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      Trump fined $10,000 for violating gag order and described as ‘not credible’ on witness stand – as it happened

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      Judge Arthur Engoron has fined Trump $10,000 after holding a brief hearing in which he called the ex-president to testify about his possible violation of a gag order this morning. Engoron previously ordered Trump not to make disparaging comments about his staff; in commentary this morning, Trump appeared to make one such statement about Engoron’s law clerk.Trump denied that he was speaking about Engoron’s clerk, and insisted he was speaking about Michael Cohen. Engoron disagreed.“As the trier of fact I find that the witness is not credible,” Engoron said in imposing the fine.Moments before it concluded, Cohen said: “Donald Trump spoke like a mob boss.”Cohen’s comment was in reference to prior statements about Trump’s directives which the ex-president’s defense team has described as inconsistent.Specifically, Trump’s team has honed in on Cohen’s testimony to Congress in which he appeared to say that his former boss didn’t tell him to inflate real estate valuations.Cohen was asked in February 2019: “Did Mr Trump direct you or Mr Weisselberg to inflate the numbers for his personal statement?”“Not that I recall, no,” Cohen said.On re-direct, Cohen explained: “He did not specifically state ‘Michael, go inflate the numbers.“As I’ve stated in my books and I’ve stated publicly, Donald Trump speaks like a mob boss,” Cohen said. Trump says what he wants without “specifically” saying.“We understood what he wanted, so when they asked me, ‘Did Mr Trump direct you or Mr Weisselberg to inflate numbers for his personal statement?’ and I stated, ‘No, not that I recall,’ that’s what I was referring to.”Court has wrapped for the day.There was a bit more bizarre courtroom drama just now. Trump abruptly left the courtroom after Cohen’s cross-examination wrapped.Faherty, a lawyer for the attorney general’s office, is now questioning Cohen on redirect. It’s unclear why Trump walked out of the courtroom.Cross-examination of Michael Cohen has resumed, but all eyes are still on the events that just transpired with Judge Arthur Engoron’s imposition of a $10,000 fine on Trump after apparently violating a gag order.Engoron imposed this punishment after calling Trump to the witness stand to explain to whom the ex-president was referring when he said: “This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.’”Engoron asked Trump lawyer Chris Kise: “Mr Kise you, I believe, said on behalf of defendant Trump … that he was referring to Michael Cohen when he said what he said.”“Is that correct?”“Yes,” Kise said.“I’m going to hold a hearing right now about that,” Engoron said.Engoron called Trump to testify.“Mr Trump, did you say in the hallway this morning, ‘This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.’”“Yes,” Trump said.“To whom were you referring when you said the person sitting alongside of me?”“You and Cohen,” Trump replied.“Are you sure that you didn’t mean the person on the other side of me – my principal law clerk?”“Yes, I’m sure.”Engoron asked whether he had previously referred to her as partisan.“I think she’s very biased against us,” Trump said.Trump also addressed his prior failure to remove past disparaging comments about the clerk in a timely way, which flouted a previous Engoron order.Trump said that his camp had put up a picture of her and removed it after Engoron took issue, but that “we have so many different sites”.“I believe that it was one of the political groups one of the Pacs that had it up or left it up,” Trump said.After Trump left the stand, Engoron said: “As the trier of fact, I find that the witness is not credible and that he had been referring to my law clerk.”Trump’s team unsuccessfully pushed back against the fine.Judge Arthur Engoron has fined Trump $10,000 after holding a brief hearing in which he called the ex-president to testify about his possible violation of a gag order this morning. Engoron previously ordered Trump not to make disparaging comments about his staff; in commentary this morning, Trump appeared to make one such statement about Engoron’s law clerk.Trump denied that he was speaking about Engoron’s clerk, and insisted he was speaking about Michael Cohen. Engoron disagreed.“As the trier of fact I find that the witness is not credible,” Engoron said in imposing the fine.Donald Trump has just sat down at the witness stand.The lunch break ended and court has resumed.Judge Engoron is now addressing Trump’s possible gag order violation.We’re still on the lunch break, but Trump has commented on the possible gag order violation that judge Engoron discussed earlier.Trump wouldn’t discuss what transpired after court broke for lunch; after media and public left the courtroom, it was sealed to reporters and observers.As shown in this video by Law 360’s Frank Runyeon, Trump denied violating the gag order.It’s possible we will know more about the potential gag order violation when court resumes after lunch.Habba just concluded her cross-examination of Cohen, leaning hard on her argument that he’s dishonest – and angry that his former confidant and boss didn’t help him.She prompted Cohen to say that he was being untruthful during prior congressional testimony in which he said “I don’t recall” when asked if Trump inflated asset valuations.“Did you ever ask President Trump to pardon you while he was in the White House?” Habba asked.“No,” Cohen said.“He didn’t pardon you, did he?”“No,” Cohen replied with force.Court proceedings are now on a break for lunch. They will resume at about 2.15pm, with additional cross-examination from another lawyer in Trump’s camp.Habba is now trying to portray Cohen as irrelevant and desperate to make money off of his ill-fated relationship with Trump. Did he make money off of his Trump tell-all? How much did he make?“And without stories or accusations about President Trump, you really don’t have anything to [sell]?” Habba asked.“I disagree,” Cohen responded.“Your primary income is speaking about Trump,” Habba pressed. “The more outrageous your stories are about president Trump, the more money you make, is that accurate, Mr Cohen?”“President Trump makes you relevant, doesn’t he?” she said later.“I think the circumstances make me relevant.” Before Cohen returned to the witness stand several minutes ago, Judge Engoron – who fined Trump $5,000 for violating a gag order that barred Trump from publicly commenting about his staff – said he was just alerted to comments that appeared to violate said order yet again.“It was just brought to my attention that the Associated Press reported…Mr Donald J Trump just stated the following to the press gaggle outside the courtroom: ‘This judge is a very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.’”“It’s really easy for the public or anyone to know who that person is,” Engoron said, referring to the law clerk whom Trump previously disparaged.“This recent statement – assuming the Associated Press is correct– obviously was intentional. I stated the last time that any future violations would be severely punished,” Engoron said. “Again, I should ask the question: Why should there not be severe sanctions for this blatant, dangerous disobeyl of a clear court order?”Trump lawyer Chris Kise insisted: “His whole commentary related to Mr Cohen and his credibility as a witness. We’re certainly aware of the order.”Engoron didn’t appear to buy the explanation, saying that the word “alongside” strongly suggested Trump was referring to his clerk. “I’ll take the whole matter under advisement,” Engoron said.Right before recess, Trump’s lawyer specifically pointed to Cohen’s use of the former president for personal gain and media content.Habba’s cross has also tried to paint Cohen as a spurned friend desperate to save his own skin.She asked Cohen whether he ever told Robert Costello, who was once a longterm Trump ally, “I don’t have anything on Donald Trump. I swear to god I don’t have anything on Donald Trump.“I don’t recall that.”“Do you recall that you told him that you would do – excuse my French – whatever the F it takes to avoid jail time?”“I don’t recall that, either.”Habba later intimated that Cohen was upset at Trump for not giving him a top White House position. She showed a series of spring 2017 texts between Cohen where someone listed as “Person 4” speculated about Trump’s chief-of-staff pick.“Keep guessing, dopey,” Cohen said.“Stop!!! You!” Person 4 replied, writing shortly thereafter: “OMG Please be true. Are you serious? You need to.”“He needs to ask, I would never,” Cohen responded.“You were never given a position in the White House, were you, Mr Cohen?”“I was given the position that I asked for. There’s no shame in being personal attorney to the president.”Court has now broken for the mid-morning break. Habba’s cross-examination of Cohen has spiraled from showmanship to campy theatrics as she has repeatedly nitpicked the former Trump fixer’s comments, down to his diction.During these exchanges–and squabbles with opposing counsel–Habba would raise the volume of her voice at key moments to make a point.While lawyers can be theatrical–and many of the best are–Cohen’s refusal to take guff contributed to the abject zaniness characterizing moments of this morning’s proceedings.“I’ve answered every question that you want, why are you screaming at me?” Cohen said.When Habba asked Cohen whether James initiated the investigation because of his comments on Trump, she pointed toward the state’s top prosecutor, who raised her hand from the first row of the gallery.“You’re welcome,” Cohen said to the courtroom. The courtroom erupted into laughter.“You’re welcome?” Habba said. “That’s telling.”“I was being comical,” Cohen said shortly thereafter.At another point, when Habba asked Cohen about the AG’s investigation, he said: “You can ask Ms. James.”“Objection,” James said from the gallery, prompting chuckles.Here are some of the latest images of key people returning to court for Trump’s civil fraud trial.Not surprisingly, Trump attorney Alina Habba is trying to cast Michael Cohen as a liar, as he’s the key witness in New York attorney general Letitia James’s civil fraud case against the ex-president.She’s also tried to catch Cohen in a trap admitting to perjury. (Lying under oath, which is perjury, constitutes a crime.)She specifically honed in on Cohen’s disavowal Tuesday of his guilt in several crimes he did, in fact, admit to five years ago.“There was no tax evasion. At best, it could be characterized as a tax omission. I have never in my life not paid taxes,” Cohen had insisted, noting that he’d spoken out against this charge many times. Cohen said there were crimes he did plead guilty to that he committed, but not everything.“I wanted to correct the record because when all of this started, it was overwhelming, the amount of misinformation, disinformation, mal-information about me was overwhelming and enormous,” Cohen said. He also disavowed arranging the payment to Karen McDougal, which he admitted to during his first plea proceeding.“I acknowledged my complicity in the Stormy Daniels matter, but…I never paid Karen McDougal,” Cohen said Tuesday. “I was tasked to review documents to ensure that Trump was protected.”Habba repeatedly asked Cohen whether he committed “perjury” during his guilty plea before the late Manhattan federal court judge William Pauley.After lawyers on both sides went head-to-head about whether Habba could use the word ‘“perjury,” Engoron instructed them to proceed without the term. She eventually got her point across, without the linguistic showmanship.“Yesterday was the first time you admitted, in open court, that you lied to Judge Pauley, correct?”“In open court?” Cohen said. “Yes.”Michael Cohen is back on the stand.Trump lawyer Alina Habba, after wishing him “good morning”, said she reminded Cohen that he was still under oath.“True,” Judge Arthur Engoron said plainly from the bench.She’s asking Cohen about the many felonies he pleaded guilty to in 2018.Within moments, the attorney general’s office took issue with these questions, as Habba on Tuesday repeatedly asked him about this.“We did this yesterday,” Colleen Faherty, a lawyer for the attorney general, said.Donald Trump has entered the courtroom. He looked forward as he walked and took his seat at the defense table without fanfare.Court was called to order several moments before his arrival; lawyers have been discussing housekeeping matters with the judge.Good morning from downtown Manhattan, where Michael Cohen is expected to soon return to the witness stand in Donald Trump’s New York state civil fraud trial.Cohen’s testimony at the 60 Centre Street courthouse stems from New York attorney general Letitia James’s lawsuit against the ex-president. Her civil claim maintains that Trump unlawfully inflated values of his properties on financial statements when it suited him.Cohen, the onetime Trump fixer who in 2018 pleaded guilty to a plethora of federal crimes related to his ex-boss, repeatedly implicated him in financial wrongdoing on Tuesday. When proceedings resume this morning, Trump attorney Alina Habba will continue her cross-examination.Here are the key points of Cohen’s testimony against Trump on Tuesday.Trump wanted to “reverse-engineer” his net worth.Cohen testified that Trump wanted him and Weisselberg to figure out a way for him to have the net worth he wanted. Per Cohen: “I was tasked, by Mr Trump, to increase the total assets based upon a number that he arbitrary selected, and my responsibility, along with Allen Weisselberg predominately, was to reverse-engineer the various different asset classes, increase those assets, in order to achieve the number that Mr Trump had [requested].”Cohen and Weisselberg altered financial statements “by hand” to give Trump his desired net worth.During meetings when Cohen and Weisselberg discussed Trump’s financials, he would make demands about what they should be. Trump, Cohen said, “would look at the total assets and he would say, ‘I’m actually not worth $4.5bn, I’m really worth more like six.’“He would then direct Allen and I to go back to Allen’s office and return after we achieved the desir[ed] goal.” Cohen said he and Weisselberg would go line-by-line on the financial statement and “mark it up by hand … in able to get the total asset number that Mr Trump asked us to achieve”.Trump allegedly had final control over business operationsThe New York attorney general’s office is working hard to prove that Trump and his inner circle conspired in defrauding lenders and insurers with inflated property valuations. Cohen’s testimony puts Trump at the center of making decisions that enabled this alleged wrongdoing. Trump, he said, made decisions about his desired net worth, how he’d present himself to insurers–and which of his underlings would carry out his wishes. “All the final decisions were done by Mr Trump,” Cohen said.Proceedings will kick off around 9.30am ET. We will be providing live coverage as they progress. More

