Trump news today: New poll casts Trump as ‘criminal’ as senior ex-official calls documents case ‘dangerous’

On his first day as attorney general, Merrick Garland pledged a return to what he called the “norms” of the Justice Department and said he would work to eliminate the perception of political interference. But in the two years since he took office, the former federal judge has found himself in the middle of a political firestorm of historic proportions.

The case against Donald Trump — the first former president to face federal criminal charges — brought a crush of protesters to the Miami courthouse last week, as well as a torrent of social media broadsides from Trump and an onslaught of criticism from Republicans.

The decision to charge Trump, who is running for president again, is perhaps the most consequential in the history of the Justice Department. The ultimate call on that came from Garland, whose demeanor leans to the mild.

Lindsay Whitehurst has more.

A new poll out from JL Partners underscores major weaknesses for the three men most likely to be sworn in as president on 20 January 2025, with little good news to soften the blow.

With the GOP primary now in full swing, Americans are getting a good look at the alternatives the Republican Party will present to the re-election of President Joe Biden, who was already the oldest president ever to take office when he did so in 2021.

But the top contenders in the GOP, former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, each have debilitating labels to overcome if they have any shot of picking up ground with a general election audience, according to the survey. For Mr Trump, voters were most likely to describe him in one word as a “criminal”; others were even less flattering, such as “disgusting”, “liar”, “evil” and “dangerous” (though “patriot” also made a top-10 appearance).

South Carolina Republicans have set Feb. 24 as the date of their 2024 presidential primary, a move that, if approved, the party says will give GOP White House hopefuls more time to campaign in the first-in-the-South state.

The state GOP executive committee voted unanimously to approve the measure on Saturday, party executive director Hope Walker told The Associated Press. The selection still needs approval from the Republican National Committee to be official, and Walker said that a formal submission will be sent ahead of an October deadline.

The move comes as both major parties make moves to solidify their voting calendars ahead of the 2024 nominating process.

Over on Independent Premium, Eric Lewis takes a deep dive into the Trump classified documents case.

As the ex-president’s loyalists continue to offer a wide scope of defences for their leader ranging from arguments that Mr Trump was allowed to designate the materials as personal records for his own safekeeping to the idea that the prosecution is merely a politicised weaponisation of the Justice Department, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has offered his own assessment on the situation.

On Sunday, he joined CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, and flatly stated that his ex-boss’s actions were “illegal and dangerous”.

Stacey Plaskett, a US representative for the US Virgin Islands, accidentally said Donald Trump should be shot for taking classified documents from the White House.

Watch the gaffe below, via MSNBC.

In a blistering new attack ad, the anti-Trump Republican group the Lincoln Project hammers the former president for taking classified documents out of the White House, and criticises as well the Republican politicians and conservative media figures who won’t condemn such conduct.

“Trump did this to himself,” the ad says. “He took the documents. He shared them and tried to cover it up. Patriots know people who committ this crime belong in prison, not the White House.”

Watch the full clip below.

Bill Barr has been unloading on Donald Trump all day.

In a recent interview on Face the Nation, Mr Barr, who served as the Trump administration’s attorney general, called his former colleague “petty and selfish.”

“He’s a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country’s,” Mr Barr said.

Former US senator for Alabama Doug Jones is warning voters not to go with third-party options like the No Labels group, which intends to run an outsider candidate, during the 2024 election.

“This is a vote for Donald Trump,” Mr Jones said in an interview with MSNBC. “This is an effort to get Donald Trump back in the presidency.”

Donald Trump was a bit of a hoarder, according to his former top deputies.

“I think he was kind of a collector of things that he thought were of interest to him for some reason or another: clippings, mementos, classified documents,” former national security adviser John Bolton told MSNBC on Sunday, calling the behaviour “disturbing.”

“We could see in the course of meetings with him — intelligence briefings, decision meetings — that sometimes he liked to retain things, and it became a practice just to make sure that we got them back in as many cases as we could,” he added.