Trump news: White House slams Putin ‘scheme’ as ex-president rejects House speaker plan
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump poured cold water on suggestions that he could be elected speaker of the House of Representatives by Republicans after this November’s midterm elections – an idea that has been floated by some of his more hardcore congressional allies. Instead, the president said, “I wanna look at what’s happening and then we’re gonna be doing something else”.
This he did in the same interview where he called on Vladimir Putin to release dirt about the Biden family’s supposed dealings with the wife of the mayor of Moscow. His appeal to the Russian autocrat has drawn outrage given Mr Putin’s current assault on Ukraine, an American ally.
Meanwhile, it emerged that White House phone records from 6 January 2021 obtained by the committee investigating the Capitol riot feature a 7-hour gap in former President Donald Trump’s communications, a span of time that includes the assault on the building by a horde of his supporters.
Later on Tuesday, former national security adviser John Bolton said that contra the ex-president’s denials, Mr Trump was aware of the slang term “burner phone” – and that he used the term on multiple occasions.
Burner phones and a seven-hour gap: What we still don’t know about the Trump White House call logs from Jan 6
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Clarence Thomas still a virtual presence at Supreme Court
After being hospitalised with an infection, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is still participating in hearings only remotely. With the scandal involving his wife Ginni only adding pressure on him to recuse himself from future 6 January-related cases, the justice’s precise condition remains a mystery.
Republican Senator worried Ketanji Brown Jackson may “legislate from the bench"
North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis has come out against Ketanji Brown Jackson in a relatively amicable statement that acknowledges the historic nature of her confirmation, praises “her knowledge, her composure and her character”, and sends good wishes to “her and her wonderful family”.
Mr Tillis’s problem, it seems, is that “she may legislate from the bench instead of consistently following the Constitution as written” – the boilerplate language Republicans have used against Democratic judicial nominees for at least two political generations.
Read his statement below.
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