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      Mike Johnson becomes fourth Republican to be nominated for US House speaker this month

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      Mike Johnson was nominated to lead the US House of Representatives on Tuesday, though it was unclear whether he would merely become the latest hopeful to fall victim to party infighting that has paralyzed Congress for more than three weeks.Johnson, of Louisiana, is the fourth Republican this month to win the party’s nomination for the speaker’s chair, which has sat vacant since a small faction of party rebels ousted Kevin McCarthy on 3 October.Republicans’ disarray has left lawmakers unable to respond to the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, or take steps to head off a partial government shutdown that would begin on 18 November without congressional action.It was not clear whether Johnson would be able to overcome divisions that have tripped up three other candidates who had previously won the party’s nomination. In a sign of those divisions, the second-place finisher in the nominating vote was the ousted McCarthy, who secured 43 votes despite not being a declared candidate.Tom Emmer, the No. 3 House Republican, won the nomination earlier in the day, only to withdraw hours later due to opposition from the party’s right flank.Like Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan before him, Emmer’s prospects were doomed by a relatively small group of holdouts who denied him the 217 votes he needed. That high threshold and the party’s narrow 221-212 majority means that any candidate can afford to lose just four votes if Democrats remain united in opposition.“We have no capacity at the moment to come to a verdict, and that is a very distressing place to be,” congressman Marc Molinaro said.Johnson, a conservative constitutional law attorney, has billed himself as a bridge builder between the various Republican factions. The north-west Louisiana district he represents is one of the poorest in the US.“He knows everybody very well, does a great job with bringing people to the floor, talking about our policies, and that’s what we need right now,” said Kevin Hern, who withdrew his own bid to support Johnson.Johnson bested Byron Donalds, Mark Green, Roger Williams and Chuck Fleischmann in the latest Republican speaker nomination fight. In total, 14 Republicans have put their names forward for speaker this month.Emmer dropped his bid after Donald Trump urged Republicans to oppose him. Unlike many in his party, Emmer voted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump after the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump earlier this month had backed Jordan’s bid for the speakership, but Republicans gave up on his attempt last week after Jordan lost three floor votes.Before that, No. 2 House Republican Steve Scalise dropped his own bid when he was unable to line up enough votes to win the job.Democrats have said they are open to a compromise candidate who would allow the chamber to function. Many Republicans have said on principle that they would not back somebody who had support from the opposition party.“We must pursue a bipartisan path forward and reopen the House,” top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries said on social media.The uncertainty has also helped to push up the US government’s borrowing costs. The government posted a record $1.7tn deficit for the most recent fiscal year, in part due to higher interest payments. More

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      Tom Emmer withdraws US House speaker bid hours after nomination

