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    White House insists Trump’s prosecutor was legally appointed after federal judge throws out Comey and James indictments – live

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    The White House press secretary insisted that Lindsey Halligan, the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia handpicked by Donald Trump, was legally appointed to her position.This comes after a federal judge threw out the charges against James Comey and Letitia James, saying that Halligan had no “legal authority” to charge two of the president’s most notable adversaries.“The Department of Justice will be appealing very soon, and it is our position that Lindsey Halligan is extremely qualified for this position, but more importantly, was legally appointed to it,” Leavitt told reporters.The press secretary said that Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, who issued today’s rulings, was “trying to shield” the former FBI director and New York attorney general “from receiving accountability”.The White House just posted the full text of a new executive order Donald Trump signed on Monday, “to begin the process of designating certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as Foreign Terrorist Organizations”.Laura Loomer, a pro-Israel, anti-Muslim extremist with unusual influence over Trump, responded to the announcement by renewing her call for the administration to designate as terrorists Muslim American elected officials she claims, without evidence, are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.Writing on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which Loomer was barred from for anti-Muslim racism before it was purchased by Elon Musk, the extremist podcaster called on Monday for the White House to use the new designation to arrest and jail three prominent Muslim Democrats: Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Zohran Mamdani.Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, has welcomed the decision by a federal judge to dismiss the criminal case against her on Monday, on the grounds that the prosecutor who brought the case, former White House aide Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed.“The court’s order acknowledges what’s been clear about this case from the beginning,” Lowell said in a statement. “The President went to extreme measures to substitute one of his allies to bring these baseless charges after career prosecutors refused. This case was not about justice or the law; it was about targeting Attorney General James for what she stood for and who she challenged. We will continue to challenge any further politically motivated charges through every lawful means available.”While gaggling with reporters, Karoline Leavitt said that she had spoken with secretary of state Marco Rubio “at length” following the US delegation’s meeting with Ukrainian officials in Geneva. She also mentioned that she’d spoken with the president.“Everybody inside feels optimistic about what happened in transpired yesterday,” she said. “The whole team really worked through the points of that 28-point peace plan that the United States authored, with input from both sides, the Russians and the Ukrainians.”Leavitt affirmed that “the vast majority” of these points had been agreed upon. “The Ukrainians have worked on language with us together,” she said. “So we feel as though we’re in a very good place.”The White House press secretary insisted that Lindsey Halligan, the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia handpicked by Donald Trump, was legally appointed to her position.This comes after a federal judge threw out the charges against James Comey and Letitia James, saying that Halligan had no “legal authority” to charge two of the president’s most notable adversaries.“The Department of Justice will be appealing very soon, and it is our position that Lindsey Halligan is extremely qualified for this position, but more importantly, was legally appointed to it,” Leavitt told reporters.The press secretary said that Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, who issued today’s rulings, was “trying to shield” the former FBI director and New York attorney general “from receiving accountability”.Speaking to reporters outside the West Wing today, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the White House supports the Pentagon’s announcement that it is investigating veteran and Arizona senator Mark Kelly.Today, the Democratic lawmaker accused the Department of Defense of intimidation, Leavitt pushed back when asked about his Kelly’s statement.“I think what senator Mark Kelly was actually trying to do was intimidate the 1.3 million active-duty service members who are currently serving in our United States Armed Forces with that video that he and his Democrat colleagues put out,” the press secretary said, referencing the social media post where six Democratic members of Congress told members of the military that they should “refuse” illegal orders.“They knew what they were doing in this video, and Senator Mark Kelly and all of them should be held accountable for that,” Leavitt added today.My colleague, Jeremy Barr, has been combing through the tens of thousands of pages that were released on Sunday as part of voting technology company Smartmatic’s $2.7bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News over its coverage of the 2020 presidential election.He notes that Fox News has strenuously denied Smartmatic’s claims and said the company has vastly overstated its value. In a statement, Smartmatic said Fox’s “attempts to delay accountability won’t work, and its day of reckoning is coming”.You can read the top takeaways from the documents below.

    In a blow to Trump’s justice department, a federal judge has tossed out criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-installed prosecutor who secured the indictment against two of the president’s most noted adversaries, was illegally appointed to her position as US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia. Currie wrote that Halligan had “no lawful authority” to present the indictments to both Comey and James (in separate cases).

    The Pentagon has said it’s investigating Democratic senator Mark Kelly of Arizona for possible breaches of military law after Kelly joined a handful of other lawmakers in a video that called for US troops to refuse unlawful orders. The Pentagon’s statement, which was posted on social media this morning, cited a federal law that allows retired service members to be recalled to active duty on orders of the defense secretary for possible court martial or other measures. For his part, Kelly wrote in a statement that he’s “given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution”.

