Trump severed from two co-defendants in Georgia case

About half of Americans say they have little or no confidence that the Justice Department is handling its investigation into Hunter Biden in a fair and nonpartisan way, and 1 in 3 are highly concerned about whether President Joe Biden may have committed wrongdoing related to his son’s business dealings, according to a new poll. But the political divide is stark.

Sixty-six percent of Republicans — and just 7% of Democrats — are very or extremely concerned about whether Joe Biden committed wrongdoing when it comes to his son’s business dealings, according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Overall, Democrats are far more wary of faulting the president at all with regard to his son’s business dealings.

“The way I look at it, if Biden did something wrong, then he should be held accountable,” said Pilar DeAvila-Pinsley 60, a New York Democrat. “But there is no proof of this.”

The poll was conducted just before House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched a formal impeachment inquiry aiming to link the president to the business dealings of his son and deflect attention from Donald Trump’s legal peril as the two men battle anew for the White House. A special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland is investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings, after a plea deal on tax and gun charges fell apart.

Aformer president has been charged with crimes connected to his attempts to overturn the results of an American election.

The federal investigation into the efforts from Donald Trump and his allies to subvert the outcome of the 2020 presidential election has yielded four criminal charges in a 45-page indictment, outlining three alleged criminal conspiracies and the obstruction of of Joe Biden’s victory and detailing a multi-state scheme built on a legacy of lies and conspiracy theories to undermine the democratic process.

A charging document under US Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith follows a grand jury vote to indict Mr Trump after months of evidence and witness testimony. A tentative trial date has been set for 4 March, 2024 in Washington DC.

The indictments follow a separate, lengthy House select committee investigation into the events surrounding and leading up to the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, including a series of blockbuster public hearings laying out evidence and witness testimony describing the depth of Mr Trump’s attempts to remain in office at whatever cost.

Suspended Texas attorney general Ken Paxton can count on a certain former president who faced two impeachment trials to stand beside him as proceedings in his own impeachment trial unfold.

Donald Trump gave Mr Paxton a boost of confidence in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Thursday morning calling him “one of the TOUGHEST & BEST” attorney generals.

Mr Trump’s words of affirmation mark the first time he has spoken about the trial of his longtime ally since it began on 5 September – though the ex-president issued a statement of support earlier this year when Mr Paxton was first impeached.

In Thursday’s post, Mr Trump accused Republicans in Texas of being “RINOS” (Republican in name only” in their decision to bring 16 articles of impeachment against Mr Paxton.

“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was easily re-elected last November, but now establishment RINOS are trying to undo that Election with a shameful impeachment of him,” Mr Trump wrote.

Mike Pence refused to say if he would dine alone with a female vice president during a town hall debate in Chicago on Wednesday.

The Republican presidential candidate, 64, awkwardly demurred when quizzed on the issue by NewsNation moderator Leland Vittert, as his wife Karen Pence watched on from the audience.

“One of the things that has been said about how you conduct your personal life is you will not eat alone or meet alone with a woman,” Mr Vittert said, referring to remarks in an infamous 2002 profile of Ms Pence in The Hill, that resurfaced in 2017 when he was vice president.

“How would that work out if you had a female vice president?”

Mr Pence replied with an ironic smile: “That’s a very clever question. It really is.”

A federal appeals court will quickly consider former President Donald Trump’s claim that presidential immunity protects him from being held liable for statements he made in 2019 when he denied that he sexually attacked a New York writer in the 1990s, the court said Wednesday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued an order to say it will expedite the appeal a day after Trump attorney Alina Habba told a three-judge panel of the court that the appeal raised “an important question that will affect the delicate balance between the judiciary and the executive branch for many years to come.”

The 2nd Circuit set a schedule for written arguments to be filed within a month.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan has set a Jan. 15 date for a jury to decide damages in a long-delayed lawsuit brought by the writer, E. Jean Carroll. She claimed Trump defamed her in 2019 when he said she fabricated claims in a memoir in which she said Trump sexually attacked her in a luxury Manhattan department store in 1996.

In May, a jury rejected Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her in the department store’s dressing room, but it concluded that he sexually abused her. It awarded $5 million for sexual assault and for defamatory remarks that it concluded Trump made last fall. Trump had vehemently denied ever sexually attacking Carroll or encountering her at a store.

Utah’s junior senator announced on Wednesday that he would not seek a second term. Mr Romney, 76, noted to reporters that he would be well into his 80s by the end of his next six years in office were he to run again, an otherwise innocent remark that may as well have been a shiv to the sides of the two frontrunners for the 2024 Democratic and Republican nominations.

Ever a creature of the political establishment, Mr Romney announced his move in an interview with The Washington Post, eschewing his hometown papers despite having just spent the entire month of August back in Utah. Concurrently with the interview’s publication, he released a short video message addressed to Utahns on Twitter.

The GOP centrist stalwart was in true form as he announced his retirement. In the Post interview, he derided his own party’s voting base, accusing them of falling for a “populist demagogue” message in either Donald Trump or his would-be replacement, Ron DeSantis.