Prosecutors note Trump’s Milley threat in push for gag order – live

Donald Trump has the biggest primary poll lead since George W Bush in the 2000 election.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is supported by 15 per cent – 43 points behind Mr Trump.

At a similar time in the 2000 campaign, in September 1999, Mr Bush was at 62 per cent in the polls to Elizabeth Dole’s 10 per cent – a lead of 52 points.

Fifty-one per cent said that Mr Trump is prevented from running under the 14th Amendment because he was part of an insurrection following the 2020 election.

Before the survey respondents were asked about disqualifying Mr Trump, they were asked a number of questions concerning the Constitution and Mr Trump’s behaviour after the last presidential election.

Thirty-four per cent said that Mr Trump should not be disqualified.

Social media users seemed unaware that scandal-tinged US Rep George Santos of New York is married until he mentioned his husband in a tribute post to late Sen Dianne Feinstein.

“My husband Matt and I are heart broken by the news of the passing of Senator Feinstein,” Mr Santos wrote. “Sen. Feinstein was a trail blazer who dedicated over 30 years of service to her country Our condolences to the Feinstein family as they grief (sic) this grave loss.”

The New York Republican has apparently been married to Matheus Gerard — known as “Matt” — since 2021, according to a Brazilian outlet. Public records reviewed by The Independent suggest that the pair live together in Queens.

Despite the years-old news, X users expressed confusion over Mr Santos’ reference to his spouse.

One user wrote, “did george santos just hard launch his husband … with the passing of senator feinstein?”

The U.S. Senate on Friday confirmed a U.S. attorney in Mississippi who will oversee the largest public corruption case in the state’s history.

President Joe Biden nominated Todd Gee for the post overseeing the Southern District of Mississippi in September 2022. His nomination stalled until April, when both of Mississippi’s Republican U.S. Senators, Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith, had indicated they would support his nomination. Gee was confirmed Friday in an 82-8 vote, with all votes against him coming from other Republicans.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi has overseen prosecutions related to a sprawling corruption scandal in which $77 million of federal welfare funds intended to help some of the poorest people in the U.S. were instead diverted to the rich and powerful. The former head of Mississippi’s Department of Human Services and former nonprofit leaders have pleaded guilty to state and federal charges for misspending money through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.

The office of Special Counsel Jack Smith mentioned both former President Donald Trump seemingly threatening the life of recently retired Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley and his visit to a South Carolina gun store in a Washington, DC legal filing pushing for a gag order.

The prosecutors have been trying for some time to place limits on Mr Trump’s public speech to stop him from threatening possible witnesses or tainting the pool of possible jurors.

The prosecutors noted that if Mr Trump had bought a firearm, he would have been in violation of his release conditions in the election subversion case.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign wrote in a social media post that Mr Trump had bought a gun, only to later remove the post and say that the ex-president hadn’t bought a gun, but had only said that he wanted to.

Attorneys from the office of the Special Counsel mentioned the gun store visit and Mr Trump’s targeting of Gen Milley as they argued that federal Judge Tanya Chutkan should place additional restrictions on Mr Trump and what he can say ahead of the trial.

The lawyer and vaccine-sceptic is expected to release campaign ads targeting the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ahead of the announcement in October.

Mr Kennedy, who is the son of the late US Senator Robert F Kennedy, previously filed candidacy papers for the democratic nomination with the FEC in April.

But according to news outlet Mediaite, Mr Kennedy believes that changes to DNC rules may exclude his candidacy and that running as an independent is “the only way to go”.

A civil trial stemming from a multi-million dollar fraud lawsuit targeting Donald Trump, his adult sons and chief associates will likely proceed next week after a New York appeals court rejected a last-ditch attempt to stall the hearings amid a mountain of criminal and civil cases facing the former president.

The two-page appellate court decision on 28 September dismissed Mr Trump’s lawsuit against the judge presiding over his case in an effort to stall the civil trial’s start date on 2 October.

A ruling comes just days after the judge’s blockbuster decision finding Mr Trump and others liable for more than a decade of fraud after a years-long investigation from the state attorney general.

A bench trial could begin as soon as Monday. Judge Arthur F Engoron will preside without a jury.

His scathing order on 26 September granted a partial judgment in favour of Letitia James, whose blockbuster lawsuit alleges Mr Trump and his business empire defrauded banks and insurers by grossly overvaluing assets and exaggerating his net worth on documents to secure deals and financing.

Donald Trump’s speech to a crowd in Clinton Township, Michigan, could not have contrasted with the day-earlier visit by his likely 2024 opponent to any greater degree.

While Joe Biden was on the picket line and making a name for himself as the most pro-labour president since at least FDR, if not in history, Donald Trump was preparing for a much different visit to the Rust Belt — one that was in many ways very typical of a politician like him.

For days leading up to Mr Trump’s Wednesday visit, a cascade of news stories highlighted his plans to “speak to union autoworkers”. The Detroit Free Press, New York Times and other reputable media outlets ran with the claim that Mr Trump would speak to an audience of 500 “former and current” union autoworkers, based on details released by the Trump campaign on day four of the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike.

But like everything with Donald Trump and his facts-optional brand of politics, the truth of the matter was hopelessly obscured both by his own operatives and credulous reporters who repeated a canned press release ad nauseam.

Mr Trump spoke on Wednesday evening and delivered potentially one of the strangest speeches a GOP politician has given in recent memory. The Republican ex-president, a member of a party that has famously battled unions for decades and whose members speak of teachers’ unions with the same level of disrespect they reserve for organised crime, pleaded for union votes and urged his audience to push UAW president Shawn Fain to endorse him.

Mr Milley, who steps down from the role after a four-year term, first hailed the US military as “unique among the world’s armies” during his speech.

“We don’t take an oath to a country,” he continued. “We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion.”

And then he appeared to take a swing at the ex-commander-in-chief.

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual.