day probably only $500 or $1,000. And my best days, I probably had $15,000 in my house, cash.
      There’s always going to be cash in my house or wherever I’m laying my head.
      But Willis said she never paid Wade more than $2,500 in any one payment.The Guardian’s Sam Levine is tweeting from the courtroom about Fani Willis’s testimony.The Fulton county district attorney is angry about “lies” told her earlier in the case, including by her former friend Robin Yeartie, who testified today that a relationship between Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade began before she hired him to work on Donald Trump’s election interference case.She’s being asked about her dealings with Yeartie, and vacations she allegedly took with Wade.Fani Willis said she was “very anxious” to testify today, and ran from her office to get to the courtroom when she heard special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s testimony had concluded.She said she had some “choice words” about the motion to disqualify her from Donald Trump’s election interference case but denies she had any substantive conversation with Wade, or anybody else about it:
      I would not have. I don’t believe I’ve had any conversation with him that is substantive related to this.
      Willis has adopted a defensive, verging on aggressive stance, and says she takes exception to allegations she slept with Wade the first day she met him, at a conference:
      Your motion tried to implicate I slept with him at that conference, which I find to be extremely offensive. Mr Wade was my teacher.
      It’s highly offensive when they replicate that you slept with somebody the first day you met with them, and I take exception to this.
      Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has just taken the stand in the election interference case in Georgia.Almost as soon as she sat down, the judge called a five-minute break for certain documents to be copied and distributed.She’ll be testifying soon about the nature of her relationship with, and cash payments to special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who wrapped up his lengthy period of testimony just now.Stick with us…Rumours that Russia is planning to deploy nuclear weapons in space have been dampened down by experts who say that while such technology is possible, there is no need to push the panic button.The furore kicked off on Wednesday when the head of the US House of Representatives’ intelligence committee, Mike Turner, called for the Biden administration to declassify information on what he called a “serious national security threat”.While Turner gave no further details, it was later reported by news outlets, citing unnamed sources, to involve Russia’s potential deployment of a nuclear anti-satellite weapon in space. The Kremlin dismissed the claim as a “malicious fabrication”.Dr Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor at the University of Leicester who specialises in outer space international relations and warfare, said the the lack of detail was no reason to panic. “It’s so vague and cryptic, it could be a number of different things. [But] no matter what they are, none of them are a big deal, to be honest. Everyone needs to calm down about this.”Russia is bound by several legal restrictions regarding the use or presence of nuclear weapons in space. Article 4 of the Outer Space treaty (1967) bans nuclear weapons from being put into orbit, installed on celestial bodies or otherwise stationed in outer space, while the New Start treaty aims to reduce the number of deployable nuclear arms. The Partial Nuclear Test Ban treaty (1963) bans nuclear explosions in space.You can read more here.The White House just announced that the US will engage with Russia and allies on the Outer Space treaty and has no intention of violating it.The White House national security spokesman John Kirby is telling reporters gathered in the west wing a little more detail about the “serious national security threat” that emerged into the public eye yesterday.“It’s not an active capability,” Kirby said, after confirming that the threat was related to “an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing, while adding that “there is no immediate threat to anyone’s safety.”Kirby did not elaborate on reports that the new capability is about Russian plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space.Kirby said Joe Biden has directed a series of actions by the administration, including briefings to congressional leaders and direct diplomatic engagement with Russia about the program.The administration has not permitted more information to be made public yet, the spokesman said.It was a surprise yesterday when the head of the House intelligence committee, Mike Turner, called for the Biden administration to declassify information on what he called a “serious national security threat”.The emerging Russian system can’t directly cause “physical destruction” on Earth, Kirby just said.The White House media briefing is underway. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre opens by lamenting the mass shooting in Kansas City, Missouri, yesterday.Gunfire erupted towards the end of the victory parade for the Kansas City Chiefs football team, after they won the Super Bowl last weekend.She repeated the White House’s call for the US Congress to ban assault weapons for the general public.Joe Biden has frequently called for such a ban during his presidency, so far to no avail. More

