Trump news latest: Trump attacks DeSantis and makes awkward ‘markers’ gaffe at farmers campaign event

A disciplinary committee in Washington DC has recommended Rudy Giuliani be disbarred in the nation’s capital for his spurious efforts to overturn the results for the 2020 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump.

Mr Giuliani had “no factual basis, and consequently no legitimate legal grounds” to challenge the results of the election in states that Mr Trump lost, while his “frivolous” pursuit to undermine the outcome and disenfranchise voters “seriously undermined the administration of justice,” according to the committee’s report.

Republican presdential hopeful Chris Christie took aim at his rival Donald Trump over the latter’s legal troubles – suggesting Mr Trump had held on to classfied documents because “he wants to pretend he’s still president”.

Mr Christie made the comments in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, in which a number of people who have had working relationships with Mr Trump weighed in on his legal issues.

The former president, who is running for a second term in the White House, has been indicted on 37 federal charges related to the mishandling of classified documents – some of which pertain to matters of national security. Mr Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has previously described the case against him as “a political persecution like something straight out of a fascist or communist nation”.

Mr Strzok, who served as the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division and supervised parts of the probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, filed a lawsuit against the department in August 2019, a year after he was fired from his position following what he described as “unrelenting pressure from President Trump and his political allies in Congress and the media” including “constant tweets and other disparaging statements by the President, as well as direct appeals from the President to then- Attorney General Jefferson Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray” to have him terminated.

While the government has said Mr Trump’s public statements had no bearing on the decision, Mr Strzok had sought to depose the ex-president as part of the discovery process.

Seven weeks before the premiere debate of the 2024 GOP primary, anxiety is building that the event could prove messy and divisive for the party.

Some candidates, like former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, are struggling to meet fundraising and polling requirements to make it on stage. He and others are pushing back on a loyalty pledge the Republican Party is insisting candidates sign to participate. And the race’s frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, is considering boycotting and holding a competing event instead.

That’s turning what is typically the highly anticipated opener of the election season into a source of uncertainty for the candidates and broader party. The frustration is particularly acute for candidates who hoped to use the forum as a powerful opportunity to confront Trump and try to blunt his momentum.

“If the outcome of all of these machinations is a very limited field and no Trump in the first debate, it’s hard to see how that can be successful,” Hutchinson said in an interview. Still, he said he was confident he will make it to the stage, even though he said he has only received contributions from “over” 5,000 donors.

“We’re not there yet. We’ve got a ways to go. And we fully intend to get there,” he said.

QAnon’s conspiracy theories are both bizarre and baseless: from the claim that Democrats are running a sex-trafficking ring through a pizza parlour, to the theory that Donald Trump is leading the fight against a cabal of paedophiles, and the story that JFK is returning from the dead more than 50 years after his assassination.

Now, the cult’s latest wild conspiracy centres around the death of its own leader.

Michael Protzman, the 60-year-old QAnon leader, died on 30 June after suffering “multiple blunt force injuries” in a dirt bike accident.

Protzman, who was known to his followers as Negative 48, was driving a dirt bike at the Meadow Valley Motocross track in Millville, Minnesota, when he crashed.

Around a week later he died from his injuries at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, the clinic confirmed to VICE News.