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      The Minnesota representative Tom Emmer has abandoned his bid for speaker after it became clear he had no pathway to winning the 217 votes required to become speaker. He abandoned his bid hours after getting enough votes to be the GOP nominee.Emmer is the third Republican who has withdrawn from the speakership race after initially getting the nod from a majority of the conference. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio previously launched unsuccessful efforts.Emmer’s failure to get the speakership is the latest development in a remarkably embarrassing three weeks for House Republicans that came after they ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker.Emmer won the nomination to be speaker shortly after noon ET on Tuesday, defeating Louisiana congressman Mike Johnson by 117-97 in a secret ballot vote. After becoming the nominee, Republicans took a non-secret roll call vote in which 26 members said they would vote against Emmer in a floor vote, according to Punchbowl News, making his pathway to getting 217 votes virtually impossible. Republicans hold a 221-212 majority in the House, meaning that whoever is eventually elected speaker needs to get the support of almost the entire conference, assuming all Democrats vote for their leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York.Johnson and Kevin Hern, the chairman of the Republican study committee and one of the eight candidates Emmer defeated on Tuesday, immediately announced they were running for speaker.Donald Trump also publicly came out against Emmer’s candidacy Tuesday afternoon.“I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great Warriors,” Trump said in a statement posted on Truth Social, his social media network. “RINO Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them. He never respected the Power of a Trump Endorsement, or the breadth and scope of MAGA-MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! He fought me all the way.”Emmer abruptly left a meeting of House Republicans Tuesday afternoon, shortly before it was announced he was ending his bid, Punchbowl reported.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnlike many of his colleagues, Emmer voted to certify the 2020 election in Congress. When he led House Republicans’ campaign arm, he also reportedly advised candidates to not talk about Trump on the campaign trail – something Emmer strongly denies. More

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      in US Politics

      Tom Emmer drops out of House speaker race amid significant Republican opposition and Trump attacks- US politics live

