Trump news - live: Ex-President rages at Fulton County prosecutors for ‘trying to steal a second election’

Donald Trump has raged at the Georgia prosecutor overseeing a probe into his 2020 election interference in the state.

“Crooked Democrat Prosecutors, many of them Racists in Reverse, are trying to steal a second Presidential Election. They did it in 2020, and we’re not going to let them do it again in 2024. MAGA!!!” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Meanwhile, Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has told CNN that a “loyalty pledge” might become a requirement for candidates taking part in the party’s presidential debates, which would compel the likes of Mr Trump to support the eventual winner if he himself is not nominated, a bid to avoid the damaging name-calling, animosity and ill-feeling that has toxified previous head-to-heads.

Key Points

• Trump tried to silence Jimmy Kimmel over mockery

• GOP to introduce ‘loyalty pledge’ for presidential candidates

• Trump ridiculed over ‘knock heads’ Ukraine peace plan

• Ex-president accused of ‘shell game with classified documents’

• Trump calls for Zuckerberg to be prosecuted and screams: ‘Biden is leading us into oblivion!!!’

Fox News refuses to air advert revealing how stars rejected Trump election fraud claims: ‘They lied to you’

08:00 , Alex Woodward

Fox News reportedly rejected a television advert from a progressive advocacy group and political action committee that highlighted recently uncovered reactions from the network’s top stars and executives to Donald Trump’s bogus election fraud claims and conspiracy theories surrounding a voting machine company that is suing the network for defamation.

The ad from MoveOn addresses viewers directly while quoting from text messages and emails uncovered in the lawsuit, which revealed how network personalities and Rupert Murdoch shared their behind-the-scenes irritation with false claims while the network continued to amplify them.

“Texts show they lied to you about the 2020 election for profit,” the ad says.

Read more:

Fox News refuses to air ad with bombshell election fraud texts: ‘They lied to you’

Rupert Murdoch admits Fox News stars ‘endorsed’ bogus election fraud claims

06:00 , Alex Woodward

Rupert Murdoch admitted during a sworn deposition that top personalities at Fox News promoted a baseless narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, according to a recent filing in a voting machine company’s billion-dollar lawsuit against the network.

The chair of the right-wing media empire said that hosts including Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro “endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election,” claims that former president and his allies continue to amplify as he seeks re-election to office in 2024.

“I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” Mr Murdoch said, according to court documents.

Read more:

Rupert Murdoch admits Fox News stars ‘endorsed’ bogus election fraud claims

DeSantis moves toward GOP presidential bid on his own terms

04:35 , John Bowden

Republican presidential contenders typically fight for prime speaking slots at the Conservative Political Action Conference. But as conservative activists gather in suburban Washington this week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will be courting donors more than a thousand miles away in Texas and California.

The apparent CPAC snub is nothing new for DeSantis, who has emerged in the early phase of the 2024 presidential election as a leading contender for the GOP nomination even as he ignores many conventions of modern politics.

Read more in The Independent:

DeSantis moves toward GOP presidential bid on his own terms

How a Trump-appointed judge could revoke access to a commonly used abortion drug

03:35 , John Bowden

Right-wing legal groups are mounting a major legal challenge against the FDA that could have enormous consequences for abortion access.

An imminent decision from US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk that would block access to mifepristone, even temporarily, could significantly disrupt access to medication abortion nationwide.

Alex Woodward reports for The Independent:

How a Trump-appointed judge could revoke access to a commonly used abortion drug

More than three-quarters of voters in George Santos’ district say he should resign

02:35 , John Bowden

More than three-quarters of voters in New York’s 3rd District want their member of Congress, George Santos, to resign, according to a new poll.

The survey found that 78 per cent of registered voters – including 89 per cent of Democrats, 72 per cent of independents and 71 per cent of Republicans – all want Mr Santos to resign.

The embattled GOP congressman has found a new home in the House among the chamber’s right wing, and has shown no signs of stepping aside amid looming criminal investigations into his conduct and scathing criticism from his colleagues.

Read more:

More than three-quarters of voters in George Santos’ district say he should resign

Rupert Murdoch admits Fox News stars ‘endorsed’ bogus election fraud claims

01:35 , John Bowden

Rupert Murdoch admitted during a sworn deposition that top personalities at Fox News promoted a baseless narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, according to a recent filing in a voting machine company’s billion-dollar lawsuit against the network.

The chair of the right-wing media empire said that hosts including Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro “endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election,” claims that former president and his allies continue to amplify as he seeks re-election to office in 2024.

It’s a stunning admission for the right-wing media boss who faces a massive lawsuit brought by voting machine companies whose products were accused of being part of a nefarious plot to steal the election.