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      Arizona Republican who resisted pro-Trump pressure in 2020 to stand down

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      A Republican elected official in Arizona who protected the vote and withstood a barrage of pressure and threats in 2020 from within his own party to sway the election toward Trump announced on Thursday that he will not seek re-election.Clint Hickman, a supervisor in Maricopa county, the state’s largest county that includes Phoenix, faced death threats for doing his job to confirm the county’s vote totals in 2020, when the state narrowly chose Joe Biden. State Republicans then initiated a sham “audit” of the county’s results, a costly hand count that took months only to conclude that Biden did indeed win.In a statement on Thursday, Hickman cited his family and the desire to spend more time with them as a reason for not running again, the Washington Post first reported.“My family has been gracious and unselfish in supporting me as I’ve campaigned, served, held town halls and breakfasts with constituents, been part of early morning and late-night meetings about county business, made decisions that brought significant attention and had profound impact – all things that come with public service,” he wrote. “I’m proud of this period of my life, but I want more time with my family.”Hickman, who first took office in 2013, will still be in office when the county canvasses the 2024 vote, with his term ending in early 2025. The Maricopa board is dominated by Republicans, with four of the five members affiliated with the GOP.One of the people who threatened Hickman, an Iowa man named Mark Rissi, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison over a threat he made to Hickman and to the state’s attorney general.Rissi had left a voicemail for Hickman in September 2021, telling the supervisor: “When we come to lynch your stupid lying Commie [expletive], you’ll remember that you lied on the [expletive] Bible, you piece of [expletive]. You’re gonna die, you piece of [expletive]. We’re going to hang you. We’re going to hang you.”During a sentencing hearing for Rissi, Hickman shared how protesters came to his house in 2020, while his wife and children were home, Votebeat reported.Elections officials across the country have seen ongoing threats and harassment since the 2020 election. Many of them have left their jobs or been run out by those who believe the election was stolen.In Maricopa county, the threats have not subsided since 2020. In the 2022 midterms, election workers received daily messages that called them names and alluded to their demise. Other county officials have seen their families threatened, with the lead election attorney arming himself and getting body armor for his family after a threat against his children. Bill Gates, another Republican supervisor who said the endless threats gave him post-traumatic stress, is also not running for re-election. More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene claims ‘bullshit’ as expert says Covid vaccine saved 14m lives

