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      Nikki Haley emerges from TV debate as Trump’s nearest rival as Iowa vote looms

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      The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley emerged from the last televised debate before the Iowa caucuses clearly Donald Trump’s strongest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, boosted by the withdrawal of Chris Christie, the only explicitly anti-Trump candidate to register significantly with voters.Voting begins in Iowa on Monday, before New Hampshire stages its primary a week on Tuesday. Haley has closed on Trump in New Hampshire and has hopes of seizing second place in Iowa at the expense of the rightwing Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.Nonetheless, the Trump camp remains bullish as the Iowa vote looms after having maintained hefty leads in the polls for months. On Wednesday night, one senior aide said the campaign “couldn’t have scripted any better ourselves” events in the Des Moines debate, delighting in the spectacle of the former US president’s rivals slogging it out on the CNN stage while Trump – who continues to refuse to debate – took an easy ride at a Fox News town hall.“If you watched any part of the ‘JV’ debate this evening, you see two campaigns that are beating the living hell out of each other,” Chris LaCivita told reporters after Haley fiercely debated DeSantis, while Trump performed on his own elsewhere.“Then you have a Donald Trump commercial that shows up and he’s talking about Joe Biden … we couldn’t have scripted any better ourselves.”“JV” stands for “junior varsity” – a designation for college athletes below first-team standard. At Drake University, Haley said, “I wish Donald Trump was up on this stage” but spent most of her evening fighting DeSantis, regardless of Trump’s whopping Iowa lead.Fox gave Trump an easy ride. On a network which has paid $787.5m to settle one lawsuit arising from his stolen election lie and faces other such threats, the subject never came up. Nor did Trump’s legal problems arising from that lie, including 17 criminal charges regarding election subversion. Nor were Trump’s other 74 criminal charges, for retention of classified information and hush-money payments, high on Fox’s agenda.Tim Miller, a Republican operative turned anti-Trump activist and writer for the Bulwark, a conservative Never-Trump website, delivered a withering assessment of the Fox News town hall.Describing “one big primetime infomercial for the frontrunner”, Miller described Trump’s hosts, the “‘straight news’ reporters Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum”, sitting “beside the disgraced former president listening to his Catskills stand-up bit and giggling like a couple of undergrads after a 5mg weed gummy”.Trump did not avoid every pitfall. Seeking to thread a particularly tricky needle, he questioned the harshness of abortion bans supported by Haley and DeSantis. But he also crowed that “for 54 years, [conservatives] were trying to get Roe v Wade terminated, and I did it, and I’m proud to have done it”.The remark drew applause from the Fox audience but delight from Democrats, given how the supreme court’s removal of the federal right to abortion last year (actually 49 years after Roe, the ruling which guaranteed the right) and other attacks on healthcare rights have fueled Democratic wins at the polls. Up and down the ballot, abortion is set to be a key election issue this year.Tommy Vietor, a former staffer to Barack Obama, posted Trump’s remark to social media and said: “Biden campaign is going to feature this in about a billion dollars’ worth of ads.”DeSantis, meanwhile, has spent hundreds of millions on his campaign but is widely seen to be in deep trouble, needing a strong second in Iowa to avoid having to drop out. He also stood to lose more than Haley from Christie’s decision earlier on Wednesday to bring an end to his own campaign.The former New Jersey governor was the only candidate to run on an explicitly anti-Trump platform, regardless of Trump’s hold on Republican voters.Ending his campaign in New Hampshire, the libertarian-minded state on which he pinned his hopes, Christie said: “Anyone who is unwilling to say that [Trump] is unfit to be president of the United States is unfit themselves to be president of the United States.”Haley and DeSantis have begun to attack Trump as caucus day looms but not in strong terms and while still reserving their harshest fire for each other. Christie also had harsh if unscripted words for both his rivals, in comments apparently picked up by accident on a hot mic before his speech was streamed.“She’s gonna get smoked and you and I both know it,” Christie said, presumably referring to Haley. “She’s not up to this.”He also said: “DeSantis called me, petrified that I would –” before the audio cut out.The remarks, which CNN confirmed were directed at Wayne MacDonald, Christie’s New Hampshire campaign chair, pointed to harsh political realities.Haley is clear in second in New Hampshire and has been reducing Trump’s lead. Most polling indicates Christie supporters will now turn her way. But Haley remains well behind Trump, particularly in her own state, South Carolina, which will be third to vote. Campaign wisdom says candidates who cannot win their home state cannot hope to win over their whole party.DeSantis is well behind Trump in Florida and everywhere else. He would certainly have reason to be “petrified” that Christie’s withdrawal will ensure Haley becomes the only competitor to Trump with any notion of viability at all.The DeSantis and Haley campaigns did not immediately comment. More