Read more:

Rupert Murdoch admits Fox News stars ‘endorsed’ bogus election fraud claims

VOICES: Ron DeSantis steps onto the national stage – but avoids direct conflict with Trump

00:35 , John Bowden

Eric Garcia writes for The Independent: “Conservatives will descend on the National Harbor this week for the Conservative Political Action Conference, better known by its initials: CPAC.

The gathering of Republicans serves as part sideshow, part game plan for the GOP, part spring break for local College Republican chapters across the country and part cattle call for presidential candidates. Indeed, former president Donald Trump made his official coming out as a viable conservative figure at the 2011 CPAC (with a little-known conservative gadfly from Texas named Ted Cruz serving as a warm-up act).”

“But one person will be conspicuously absent from the gathering: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Mr Trump’s most formidable potential challenger.”

Read more:

Ron DeSantis steps onto the national stage – but avoids direct conflict with Trump

Ron DeSantis takes control of Disney World’s governing structure after ‘Don’t Say Gay’ feud

Monday 27 February 2023 23:35 , John Bowden

Ron DeSantis has taken over the governing structure for Disney World following a political battle between the corporate giant and Florida’s Republican governor and conservative state lawmakers over a controversial measure that opponents have derided as the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.

It’s the latest escalation of a culture war fight started by the Florida governor and probable 2024 candidate.

Read more:

DeSantis takes over Disney World’s governing structure after ‘Don’t Say Gay’ feud

Trump attorneys say they won’t accept ‘faulty’ indictments in Georgia 2020 election probe

Monday 27 February 2023 22:35 , John Bowden

Attorneys for Donald Trump are insisting that comments made by the foreperson of a grand jury impanelled in Fulton County, Georgia to hear evidence of crimes committed by Donald Trump and his allies in the wake of the 2020 election have irreversably tainted the case against him.

It’s the latest effort by Mr Trump’s circle of allies to denigrate the integrity of those charged with investigating the multiple claims of wrongdoing that they face, and comes as cable news talking heads fretted over the weekend about whether Emily Kohrs had endangered the potential prosecution of Mr Trump or his advisers with remarks to several news outlets.

Read more from John Bowden:

Trump attorneys attack ‘faulty’ indictments in Georgia 2020 election probe

WATCH: Jeb Bush calls for Ron DeSantis to run for president

Monday 27 February 2023 21:35 , John Bowden

Former Florida Gov Jeb Bush, most notable for his expensive failed 2016 presidential campaign which was one of many ground up and cast aside by the Trump machine, is wading into national GOP politics once again.

In an interview with Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade, he calls for current Florida Gov Ron DeSantis — currently polling competitively against Mr Trump — to run for president and block The Donald from office again.

Watch below:

Why Donald Trump’s phone call seeking to overturn Georgia election results was so damaging

Monday 27 February 2023 20:35 , John Bowden

A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, has recommended multiple criminal charges as a result of an investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.

In an interview, the jury foreperson told The New York Times that the list of charges recommended was “not short”.

Let’s take a look at the conference call between the White House, Mr Trump’s lawyers, and Georgia state officials on 2 January 2021 that was so damaging for Mr Trump’s credibility and why it could wind him — or his allies — in legal jeopardy.

Why Trump’s phone call seeking to overturn Georgia election results was so damaging

Has Trump’s ‘giggling’ Georgia grand jury foreperson Emily Kohrs blown the case?

Monday 27 February 2023 19:35 , John Bowden

On Monday, lawyers for former President Donald Trump insisted to Axios that they did not view the investigation headed by prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, as legitimate after the foreperson of the grand jury spoke to several media outlets following the conclusion of her service.

But, as experts told The Independent in recent days, Emily Kohrs’s comments do not actually pose a threat to the integrity of Fulton County’s investigation.

Read more:

Has Trump’s ‘giggling’ Georgia grand jury foreperson blown the case?

Trump continues taking shots at Nikki Haley

Monday 27 February 2023 18:35 , John Bowden

Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign was in attack mode on Monday, circulating a Washington Times hit piece attacking his former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley as a “bureaucrat” in an “Oedipal primary”.

Though Ms Haley has little chance of posing a serious challenge to the former president in the primary, at least for the moment, the Trump campaign’s actions signal the former president’s strategy for dealing with his 2024 GOP rivals: Attack, attack, attack.

Read the Washington Times article here:

Jonathan Last: DeSantis risks falling in to Trump’s trap

Monday 27 February 2023 17:27 , John Bowden

Most recently picking up the endorsement of former Gov Jeb Bush, Florida Gov Ron DeSantis is showing day by day that he will likely be the most credible alternative to Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican primary.

But as conservative writer Jonathan Last opines in The Bulwark, that position comes with its own set of burdens that Mr Trump can weaponise against a challenger.

“DeSantis has made his bones by being an enemy of the establishment. That’s easy when the establishment is the mainstream media,” writes Last.