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      Responding to an expert’s statement that “about 3.2 million” American lives have been saved by vaccines against Covid, with “over 14 million lives” saved globally, the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said: “I’m not a doctor, but I have a PhD in recognising bullshit when I hear it.”On Capitol Hill on Thursday, Greene attended a hearing staged by the House oversight select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic.The expert Greene responded to, Dr Peter Marks, the director of biologics evaluation and research at the Food and Drug Administration, also described how at the height of the pandemic in the US, “about 3,300 [people], about a World Trade Center disaster a day”, were dying of Covid-19, contributing to a death toll of more than 1.1m.Marks later apologised to viewers, after Greene claimed children should not be given Covid vaccines.Greene, from Georgia, is a former CrossFit gym owner, conspiracy theorist and controversialist who entered Congress in 2021 and has assumed an influential position in a House Republican caucus controlled by the far right.Touting herself as a possible vice-presidential pick for Donald Trump, she is set to act as a manager in the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, a process Greene drove in the House.Speaking after Marks answered questions from the Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, Greene first dismissed the doctor’s comments as “bullshit”.Then she used her allotted five minutes to deliver rambling remarks about “all kinds of injuries, miscarriages, heart attacks, myocarditis, permanent disability, neurological problems” that she said had arisen from “people being forced to take vaccines”.“There’s been thousands of peer-reviewed medical studies, thousands of them studying vaccine injuries,” Greene said. “They are real. People are dying.“People are having heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, and many other countries are dropping the Covid-19 vaccine and saying we shouldn’t give them to children. It’s time to be honest about the vaccine-injured and we need to stop allowing these Covid-19 vaccines to be given out to children.”The next speaker, the California Democrat Robert Garcia, said: “I’m sorry you all had to go through that. That was a lot of conspiracy theories and wild accusations, which we know have been debunked by medical science. We should be clear that vaccines work and have saved lives, and have saved millions of lives in this country.”Garcia displayed blow-ups of tweets and comments in which Greene has spread conspiracy theories and misinformation including comparing pandemic public health rules to the Holocaust, encouraging parents to deny Covid vaccines to children and claiming vaccines contribute to an increase in “turbo cancers”.As Greene indicated her displeasure, Garcia asked Dr Marks to “clarify once again for the American people, do the Covid vaccines cause ‘turbo cancers’?”“I’m a haematologist and oncologist that’s board certified,” Marks said. “I don’t know what a ‘turbo cancer’ is. It was a term that was used first in a paper on mouse experiments, describing an inflammatory response. We have not detected any increase in cancers with the Covid-19 vaccines.”As Garcia began to speak, Marks interjected.“May I just add something here,” he said. “I do need to apologise to the thousand or so parents of children under four years of age who have died of Covid-19, who were unvaccinated. Because there were deaths and there continue to be deaths among children, and that is the reason why they need to get vaccinated. Thank you.” More

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      Larry Hogan says he doesn’t want to be a senator – but he’s polling well anyway

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      Larry Hogan, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Maryland who says he doesn’t really want to be a US senator but is running anyway, is tied with or leads his possible Democratic opponents, according to a poll released on Thursday.The former governor of Maryland leads Angela Alsobrooks, a state politician, by seven points in a hypothetical matchup and ties at 42% support with the US congressman David Trone, in a poll by Emerson College, the Hill and DC News Now.Governor from 2015 to 2023, Hogan left office as a popular moderate Republican in an otherwise generally Democratic state. Opposing Donald Trump’s grip on his party, and flirting with a third-party presidential run, Hogan repeatedly said he did not want to succeed the Democrat Ben Cardin in the Senate after Cardin retires next year.Last week, Hogan said he would run after all.Last May, Hogan said he did not “have a burning desire to be a senator”, would find sitting in the Senate “really frustrating on a personal human level”, thought being a senator was “not where my skill set lies” and said that although he could win a seat, “the problem was I would win and I would have to go be a senator”.On Wednesday he told CNN “not much” had changed.“I still feel exactly the same way,” he said. “Not a lot gets done in Washington. Who in their right mind would want to go in and be a part of that divisiveness and dysfunction? I said I wasn’t going to walk away from politics, I was going to try to be a voice, standing up to try to fix things, and you can’t just sit back and complain about things if you’re not willing to try to make a difference.“Still personally, there’s not a burning desire to go be a senator … I’m only doing it because I think I have a unique voice and perspective.”Hogan also said he only decided to run “a week ago, after the debacle that took place on the Senate floor”, when Republicans sank a border and immigration deal they themselves helped draft apparently in part because Trump told them to do so.The poll noted that Hogan also holds broad appeal in a matchup against Trone among independents, at 48%, and would attract the support of nearly a quarter of Democratic voters.Hogan was therefore a prized target for Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, who is seeking to take control of the chamber in November.“In Maryland I won huge numbers of suburban women and Black voters,” Hogan told CNN. “I have been able to reach out to people across the spectrum.”Asked about appealing to such voters while on a Republican ticket headed by Trump, Hogan said: “It’s a big challenge. Maryland is the most Democratic state in the country. But I’m not running as Donald Trump … I’m not running for the Republican party or for any candidate for president. I decided to run to kind of stand up and fight for the people of Maryland, and stand against the broken politics in Washington.”Hogan has held positions that could reduce his bipartisan appeal. Asked on CNN about his record on abortion – an issue that has fueled Democratic victories since the US supreme court removed the federal right in 2022 – Hogan said he was a moderate.“I’m personally not a proponent of abortion,” he said, “but I said I’m not going to take away that right for others to make that decision for themselves.”Calling Democratic attacks on the issue “tired”, Hogan said that as a senator, he would not vote for a national abortion ban.“I understand why this is such an important and emotional issue for women across Maryland and across the country,” he said, adding: “There’s no threat to the protection of these rights in Maryland, where it’s already a law. Voters have already weighed in on it. It’s settled law.”Hogan’s successor as governor, the Democrat Wes Moore, hit back, telling the Baltimore Banner: “Anyone who thinks that there is no threat to women’s reproductive rights and abortion access is delusional.” More