    Talks continued in Geneva between US and Ukrainian representatives today. Earlier, Donald Trump said that “something good just may be happening” in a post on Truth Social. Meanwhile, Ukraine has significantly amended the US “peace plan” for Ukraine, removing some of Russia’s maximalist demands, people familiar with the negotiations said, as European leaders warned on Monday that no deal could be reached quickly. For his part, Volodymyr Zelenskyy may meet Donald Trump in the White House later this week.

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has filed a notice in the federal register to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the roughly 10,000 Myanmar nationals living in the US. This, despite the country being ruled by a military dictatorship that has a record of executing dissidents. The Trump administration has already withdrawn protected status for a number of other nationalities, including Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, South Sudan and Venezuela, as part of sweeping changes to immigration policy.

    The outgoing Georgia congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, said today that “smears, lies, attacks, and name calling is childish behavior, divisive, and bad for our country”. This comes after she announced her decision to resign from Congress in January. In recent weeks, Greene has had a very public falling out with Donald Trump, which culminated in the president calling her a “traitor” after she supported a vote for the justice department to release the complete trove of Jeffrey Epstein files. Today, without naming the president or any Republican colleagues, the Georgia lawmaker pushed back on X. “Memes and red meat rants do nothing. Actions speak louder than words,” Greene wrote
    The president has said he will visit Beijing in April, after a “very good” call with China’s leader, Xi Jinping.Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he “discussed many topics including Ukraine/Russia, Fentanyl, Soybeans and other Farm Products”.He also teased a “good, and very important, deal for our Great Farmers”, and summarised the relationship with China as “extremely strong”. This despite a brewing trade war with the nation, following their decision to limit exports of rare earth minerals, and the US issuing retaliatory tariffs.“President Xi invited me to visit Beijing in April, which I accepted,” Trump added. “I reciprocated where he will be my guest for a State Visit in the U.S. later in the year. We agreed that it is important that we communicate often, which I look forward to doing.”Earlier, we brought you the news that the Department of Defense is investigating veteran and sitting Democratic senator Mark Kelly.This, after the Arizona lawmaker joined five other members of Congress in telling active duty military to “refuse illegal orders” in a social media video.For his part, Kelly has responded in a statement. “Secretary Hegseth’s tweet is the first I heard of this. I also saw the President’s posts saying I should be arrested, hanged, and put to death,” he wrote in a post on X. “If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”Kelly also gave a brief summary of his military career:
    In combat, I had a missile blow up next to my jet and flew through anti-aircraft fire to drop bombs on enemy targets. At NASA, I launched on a rocket, commanded the space shuttle, and was part of the recovery mission that brought home the bodies of my astronaut classmates who died on Columbia. I did all of this in service to this country that I love and has given me so much.
    Halligan’s conduct in the Comey case came under sustained scrutiny from three different judges. A magistrate judge determined that Halligan may have committed other significant legal errors in instructing and presenting evidence to the same grand jury.The justice department denied to Reuters that Halligan engaged in any misconduct and argued that the magistrate judge’s ruling was based on misinterpretations and assumptions.A reminder that Comey was charged with making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation. Prosecutors alleged he lied to the Senate judiciary committee during a 2020 hearing when he said he stood behind prior testimony that he had not authorized FBI leaks about investigations into Trump and his 2016 presidential election rival, Hillary Clinton.Comey has had an antagonistic relationship with Trump since his first term in 2017, when the president fired Comey while he was overseeing an investigation into alleged ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.Comey, who pleaded not guilty, mounted an array of legal challenges to the case, arguing that Halligan was unlawfully appointed as interim US attorney, that the case was an improper “vindictive” prosecution engineered by Trump, and that the substance of the false statement allegation was legally flawed.A federal judge has tossed out criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James.District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-installed prosecutor who secured the indictment against two of the president’s most noted adversaries, was illegally appointed to her position as US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia.Currie wrote that Halligan had “no lawful authority” to present the indictments to both Comey and James (in separate cases). Lawyers for the former FBI director argued that when Halligan secured the indictment, the clock for a temporary US attorney had been run-out by her predecessor, Erik Siebert (who had already served for 120 days). They said it ultimately disqualified Halligan from holding the position at all. More

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      US judge throws out criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James