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      It looks like Tom Emmer is out of the speakership scramble…Emmer has dropped out of the race, per multiple reports, including the Washington Post, CNN and NBC. The Minnesota congressman is the third Republican speaker nominee since Kevin McCarthy was ousted.Emmer goes the way of representatives Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, neither of whom was able to unite their party’s far-right and moderate factions to back them. Emmer’s bid lasted just a few hours – he was nominated by the House GOP at lunchtime.House Republicans’ long search for a leader is far from over. Tom Emmer, the latest member vying for the speakership, announced he was dropping out of the race just four hours after his peers designated him as a nominee.Like Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan before him, Emmer couldn’t unite House GOP members to back him. His detractors on the far-right cited his stance on same-sex marriage and government spending bills, and his willingness to certify the 2020 election in Congress.In other news:
      Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer to Donald Trump who was indicted in the Georgia election subversion case, accepted a plea deal from prosecutors.
      Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, testified that the former president was told repeatedly that his allegations of voting fraud were baseless, according to report from ABC. This is the latest, and perhaps most damning evidence yet in the federal government’s case against Trump .
      Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, spoke with the special counsel investigating the former president several times, testifying that Trump was told repeatedly that his allegations of voting fraud were baseless, according to ABC.Per ABC, which sites unnamed sources familiar with the matter:
      The sources said Meadows informed [special counsel Jack] Smith’s team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump’s prolific rhetoric regarding the election.
      Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being “dishonest” with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.
      Such testimony would be among the most damning evidence yet in special counsel’s case alleging that Trump tried to unlawfully retain power after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.On Fox Business, far-right representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she couldn’t support Tom Emmer because he hadn’t supported a ban on trans people serving in the military, and because he supported the “voting rights … national voting movement that was completely against what we stand for”.It looks like Tom Emmer is out of the speakership scramble…Emmer has dropped out of the race, per multiple reports, including the Washington Post, CNN and NBC. The Minnesota congressman is the third Republican speaker nominee since Kevin McCarthy was ousted.Emmer goes the way of representatives Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, neither of whom was able to unite their party’s far-right and moderate factions to back them. Emmer’s bid lasted just a few hours – he was nominated by the House GOP at lunchtime.Punchbowl News reports that Republicans are returning to a Capitol complex meeting room for behind-closed-door discussions that could decide whether they move forward with Tom Emmer’s candidacy as speaker:The Minnesota congressman, who, as the party’s whip is the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, won the GOP nomination for speaker this afternoon, but now faces opposition from perhaps 26 of his counterparts – which means defeat in a floor vote.We’ll be looking out for details on what Republicans decide at this meeting.Earlier in the day, House Democratic caucus chair Pete Aguilar weighed in on congressman Dean Phillips’s attempt to make a deal with Republicans.The Minnesota Democrat had suggested he would be willing to vote “present” and lower the threshold for Republican Tom Emmer to win election as speaker on the House floor in exchange for policy concessions around aid to Ukraine and Israel, among other things.That would represent a break from Democrats’ tactics ever since Kevin McCarthy was ousted, which have generally involved sitting back and doing nothing while the GOP fights among themselves. But with perhaps 26 Republicans willing to oppose his candidacy as speaker, it would not be enough to save Emmer, and Aguilar made clear the rest of the party is not on board.Here are his comments:The ranks of Tom Emmer’s detractors appear to be growing.Rightwing Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna is not among those reported to have voted against Emmer behind closed doors, but now says she would oppose him on the House floor:That could mean his opponents number 27, which would guarantee his defeat.Wondering who exactly is this Tom Emmer fellow, emerged from the (figurative) wilds of Minnesota to be the latest Republican congressman (all men, so far) to attempt to grasp and keep hold of the gavel of the speaker of the US House? Let the Guardian’s Sam Levine enlighten you:The Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer will now be the third party leader to try to galvanize enough support among Republicans after Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio failed in their bids to be House speaker.It remains unclear if Emmer will be able to get the 217 votes he needs to be speaker, but – for the moment at least – he is in the center of the ongoing crisis gripping the party and causing chaos in the heart of US government.Emmer was elected to Congress in 2014, replacing Michele Bachmann, a far-right figutr who was one of the earliest Tea Party stars. When he initially ran to replace her, he was described as “Bachmann 2.0”, by the left-leaning Mother Jones magazine, but after he was elected he said he would be more low key.Emmer represents Minnesota’s sixth congressional district, which includes a partial ring of Minneapolis suburbs and extends north-west from the city. The district is solidly conservative: Donald Trump carried it in 2020 by more than 17 points.Emmer broke with many of his Republican colleagues and voted to certify the 2020 election.“Simply put, Congress does not have the authority to discard an individual slate of electors certified by a state’s legislature in accordance with their constitution,” he said.He did, however, sign on to a brief at the supreme court urging the justices to throw out the electoral votes from key swing states and suggested there may have been fraud as he supported Trump’s legal challenges to the election results, CNN reported.Read on here:Courtesy of Politico, here is a full list of all of Tom Emmer’s opponents among the House GOP, and who they voted for.As you can see, many cast ballots for Jim Jordan, a prominent rightwing lawmaker and 2020 election denier who last week abandoned his bid for speaker after concluding he could not win a floor vote:CNN, meanwhile, heard from Indiana’s Jim Banks, who had no problems pillorying Emmer:Tom Emmer’s issues with Donald Trump and his allies are well known, and it appeared the Minnesota congressman had moved to address them.While campaigning in New Hampshire yesterday, the former president batted away a question about whether he was opposed to Emmer becoming speaker – video of which was posted by the congressman, as a sign he had Trump’s support:It was apparently all for naught, since Trump has now put out a strongly worded statement against Emmer.Politico had a good rundown over the weekend of why Trump is opposed to Emmer, who is notable for not supporting attempts to certify election results in swing states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020, as some of the other speaker candidates had. Here’s more from Politico:
      The former president’s top allies are already working to thwart Emmer’s candidacy. Trump supporters have begun passing around opposition research on the congressmember, and the pro-Trump “War Room” podcast on Friday afternoon turned into an Emmer bash-fest. During an appearance on the program, top Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn noted that Emmer had yet to endorse Trump in the Republican presidential primary.
      “If somebody is so out of step with where the Republican electorate is, where the MAGA movement is, how can they even be in the conversation?” Epshteyn said. “We need a MAGA speaker. That’s what it comes down to. Because if you look at the numbers, if you look at the energy, if you look at the heat, this is the Trump party, this is the MAGA party. It is no longer the old-school khaki establishment Republican Party.”
      Steve Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser and the “War Room” host, chimed in to call Emmer a “Trump hater.”