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      US House intelligence chair warns of ‘urgent’ national security threat

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      The head of the House intelligence committee said on Wednesday he had information about a serious national security threat and urged the administration to declassify the information so the US and its allies can openly discuss how to respond.Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, gave no details about the nature of the threat in his statement. The White House also declined to provide details.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said there was no need for alarm. He said he was not at liberty to disclose the classified information. “But we just want to assure everyone steady hands are at the wheel. We’re working on it and there’s no need for alarm,” he told reporters at the Capitol.Turner earlier on Wednesday sent an email to members of Congress saying his committee had “identified an urgent matter with regard to a destabilizing foreign military capability” that should be known to all congressional policymakers. He encouraged them to come to a Scif (sensitive compartmented information facility), a secure area, to review the intelligence. He again provided no details.Turner’s announcement appeared to catch the Biden administration off guard.The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters at the White House he already had been due to brief Turner and other senior congressional leaders on Thursday. Sullivan did not disclose the topic or provide any other details related to Turner’s statement.“I’m focused on going to see him, sit with him as well as the other House members of the Gang of Eight, tomorrow,” Sullivan said. “And I’m not in a position to say anything further from this podium at this time.”He acknowledged it was not standard practice to offer such a briefing.“I’ll just say that I personally reached out to the Gang of Eight. It is highly unusual, in fact, for the national security adviser to do that,” Sullivan said. He said he had reached out earlier this week.He would not say whether the briefing was related to Turner’s warning. “I leave it to you to draw whatever connections you want,” he told reporters.Johnson said he sent a letter last month to the White House requesting a meeting with the president to discuss “the serious national security issue that is classified”. He said Sullivan’s meeting was in response to his request. More

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      Say it with cash: Trump’s Valentine love letter to Melania is fundraising email

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      In a Valentine’s Day fundraising message, Donald Trump sought to demonstrate the depth of his love for Melania Trump, his third wife, by referring to his lengthy list of criminal charges.“Even after every single indictment, arrest and witch hunt, you never left my side,” the message said.The probable Republican presidential nominee faces four criminal indictments: for election subversion (13 state charges, four federal), retention of classified information (40, federal) and hush-money payments to an adult film star and director who claims a sexual affair (34, state).Stormy Daniels claims to have had sex with Trump in 2006, shortly after Melania gave birth to her son, Barron Trump, a claim Trump denies despite having arranged to pay Daniels $130,000 to be quiet during the 2016 election.Nor is that Trump’s only legal problem – or product of what he claims are witch-hunts mounted by his enemies – to do with matters of sex.Last month, Trump was on the wrong end of an $83.3m judgment in a defamation case arising from an allegation of rape, from the writer E Jean Carroll, that a judge said was “substantially true”.Carroll said Trump assaulted her in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. In a deposition, Trump memorably confused a picture of Carroll for a picture of Marla Maples, his second wife.And yet, despite it all, when it comes to his current wife – and the matter of raising campaign cash – Trump remains a determined softie.Under the headline “This is a Valentine’s Day letter from Donald J Trump”, the message sent out on Wednesday began: “Dear Melania. I love you!”It then took its unexpected turn.“Even after every single indictment, arrest and witch hunt, you never left my side. You’ve always supported me through everything. I wouldn’t be the man I am today without your guidance, kindness and warmth. You will always mean the world to me, Melania! From your husband with love, Donald J Trump.”Recipients who clicked on one of three big red invitations to “send your love” were directed to a page offering the chance to send a “personalised message” to Melania – and to donate to Trump’s campaign amounts ranging from $20.24 to $3,300 or “other”.Melania Trump has recently reappeared in public with her husband, after an absence believed related to the death of her mother, Amalija Knavs, last month. Donald Trump recently told Fox News his wife “wants to make America great again, too” and would “play a big role” in his campaign to return to power.“I think she’s going to be very active in the sense of being active,” Trump added. More