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      Republican Chris Christie suspends presidential bid

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      The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he announced on Wednesday evening.“It is clear to me tonight that there is not a path to win the nomination,” he said at a town hall in Windham, New Hampshire.The former New Jersey governor, who also ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2016, when he lost out to Donald Trump, has been struggling in the polls for weeks and had failed to qualify for the last GOP debate before Monday’s Iowa caucuses kick off the nominating contest of the 2024 race for the White House.He had always stood out as the Republican candidate with the most overtly critical viewpoint of the policies and character of Donald Trump.He has yet to endorse a rival and was heard publicly on an apparent inadvertent “hot mic” before he took the stage in New Hampshire predicting that one, almost certainly Nikki Haley, will “get smoked” in the race for the nomination and that a “petrified” Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, had called him, while a person he was talking to was heard predicting that the struggling DeSantis would not last beyond next week’s Iowa caucuses. Haley and DeSantis are the closest contenders behind the solid frontrunner, Trump.The hot-mic comments were widely heard on a YouTube audio livestream before Christie’s event began, with the audio being cut abruptly after a few seconds.Appearing before a subdued crowd at the town hall event a few moments later, Christie said: “This race has always been bigger than me.” And he warned the US against re-electing Donald Trump to a second term.“If we put him back behind the desk at the Oval Office, and a choice is needed to be made about whether to put himself first or you [the public] first, how much more evidence do you need? He will put himself first,” Christie said.He had earlier said that if Trump had been president when Islamist terrorists attacked the US on 9/11, “he would have [gone] to the bunker” instead of taking charge to protect the country.Christie said that “this is a fight for the soul of our party” and – echoing a campaign message Joe Biden, the Democratic president, has said many times – he added “and the soul of our country.”He said that if Trump ultimately becomes the Republican nominee, the moment that was going to happen could be traced back to the GOP debate in Milwaukee last August when all the other candidates present – Trump was absent – except Christie himself raised their hands when asked if they would still nominate someone if they had a criminal conviction.If Trump became president again, the US “will remain angry … remain divided”, Christie said.Christie’s exit removes from the race the only candidate willing to base his campaign on attacking Donald Trump, the former president who faces 91 criminal charges arising from his conduct since entering politics, including his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as well as provoking multiple civil cases and moves to remove him from the ballot in states including Colorado and Maine.A longtime Trump ally and adviser since endorsing him in 2016, Christie stayed loyal even after Trump nearly killed him with Covid-19, only to turn after Trump incited the deadly attack on Congress of 6 January 2021.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a recent campaign ad, Christie said: “Eight years ago when I decided to endorse Donald Trump for president, I did it because he was winning, and I did it because I thought I could make him a better candidate and a better president. Well, I was wrong, I made a mistake.”On the campaign trail, Christie focused on attacking Trump from the debate stage and on campaigning in New Hampshire.Long seen as suspect by hardline Republican voters, largely over his past as governor of an east coast, predominantly Democratic state, he could not make much of an impact.Christie’s failed presidential campaign in 2016 and scandal-tainted record in office – in 2013, he became embroiled in the Bridgegate scandal over political payback – also worked against him.In further details of the apparent hot-mic incident, which was widely reported on social media and in US news outlets, Christie was heard saying to an unknown individual: “She’s going to get smoked, and you and I both know it … She’s not up to this.”He was assumed to be referring to Haley as he then mentioned fundraising numbers that resemble Haley’s. She is the former governor of South Carolina and formerly the Trump-appointed US ambassador to the United Nations.Christie could then be heard saying “DeSantis called me, petrified” and an unknown person responding that DeSantis is “probably getting out after Iowa”.Christie had not, immediately after announcing his campaign suspension, commented on the hot-mic incident. More

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      Trump told European leaders that US ‘will never come to help you’