      Others close to Trump said Emmer as speaker would open a breach between House Republicans and their likely presidential nominee. Emmer “has no relationship with Trump,” one adviser said.
      And … Donald Trump hath spoken. And … he isn’t a fan of Tom Emmer, the current choice of the Republican party to be speaker of the US House.
      I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great Warriors. RINO Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them. He never respected the Power of a Trump Endorsement, or the breadth and scope of MAGA – MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! He fought me all the way, and actually spent more time defending Ilhan Omar, than he did me—He is totally out-of-touch with Republican Voters. I believe he has now learned his lesson, because he is saying that he is Pro-Trump all the way, but who can ever be sure? Has he only changed because that’s what it takes to win? The Republican Party cannot take that chance, because that’s not where the America First Voters are. Voting for a Globalist RINO like Tom Emmer would be a tragic mistake!
      That word salad brought to you by Truth Social, of course. Whether Emmer has “fought Trump all the way” or not is, to put it mildly, doubtful. He didn’t vote to overturn the 2020 election but he did sign on to a lawsuit seeking to throw out results, and so forth.Ilhan Omar, meanwhile, is a Democratic representative from Minnesota – Emmer’s state – a migrant from Somalia, both one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress and a leading progressive, part of a so-called “Squad” of left-leaning Democratic women.In July 2019, a crowd at a Trump rally in North Carolina targeted Omar with chants of “send her back”. Amid condemnation (Omar said: “I believe [Trump] is fascist”), Emmer said: “I didn’t watch the rally last night, sorry, but there’s no place for that kind of talk. I don’t agree with it.”Trump – who at the time said himself he was “not happy” with the crowd and claimed to have tried to stop the chants – may now wish to consider that in the same session with reporters, Emmer both said he didn’t think Trump had a “racist bone” in his body, and tried to explain Trump’s attacks on Omar.“What he was trying to say he said wrong,” Emmer said. “What he was trying to say is that if you don’t appreciate this country you don’t have to be here. It has nothing to do with your race or gender, or your family history. It has to do with respecting and loving the country that is giving you the opportunities that you have.“I had somebody say to me recently: ‘You know when Ilhan talks, Ilhan makes it look like she lets people believe she hates America.’ Now I don’t know if that’s true, but as somebody said to me back at home, they said to me: ‘How about a little gratitude with that attitude?’”Sidney Blumenthal’s Guardian column today – on the short-lived candidacy for speaker of Jim Jordan, the end of which precipitated today’s votes and the rise of Tom Emmer – is worth your time, starting from the opening lines about the necessity of counting votes and proceeding through Jordan’s unique political career:Jim Jordan’s march to seize the Capitol began as a beer hall putsch but veered into Sesame Street. Vote after vote, he has missed the sagacity of the Count, the puppet Dracula who teaches children the number of the day. Former speaker Nancy Pelosi wryly remarked that the Republicans should “take a lesson in mathematics and learning how to count”.After the second round, Jordan threw in the towel from his stool in the corner: no más! He endorsed instead extending the tenure and power of Patrick McHenry, the speaker pro tempore, until someone could figure something else out. But Jim Jordan the consensus builder was a short-lived phenomenon. The spirit of violence swirled around him.Read on:Steve Scalise, the majority leader, emerges to talk about the talks (and discuss the discussions) going on behind closed doors. Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Scalise, of Louisiana and a previous candidate for speaker, says of the 20 or more holdouts against Emmer: “There’s some conversations, some are moving.”From the top: “First of all, I want to congratulate Tom Emmer on being selected our speaker designate with strong support. We are working right now through some questions still and we just continue our conversations.“Obviously we want to work to make sure when we get to the floor we have 217 [votes, to make Emmer speaker] and that’s something that Tom has said he wants to do before we go to the floor. So we’re gonna have some more conversations, but this is an ongoing process. We like to wrap this up today, but we’re still talking to some individual members.”Asked about the likelihood of Emmer (from Minnesota) making it to the floor today, Scalise says: “There’s some conversations, some are moving. You got to continue having these conversations. That’s what we’re doing right now.”Emmer, Scalise says, is “hearing everybody in those conversations going on as we speak. So that’s the first thing that Tom’s doing, is hearing people out, and that’s what, frankly, this whole process has been about. And so he’s got to hear people out. Ultimately, work to to move them over. And we’ve got to keep working until we get to 217. And I’m gonna do what I can to help Tom.”Matt Gaetz of Florida, who started this whole mess by prompting the ejection of Kevin McCarthy, then appears and stalks off, followed by the media scrum.Some reading to pass the time while we wait for Tom Emmer to speak – or not – concerning the last person to actually be speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and his relationships with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two anti-Trump Republicans who sat on the House January 6 committee and subsequently left Congress, Cheney defeated in Wyoming and Kinzinger retired in Illinois.Kinzinger will next week publish a book: Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country.Inside, he says McCarthy dismissed Cheney’s warning about January 6 on a party conference call five days before.Kinzinger also details two occasions on which, he says, McCarthy shoulder-checked him, physically, in the House chamber.Those moments, Kinzinger says, made him think: “What a child.’”In a passage written before McCarthy’s historic ejection by Matt Gaetz of Florida, the catalyst for the current mess, Kinzinger adds: “I just chalked it up to the immature behaviour that [McCarthy] favoured and that had become more and more common inside the chamber.”Full story:House Republicans have nominated Tom Emmer to become the next speaker of Congress’s lower chamber, but their long search for leadership is far from over. As many as 26 members of the party signaled they will not vote for him on the floor, more than enough to sink his candidacy. This is the exact same position Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan found themselves in, and highlights just how disunited the GOP has become and what an absolute mess that ouster of Kevin McCarthy created. Emmer has reportedly vowed to continue polling Republicans behind closed doors until he gets the support he needs to win. We’ll see what becomes of that.Here’s a rundown of today’s news so far:
      Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer to Donald Trump who was indicted in the Georgia election subversion case, accepted a plea deal from prosecutors.
      Emmer’s detractors cite his stance on same-sex marriage and on government spending bills.
      Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman who is mulling challenging Joe Biden in the primary, said he would be willing to vote “present” when Emmer’s nomination is considered in exchange for policy concessions.
      Tom Emmer is pressing on in the face of the significant GOP opposition to his candidacy for speaker.CNN reports that he wants to continue holding roll call votes behind closed doors until he has the numbers he needs to win. But if he is not successful, congressman David Joyce says he will offer a resolution to give acting speaker Patrick McHenry the full powers of the job. Joyce made the same proposal last week, when Jim Jordan’s candidacy was flailing:Up to 26 Republicans may oppose Tom Emmer becoming speaker of the House, enough to stop him from getting the gavel, Punchbowl News reports:Assuming all Democrats vote against him, Emmer can only afford to lose four of the 221 Republicans in the House – a goal he appears to be well short of.The nominees who came before him, Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, faced the same problem, and ultimately had to drop out. House Republicans have not yet announced when they will convene the chamber to hold a floor vote on making Emmer speaker. More