He continues: “But we’re about to enter and environment when the establishment will be conservative media. And DeSantis is going to be championed by Fox and National Review and all the same people who were into George W. Bush once upon a time.”

Will Ron DeSantis end up being painted as the GOP establishment’s effort to suppress Donald Trump’s voters within the party?

Jeb Bush, whose White House run was crushed by Trump, backs DeSantis for 2024

Monday 27 February 2023 15:30 , John Bowden

Former presidential candidate Jeb Bush said that he hopes Florida Governor Ron DeSantis decides to run for president in 2024 in a bid to beat former president Donald Trump, who crushed Mr Bush in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.

Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade asked Mr Bush, himself a former Florida governor, whether 2024 offered his successor an opportunity to seek the White House.

Read his response here:

Jeb Bush, whose White House run was crushed by Trump, backs DeSantis for 2024

Trump takes aim at Fulton County prosecutors

Monday 27 February 2023 14:48 , John Bowden

After his attorneys told Axios that they don’t accept the validity of Fulton County’s investigation into their boss, Donald Trump took aim at the Georgia prosecutors investigating his effort to change the lawful results of the 2020 election.

In a Truth Social post on Monday, the ex-president accused Georgia law enforcement of “trying to steal a second presidential election” as he continues his efforts to denigrate trust in America’s election systems, court systems, and civil servants.

Read more from Eric Garcia:

Trump accuses prosecutors of ’trying to steal a second Presidential Election’

GOP leaders, stung by losses, plan to wade into Senate races

Monday 27 February 2023 14:31 , John Bowden

Angry over a wave of losses experienced by pro-Trump candidates in the last election cycle, Republican leadership isn’t willing to let Donald Trump steer the ship anymore — at least not unopposed.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee intends to wade into party primaries in key states, providing resources to its preferred candidates in a bid to produce nominees who are more palatable to general election voters.

Follow this story in The Independent:

GOP leaders, stung by losses, plan to wade into Senate races

Ron DeSantis moves toward Republican presidential bid on his own terms

Monday 27 February 2023 13:45 , Joe Sommerlad

Republican presidential contenders typically fight for prime speaking slots at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). But as activists gather in suburban Washington this week, Florida governor Ron DeSantis will be courting donors more than a thousand miles away in Texas and California.

The apparent CPAC snub is nothing new for Mr DeSantis, who has emerged in the early phase of the 2024 presidential election as a leading contender for the GOP nomination even as he ignores many conventions of modern politics.

Mr DeSantis is a regular voice in conservative cultural fights on cable television but often avoids gatherings of fellow Republican governors and party leaders, who are quick to complain in private about his go-it-alone approach.

He is the only top-tier presidential prospect yet to court voters in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina, the states hosting the GOP’s opening presidential primary contests. And he is often at odds with the press, refusing even to notify local media of last week’s rare three-state tour with law enforcement.

Here’s a little more on his singular approach to courting national political popularity.

DeSantis moves toward GOP presidential bid on his own terms

Marjorie Taylor Greene mocked for saying 6bn migrants have crossed US border under Biden

Monday 27 February 2023 13:15 , Joe Sommerlad

MAGA Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wildly inflated the number of migrants she alleges have illegally crossed the US border from Mexico during Joe Biden’s time in the Oval Office during a tweet over the weekend, a statement for which she was roundly and rightly ridiculed.

“$113 Billion has been appropriated to Ukraine in just 1 yr,” she declared. “Trump’s wall would have only cost $22 billion, but Congress refused to fund it. 6 Billion people illegally crossed our border since Biden took office, but Ukraine’s border is the only border that matters to Washington.”

The population of the entire world is only 8bn, lest we forget, and just 332m live in the US.

Graig Graziosi rounds up the ridicule.

Marjorie Taylor Greene mocked for saying 6 billion crossed US border

Bryan Cranston says Trump's Make America Great Again slogan is racist

Monday 27 February 2023 12:45 , Joe Sommerlad

The Breaking Bad star sat down with veteran anchor Chris Wallace for his CNN interview show over the weekend to offer an interesting point of view about the MAGA movement and its assumptions, arguing that it intentionally sidelines the African American experience.

John Bolton says he will run to be next US president to stop Trump

Monday 27 February 2023 12:15 , Joe Sommerlad

Speaking to Camilla Tominey on right-wing GB News, the Republican’s hawkish former national security adviser turned enemy John Bolton said he plans to run for the White House in a bid to block Trump, saying it was a “very difficult decision" to put his name forward but that he was determined to do so to prevent a belated second Trump term..

"I think it’s very important that Donald Trump not be the nominee of the Republican Party in 2024,” he said.

"I think he can be defeated. I’d certainly like to help out in making that happen.

"And if if I think being a candidate myself does show a path to getting the nomination, to winning in November of next year, then, yes, I’ll get it."