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      Donald Trump told the president of the European Commission in 2020 that the US would “never come help” if Europe was attacked and also said “Nato is dead”, a senior European commissioner said.Multiple news outlets said the exchange between Trump and Ursula von der Leyen at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020 was described in Brussels on Tuesday by Thierry Breton, a French European commissioner responsible for the internal market, with responsibilities including defence.“You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,” Trump said, according to Breton, who was speaking at the European parliament.According to Breton, Trump also said: “By the way, Nato is dead, and we will leave, we will quit Nato.”According to the Jerusalem Post, Trump added: “And by the way, you owe me $400bn, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defence.”As Germany’s defence minister, von der Leyen was among European officials who pushed back at Trump on the issue of funding.But threats to quit Nato, and demands that European nations increase contributions to it, were as much a feature of Trump’s presidency as concern over his opaque, apparently submissive relationship with Vladimir Putin.Trump claims to understand the Russian president, who he says waited until Trump was out of office before invading Ukraine.In Brussels, Breton reportedly said Trump’s 2020 remarks were “a big wake-up call” and warned: “He may come back.”The first contest of this year’s Republican presidential primary, the Iowa caucuses, takes place on Monday.Trump faces 91 criminal charges, legal attempts to keep him off the ballot and assorted civil threats, yet enjoys huge polling leads over his closest rivals: Ron DeSantis, the hard-right governor of Florida, and Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the UN.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPolling regarding a notional general election between Trump and Joe Biden shows a close contest, with Trump often in the lead.“Now more than ever, we know that we are on our own, of course,” Politico reported Breton as saying.“We are a member of Nato, almost all of us, of course we have allies, but we have no other options but to increase drastically [spending on arms] in order to be ready [for] whatever happens.”Trump’s campaign did not immediately comment. More

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      Judge bars Trump from presenting own closing arguments in fraud trial – as it happened