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      in US Politics

      Who is Tom Emmer, Republicans’ latest failed House speaker hopeful?

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      The Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer was the third party leader to try to galvanize enough support among Republicans to be House speaker after Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio failed in their bids.But he rapidly found he was unableto muster the 217 votes he needed to get the job.He was for a few hours at the center of the ongoing crisis gripping the party and causing chaos in the heart of US government. But Emmer did not even make it to a public floor vote in the House before his support ebbed away and he dropped out – not least due to withering attacks by the former US president Donald Trump.Emmer was first elected to Congress in 2014, replacing Michele Bachmann, a far-right member of Congress who was one of the earliest members of the Tea Party. When he initially ran to replace her, he was described as “Bachmann 2.0”, by the left-leaning Mother Jones magazine, but after he was elected he said he would be more low key than she was.Emmer represents Minnesota’s sixth congressional district, which includes a partial ring of Minneapolis suburbs and extends north-west from the city. The district is solidly conservative – Donald Trump handily carried the district in 2020 by more than 17 points.Emmer broke with many of his Republican colleagues and voted to certify the 2020 election. “Simply put, Congress does not have the authority to discard an individual slate of electors certified by a state’s legislature in accordance with their constitution,” he said in a statement after certification.He did, however, sign on to a brief at the supreme court urging the justices to throw out the electoral votes from key swing states and suggested there may have been fraud as he supported Trump’s legal challenges to the election results, CNN reported.Emmer’s rise in Congress was shaped by two terms he spent as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the wing of the House Republicans that helps the party defend and pick up seats. During Emmer’s first term as chair in 2020, Republicans gained a net 13 seats, getting them very close to a majority. In 2022, in Emmer’s second term, Republicans gained that majority, though they didn’t pick up as many seats as expected.During the midterm elections last year, CNN reported Emmer reportedly advised candidates not to talk about Trump on the campaign trail – an accusation he strongly denies. That history, in addition to Emmer’s vote to certify the election, has reportedly cause friction with Trump, whose allies are said to be pushing to block him from the speakership.Trump himself said he was largely staying out of the speaker’s race and noted that Emmer had called him to offer praise. “I think he’s my biggest fan now,” he told reporters on Monday in New Hampshire.After Republicans won control of the House last year, Emmer won a contentious election to be the majority whip, the number three position in leadership that is in charge of counting votes. He narrowly defeated the Indiana representative Jim Banks in a contest that reportedly generated bad blood.In addition to his vote to certify the election, Emmer has also taken at least one other vote that broke with the majority of his caucus. Last year, he was one of 39 Republicans to vote in favor of having the federal government recognize same-sex marriages.Before serving in Congress, Emmer was a lawyer and state representative in Minnesota, where in 2005 he backed a bill favoring chemical castration for some sex offenders. In 2010, he ran for governor, losing by an extremely close 9,000 votes after a recount. He has seven children. More