Trump calls for Zuckerberg to be prosecuted and screams: ‘Biden is leading us into oblivion!!!’

Monday 27 February 2023 11:45 , Joe Sommerlad

Over on Truth Social, Mr Trump has been posting about a Fox story allegedly tying Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a $2m donation to the Georgia elections board.

“He cheated on the Election(s),” the former president raged: “The whole system is RIGGED. Why isn’t he being prosecuted? The Democrats only know how to cheat. America isn’t going to take it much longer!”

Clearly having a very normal Sunday evening at home in his rotting mansion, Mr Trump also tweeted, sorry “truthed”: “Crooked Democrat Prosecutors, many of them Racists in Reverse, are trying to steal a second Presidential Election. They did it in 2020, and we’re not going to let them do it again in 2024. MAGA!!!”

All of which came after this beauty: “This is the most dangerous time in the history of our Country. World War III is looming, like never before, in the very dark and murky background. ‘Leadership’ is solely responsible for this unprecedented danger to the USA, and likewise, the World. HOPELESS JOE BIDEN IS LEADING US INTO OBLIVION!!!”

Ho boy.

Ex-president accused of ‘shell game with classified documents’

Monday 27 February 2023 11:15 , Joe Sommerlad

Department of Justice (DoJ) investigators are examining whether the actions by Mr Trump and at least one of his long-time aides may have kept a box containing documents with classified markings from being discovered during the search of his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, property by FBI agents on 8 August last year.

According to CNN, the box at issue contained “a handful” of documents bearing classification markings as well as copies of presidential schedules dating back to Mr Trump’s time in the White House.

It was discovered in December after DoJ officials told Mr Trump’s attorneys to conduct another search for government-owned records at the twice-impeached ex-president’s property and subsequently turned over to federal authorities.

Citing a person familiar with both the box’s laborious journey between locations connected to the ex-president and the inquiry being overseen by special counsel Jack Smith, CNN said federal investigators suspect Mr Trump played a “shell game with classified documents” by directing staff to move the box between Mar-a-Lago and a nearby office block rented by Mr Trump’s team with federal funds available to him under the Former Presidents Act.

Andrew Feinberg has more.

Trump accused of ‘shell game with classified documents’ after box moved around

Trump ridiculed over ‘knock heads’ Ukraine peace plan

Monday 27 February 2023 10:45 , Joe Sommerlad

If the former president is so sensitive to Jimmy Kimmel jokes, he perhaps ought to try a little harder to avoid presenting comics with such easy material.

Mr Trump is currently being mocked for his ludicrous remarks on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, made in a radio interview with former Fox anchor Glenn Beck.

“The saddest part about the war is that this is a war that should’ve never happened, right, okay?” the 45th president said.

“So now it happened. Now you have to get people in a room. You have to knock heads and you have to get it done.

“That would mean saying things to [Vladimir] Putin and saying things to [Volodymyr] Zelensky that they’re not gonna want to hear and getting them into a room and getting it done.”

Sure thing Don.

Sheila Flynn has more.

Trump mocked after sharing his plan to end Ukraine war: ‘Knock heads’

GOP to introduce ‘loyalty pledge’ for presidential candidates

Monday 27 February 2023 10:15 , Joe Sommerlad

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has told CNN that a “loyalty pledge” might become a requirement for candidates taking part in the party’s presidential debates, which would compel the likes of Mr Trump to support the eventual winner if he himself is not nominated, a bid to avoid the damaging name-calling, animosity and ill-feeling that has toxified previous head-to-heads.

“We haven’t put the criteria out, but I expect a pledge will be part of it,” Ms McDaniel told Dana Bash on Sunday’s State of the Union, adding: “I think they’re all going to sign it.”

John Bowden has the full story.

GOP chair says party may try to force Trump to back GOP nominee even if it’s not him

Trump tried to silence Jimmy Kimmel over mockery

Monday 27 February 2023 09:45 , Joe Sommerlad

Donald Trump attempted to have popular late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel silenced during his presidency by having his White House staff call ABC owner Disney to demand an end to his jokes at the Trump’s administration’s expense, according to Rolling Stone.

A former Trump official told the magazine that that “severity of Mr Trump’s fury” was conveyed in at least two separate phone calls to executives because the commander-in-chief felt the comedian had been “very dishonest and doing things that he would have once sued over”.

“I do not know to who, but it happened,” the unnamed ex-aide said. “Nobody thought it was going to change anything but DJT was focused on it so we had to do something… It was doing something, mostly, to say to [Trump], ‘Hey, we did this.’”

Shweta Sharma has more.

Trump tried to get Jimmy Kimmel censored in 2018, report says

Monday 27 February 2023 09:36 , Joe Sommerlad

Good morning and welcome to The Independent’s live coverage of US presidential candidate Donald Trump, plotting a return to the White House in 2024.