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      Donald Trump will be barred from his reported aim to deliver his own closing argument on Thursday in his New York civil business fraud trial.Judge Arthur Engoron had reportedly been prepared to allow the former president, in a highly unusual move, to address the court tomorrow in addition to his lawyers doing so.But fresh news now being reported by the Associated Press – Engoron has “rescinded permission”.Trump is a defendant in the case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. She claims his net worth was inflated by billions of dollars on financial statements that helped him secure business loans and insurance.An attorney for Trump informed Engoron earlier this week that Trump wished to speak during the closing arguments, and the judge approved the plan, according to one of the two people who spoke to the AP.Read more about the case from the Guardian’s Lauren Aratani, who had a great report from last weekend, here.As Republicans convened to weigh holding Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for not appearing for a deposition, the president’s son seized the spotlight by showing up unannounced at the House oversight committee room. It was something of a stunt, but succeeded in pulling media attention away from the hearing, and giving Democrats an opportunity to accuse the GOP of hypocrisy, since Biden’s attorney said he would have been willing to testify then, if asked. In New York City, Donald Trump was briefly set to personally deliver closing arguments at his civil fraud trial tomorrow, until judge Arthur Engoron said no.Here’s what else happened today:
      Conservative Republicans blocked the consideration of legislation on the House floor, in protest of speaker Mike Johnson’s government spending deal with Democrats.
      Joe Biden finally saw tentative improvement in his polling in a key swing state.
      Democrats of color blasted Republican Nancy Mace, who accused Hunter Biden of exhibiting “white privilege”.
      A group of constitutional law experts wrote an open letter saying that impeaching homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas simply because Republicans disagree with his policies is unjustifiable.
      Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania became the first House Democrat to call on Lloyd Austin to resign as defense secretary for not promptly telling the White House he had been hospitalized.
      Chris Deluzio, a freshman House Democrat from Pennsylvania and Iraq war veteran, has called on defense secretary Lloyd Austin to resign after he waited several days to notify the White House that he had been hospitalized.“I have lost trust in Secretary Lloyd Austin’s leadership of the Defense Department due to the lack of transparency about his recent medical treatment and its impact on the continuity of the chain of command. I have a solemn duty in Congress to conduct oversight of the Defense Department through my service on the House Armed Services Committee. That duty today requires me to call on Secretary Austin to resign,” Deluzio said.The White House has said Joe Biden has confidence in Austin, who remains hospitalized:Meanwhile, in Iowa, two of the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination will debate this evening, though frontrunner Donald Trump will not be joining them, the Guardian’s Alice Herman reports:Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis will face off one-on-one in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday night in their fifth and most high-stakes attempt to take support away from Donald Trump before Monday’s Iowa caucus, the country’s first state primary election.The former president has repeatedly declined to debate his party’s opponents, and will again forgo this debate, instead participating in a town hall hosted by Fox News, also in Iowa.Unlike the prior debates, this one was not coordinated by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which decided in December to stop hosting GOP debates for the rest of the primary season.The RNC debates narrowed the field of Republican contenders to five, and CNN’s debate requirement that candidates poll at 10% in at least three national or Iowa-based surveys has left only Haley, DeSantis and Trump qualifying. Chris Christie, Trump’s most vociferous critic among the Republican contenders, did not make the cut, but will likely qualify in New Hampshire.House Republicans’ bad day just got worse, after conservative lawmakers disrupted a procedural vote in protest at speaker Mike Johnson’s deal with Democrats to fund the government:A vote on a rule to bring multiple pieces of legislation up for consideration just failed, and the House’s Republican leadership then announced there would be no votes for the rest of the day.It was the latest disruption for the House GOP, after Hunter Biden upstaged an oversight committee hearing convened this morning to hold him in contempt by showing up unexpectedly. That gave Democrats the opportunity to claim the majority does not actually want to hear from the president’s son about allegations of corruption. Just take it from the spokesman for the committee’s Democrats:After months of worrying poll numbers, Joe Biden has received some tentatively good news in the form of a just-released Quinnipiac University survey showing the president ahead of Donald Trump in must-win state Pennsylvania.Biden garnered 49% support against Trump’s 46% in what Quinnipiac said was the first time that the president led in their surveys of the swing state. Trump was ahead of Biden in two previous polls the university commissioned, though the university noted the race remained “too close to call”.Biden carried Pennsylvania when he was first elected in 2020, while Trump had won it in 2016.When Hunter Biden turned up before the House oversight committee today, South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace accused him of exhibiting “white privilege”.That comment did not sit well with at least two Democratic lawmakers on the panel, who excoriated Mace’s choice of words. Here’s Jasmine Crockett of Texas:And New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:In response to Florida’s Republican representative Byron Donalds who asked Maryland’s Democratic representative Jamie Raskin whether he has ever stayed at a Trump hotel, Raskin replied:
      “I would never stay at a Trump hotel. I’ve got too much self-respect and a concern for hygiene.”
      Raskin’s comments came as he offered to take Donalds “up on his challenge to see whether the Trump hotel in Washington, the Trump hotel in Las Vegas, the Trump hotel on Fifth Avenue, the Trump hotel on UN Plaza, the four of the more than 500 businesses that we got documentation for, whether they actually had the same level of business coming from Saudi Arabia, the communist bureaucrats of China … the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, India, Egypt … ”“We will make that comparison about what was done before if you get the chairman to call off the ban on further documents,” he added, referring to House oversight committee chairman James Comer.Last Thursday, a report published by Democrats from the House oversight committee found that Trump’s businesses received at least $7.8m in payment from 20 countries during his presidency.In an email New York judge Arthur Engoron sent to Donald Trump’s lawyer Chris Kise on Wednesday surrounding Trump’s closing arguments, Engoron wrote:
      “Dear Mr. Kise,
      Not having heard from you by the third extended deadline (noon today), I assume that Mr. Trump will not agree to the reasonable, lawful limits I have imposed as a precondition to giving a closing statement above and beyond those given by his attorneys, and that, therefore, he will not be speaking in court tomorrow.”