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      House still without speaker as Republicans fail yet again to unify

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      After three weeks of the House having no speaker and mere hours after Tom Emmer of Minnesota won the nomination, the House still did not have a speaker on Tuesday when Emmer dropped out after just hours.Again, Republicans have failed to unify after the historic removal of Kevin McCarthy.Ahead of the Tuesday vote, seven House Republicans had launched speakership bids: Emmer, Jack Bergman of Michigan, Byron Donalds of Florida, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Austin Scott of Georgia and Pete Sessions of Texas. Two other declared candidates, Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania and Gary Palmer of Alabama, announced before the Tuesday vote that they would withdraw from the race.Sessions, Bergman, Scott and Hern were eliminated after the first four ballots, while Donalds dropped out following the fourth round of voting. On the fifth and final ballot, Emmer and Johnson were the only two candidates, and Emmer pulled off the win, becoming the conference’s third speaker nominee in three weeks.The final vote was 117 to 97, underscoring the significant challenge that Emmer faced in attempting to unify his deeply divided conference. An internal roll call vote taken after Emmer won the nomination indicated that more than 20 Republicans intended to oppose him on the floor, members told reporters. Although Emmer tried to allay those members’ concerns, he was unable to sway enough of his detractors to advance to a floor vote.Of the declared candidates, Emmer was arguably the best known within the conference, because of his position in House leadership. But Emmer has shown an occasional willingness to clash with Donald Trump, which raised issues with some of his House colleagues. For example, Emmer is one of just two speaker candidates, along with Scott, who voted to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election despite the former president’s false claims of widespread fraud in battleground states. However, Emmer also signed an amicus brief urging the US supreme court to invalidate the election results of four key swing states, which would have voided Biden’s victory in the presidential race.Emmer’s mixed record on election denial was not enough to assuage the concerns of Trump, who urged House Republicans to oppose the speaker nominee on Tuesday. Writing on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump warned that a vote for Emmer would be “a tragic mistake”.“I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great Warriors,” Trump said. “Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them.”Emmer’s nomination came four days after Jim Jordan of Ohio abandoned his speakership bid due to entrenched opposition among more moderate Republicans.The House has now been without a speaker for three weeks, since McCarthy’s ouster earlier this month. Because of Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House, any speaker candidate can only afford four defections within the party and still secure the 217 votes needed to win the gavel.As the House remains at a standstill, the chamber is unable to advance any legislation. Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass a supplemental funding package providing aid to Ukraine and Israel, but the House cannot consider such a bill until a new speaker is elected.Despite the high stakes, House Republicans have been unable to unify around a single candidate. Following McCarthy’s removal, the House majority leader, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, won the conference’s speaker nomination, but he dropped out days later amid fierce backlash from hard-right lawmakers. Jordan then won Republicans’ speaker nomination, but he was forced to withdraw after three failed floor votes.“Chaos and dysfunction continue to be the order of the day in the House Republican majority,” the House Democratic caucus chair, Pete Aguilar of California, said Tuesday. “The American people and our allies abroad can’t afford any more delays. Every day of this Maga [‘Make America Great Again’] madness is another day of not sending aid to Israel and Ukraine, not taking meaningful steps to fund our government and not making sure that we’re looking out for working families across this country.”In a potentially grim sign for Republicans’ hopes of quickly reaching a resolution to the deadlock, the hard-right House Freedom Caucus has demanded that members remain in Washington DC until a new speaker is elected, jeopardizing the chamber’s planned recess starting next week.“We must proceed with all possible speed and determination,” the caucus said in a statement released on Monday. “Intentional and unnecessary delays must end. It serves only the lobbyists of the swamp and defenders of the status quo to continue to drag out this process.” More

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      Virginia Democrats defend Susanna Gibson after sex-livestream revelation