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      A federal judge threw out the criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James on Monday, concluding that the prosecutor handling the cases was unlawfully appointed.Lindsey Halligan, who Trump named the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia in September, had “no lawful authority to present the indictment” against the former FBI director and New York attorney general, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, wrote in her opinion.“I conclude that the attorney general’s attempt to install Ms Halligan as Interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia was invalid and that Ms Halligan has been unlawfully serving in that role since September 22, 2025,” Currie, who was appointed to the bench by Bill Clinton, wrote in her opinion. She added that “all actions flowing from Ms Halligan’s defective appointment” were “unlawful exercises of executive power and must be set aside”.The decision is a major win for Comey, who was charged with lying to Congress five years ago, and James, who was charged with mortgage fraud. Both unequivocally denied wrongdoing and said the cases were a thinly veiled effort by the Trump administration to punish them for opposing Trump.“I am heartened by today’s victory and grateful for the prayers and support I have received from around the country,” James said in a statement. “I remain fearless in the face of these baseless charges as I continue fighting for New Yorkers every single day.”Comey also praised the decision.“I’m grateful that the court ended the case against me which was a prosecution based on malevolence and incompetence,” he said in a recorded video. “This case mattered to me personally, obviously, but it matters most because a message has to be sent that the president of the United States cannot use the Department of Justice to target his political enemies.“I know that Donald Trump will probably come after me again and my attitude is gonna be the same. I’m innocent, I am not afraid, and I believe in an independent federal judiciary,” he added.US attorneys must be confirmed by the Senate. Federal law allows the attorney general to appoint someone to serve on an acting basis for 120 days while a nomination is pending. Once that 120 day period is up, the law allows the judges on the district court where the prosecutor handles cases to appoint a top prosecutor.Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Siebert, began serving in the role on an interim basis in January. In May, at the end of the 120-day period, the judges in the eastern district of Virginia chose to extend his appointment. In September, Siebert was forced out of his role as it reportedly determined there was insufficient evidence to charge James with a crime. Trump installed Halligan, a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience in the role and Comey was indicted on charges of lying to Congress days later. Halligan then indicted James on allegations of mortgage fraud shortly after that.The Trump administration argued that the attorney general could simply revisit someone new every 120 days, but Currie said that would simply allow the attorney general to indefinitely appoint someone on an interim basis. The “text, structure, and history” of the law do not support the government’s argument she wrote.Currie dismissed both cases “without prejudice”, which means the government could theoretically try to bring the charges again under a properly appointed US attorney. But it is unclear if they could even do that in Comey’s case because the statute of limitations for the crime he is charged with passed on 30 September 2025.“The decision further indicates that because the indictment is void, the statute of limitations has run and there can be no further indictment,” said Patrick Fitzgerald, a lawyer for Comey. “The day when Mr Comey was indicted was a sad day for our government. Honest prosecutors were fired to clear the path for an unlawful prosecution. But today an independent judiciary vindicated our system of laws not just for Mr Comey but for all American citizens.”Halligan personally presented both cases to the grand jury and has been under intense scrutiny since taking her position. Last week, a judge overseeing the case questioned whether she had properly followed routine procedure in obtaining an indictment in Comey’s case. Prosecutors handling the case say they followed appropriate procedure.“The court’s order acknowledges what’s been clear about this case from the beginning. The president went to extreme measures to substitute one of his allies to bring these baseless charges after career prosecutors refused,” Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for James, said in a statement. “This case was not about justice or the law; it was about targeting Attorney General James for what she stood for and who she challenged. We will continue to challenge any further politically motivated charges through every lawful means available.” More

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      Surprise envoy pushing Ukraine ‘peace’ plan belies Vance influence on US policy

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      The US army secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration’s newest proposal to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine – but his ties to JD Vance have put a close ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president on the frontlines of Donald Trump’s latest push to end the war.Before his trip to Kyiv last week, Driscoll was not known for his role as a negotiator or statesman, and his early efforts at selling the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.His close ties to Vance, with whom he studied at Yale and shares a close friendship, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.It was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s disastrous first trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more “respect” – now Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to cut a quick deal that local officials have described as a “capitulation”.After a tumultuous first year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump’s top advisers – including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.Vance has been a vocal booster of the latest proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.Vance’s early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia – while also seeking to renew relations with Moscow – were unsuccessful, and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his early speeches in which he accused them of “running from their voters” – who Vance said had anti-immigration and conservative positions close to those of Trump’s own constituency.But the new peace deal published last week closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the administration while the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin’s maximalist demands.In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the war from restarting.“Every criticism of the peace framework the administration is working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote. “There is a fantasy that if we just give more money, more weapons, or more sanctions, victory is at hand.”“Peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he added. “It might be made by smart people living in the real world.”It was also Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with bringing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.That was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more firm footing.Rubio was part of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.But his initial response to the deal was lukewarm: “Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend before the conference. “And achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.”In private, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to explain that the deal was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.“Rubio did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations It is based on input from the Russian side. But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.” More

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      Pentagon investigating US senator over call for troops to refuse illegal orders