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      Mayorkas impeachment: petty, doomed … but still potentially damaging

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      In 1876, the last US cabinet official to be impeached, William Belknap, resigned before the House could vote on the matter. Ulysses S Grant’s secretary of war was tried in the Senate anyway, on charges of corruption, but escaped conviction.Nearly 150 years later, in the House on Tuesday and at the second time of asking, Republicans corralled just enough votes to ensure Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, suffered Belknap’s fate. But Mayorkas has not resigned – and nor is he likely to be convicted and removed.Democrats control the Senate, which means Mayorkas is all but certain to be acquitted at any trial, regardless of reported doubts among Republican senators about their party’s case.After the 214-213 vote to impeach, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, set out what will happen next. House managers will present the articles of impeachment after Monday’s President’s Day holiday. Senators will be sworn in as jurors. And Patty Murray of Washington state, the Democratic Senate president pro tempore, will preside thereafter.Schumer also issued a stinging statement.“This sham impeachment effort is another embarrassment for House Republicans,” the New Yorker said. “The one and only reason for this impeachment is for Speaker [Mike] Johnson to further appease Donald Trump.”The Mayorkas impeachment is of a kind with Senate Republicans’ decision last week to detonate their own hard-won border and immigration bill because Trump, their likely nominee for president, wants to campaign on the issue.Schumer continued: “House Republicans failed to produce any evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has committed any crime. House Republicans failed to show he has violated the constitution. House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense. This is a new low for House Republicans.”Most observers agree that the charges against Mayorkas – basically, that he performed incompetently and violated immigration law regarding the southern border – do not remotely rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanours”, as constitutionally required for impeachment and removal.Perhaps with a nod to the unfortunate Belknap, the Biden White House weighed in, saying: “History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games.”But history also records that all impeachments (and impeachment efforts, such as that mounted by Republicans against Biden himself) are inherently political, so this one could prove as politically potent as did those of Trump. Both Trump impeachments concerned behaviour – blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt and inciting the January 6 attack on Congress – much closer by any standard to the status of high crimes and misdemeanours. Regardless, Republicans ensured Trump was acquitted in both and have since fed Trump’s fierce desire for revenge.The Mayorkas impeachment was driven by Trump-aligned extremists prominently including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.Speaking to reporters on the Capitol steps on Tuesday, the same day the Senate passed a $95bn national security package including funding for Ukraine in its war with Russia, Greene said she was “very thankful to our Republican Congress. We’re finally working together with the American people to send a message to the Biden administration that it’s our border that matters, not other countries’ borders. Our border matters.”Claiming Mayorkas was guilty of “willful betrayal of the American people and breaking federal immigration laws”, Greene also said the impeachment “sends a message to America that Republicans can get our job done when we work together and do what’s important and what the American people want us to do.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf there were any remaining doubt that Mayorkas was impeached in service of pure politics, Greene said senators set to sit as jurors should “look at the polling. They know that our border security is the No 1 issue in every single campaign in every single state, every single city, in every single community … They better pay attention to the American people.”It is not certain, however, that a trial will happen.Joshua Matz, a lawyer who has written extensively on impeachment and worked on both impeachments of Trump, recently told Politico: “Impeachment trials are meant to be deadly serious business for matters of state – not free publicity for the House majority to air policy attacks on the current administration.”The Mayorkas impeachment articles, Matz said, are “so manifestly about policy disagreement rather than anything that could arguably qualify as high crimes and misdemeanours, that it would be unwarranted to waste the Senate’s time with the trial on the matter.“The articles are formally deficient in so many ways that any trial would be flagrantly unfair and create such grave due process issues that it would be outrageous to even proceed.”Senate Democrats could bring up a simple motion to dismiss the Mayorkas charges, a gambit which would be likely to succeed, given indicated support from the West Virginia centrist Joe Manchin, a key swing vote in the narrowly divided chamber. Less starkly, Democrats could seek to tie proceedings up in procedure, options including sending the charges to a committee, there to sit in limbo throughout an election year.All choices carry political peril, however. On Wednesday, the news site Semafor quoted an unnamed Republican aide as saying: “If Democrats give Republicans the opportunity to say that they are sweeping this under the rug, we will gladly take it.“If this is the sham Democrats claim it is, why would they be afraid of holding a trial?” More

