Trump prepares to claim election fraud again with 2024 New Year's message: Live – The Independent

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Ex-president claims ‘millions of people … are illegally’ entering US to vote in 2024
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Donald Trump doubles down on anti-immigrant rhetoric after Supreme Court decision
Donald Trump is preparing to claim election fraud again if he loses to President Joe Biden in the November 2024 election.
In a ranting New Year’s message on Truth Social, the former president wrote: “As the New Year fast approaches, I would like to wish an early New Year’s salutation to Crooked Joe Biden and his group of Radical Left Misfits & Thugs on their never ending attempt to DESTROY OUR NATION through Lawfare, Invasion, and Rigging Elections.”
“They are now scrambling to sign up as many of those millions of people they are illegally allowing into sour Country, in order that they will be ready to VOTE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024,” he added.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump is reportedly concerned that some conservative justices on the Supreme Court – half of which he appointed – may rule against him after he was removed from the ballots in several states under the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists holding public office.
Advisers to Mr Trump are prepping to file challenges as soon as Tuesday to the decisions in Colorado and Maine, according to The New York Times.
Donald Trump is reportedly concerned that some conservative justices on the Supreme Court – half of which he appointed – may rule against him after he was removed from the ballots in several states under the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists holding public office.
Advisers to Mr Trump are prepping to file challenges as soon as Tuesday to the decisions in Colorado and Maine, according to The New York Times.
Mr Trump was removed from their GOP primary ballots because of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot when his supporters attempted to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in their false and baseless belief that the election had been stolen.
While Mr Trump has been charged with wrongdoing in relation to the Capitol riot, his allies often make the point that he hasn’t been criminally charged with “insurrection”.
The Trump team is set to file a challenge in a Maine state court to the secretary of state’s decision to block Mr Trump from appearing on the ballot, while the ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court to remove Mr Trump will be challenged in the US Supreme Court.
The former president appointed three of the six conservative justices on the court. The three liberals were appointed by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The remaining three conservatives were appointed by George HW Bush and George W Bush.
Donald Trump is laying the ground to claim election fraud again in 2024, baselessly suggesting in his New Year’s message that the Biden administration is allowing immigrants to enter the US to vote.
“As the New Year fast approaches, I would like to wish an early New Year’s salutation to Crooked Joe Biden and his group of Radical Left Misfits & Thugs on their never ending attempt to DESTROY OUR NATION through Lawfare, Invasion, and Rigging Elections,” Mr Trump wrote in the afternoon of 30 December.
“They are now scrambling to sign up as many of those millions of people they are illegally allowing into [our] Country, in order [so] that they will be ready to VOTE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024,” he added.
Mr Trump’s New Year’s screed followed a previous post just after midnight early on Saturday, in which he wrote, “It’s becoming more and more obvious to me why the ‘Crazed’ Democrats are allowing millions and millions of totally unvetted migrants into our once great Country”.
“IT’S SO THEY CAN VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. They are signing them up at a rapid pace, without even knowing who the hell they are. It all makes sense now. Republicans better wake up and do something, before it is too late. Are you listening Mitch McConnell?” he asked of the Senate Republican leader.
NBC legal analyst Joyce Alene wrote on X that “Trump is preparing to claim the 2024 election was stolen from him when he loses”.
Former GOP lawmaker Adam Kinzinger has revealed new details about Donald Trump’s alleged bad odour, claiming that he reeks of a combination of several unsavoury scents including “armpits, ketchup, a butt”.
Speaking on The MeidasTouch Network on Thursday, Mr Kinzinger reignited the claims around the former president’s “not good” smell and launched into a lengthy description of it.
“It’s not good. The best way to describe it… take armpits, ketchup, a butt and makeup and put that all in a blender and bottle that as a cologne,” he said.
“That’s kind of that. I’ve been amazed that everybody is just kind of learning about this now,” he added.
The Independent has reached out to a Trump spokesperson for comment.
Claims around the former president’s alleged odour erupted last week when the former Illinois Republican representative tweeted: “I’m genuinely surprised how people close to Trump haven’t talked about the odor. It’s truly something to behold. Wear a mask if you can.”
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump say he may testify at a mid-January civil trial set to decide how much he owes a columnist for defaming her after she said he sexually abused her three decades ago in a Manhattan luxury department store.
The lawyers filed papers in Manhattan federal court late Thursday to request that Trump’s October 2022 deposition transcript in the case not be shown to the jury because Trump “has been named as a witness to testify at this trial.”
The lawyers — Alina Habba and Michael Madaio — did not respond to an email Friday seeking comment.
The columnist, 80-year-old E. Jean Carroll, is planning to testify at the trial, slated to start Jan. 16, about how her life has been affected and threats she has faced since Trump claimed that he never knew her and that she was making false accusations against him.
The former Elle magazine columnist is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and substantially more in punitive damages after a jury at a Manhattan trial last May found she had been sexually abused by Trump in spring 1996 in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman store across the street from Trump Tower, where Trump resided.
Carroll testified at that trial that her flirtatious encounter with Trump seemed lighthearted and fun as she accompanied him on a search for a gift for his friend in the store’s desolate lingerie area. But she said it turned violent inside the dressing room after they dared each other to try on a piece of lingerie.
She said Trump shoved her against a wall and raped her. The jury rejected the rape claim, but agreed that he sexually abused her. It awarded $5 million for sexual abuse and defamation that occurred with comments Trump made in fall 2022.
The decision by Shenna Bellows, secretary of state of Maine, to rule Donald Trump ineligible as a presidential candidate was a mistake. That her decision was followed in a few hours by a contrary decision by Shirley Weber, secretary of state of California, confirms how mistaken it was.
Two officials, the most senior responsible for elections in their states, reaching opposite conclusions on the same facts suggests that the case against Mr Trump is far from watertight.
On principle, if there is any reasonable doubt about Mr Trump’s eligibility, he should be allowed to stand. In a democracy, it is for the people to decide who is and who is not a suitable person to hold office.
Editorial: The case against the former president has yet to be proven in court – and efforts by state officials to block his candidacy are not only counterproductive, they may also prove incendiary. Let him run
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Former President Donald Trump speaks to the press as he arrives for his civil fraud trial in New York City on 17 October 2023
AFP via Getty Images
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