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      The Pentagon says it is investigating the Arizona senator Mark Kelly for possible breaches of military law after the federal lawmaker joined a handful of other Democrats in a video calling for US troops to refuse unlawful orders.It is extraordinary for the Pentagon to directly threaten a sitting member of Congress with investigation. Until Donald Trump’s second presidency, the institution in charge of the US military had usually strived to appear apolitical.In a statement on Monday on social media announcing the investigation into Kelly, a veteran, the Pentagon cited a federal law that allows retired service members to be recalled to active duty on orders of the defense secretary for possible court martial or other measures. Kelly served in the US navy as a fighter pilot before going on to become an astronaut. He retired at the rank of captain.The Pentagon’s statement suggested that Kelly’s statements in the video interfered with the “loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces” by citing the federal law that prohibits such actions.“A thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures,” the statement said.In the video that was posted last Tuesday, Kelly was one of six lawmakers who served in the military or intelligence community to speak “directly to members of the military”.Kelly told troops “you can refuse illegal orders” – and other lawmakers said that they needed troops to “stand up for our laws … our constitution.”A statement on Monday from Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, said Kelly was the only video participant who remained subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).“The video … was despicable, reckless and false,” said the statement from Hegseth, whose defense department has rebranded itself the war department. “Encouraging our warriors to ignore the orders of their commanders undermines every aspect of ‘good order and discipline’.“Kelly’s conduct brings discredit upon the armed forces and will be addressed appropriately.”A statement issued by Kelly said he learned of the investigation into him when the Pentagon posted about it on social media.“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” Kelly’s statement said. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the constitution.”Kelly’s statement alluded to having experienced combat during his military career as well as having served as an astronaut for the US space agency, Nasa.“I had a missile blow up next to my jet and flew through anti-aircraft fire to drop bombs on enemy targets,” his statement said. “At Nasa, I launched on a rocket, commanded the space shuttle, and was part of the recovery mission that brought home the bodies of my astronaut classmates who died” during the 2003 Columbia space shuttle explosion.“I did all of this in service to this country that I love and has given me so much.”The US Manual for Courts-Martial states that the military requirement to obey orders “does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime”.Nonetheless, Trump reacted furiously to the video in question, writing on his Truth Social platform that Kelly and the others had engaged in “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH”. The president also reposted another Truth Social user who wrote, in part, “HANG THEM”.Active military members in the US – whose oath is to the constitution rather than the president – can indeed face execution for the crime of sedition. Civilians, meanwhile, can be fined and imprisoned for up to 20 years if found to have engaged in seditious conspiracy.Generally, Republican allies of Trump have supported his response while his philosophical opponents have condemned it.Kelly has since said Trump’s accusation of sedition made him fearful of his family’s safety, especially after his wife, Gabrielle Giffords, narrowly survived an attempted assassination while she was in Congress and meeting constituents in 2011.“This kind of language is dangerous, and it’s wrong,” Kelly said on Friday on MS NOW’s Morning Joe, when he also alluded to a number of instances of deadly political violence across the US in recent months.On Sunday’s edition of Face the Nation, Kelly added: “We’ve heard very little, basically crickets, from Republicans in the United States Congress about what the president has said about hanging members of Congress.” More

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      Fox Corp chief told Sean Hannity that Trump could not go on air in 2020 if he attacked network

