Trump news: President discussed ‘using military to overturn election’ as Powell touted for DOJ role
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump has reportedly discussed the option of bringing in the military in an effort to rewrite the election result – with senior officials said to have voiced opposition to the plan – as the president searches for options as he refuses to accept his loss.
Michael Flynn, whom Mr Trump recently pardoned for lying to the FBI, apparently suggested the president could impose martial law and use the military to re-run the vote.
Meanwhile, lawyer Sidney Powell, who was booted from his campaign's legal team after pushing unfounded conspiracy theories, has been touted as a potential new special counsel investigating allegations of voter fraud.
Check out The Independent’s live coverage and analysis as it came in below.
Trump attacks Boris Johnson’s Covid lockdown
Mr Trump has attacked Boris Johnson’s decision to impose strict new regulations in England to try and halt the spread of the coronavirus, saying the “cure cannot be worse” than the problem.
The president retweeted a BBC News story about the new regulations and wrote: “We don’t want to have lockdowns. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself!”
In another tweet, he wrote: “The entire WORLD is being badly hurt by the China Virus, but if you listen to the Fake News Lamestream Media, and Big Tech, you would think that we are the only one. No, but we are the Country that developed vaccines, and years ahead of schedule!”
Here is the story:
Was the Trump Christmas card photoshopped?
US first lady Melania Trump has been accused of photoshopping her and President Trump’s official Christmas portrait.
The photo is the couple’s last Christmas portrait as US president and first lady, as they are due to leave the White House on 20 January when President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated, following Mr Trump’s loss in 3 November’s national election.
Here is the story:
Was the Trump Christmas card photoshopped?
Social media users accused US first lady of manipulating portrait
Trump discussed ‘bringing military in to overturn election result’
Mr Trump on Friday considered bringing in the military to overturn his key swing state defeats to president-elect, Joe Biden, it has been reported.
White House insiders allegedly said Mr Trump discussed imposing martial law in a move aimed overturning the result of the 2020 election.
It reportedly came after Michael Flynn, the president's first national security adviser, floated the idea in an interview with the right-wing news outlet, Newsmax last week.
Here is the full story:
Trump discussed ‘bringing military in to overturn election result’ and calls for ‘wild’ protest on 6 January
President continues to falsely insist the election was “rigged”
Biden picks Regan for EPA nominee, Haaland for interior head
Joe Biden says he has chosen North Carolina regulator Michael Regan as his nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and New Mexico Representative Deb Haaland as his pick for interior secretary.
Mr Biden said on Thursday that the selections would create an experienced climate team ready from their first day in office to tackle the “undeniable, accelerating, punishing reality of climate change".
Mr Biden is proposing a dramatic pivot away from Trump-era climate policies towards cutting oil, gas and coal emissions.
The picks also help Mr Biden fulfill his promise to put together a Cabinet that reflects the diversity of America. Mr Regan is Black, while Ms Haaland would be the first Native American Cabinet member in US history.
Read the full story here:
Biden picks Regan for EPA nominee, Haaland for interior head
President-elect Joe Biden says he has chosen North Carolina regulator Michael S
Second Covid vaccine authorised in US preparing to ship out
Workers on Sunday began packaging shipments of the second Covid-19 vaccine authorised in the US.
Employees at a factory in the Memphis area were boxing up the vaccine developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health.
The much-needed jabs are expected to be given starting on Monday, just three days after the Food and Drug Administration authorised their emergency rollout.
Later Sunday, an expert committee will debate who should be next in line for early doses of the Moderna vaccine and a similar one from Pfizer and BioNTech. Those vaccines were first shipped out a week ago and started being used the next day, kicking off America’s biggest vaccination drive.
Twitter now alerts Trump that Biden is president every time he lies about election fraud
Twitter has updated a label placed on misleading claims made by Mr Trump and others, that declares Mr Biden to have won the election.
The message, which Twitter places on potentially misleading content on the site, now says the president-elect won the election, while it previously said the election was “disputed”.
Users on the site are now told that “Election officials have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the US Presidential election,” when they see a Twitter post that has the misinformation label.
It started to appear on tweets posted by the US president on Saturday morning, as he continued to make baseless allegations about the presidential election, which he lost to Mr Biden.
Here is the story:
Twitter now alerts Trump that Biden is president every time he lies about election fraud
Social media site now tells users that ‘Election officials have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the US Presidential election’
Keep up the good work, Putin tells spy agency staff
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the foreign intelligence service was exceptionally important for protecting the country, in comments made soon after it was accused of being behind a major hack on US government departments.
Speaking at an event commemorating 100 years since the founding of the SVR foreign intelligence service, Mr Putin said the agency and other security services were a crucial guarantee of Russia's “sovereign, democratic, independent development”.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that Russia was responsible for the attack.
The Kremlin has always denied Moscow's involvement in cyber attacks against the West. It has said that Russia had nothing to do with this latest assault.
Joe Biden’s options for Russian hacking punishment
What are the president-elect's options to counter a massive hacking campaign that senior US officials have blamed on Russia?
Mr Biden’s team will have to consider several options, from new financial sanctions to cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure.
But with Mr Trump taking no action, Mr Biden's team are concerned that in the coming weeks the president-elect may be left with only one tool: bluster, according to one of the people familiar with his options.
“They'll be held accountable,” Mr Biden said in an interview broadcast on CBS on Thursday when asked about how he would deal with the Russian-led hack. He vowed to impose “financial repercussions” on “individuals as well as entities".
Russia has denied any involvement.
Here is the full story:
Joe Biden’s options for Russian hacking punishment: sanctions and cyber retaliation
The response will need to impose a high economic, financial or technological cost on the perpetrators, but avoid an escalating conflict between the two Cold War adversaries
Don Jr says he’s losing thousands of supporters every day
Donald Trump Jr has complained about being “cancelled” a “couple of times a day” and claimed he is losing thousands of social media followers.
Speaking at the pro-Trump student organisation Turning Point USA’s conference in Florida on Saturday, Mr Trump Jr, 42, gave a rambling nearly 30-minute speech, speaking about the election and “liberal privilege”.
During his speech, Mr Trump Jr made numerous false claims about November’s election results and President-elect Joe Biden’s cognitive capabilities, ironically saying: “the guy can’t conform a complete sentence.”
Here is the story:
Don Jr complains about ‘being cancelled’ and says he’s losing thousands of supporters every day
‘They must be plotting something really big if they haven’t been cancelling me all day,’ president’s eldest son jokes
Trump brands Bolton ‘one of the dumbest people in Washington’
Overnight Mr Trump lashed out at John Bolton after the former national security adviser called reports the president had discussed using martial law to overturn the election result “unbelievable [and] almost certainly without precedent”.
Mr Bolton told CNN: “He’s unfit for the job. I don’t think he’s ever read the Constitution, if he has, he clearly didn’t understand it, and if he did understand it one point, he’s forgotten it."
Early on Sunday morning, Mr Trump took to Twitter to attack his former aide, writing: "What would Bolton, one of the dumbest people in Washington, know?
“Wasn’t he the person who so stupidly said, on television, ‘Libyan solution’, when describing what the U.S. was going to do for North Korea? I’ve got plenty of other Bolton ‘stupid stories’.”
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