Trump returns to court for immunity appeal hearing in election interference case: Live updates

I don’t know who still needs to hear this message but, judging by the latest polling, clearly millions do.

As we used to say in 2018: “There is ALWAYS a tweet.”

Trump’s short-lived White House director of communications, Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci, has attacked Wall Street for its “nonchalant” attitude to the prospect of his estranged former boss’s re-election.

“It’s painful for me to admit this, but Wall Street is basically nonchalant to this election,” Scaramucci told The Hill.

“I think they view Donald Trump by and large as benign to somewhat beneficial to the economy and business, despite the fact that he spent $7.8 trillion of additional deficit spending.

“And I think that they’re viewing this as a Fed-driven market, more than it is a Democratic or Republican presidency market.”

He warned against this short-sighted standpoint, arguing that a second Trump would “ultimately [be] really bad for business”.

He described the status quo as, “unfortunate, because, as President Biden is pointing out, Mr Trump is at great risk to the institutions of America.

“And you know, I think if we lose any of those cherished institutions, it’s ultimately really bad for business. So it’s a great irony that people aren’t focused enough on what’s at stake here.”

Trump lost yet another attempt to avoid a trial stemming from a defamation lawsuit from E Jean Carroll on Monday after a federal appeals court panel in New York refused to rehear his “immunity” defence one week before the trial is set to begin.

A single-page order from the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit declined to hear his request for the case to be heard in front of the court’s full 13-member panel.

Alex Woodward has the full story.

The Republican was taking a gossipy relish last night in the allegation from fellow Georgia defendant Mike Roman that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis had engaged in an “improper” romantic relationship with a fellow prosecutor, which, he argued, made their indictment “fatally defective”.

On the same platform, Trump also had more snide things to say about Judge Arthur Engoron, overseeing his civil trial in New York, and his challenger for the GOP nomination Nikki Haley.

In an interview with Lou Dobbs last night, Trump made the surprising declaration that he believes the US economy is “running off the fumes of what we did” and said that he “hopes” it crashes.

“We have an economy that’s so fragile, and the only reason it’s running now is it’s running off the fumes of what we did,” the Republican front-runner claimed. “It’s just running off the fumes.

“And when there’s a crash — I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover. The one president I just don’t want to be, Herbert Hoover.”

However much Trump might like this to be true, the US economy is actually in pretty decent shape, all things considered, boasting falling inflation and unemployment numbers and highly positive job growth, adding added 216,000 new roles in the final month of 2023.

“What we’re seeing now I think we can describe as a soft landing, and my hope is that it will continue,” Joe Biden’s treasury secretary Janet Yellen told CNN on Friday after those numbers were posted.

“The American people did it. The American people go to work every day, participate in the labour market, form new businesses. But President Biden has tried to create incentives that give Americans the tools they need to help this economy grow.”

Trump appeared to be trying to distance himself from the president’s brutal comparison with Hoover last month, when he said of his rival:  “In the four years Donald Trump was president — and he’s the only president other than Herbert Hoover who actually lost jobs in a four-year period. And that’s why I often… think of him as Donald ‘Herbert Hoover’ Trump.”

In the same interview with the ever-fawning Dobbs, the Republican also hit out at Never Trump Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, calling them “far worse than any Democrat who ever lived… Two very sick Republicans”.

Graphic details about Trump’s alleged “sexual proclivities” have emerged in the latest round of court documents containing details of late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s associates.

The new documents contain “incendiary claims” about the former president, including accusations that he had sexual relations with “many girls”, made by one of Epstein’s alleged victims, Sarah Ransome.

Trump’s name has appeared a handful of times previously in the documents and, while not accusing him of wrongdoing, appears to illustrate the good relationship he had with the disgraced financier.

In the newly unsealed documents, Ransome testified that her unnamed friend “was one of the many girls that had sexual relations with Donald Trump”, including at Epstein’s New York townhouse.

“She confided in me about her casual ‘friendship’ with Donald. Mr Trump definitely seemed to have a thing for her and she told me how he kept going on about how he liked her ‘pert nipples’,” she testified.

Mike Bedigan has this report.

Attorneys for the Republican are now claiming that the former president didn’t have “fair notice” that his attempts to reverse his Georgia loss in the 2020 presidential election could result in criminal charges against him.

A flurry of filings in Fulton County Superior Court on Monday argue that the sprawling election interference case against Trump “consists entirely of core political speech at the zenith of First Amendment protections”.

Attorneys for the former president want the case dismissed on grounds that he has “presidential immunity” from actions while in office, that he was already acquitted for similar allegations in his second impeachment trial and that he was never told that what he was doing in the state – where he is charged as part of an alleged racketeering scheme to unlawfully subvert the state’s election results – could be prosecuted.

Here’s Alex Woodward again with more.

Donald Trump is set to attend a hearing on Tuesday morning at Washington DC’s Court of Appeals weighing the presidential immunity plea that he hopes will see his January 6 election interference case dismissed.

“Of course I was entitled, as President of the United States and Commander in Chief, to Immunity,” Mr Trump told his followers on Truth Social, trailing the appearance.

“I wasn’t campaigning, the Election was long over. I was looking for voter fraud.”

Trump’s legal team will again try to convince a federal appeals court that the former president should be immune from criminal prosecution for his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a defence that was already shot down by the judge overseeing the election conspiracy case against him.

Tuesday’s session will see a three-judge panel in DC hear arguments from the former president’s attorneys who want that decision reversed.