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      New revelations about the tense relationship between Fox News and Donald Trump in the fall of 2020 have emerged in a trove of thousands of court documents released on Sunday as part of a massive defamation lawsuit filed against the network by voting technology company Smartmatic.One exchange showed that Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox News parent company Fox Corp, told star anchor Sean Hannity in a 1 October 2020 text chain that Trump could not appear on Fox again if he attacked the network.“Sean, sorry, but the president is not coming back on air if he uses it to attack us,” Murdoch wrote to a group that also included his father, Rupert, and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. “It is the same rule we have with the other side. This is a golden rule,” signing the message with “Thx L.” (In a 1 October 2020 interview with Hannity, Trump said Fox was “a much different place than it used to be”.)Hannity’s response to Murdoch’s message was redacted. The situation got worse in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, when many Fox News supporters turned against the network, including Trump himself, leading to something of an existential crisis at the long-dominant channel.In a separate correspondence after the November 2020 presidential election, after many Trump supporters had grown angry at Fox News over its call of the state of Arizona for Joe Biden, Hannity acknowledged the anger from the president’s side. “Trump people hate Fox,” he wrote to a producer. “Hate hate hate.”While Fox publicly stood behind its Arizona call in the face of internal and external blowback, according to a 6 November 2020 email from Scott, Lachlan Murdoch said that Fox should consider reversing its call of the state of Arizona for Biden if his margin fell below 1% of the vote. “I’m not recommending we do that at this time,” Scott said.The documents released on Sunday are copies of the exhibits that were cited in previous filings between the parties. They include both longer versions of previously cited conversations and many new internal text messages and email exchanges that have not previously been made public.In a previously unreported 23 November 2020 email to his son, Rupert Murdoch suggested they chat about the viewer backlash against Fox News. “Getting killed in audience numbers,” he wrote. “All day long. We have to keep our nerve but worth a discussion. Won’t hurt subscriber revenue, but will soon cut into [advertisements].” Lachlan Murdoch wrote that he would call his father the following morning. “Agree re FNC,” he wrote. “Keeping me awake at night.”In another previously unreported 21 January 2021 email to his son Lachlan, Rupert wrote that he was “still getting criticism for [Fox News Channel]. Saying leading voices encouraged stolen election bullshit and pushed Jan 6 rally.” In the same thread, Murdoch talked about ousting business network host Lou Dobbs. “Just take him off the air and negotiate later,” he wrote. Dobbs’s show was cancelled the following month.The elder Murdoch also talked about hiring former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile, saying that it’s “hard to attack a Black woman”.The documents released on Sunday also included a version of Smartmatic’s deposition of Rupert Murdoch. When asked by a Smartmatic lawyer whether he took any steps “to make sure that hosts with shows on Fox News Media did not endorse claims about the 2020 election being stolen,” Rupert Murdoch responded: “No. No.”“I was very happy [with] the way Fox News was handling it,” Rupert Murdoch said of the network’s post-election coverage.Rupert Murdoch also acknowledged that Fox News made a decision to “pivot” after the election by “moving away from our support of Trump”. But he said it was difficult to do so. “Our very large audience tended to be Trump supporters,” he said. “We didn’t want to upset them totally. That, we did before. They’d been attacking us.”Murdoch also affirmed that he believed Trump’s claims of a stolen election contributed to the January 6 US Capitol attack – though he denied it was a “riot” and said it was “intended to be just be a rally outside the Capitol”.In his own deposition, Lachlan Murdoch said he didn’t think Fox News did anything to “endorse” claims of election fraud made by Trump’s supporters. He also re-affirmed the journalistic value of covering the president’s election fraud claims. “I can’t imagine a more newsworthy story than the sitting president of the United States calling into question the election results,” he said, according a transcript of his deposition.“We did not make the allegations against Smartmatic. The president and his lawyers and associates made the allegations against Smartmatic,” Lachlan Murdoch said. “We reported those allegations, which I believe were incredibly newsworthy. So we did not make an apology for reporting the sitting president’s allegations about a voting system.”Smartmatic was indicted by the Department of Justice last month as part of an investigation into bribery in the Philippines. The company denies the charges, calling the indictment “targeted, political, and unjust”.Fox News has strenuously denied Smartmatic’s claims and said the company has vastly overstated its value.“The evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News and that Smartmatic grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech,” a Fox News spokesperson said. “Now, in the aftermath of Smartmatic being criminally charged with bribery in the Philippines and the Government’s motion to include evidence of Smartmatic’s business dealings in Venezuela and Los Angeles County, we are eager and ready to continue defending our press freedoms.”Fox had petitioned the judge in the case to delay the trial, pending the criminal case against Smartmatic, but on Monday that effort was denied.“Today’s decision is an important victory for Smartmatic as we progress in our efforts to hold Fox accountable for its lies,” a Smartmatic spokesperson said. “The court made clear that Fox’s attempts to delay accountability won’t work, and its day of reckoning is coming.”Both parties are tentatively scheduled to argue their case for summary judgement next month. More

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      Trump hints support for fringe theory that Venezuela rigged 2020 election

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      Donald Trump on Sunday appeared to endorse the discredited conspiracy theory that Venezuela’s leadership controls electronic voting software worldwide and caused his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden.White House officials have previously said that Trump’s increasingly bellicose policy toward Venezuela is driven by concerns about migration and the drug trade. But the president’s new comment, made on Truth Social, hints that his hostility to Venezuela may also be based on an outlandish, implausible theory ruled to be false by a judge in 2023.Fox News paid $787m in 2023 to Dominion Voting to settle a lawsuit that was based in part on identical claims about Venezuela’s supposed role in the 2020 election.The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s remarks.Trump’s post came two days after the Guardian reported that Trump’s Department of Justice has been extensively interviewing conspiracists who are pushing the idea that Venezuela controls voting companies and flips votes to the candidates it favors.The US attorney in Puerto Rico, W Stephen Muldrow, has repeatedly interviewedthe former CIA officer Gary Berntsen and Venezuelan expatriate Martin Rodil, who claim to have proof of the scheme and the two have also briefed a taskforce out of Tampa. Berntsen, and author Ralph Pezzullo, were also guests on the podcast of far-right media personality Lara Logan on Friday.Trump on Sunday reposted the Logan podcast segment, and wrote:“We must focus all of our energy and might on ELECTION FRAUD!!”Trump did not specifically mention Venezuela, but the podcast was a rehash of the allegations and was built around a self published book called Stolen Elections, which recounts the theory.The post came as Trump has sent extensive military resources, including a navy aircraft carrier, to the region.On Monday the administration ramped up pressure, designating the Venezuelan-based so-called Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. In July the treasury department had already named it a “specially designated global terrorist”.An indictment filed in 2020 alleged that the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, heads the reputed organization.“Who knows what the process is inside the White House,” said David M Rowe, a political science professor at Kenyon College who specializes in national security. “If it captures Trump’s attention, my understanding is it is part of the process. Trump needs to find justification in his own mind for war.”Rowe said that narcoterrorism claims about Venezuela have not resonated with Trump’s America First base, which has been reluctant to support overseas intervention. “As a kind of casus belli, a reason for war, narcoterrorism looks extremely weak. An attack on the American electoral system is stronger. If he can argue to the Maga movement that they did intervene in the US political system, it’s a stronger case for war,” he said.Berntsen, the ex-CIA officer promoting the theory, was asked by the Guardian on Monday about the president’s apparent affirmation of his theory, and replied: “The President knows this is NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY, he knows the truth, evidence in possession of DOJ.”A Venezuelan opposition figure who supports strong action against Maduro but is dismissive of the election claims told the Guardian on condition of anonymity that proponents of the conspiracy theory are trying to take advantage of access to the administration. “I think there is someone inside the White House that these people have access to. They might be overselling this crap and there are people who refuse to let go of the 2020 election conspiracy bullshit.” More

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      Trump wants to revive the Rush Hour franchise. Is he eyeing a return to Hollywood?

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      It is said that by 328BC, having made empires kneel to him, Alexander the Great wept … for there were no more worlds to conquer.Similarly, having solved the Middle East and Ukraine issues with only a couple of technicalities to iron out and put an end to so many other wars as well, Donald Trump may also be tempted to sob at having run out of important tasks. And yet, just as he is about to kneel in anguish on the Oval Office carpet, he is apparently perking up at the thought of one more mighty challenge.He can revive the Rush Hour movie franchise!Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount Skydance – which, earlier this year, as Paramount Global, settled a lawsuit with Trump not dissimilar to the one he’s recently threatened the BBC with – has reportedly been leant on by the commander in chief to revive the affectionately remembered Rush Hour films – the knockabout buddy cop adventures starring Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan.A fourth Rush Hour film is reportedly a central part of Trump’s second-term project – a dream of reintroducing some old-fashioned masculinity into Hollywood culture and it would moreover create some employment for that unlovely Tinseltown hombre who directed the first three Rush Hour films – Brett Ratner.Ratner was accused of sexual assault in 2017, allegations which he denied. But, with privileged access, has now directed a $40m documentary about Melania Trump – the kind of film that can only be described as “soft-hitting”.Does the world really need or want Rush Hour 4? If it did, surely we would have it by now? Market forces in the brutally commercial Darwinian jungle of franchise cinema would have created Rush Hour 4. Or at the very least rebooted it for streaming TV with a younger cast and maybe David Harbour as the glowering police chief.The idea of the Rush Hour series is a quirky odd-couple pairing of two cops: Chris Tucker’s James Carter from the LAPD and Jackie Chan’s Yan Naing Lee from the Hong Kong Police Force. They both get to play “fish out of water” comedy – the water being each other’s culture – with some very broad and arguably problematic sexual comedy. And, of course, there are plenty of fights, with Tucker giving us some all-American punch-ups and Chan busting out some uproarious martial arts moves.It’s all very undemanding, stereotypical stuff and Donald absolutely loves it. Could it be that Rush Hour 4 will feature one of his wooden cameos, or something more? Or it could be that the president is – like Arnold Schwarzenegger – starting to envision a post-political return to the glamorous world of show business. Perhaps he will wish to produce as well as star.But there is another possibility. Recently, Trump played host to New York’s Democratic socialist mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani; the meeting that many thought could only end in the kind of tongue-lashing that the president notoriously gave Volodymyr Zelenskyy on their first encounter. But no. It was all smiles. A very unexpected bromance seemed to be in the offing. Could it be that Trump likes the idea of Rush Hour because it’s so … inclusive? A black guy and an Asian guy united under the American banner. Has Mamdani finally softened Trump’s worldview? If so, and if Rush Hour 4 is the result, well, it could have been worse. More