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      Democrats in Virginia are defending their candidate for a competitive statehouse seat against “desperate” efforts by Republicans to exploit her appearances on an adult porn website.The state’s Republican party has admitted it sent out several thousand “explicit” flyers to voters in House district 57 containing still images reportedly of Democrat Susanna Gibson engaged in livestreamed sex acts with her husband.The nurse practitioner and first-time candidate denounced as “gutter politics” the publication of a report last month that the couple had performed on the pornographic website Chaturbate in exchange for electronic “tips”. Videos of their encounters were archived last year, according to a Washington Post report, although it is unclear when they were shot.The mailings, marked “Warning: explicit material enclosed” and “Do not open if you are under the age of 18”, also contain censored quotes from Gibson, according to Richmond’s NBC12 news channel.A statement from her campaign denounced both the messaging and timing of the mailings, barely two weeks before election day in her closely contested race with the Republican David Owen.“David Owen and the Virginia GOP are trying to distract voters from their extreme agenda to ban abortion, defund schools and allow violent criminals to access weapons of war,” it said.“Voters are tired of these desperate attacks, and they will not be fooled by them. Nothing will ever deter her commitment to our community.”The seat could prove crucial in Republicans’ efforts to secure a majority in both houses of the commonwealth’s general assembly, and embrace the extremist policies of Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin, who favors a 15-week abortion ban.Currently, Democrats hold a narrow advantage in the state senate. Republicans recaptured a slim advantage in the house of delegates in 2021.The Virginia Democratic party’s house caucus issued its own defense of Gibson, questioning Republicans’ motives.“The Maga [Make America Great Again] Republicans can’t help themselves from showing their true colors. This is a desperate attempt to distract and deflect from how many of their candidates are on the record wanting to ban abortion,” it said in a statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Let’s not forget, David Owen is the same guy who was caught on camera saying he wanted to change the makeup of the general assembly to institute said ban. The VA GOP can’t be trusted and this continues to make that clear.”Owen’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment, NBC12 said.Rich Anderson, the chair of the Virginia Republican party, told the outlet: “Gibson’s campaign has falsely alleged that the videos of her publicly engaging in sexual activity on publicly accessible pornography websites were ‘leaked’ by Republicans. In reality, the opposite is true.“The mail piece corrects her false statements using already published mainstream media news accounts and Gibson’s own public words as documented via her videos.”Youngkin told the station he had not seen the mailers, but felt Gibson should be held accountable. “This candidate’s personal life is something that that candidate needs to explain to people, and the Democratic party needs to have an opinion on this,” he said. More

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      Kevin McCarthy dismissed Liz Cheney warning before January 6, book says

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      When Liz Cheney warned fellow Republicans five days before January 6 of a “dark day” to come if they “indulged in the fantasy” that they could overturn Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden, the then House GOP leader, Kevin McCarthy, swiftly slapped her down.“After Liz spoke,” the former Wyoming representative’s fellow anti-Trumper Adam Kinzinger writes in a new book, “McCarthy immediately told everyone who was listening, ‘I just want to be clear: Liz doesn’t speak for the conference. She speaks for herself.’”Five days after Cheney delivered her warning on a Republican conference call, Trump supporters attacked Congress in an attempt to block certification of Biden’s win.McCarthy’s statement, Kinzinger writes, was “unnecessary and disrespectful, and it infuriated me”.Kinzinger details McCarthy’s “notably juvenile” intervention – and even what he says were two physical blows delivered to him by McCarthy – in Renegade: Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country, which will be published in the US this month. The Guardian obtained a copy.Nine deaths have been linked to the January 6 riot, more than a thousand arrests made and hundreds convicted, some with seditious conspiracy. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting the attack, and acquitted a second time when Senate Republicans stayed loyal. When the dust cleared from the January 6 attack, McCarthy was among 147 House and Senate Republicans who still voted to object to results in key states.Like Cheney, Kinzinger, from Illinois, sat on the House January 6 committee, then left office. Unlike Cheney, who was beaten by a Trump ally, Kinzinger chose to retire.Cheney has maintained a high profile, warning of the threat Trump poses as he leads polling regarding the Republican nomination next year, 91 criminal charges (17 concerning election subversion) and assorted civil threats notwithstanding, and refusing to rule out a presidential run of her own.Kinzinger has founded Country First, an organisation meant to combat Republican extremism, and become a political commentator. In his book, he says he responded to McCarthy on the 1 January 2021 conference call by issuing his own warning about the potential for violence on 6 January and “calling on McCarthy to say he wouldn’t join the group opposing the electoral college states.“He replied by coming on the line to say, ‘OK, Adam. Operator, who’s up next?’”Such a “rude and dismissive tone”, Kinzinger says, “was typical of [McCarthy’s] style, which was notably juvenile”.McCarthy briefly blamed Trump for January 6, swiftly reversed course, stayed close to the former president and became speaker of the House, only to lose the role after less than a year, in the face of a Trumpist rebellion.Kinzinger accuses McCarthy, from California, of behaving less like a party leader than “an attention-seeking high school senior who readily picked on anyone who didn’t fall in line”. And while characterising McCarthy’s dismissal of Cheney’s warning about January 6 as “a little dig”, Kinzinger also details two physical digs he says he took from McCarthy himself.“I went from being one of the boys he treated with big smiles and pats on the back to outcast as soon as I started speaking the truth about the president who would be king,” Kinzinger writes.McCarthy “responded by trying to intimidate me physically. Once, I was standing in the aisle that runs from the floor to the back of the [House] chamber. As he passed, with his security man and some of his boys, he veered towards me, hit me with his shoulder and then kept going.“If we had been in high school, I would have dropped my books, papers would have been scattered and I would have had to endure the snickers of passersby. I was startled but took it as the kind of thing Kevin did when he liked you.“Another time, I was standing at the rail that curves around the back of the last row of seats in the chamber. As he shoulder-checked me again, I thought to myself, ‘What a child.’”Kinzinger is not above robust language of his own. Describing Trump’s Senate trial over the Capitol attack, the former congressman bemoans the decision of the Republican leader in that chamber, Mitch McConnell, to vote to acquit because Trump had left office – then deliver a speech excoriating Trump nonetheless.“It took a lot of cheek, nerve, chutzpah, gall and, dare I say it, balls for McConnell to talk this way,” Kinzinger writes, “since he personally blocked the consideration of the case until Trump departed.” More