Trump to challenge Maine and Colorado ballot removals in courts: Live – The Independent

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Ex-president privately shares concern conservative justices may be worried about being seen as ‘political’ and rule against him
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Donald Trump doubles down on anti-immigrant rhetoric after Supreme Court decision
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.
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.
Meanwhile, Nikki Haley has said she would pardon Mr Trump if he’s convicted of crimes if she’s elected president.
The former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador argued it would be “in the best interest of the country”.
“I would pardon Trump,” she said, responding to a question from a nine-year-old boy in New Hampshire, according to NBC News.
In filing on Saturday, the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith has argued that the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia should reject former President Donald Trump’s claim that he’s immune from prosecution for things he did while serving as president.
The Special Counsel writes in the introduction of the 82-page legal filing that “For the first time in our Nation’s history, a grand jury has charged a former President with committing crimes while in office to overturn an election that he lost”.
“In response, the defendant claims that to protect the institution of the Presidency, he must be cloaked with absolute immunity from criminal prosecution unless the House impeached and the Senate convicted him for the same conduct. He is wrong,” they add. “Separation of powers principles, constitutional text, history, and precedent all make clear that a former President may be prosecuted for criminal acts he committed while in office—including, most critically here, illegal acts to remain in power despite losing an election.”
In the conclusion, the Special Counsel argues that the court “should affirm the district court’s order denying the defendant’s motions to dismiss on Presidential immunity and double-jeopardy grounds”.
“For the reasons given in the Government’s motion to expedite appellate review, including the imperative public importance of a prompt resolution of this case, the Government respectfully requests the Court to issue the mandate five days after the entry of judgment. Such an approach would appropriately require any party seeking further review to do so promptly,” they argue.
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.
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.”
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was accused by a child of flip-flopping on her views about former president Donald Trump — and then was likened to the 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry.
The nine-year-old named Adam began by telling the former UN ambassador at a New Hampshire town hall on 27 December: “Chris Christie thinks that you’re a flip-flopper on the Donald Trump issue. And honestly, I agree with him.” The crowd then erupted in laughter.
“You’re basically the new John Kerry – if you remember John Kerry from 2004,” the kid added, sparking more laughs from the audience. Mr Kerry, who lost the presidency to George W Bush, was accused of changing his position on a number of topics, including the Iraq War. He now serves as the US’s first Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.
The fourth grader then asked: “How can you change your opinion like that in just eight years, and will you pardon Donald Trump?”
Kelly Rissman reports:
‘You’re basically the new John Kerry–if you remember John Kerry from 2004,’ the fourth grader said
Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s one-time lawyer and “fixer” used Google Bard, the artificial intelligence program, to provide his lawyer with fictitious legal citations, according to newly unsealed court papers.
The fake citations were then included in a motion filed with a Manhattan federal judge to argue for an early end to Cohen’s court supervision having been released from prison for campaign finance violation charges that he pleaded guilty to in 2018.
Cohen explained in a sworn declaration released on Friday (29 December) that he had not kept abreast of “emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology and did not realize that Google Bard was a generative text service that, like ChatGPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not”.
He added that he also didn’t realise that his lawyer, David Schwartz, “would drop the cases into his submission wholesale without even confirming that they existed”.
Read the full article
Eric Garcia writes:
For the second time in as many weeks, a state disqualified former president Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot. A week after Colorado disqualified Mr Trump from the 2024 Republican primary ballot, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said in a filing that Mr Trump was disqualified because he contributed to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.
These moves are unprecedented, but then again, so was Mr Trump’s presidency, and his refusal to engage in a peaceful transfer of power.
Mr Trump is not likely to win Colorado or Maine in a November 2024 general election. Colorado voted for President Joe Biden by double digits while Maine broke for Mr Biden by nine points in 2020. In addition, neither of these states is among the four early nominating contests – Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
That means that even if the Supreme Court were to act in the quickest manner possible, the Republican primary would likely already be decided.
Continue reading…
Attempts to remove Trump from the ballot are the latest example of magical thinking hoping that he can simply go away. But we’re stuck with him for the time being
PREMIUM: Donald Trump must be defeated by the American people at the ballot box
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.
But there is an equally strong argument that, in practice, the attempts to block Mr Trump’s candidacy only help him.
Continue reading:
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
Donald Trump’s Republican rivals in the 2024 White House race have come out in support of the former president after he was struck from the ballot in Maine.
In a decision handed down on Thursday, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows blocked Mr Trump from appearing on the state ballot under the 14th Amendment, due to his role in inciting the January 6 Capitol riots.
Maine is now the second state to remove him from the ballot, after Colorado’s Supreme Court issued a similar ruling earlier this month.
Following the Colorado ruling, all four of Mr Trump’s rival GOP candidates put on something of a united front and spoke out to slam the move.
On Thursday, they all once again criticised the decision coming out of Maine.
Rachel Sharp has the details.
Vivek Ramaswamy has challenged the other candidates to withdraw from the ballot in states where Donald Trump is disqualified
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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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