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      Why did young men move left in this month’s US elections? | Cory Alpert

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      Just a few months ago, it seemed that the political landscape was changing permanently, with young people shifting right – especially young men. Democrats spun up a vortex of efforts to win them back, but they often appeared to be flailing. This month’s elections, however, told a different story.Young men in the US face a political identity crisis. It should not be controversial to say that the world that many were promised as children has not come to fruition. Two decades of war and a turbulent economy have combined with a massively changing workforce. Young men’s disaffection should come as no real surprise.An entire ecosystem of hucksters has emerged to take advantage of these young people, peddling a dark vision that offers violence and control as a response to a changing world. Meanwhile, the Democratic party failed to imagine a political future that included these young men. In Democrats’ parlance, anyone who took one step in that direction was hopelessly lost, unable to see the beautiful egalitarian future that we could create together.There is a fine line here. I am not arguing for the redemption, welcome, or whitewashing of the people who have peddled this bleak reality. But we can and should build a political coalition that includes this generation, that doesn’t leave them out in the cold, only to find a home in the most bleak fringes of a political movement that tells them that a lust for control over other people, especially women, is the only way to find meaning.On the left, we tell ourselves the story of our own vaunted sympathy, and yet we assign only blame to the young men who do something similar, looking for community and only finding it among the most opportunistic and dangerous political movements. We have done little to welcome them in.And while Democrats had solid policies and economic plans, Republicans, backed by an army of digital content, were able to take the mantle of running on the economy and framing the left as cultural warriors out of touch with the majority of Americans.But the good news is that this month’s elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City show Democrats have learned a lesson.The three marquee campaigns of this year were all remarkably similar, despite coming from different parts of the ideological spectrum. Their messaging was relentlessly focused on affordability – how expensive and difficult life has become for the working and middle-class people of their communities. Their solutions covered a wide ideological range, but the focus remained the same.Most young men, like most trans people and Black people and immigrants and everyone else, are dealing with housing that has skyrocketed in price, especially compared with our parents’ generations. Instead of having one career in our lifetimes, we now have to continually seek new jobs. Living independently as an adult is much more expensive and complicated now than it has been. These affordability campaigns gave young men something to do about those pressures rather than ceding that frustration to the most cynical actors.Undoubtedly this conversation is easier to have when Donald Trump is taking three steps every day to dismantle the economy. There’s a real sense that the economy is getting worse. That it’s more difficult to pay bills and keep food on the table, especially when Republicans are, quite literally, ensuring that 42 million people cannot afford to keep food on their table by refusing to fund Snap during their government shutdown.Republicans got distracted, trying to defend Trump and also trying to repeat his playbook of tying Democrats to the culture war of the moment. But without Trump’s singular ability to control a media narrative, Republicans with far less political talent and capital floundered, making themselves look weak and silly in the process.The political miracle is that this ruthless focus on affordability and cost of living may have brought in many of those same young men who had followed Trump a year ago. In Virginia and New Jersey, men under 30 broke for their new Democratic governors, with about six in 10 supporting Spanberger, according to the AP. In New York, young men went for Zohran Mamdani over Andrew Cuomo by a margin of nearly 40 points, according to a Tufts Circle analysis.It turns out that these young men are not completely lost to us. We just failed to imagine a reality where they could be in our camp.Affordability broke through amid the longest government shutdown in US history, as consumer prices were rising ever higher thanks in part to Trump’s tariffs. For all of his bluster, eventually the economic reality becomes an unavoidable political crisis for anyone not far gone in his cult of personality who has to pay their bills.Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, and Mamdani in New York City showed us that the frustration that every working and middle-class person feels could be directed into a political coalition that sees marginalized people as people also affected by the greed and corruption that has made life unaffordable for so many.Young men, like everyone else, are looking for a politics that can make life a little better. Democrats are finally figuring out how to offer them that chance.

      Cory Alpert is a PhD researcher at the University of Melbourne looking at the impact of AI on democracy. He served in the Biden-Harris administration for three years More

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      The ‘war on terror’ has killed millions. Trump is reviving it in Venezuela | Daniel Mendiola

