Donald Trump news latest: Trump sues ‘Russia dossier’ ex-spy as fraud court date set

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez undermined the suitability of the Republican witnesses at the House Oversight Committee’s first hearing on the impeachment inquiry of U.S. President Joe Biden with one simple question.

“In your testimony today, are you presenting any first-hand witness account of crimes committed by the president of the United States?” Ocasio-Cortez asked Jonathan Turley, the conservative legal scholar who the Republicans have called as a witness.

“No, I’m not,” he replied.

Ocasio-Cortez asked the same question to the two other Republican witnesses – Bruce Dubinsky and Eileen O’Connor – and received the same answer from both, immediately undermining their usefulness as witnesses in the case against Biden.

In comments made last week on Truth Social, the former president said the top general should face the death penalty for a conversation he had with his Chinese counterpart.

He claimed Mr Milley went behind his back to communicate with China during the final months of the Trump administration.

“This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States,” Mr Trump wrote. “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act.”

His comments prompted former House speaker Nancy Pelosi to say Mr Trump should be barred from public office.

During the first hearing in the impeachment hearing against President Joe Biden, a Democrat on the House Oversight panel asked whether Republicans on the panel would hold the president’s son — whose business dealings are at the heart of the inquiry — and former President Donald Trump to the same standard.

Texas Democratic Rep Greg Casar asked the committee: “Will members of the Oversight Committee please raise your hand if you believe both Hunter and Trump should be held accountable for any of the indictments if convicted of a jury of their peers?”

Only the Democrats could be seen raising their hands. Some even laughed at the question, to which Mr Casar said, “No it’s serious. This is a serious matter.”

“If y’all need to think about it, we can take a moment and think about it,” he added, before repeating the question. Still, Republicans kept their hands down.

The Texas Democrat then added, “Raise your hand if you think that equal justice under the law applies and if Trump should be held accountable.”

As his legal battles grow more complex by the day, a serious question has emerged: Whether Mr Trump will win the nomination and campaign for the general election as a convicted criminal.

That possibility, in turn, raises another, simpler question: Will the 45th President of the United States go to prison?

Between his 91 felony counts, Mr Trump faces a total of roughly seven centuries in total jail time, spread between dozens of various charges of differing seriousness. Obviously, Mr Trump is not going to be sealed inside a federal penitentiary for all eternity, but the increasingly wide range of actions for which he is now being prosecuted is slowly chipping away at the likelihood that he will evade the inside of a cell forever.

Mr Biden, 80, reaffirmed his commitment to fighting for freedom and democracy in a video posted to social media, just months after Mr Trump announced his candidacy.

The short film opened with footage of the deadly Capitol riot of 6 January 2021 and warned against the threat posed by “MAGA extremists”, whom he cautioned are hell-bent on cutting social security while offering tax breaks to the wealthy and assaulting abortion rights, oppressing LGBT+ values, limiting voting access and banning books.

The campaign clip also offered a defiant vision of a more tolerant, multicultural America, clearly establishing a positive alternative narrative for the nation at odds with the apocalyptic forecasts of Mr Trump, 77, and his supporters.

While current polling might indicate that a majority of the American public has little appetite for a rematch between the ageing Mr Biden and Mr Trump in 2024, that is beginning to look like the most likely outcome.

In the pages released by the panel, investigators can be seen discussing the case against the younger Biden that would eventually lead to misdemeanour tax charges and three felony gun charges. The former would later be dismissed, but are expected to be refiled. The communications depict a routine multi-agency investigation that has led to the first criminal indictment of a sitting president’s family member in many years.

They also include communications between Hunter Biden and his associates, including instances in 2017, when his father was not in government, where Hunter referred to access to his father as an asset.

Rep Jason Smith, the committee’s chairman, said on Wednesday that the documents “show a clearer connection between Joe Biden, his public office, and Hunter Biden’s global influence peddling scheme that resulted in over $20 million in payments to the Biden family.”

“This evidence makes clear Hunter Biden’s business was selling the Biden ‘brand’ and that access to the White House was his family’s most valuable asset – despite official claims otherwise,” Mr Smith said in a prepared statement.

New Mexico Democrat Melanie Stansbury asked on Thursday, “What is this hearing actually about?” during the first proceedings of the GOP impeachment of Joe Biden.

“It’s a campaign strategy. It’s a misuse of official resources. It is this committee and loyalists of Donald Trump doing his bidding to bolster his chances of winning back the White House and securing their majority in the next election,” she argued.

“And in the process, to diminish the name of impeachment which is enshrined in the US Constitution, which we take an oath to uphold and to make Donald Trump’s crimes including his two impeachments and his 91 criminal indictment counts look like they’re not serious crimes,” she added.

“When you think about it, it’s chilling. It’s truly chilling. It’s another attack on our democracy and our institutions. It’s another attack on fair and free elections and the use of this committee to try to carry it out. So I just want to say I think it’s obvious who the grand puppet master is here. He tweeted about it on his own social and we see the long arm, but little hands of Mr Donald Trump, whose fingerprints are all over this hearing and this sham impeachment,” she added.

“But we know that the American people are smart, that they’re not going to be fooled by what’s happening here today, and especially as they shut the government down in two days with catastrophic impacts for our communities,” Ms Stansbury said.

Ex-president’s claim to have organised an audience of ‘hundreds’ of union members remains unlikely.

The Republicans on the panel refused to say if Donald Trump and Hunter Biden should be held accountable for any crimes they may have committed.

Rep Greg Casar of Texas asked: “Will members of the oversight committee raise their hands if you believe both Hunter and Trump should be held accountable for any of indictments if convicted?”

While the Democrats raised their hands, the Republicans remained still.

Donald Trump is suing a former MI6 officer and the intelligence consultancy he founded, High Court records show.

The former US president is bringing a data protection claim against Orbis Business Intelligence and its founder Christopher Steele, who previously ran the Secret Intelligence Service’s Russia desk.

According to a court order published on Thursday, a two-day hearing in Mr Trump’s legal action is set to start on October 16, which is thought to be the first hearing in the claim.

No other details of the case have been made available, but Mr Trump is not expected to attend.

Mr Steele was the author of the so-called Steele dossier, which included allegations that Mr Trump had been “compromised” by the Russian security service, the FSB.

The dossier, leaked to BuzzFeed in 2017, also alleged that Mr Putin “supported and directed” an operation to “cultivate” Mr Trump as a presidential candidate for “at least five years”.

Mr Trump denied the claims.

Mr Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence were previously sued for libel by Russian national Aleksej Gubarev over the publication of the dossier, claiming they were legally responsible for BuzzFeed publishing the dossier.

However, in a judgment in October 2020, Mr Justice Warby dismissed the claim.