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      Trump is ‘unhinged’ and ‘diminished’, says Nikki Haley

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      Donald Trump is “unhinged” and “diminished”, said Nikki Haley, the former president’s last rival for the Republican presidential nomination, on Wednesday.“To mock my husband, Michael and I can handle that,” the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador told NBC News’s Today, referring to comments by Trump about Michael Haley, a national guard officer deployed in Djibouti.“But you mock one member of the military, you mock all members of the military … Before, when he did it, it was during the 2016 election, and everybody thought, ‘Oh, did he have a slip? What did that mean?’ The problem now is he is not the same person he was in 2016. He is unhinged. He is more diminished than he was.”In the 2016 campaign, Trump mocked John McCain, an Arizona senator and former nominee for president who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Having avoided the draft for that war, Trump was expected to pay a heavy political price but did not, going on to attract controversy in office for allegedly deriding those who serve.Eight years later, Trump has won Republican votes in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada and leads Haley in her own state, the next to vote, by vast margins.Haley’s use of the word “diminished” spoke to concerns about Trump’s age – 77 – but also that of the president, Joe Biden, who at 81 is facing a barrage of Republican attacks about his fitness for office. Haley, 52, has said older politicians should face cognitive tests.Initially shy of attacking Trump, Haley has turned fire his way as primary rivals have dropped out, leaving her the last impediment to a third Trump nomination. But Haley continues to say she will support Trump if he is nominated to take on Biden.“I have said any of those 14 [Republican candidates] would be better than Joe Biden,” she told NBC, “because everybody sees how diminished Joe Biden is.“[But] I will also tell you there is no way that the American people are going to vote for a convicted criminal. They’re not.”Trump faces 91 criminal charges under four indictments: 40 for retaining classified information, 34 for hush-money payments to an adult film actor, 13 for attempted election subversion in Georgia and four for attempted federal election subversion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe former president also faces civil suits over his business affairs and was on the receiving end of an $83.3m judgment in a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge said was “substantially true”.After supreme court arguments last week, Trump looks set to survive state attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection, the attack on Congress of 6 January 2021.Despite such dramas, Trump is poised to extend control over his party by installing a loyalist and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as Republican National Committee co-chairs and a campaign official, Chris LaCivita, as chief operating officer.Asked about Trump’s claim she was hurting the party by staying in the primary, Haley told NBC: “From a man who spent $50m of his own campaign contributions on his personal court cases, where the RNC is broke, I’m the one hurting in resources? I don’t think so.“I’m the one that saves the Republican party. Look at every general election poll. Look at any of them. Trump loses [to Biden] by five, by seven. On a good day, he’s even. Margin of error. I defeat Biden by up to 17 points.” More