      Fani Willis, Georgia’s Fulton county district attorney who brought election interference charges against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, has been subpoenaed in a divorce case involving a special prosecutor she hired in the Trump case.A process server delivered the subpoena to Willis’s office on Monday, according to a court filing reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the subpoena. The subpoena requests Willis to testify in the divorce case involving her top prosecutor Nathan Wade and his wife Joycelyn Wade.The Wades filed for divorce in Cobb county, just outside Atlanta, in November 2021, according to a county court docket. The filings in the case have been sealed since February 2022.Earlier this week, Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant in the election interference case who is facing seven criminal charges, filed a motion accusing Willis and Nathan Wade of an “improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case”. The filing offered no proof of the relationship or of any wrongdoing.For the full story, click here:Donald Trump’s real estate empire is facing peril.For 11 weeks, the inner workings of his company have been discussed at a New York fraud trial. A judge has already decided Trump committed fraud. He will rule on punishment later.Trump’s companies could lose their New York licenses, making it nearly impossible for him to run his real estate business. He is also facing a vast fine – state lawyers made the case for a $370m penalty on Friday – which could force the company to sell off its properties.At this point, prosecutors and Trump’s defense team have rested their cases. Closing arguments are set to take place on Thursday.The last three months offered Trump and his lawyers their chance to defend Trump in court against accusations that he purposely exaggerated his net worth on government documents. Instead, they worked to uphold the shimmering portrait Trump has painted of himself for the last 40 years. The story that gave Trump celebrity and, ultimately, the White House could lead to the downfall of his company.A scathing pre-trial summary judgment made the trial an uphill battle for Trump’s team. Issued on 26 September, less than a week before the trial started, the ruling said documents submitted by prosecutors showed Trump had committed fraud. The ruling is currently under review by an appellate court, but if upheld, Trump will lose his business licenses, severely curtailing his real estate business in New York.You can read more here.Donald Trump will be barred from his reported aim to deliver his own closing argument on Thursday in his New York civil business fraud trial.Judge Arthur Engoron had reportedly been prepared to allow the former president, in a highly unusual move, to address the court tomorrow in addition to his lawyers doing so.But fresh news now being reported by the Associated Press – Engoron has “rescinded permission”.Trump is a defendant in the case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. She claims his net worth was inflated by billions of dollars on financial statements that helped him secure business loans and insurance.An attorney for Trump informed Engoron earlier this week that Trump wished to speak during the closing arguments, and the judge approved the plan, according to one of the two people who spoke to the AP.Read more about the case from the Guardian’s Lauren Aratani, who had a great report from last weekend, here.House Republicans today condemned Alejandro Mayorkas during the opening hearing in the impeachment process they’ve instigated against the homeland security secretary over record numbers of migrants making unauthorized entry across the US-Mexico border.Mark Green, the Republican chairman of the committee leading the impeachment effort, said in opening remarks that Mayorkas had intentionally encouraged illegal immigration with lax policies, Reuters reports.But congressman Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the committee, called the impeachment effort a “circus sideshow” crafted by Republicans “to try to distract from their own failures” to address border security.The impeachment effort is the culmination of years of Republican criticism of Joe Biden’s border management and the president’s moves to reverse some of the harshest policies of Donald Trump.“The secretary’s actions have brought us here today, not ours,” Green said at the hearing, calling Mayorkas “the architect of the devastation” at the border.Not only Democrats across both congressional chambers but also Senate Republicans have questioned the attempt to remove Mayorkas over a policy dispute, which legal experts say does not satisfy the high standard for impeachment.Border security is a core issue for Republican base voters and the party has intensified its criticism of the Biden administration in the run-up to 5 November election.The only cabinet secretary to ever be impeached was Ulysses Grant’s secretary of war in 1876 following allegations of corruption – demonstrating the exceptional nature of today’s proceedings.More on Thompson:It’s been a lively morning on Capitol Hill, to say the least. And there is a lot more action to come so stay with us as we bring you the US political news as it happens.Here’s where things stand:
      Hunter Biden made a surprise appearance at a congressional hearing, as Republicans on the US House oversight committee convened to consider a resolution to hold the US president’s son in contempt of Congress over his refusal to comply with a subpoena for testimony over his business interests.
      Appearing with his attorney, Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden sat silently in the front row of the hearing room as the chair and vice-chair of the oversight committee delivered their opening statements.
      After Hunter Biden walked into the House oversight committee hearing room in Washington, Republican Nancy Mace laid into him, prompting objections from Democrats. “Who bribed Hunter Biden to be here today? That’s my first question,” she said.
      Meanwhile, in a separate proceeding, House Republicans leading the homeland security committee were barreling ahead with efforts to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, part of a broader effort to make immigration and border security a defining issue of this year’s presidential election. The committee was holding its first hearing in the process, but Mayorkas was not attending.
      A group of constitutional law experts has written an open letter saying that impeaching Mayorkas simply because Republicans disagree with his policies is unjustifiable.
      The Republican campaign against Hunter Biden centers on allegations that his father, president Joe Biden, benefited illicitly from his business dealings overseas.The GOP has turned up no proof of such ties. What they have discovered is that, per the testimony of Hunter Biden’s former business partner, he would sometime put his father on speakerphone during business meetings, but their conversations were casual.As he was departing the House oversight committee room, Hunter Biden was asked why he had his father talk to his clients. Here’s what he had to say:According to Reuters, Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell spoke briefly to reporters about why the president’s son made an unexpected appearance in the House oversight committee’s audience.“We have offered to work with the House committees to see what and how relevant information to any legitimate inquiry could be provided,” Lowell said after Biden left the hearing room.“Our first five offers were ignored. And then in November, they issued a subpoena for a behind-closed-doors deposition, a tactic that the Republicans have repeatedly misused in their political crusade to selectively leak and mischaracterize.” More