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      For the last two months, US forces have amassed outside Venezuela and carried out a series of lethal strikes on civilian boats. The Trump White House has ordered these actions in the name of fighting “narco-terrorists” – a label apparently applicable to anyone suspected of participating in drug trafficking near Latin American coastlines. More than 80 people have already been killed in these pre-emptive strikes, and war hawks are calling for expanded military action to depose the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.Watching this play out, I am reminded of a passage from the geographer Stuart Elden’s award-winning 2009 book, Terror and Territory. In discussing how to study the “war on terror”, Elden observed that it did not make sense to study terrorism as something unique to non-state actors.“States clearly operate in ways that terrify,” Elden said. “The terrorism of non-state actors is a very small proportion of terrorism taken as a whole, with states having killed far more than those who oppose them.”A large body of research supports this claim.Researchers with Brown University’s Costs of War project, for example, have found that US-led interventions in the “war on terror” from 2001 to 2023 killed over 400,000 civilians in direct war violence. They also show evidence that when considering indirect deaths – for example, people in war zones dying from treatable medical conditions after clean water or medical infrastructure was destroyed – death toll estimates rise to at least 3.5m. Moreover, even beyond direct war zones, a recent study in the Lancet found that sanctions during the same period were also extremely deadly, causing as many as 500,000 excess deaths per year from 2010 to 2021.In short, we have already spent decades terrorizing civilian populations around the world in the name of fighting terror. This is well known, and yet the Trump White House is reinvigorating the “war on terror” anyway. Still more, it is trying to do it with even less oversight on the president’s license to kill than has been exercised in the past.While on the surface Trump’s second term has been characterized by a disorienting barrage of executive orders and culture war polemics, the administration has in fact been running a cohesive authoritarian playbook aimed at conferring near limitless powers to the presidency. These concerted efforts have played out in numerous policy arenas from immigration, to higher education, to economics, to even determining who is a citizen.Consistent with this pattern, Trump is asserting the same unchecked authority over the violent capacities of the US military.As I have written previously, a key tactic of the Trump White House has been eviscerating the oversight of the courts, making it impossible to impede the executive branch from continuing to break the law, even when it gets caught red-handed. However, another frequent strategy – perhaps less visible, though equally anathema to a system of limited government – has been to simply sidestep oversight by asserting that, even when law in theory places limits on presidential power, the exercise of this power is still “unquestioned”; according to this thinking, the executive branch apparently has the prerogative to interpret what those limits are.Of course, in a serious constitutional system, this would be preposterous. In practice, there would be no limits to presidential powers, rendering the constitution moot. Nonetheless, this is exactly the type of power that Trump is asserting over the military, both at home and abroad.The court case related to Trump’s efforts to suppress protests in Chicago using troops sheds critical light on how this strategy works. Federal law allows a president to deploy troops domestically if there is a “rebellion” that is making it impossible to “execute the laws of the United States”. Accordingly, some lower court judges have reasonably blocked the deployment of troops, finding that the administration has been unable to prove that these conditions were met. Just look at the facts: protests had on average only been about 50 people at a time, and they have clearly not made law enforcement impossible since ICE – the federal agency being protested – has vastly increased arrests during this time.True to form, however, Trump’s lawyers have argued that these details are irrelevant. In their view, there is actually no need to prove a rebellion is happening because the president has the authority to define rebellion anyway. In other words, the law might impose limits on how the president can use the military, but the president gets to decide what those limits are.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile lower courts have so far prevented this nakedly authoritarian legal theory from taking hold, the argument itself is still massively consequential: first, because an extremely Trump-friendly supreme court will hear the case soon and could very well endorse these claims; and second, because this is essentially the same logic that the Trump administration has used to justify killing civilians off the Latin American coast. Indeed, just as the Trump administration is asserting the exclusive right to define “rebellion” regardless of the facts on the ground – thus eliminating any real limits on the power to deploy troops domestically – the Trump White House is similarly asserting the unencumbered right to define “terrorist”, along with the corresponding right to take deadly action with virtually no outside oversight.In public statements, Trump has defended treating drug smugglers as terrorists by citing the harm done by drug overdoses, in effect suggesting that drug traffickers are directly killing US citizens. Ignoring the fact that Venezuela doesn’t produce fentanyl, the main driver of overdoses in the US, Trump has even gone so far as to float the mathematically impossible claim that each boat strike has saved 25,000 lives. Of course, officials have provided zero public evidence that the boats attacked were carrying drugs at all, much less tried to explain how blowing up boats would have any impact at all on drug abuse in the US.But again, why would they? The whole point of the argument is that such facts don’t matter because Trump simply has the unchecked authority to use lethal force. In fact, the justice department has suggested that officials do not even have to publicly list which foreign organizations are classified as killable terrorists, much less provide evidence to support this designation.Ultimately, Trump’s actions in and around Venezuela are best understood as a new phase in the “war on terror” – an ongoing tragedy that has already had deadly consequences for millions – though now with even fewer guardrails. The bottom line: Venezuela is not just some chess piece in an abstract game of geopolitics, and we are doing a disservice to humanity if we let war hawks in government and media spin it this way. We are talking about real people, and as very recent history shows, countless lives are at stake.

      Daniel Mendiola is a professor of Latin American history and migration studies at Vassar College More