Trump says there were no documents found at Mar-a-Lago, just ‘cool’ empty folders marked classified
Donald Trump leaped to Mike Pence’s defence on Tuesday after it emerged that classified documents had been found in the vice president’s Indiana home.
In a Truth Social post, Mr Trump called Mr Pence an “innocent man” and urged people to “leave him alone”.
It’s a marked difference from his response to the discovery of classified documents at President Joe Biden’s Wilmington home and an office he used in Washington DC.
Now, classified documents have been found at the homes of Mr Trump, Mr Biden and Mr Pence, prompting investigations into the matters.
The latest discovery at Mr Pence’s home comes the same day that a Georgia prosecutor said that a decision was “imminent” around whether or not to bring charges against Mr Trump and his allies over their efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state.
A judge in Fulton County is expected to rule over the public release of a grand jury report following an eight-month probe into Mr Trump’s alleged actions.
On Tuesday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said she opposed the report being made public just yet, as she suggested that the special grand jury had recommended multiple indictments.
After years of resistance, Trump has discovered texting, report says
According to reporting by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman in The New York Times, former president Donald Trump has discovered text messaging.
Despite long being famous for his unfiltered tweets (now Truths?) in the public sphere, Mr Trump has long avoided communicating by email or text in private, something that may have helped him avoid worse legal jeopardy than he is currently in.
Citing three people with knowledge of his new habit, Swan and Haberman report that messages from the former president have shown up on the phone of surprised recipients.
A lack of written electronic communication from the one-time president was notable in the January 6 investigation when other Trumpworld figures’ texts and emails were key to building the case against him.
To date, Mr Trump’s texts are described as innocuous and have included new year greetings and political comments.
Oliver O’Connell25 January 2023 18:20
Watch: De La Cruz voices anger over DirecTV ditching Newsmax
Oliver O’Connell25 January 2023 18:00
McCarthy targets Biden over documents – despite new revelations about Pence
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy attempted to draw a distinction between the documents found at former vice president Mike Pence’s home and those discovered at President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.
The Independent asked Mr McCarthy about CNN’s report that Mr Pence found documents at his home in Carmel, Indiana and promptly returned them.
Eric Garcia reports on how the speaker responded to his question.
Oliver O’Connell25 January 2023 17:40
Watch: Classified documents found at home of Mike Pence
Classified documents found at home of former US vice president Mike Pence
Documents with classified markings were discovered in former vice president Mike Pence’s Indiana home last week, his lawyer has told the National Archives – the latest in a string of discoveries of confidential information in private residences. The records “appear to be a small number of documents bearing classified markings that were inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former vice president at the end of the last administration”, his lawyer Greg Jacob wrote in a letter to the Associated Press. Mr Pence served under Donald Trump from 2017 to 2021. Click here to sign up for our newsletters.
Oliver O’Connell25 January 2023 17:20
White nationalist Nick Fuentes suspended from Twitter one day after brief return
Notorious white nationalist and virulent antisemite Nick Fuentes has been suspended from Twitter, again, one day after he was able to return to his verified account.
Mr Trump has refused to condemn either of the men and their history of rampant antisemitism and Mr Fuentes’s links to neo-Nazism, anti-LGBT+ bigotry and misogyny.
Alex Woodward has the latest.
Oliver O’Connell25 January 2023 16:59
Trump blames everyone else as potential Georgia charges loom
Donald Trump issued a potentially revealing statement on Truth Social as news broke Tuesday that authorities in Fulton County, Georgia, are nearing a decision on charges for multiple members of his inner circle — including potentially Mr Trump himself.
The ex-president, out of nowhere, brought up his now-infamous 2 January 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he instructed the state elections chief to “find” more than 11,000 votes he would have needed to surpass Joe Biden’s total in the state.
Oliver O’Connell25 January 2023 16:40
Pence to visit Florida on Friday
Former Vice President Mike Pence will visit Florida International University in Miami on Friday 27 January.
The likely 2024 contender is ostensibly in the state as part of his book out for his memoir So Help Me God.
Oliver O’Connell25 January 2023 16:10
House Judiciary schedules first ‘Biden Border Crisis’ hearing
The House Committee on the Judiciary will hold its first hearing on the “Biden Border Crisis” on Wednesday 1 February at 10am.
Chairman Jim Jordan tweeted the announcement adding: “Ready to get to work.”
Oliver O’Connell25 January 2023 15:50
DirecTV drops Trump-favourite Newsmax
DirecTV has dropped pro-Trump far-right news channel Newsmax.
The network ceased to be aired by the platform at 11.59pm on Tuesday, with the platform saying that the carriage fees demanded by Newsmax to supplement advertising would have led to higher costs that would have had to be passed on to customers.
Newsmax disputes this saying that the claim is false and they have been “de-platformed” by DirecTV as conservative outlet One America News was in 2022.
Texas Republican Rep Wesley Hunt has taken up the fight on behalf of the network sending a letter of protest to the CEOs of DirecTV and parent AT&T, co-signed by a number of GOP lawmakers including Matt Gaetz, James Comer, and Lauren Boebert.
Newsmax is still available to stream online and through multiple other platforms including Amazon, Roku, and Google Play. The network refers to the move by DirecTV as “censorship”.
DirecTV maintains that it wanted to continue to offer the network on its platform.
Oliver O’Connell25 January 2023 15:30
Full story: Marjorie Taylor Greene ‘sees herself on the shortlist for Trump’s VP’
Former Trump White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who hosts a podcast on which the Georgia Republican Representative has appeared, told NBC News that “this is no shrinking violet, she’s ambitious, she’s not shy about that, nor should she be”.
Gustaf Kilander has the story.
Oliver O’Connell25 January 2023 15:05