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      Antony Blinken warns Houthis of ‘consequences’ for attacks on Red Sea ships – video

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      The US secretary of state, has warned the Houthis that there would be ‘consequences’ for the Yemeni rebel group’s apparent attack on western warships in the Red Sea. Speaking to reporters in Bahrain during his tour of the Middle East, Antony Blinken said: ‘All I can tell you is that as we’ve made clear, and many other countries make clear, there will be consequences for the Houthis’ actions.’

      Blinken also called on Iran to cease its support for Houthis, as the group continued its blockade of Israel-linked and Israel-bound ships passing through the Red Sea More

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      Fani Willis subpoenaed in divorce case involving Trump prosecutor

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      Fani Willis, Georgia’s Fulton county district attorney who brought election interference charges against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, has been subpoenaed in a divorce case involving a special prosecutor she hired in the Trump case.A process server delivered the subpoena to Willis’s office on Monday, according to a court filing reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the subpoena. The subpoena requests Willis to testify in the divorce case involving her top prosecutor Nathan Wade and his wife Joycelyn Wade.The Wades filed for divorce in Cobb county, just outside Atlanta, in November 2021, according to a county court docket. The filings in the case have been sealed since February 2022.Earlier this week, Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant in the election interference case who is facing seven criminal charges, filed a motion accusing Willis and Nathan Wade of an “improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case”. The filing offered no proof of the relationship or of any wrongdoing.The motion claimed that the alleged relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade resulted in “the special prosecutor, and, in turn, the district attorney, profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers”.“Willis has benefited substantially and directly, and continues to benefit, from this litigation because Wade is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute this case on her behalf,” the motion states.“He will continue to be incentivized to prosecute this case based on his personal and financial motives, so he has acquired a unique and personal interest or stake in Mr Roman’s continued prosecution. That is, he is motivated to prosecute Mr Roman for as long as possible because he will continue to make exorbitant sums of money,” the motion added.According to county records reviewed by the Hill, Nathan Wade was paid nearly $654,000 in legal fees in 2022 and 2023 as he worked on the election interference case.The motion further claimed – without evidence – that Willis and Nathan Wade traveled together to vacation destinations including Florida, Napa Valley and the Caribbean.The Guardian has contacted Willis and Nathan Wade for comment. Neither have yet spoken publicly on the subpoena. More

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      ‘Totally baseless’: Trump denounced for Nikki Haley ‘birther’ lie

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      A leading professor of US constitutional law condemned Donald Trump for “playing the race card” by propagating the “totally baseless” claim that Nikki Haley, his surging rival for the Republican presidential nomination, is not qualified because her parents were not US citizens when she was born.“The birther claims against Nikki Haley are totally baseless as a legal and constitutional matter,” Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told NBC.“I can’t imagine what Trump hopes to gain by those claims unless it’s to play the race card against the former governor and UN ambassador as a woman of colour – and to draw on the wellsprings of anti-immigrant prejudice by reminding everyone that Haley’s parents weren’t citizens when she was born in the USA.”The term “birther” was coined to describe racist conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, the first Black US president, which Trump seized on as he established a presence on the political far right.In 2016, as he ran for president himself, Trump also attempted to raise doubts about Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who was then his chief rival.Obama’s father was Kenyan and his mother American. He was born in Hawaii. Cruz’s father was Cuban and his mother American. He was born in Canada and moved to Texas when young.The 14th amendment to the US constitution – the same text under which Colorado and Maine now seek to remove Trump from the ballot for inciting an insurrection – says “all persons born or naturalised in the United States” are citizens. It was introduced after the civil war, conferring citizenship on people once enslaved. The constitution requires that a presidential candidate must be a resident for 14 years, at least 35 years old, and a “natural-born citizen”.As described in Haley’s autobiography, her parents “were born in the Punjab region of India”. Haley was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, in 1972, a US citizen at birth. Her father became a US citizen in 1978, her mother in 2003. Haley was governor of her home state from 2011 to 2017, then ambassador to the United Nations when Trump was president.In the race for the Republican nomination, Haley has surged in polling. She has done particularly well in New Hampshire, cutting Trump’s lead to single digits. Trump still dominates in Iowa, the first state to vote next week.On Tuesday, Trump re-posted to his Truth Social platform a post from the Gateway Pundit, a far-right site, which cited Paul Ingrassia, a New York Young Republican and “constitutional scholar”, as saying Haley was disqualified.In his own post, Ingrassia cited “great investigative work by Laura Loomer, who uncovered that neither one of Haley’s parents were US citizens when she was born in 1972”. Loomer, a far-right, Islamophobic, white-supremacist Florida activist who has run unsuccessfully for Congress, is an ardent Trump supporter.Experts agree Haley is qualified to be president, simply because she was born on US soil. Campaigning on a virulently anti-immigrant platform, Trump has promised to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented migrants.His post about Haley was condemned across the US media – and the political spectrum.Charles Gasparino, a Fox Business correspondent, said: “The problem with Donald is that he goes disgustingly low and not just against real enemies.”John Avlon, a CNN political analyst, said: “Trump’s lies are cut and paste: now he’s going birther on Nikki Haley – after trying the same attack on Obama, Harris and Cruz.”Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of colour to be vice-president, was born in Oakland, California, in 1964, to parents from India and Jamaica. Trump sought to cast doubt on her eligibility for office during the 2020 election. More

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      Field of bad dreams: Biden rival makes quip after no one turns up to 2024 event

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      Contemplating a New Hampshire campaign event to which not one voter showed up, the Minnesota congressman and Democratic presidential hopeful Dean Phillips told reporters on Tuesday: “Sometimes, if you build it, they don’t come.”He was alluding to a famous line from Field of Dreams, a 1989 film in which an Iowa farmer played by Kevin Costner builds a baseball field, thereby attracting the ghosts of famous players.Phillips is widely held to have a ghost of a chance of succeeding in his quest to deny a sitting president, Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nomination. Nonetheless, the 54-year-old centrist, who is self-funding his campaign, insists Biden is too old at 81 to mount a meaningful fight against Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee.In Manchester, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, Phillips parked his “Government Repair Truck” – a tested campaign prop – outside a Hilton hotel, planning to talk to voters while handing out Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, a staple for New Englanders, notably including Ben Affleck.Unfortunately, reports of sparsely or non-attended campaign events are a staple of presidential primary campaigns.According to NBC News, no one showed up to chat with Phillips in part because the temperature was below freezing, thereby sending drivers to an underground parking garage from which they could enter the hotel.Phillips “ended up pouring coffee for the staffers who were there”, NBC said, adding that the candidate made his Field of Dreams quip to reporters.Biden is not on the ballot in New Hampshire, thanks to a dispute between the state and national Democrats who reconfigured their primary to start in South Carolina.The focus of the Republican race will switch to New Hampshire next week, after Monday’s Iowa caucuses. Trump leads in the north-eastern state, though the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has eaten into his advantage.Elsewhere on Tuesday, Reuters published an interview in which Phillips once again rejected the contention that he risks damaging Biden and thereby boosting Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe also declined to rule out a third-party run for president, notionally on a ticket with Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman whose opposition to Trump cost her a seat in the House.“I wouldn’t say that’s even discussed right now,” Phillips said. “But I never say never.“I mean, this is about preservation of democracy. We are certainly different, politically. But we do have the same principle. And that is protecting the constitution, ensuring our systems of governance work and restoring some degree of sensibility and common sense to Washington. So I want to help her do that. And I think she wants to help me.” More