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☆ Inside Trump’s Club When the Call Came: You’re Indicted
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Maggie Haberman | Jonathan Swan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Former President Donald J. Trump was gathered with his core political advisers in the office near his poolside cottage at his club in Bedminster, N.J., when his phone rang around 7 p.m. on Thursday. On the line, according to two people with knowledge of the call, was one of his lawyers, informing him he had been indicted for the second time in less than three months. Mr. Trump, always compartmentalizing, immediately moved to a political reaction. At 7:21 p.m., he did what he used to do so often when he was president: He personally programmed the chyrons on every news channel in the country. He broke the news of his own indictment — drafting and then sending a three-part statement on his social media network, Truth Social, that soon interrupted the nighttime shows on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.

Persons: Donald J, Trump, Biden Organizations: Fox News, MSNBC, CNN Locations: Bedminster, N.J, Manhattan, Miami

Once he was sworn in as president, Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen. Rather than publish her account, the tabloid suppressed it in cooperation with Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen, prosecutors say. Legal experts say that Mr. Trump and others appear to be at “substantial risk” of prosecution for violating a number Georgia statutes, including the state’s racketeering law. But if she were to prevail at trial, a judge could impose steep financial penalties on Mr. Trump and restrict his business operations in New York. Ms. James’s investigators questioned Mr. Trump under oath in April, and a trial is scheduled for October.

Persons: Donald J, Trump, Trump’s, Jack Smith, Alvin L, Bragg, Stormy Daniels, Michael D, Cohen, Daniels, Karen McDougal, McDougal, Brad Raffensperger, Biden’s, —, Emily Kohrs, “ You’re, ”, “, Willis, Jan, Mr . Biden, Smith, Mike Pence, Mark Meadows, Letitia James, Mr, James, Donald Jr, Eric, Jonah E, Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Michael Gold, Michael Rothfeld, Ed Shanahan, Richard Fausset, Ashley Wong Organizations: Capitol, Manhattan, National Enquirer, Mr, ., The New York Times, Justice Department, Trump, Prosecutors, White House, Trump White House, New York, Civil, New Locations: Manhattan, Georgia, . Georgia, Fulton County, United States, Washington, Trump’s, New, New York, Bromwich

☆ Pence Delivers Strong Rebuke to Trump in Campaign Announcement
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-07 | by ( Jonathan Swan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Before a crowd of several hundred on the campus of the Des Moines Area Community College, Mr. Pence focused on something that many in his party have tried to desperately avoid: Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. 6 was a tragic day in the life of our nation,” Mr. Pence said. “But thanks to the courage of law enforcement, the violence was quelled, we reconvened the Congress. The very same day, President Trump’s reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol.”He added: “But the American people deserve to know on that fateful day, President Trump also demanded I choose between him and our Constitution. I chose the Constitution, and I always will.”

Persons: Mike Pence, Donald J, Trump, —, Pence, “ Jan, Mr, Trump’s, ” Organizations: Des, Des Moines Area Community College, Capitol Locations: Iowa, Des Moines

☆ The G.O.P. Has Drifted, but Mike Pence Is as Conservative as Ever
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-07 | by ( Jonathan Swan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Mike Pence is the most conservative candidate competing for the presidency. The president Mr. Pence served under, Donald J. Trump, transformed the G.O.P. electorate, making the path to a Pence presidency visible only to the truest of true believers. Mr. Pence has not really changed all that much since he was governor of Indiana less than a decade ago, but his party has. It’s the same Mike Pence but a different G.O.P., and it’s a different G.O.P.

Persons: Mike Pence, Pence, Donald J, Trump, Bill Clinton, Jeffrey B, Clark, “ We’re, ”, “ Organizations: Social Security, Russia, Republican, Justice Department, Department Locations: Indiana

☆ No one cares about Mike Pence
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-07 | by ( Taylor Berman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Pence hopes to position himself as a more traditional conservative, pushing for family values, fiscal conservatism, and an aggressive military presence abroad. He stuck with Mr. Trump through numerous controversies including the leak of the "Access Hollywood" tape, in which Mr. Trump boasted about grabbing women's genitalia. He vouched for Mr. Trump's character with skeptical evangelicals with whom Mr. Trump ultimately forged his own relationship. Portraying himself as a traditional conservative could also lead to a return to conservative media for Pence. For a time after leaving office as vice president, the Pences were homeless and appeared to be couch-surfing their way through Indiana.

Persons: Pence, —, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, McKay Coppins, … It's, Jonathan Swan, Trump, Doug Heye, Simon, Schuster, He's, I'm Organizations: Republican, Trump, Service, GOP, Politics, Florida, Atlantic, New York Times, Ukraine, Mr Locations: U.S, Afghanistan, Indiana

For months, people in Mr. Trump’s orbit have been puzzled by and wary about the low profile kept by Mr. Meadows in the investigations. As reports surfaced of one witness after another going into the grand jury or to be interviewed by federal investigators, Mr. Meadows has kept largely out of sight, and some of Mr. Trump’s advisers believe he could be a significant witness in the inquiries. Mr. Trump himself has at times asked aides questions about how Mr. Meadows is doing, according to a person familiar with the remarks. Mr. Meadows was around for pivotal moments leading up to and after the 2020 election, as Mr. Trump plotted to try to stay in office and thwart Joseph R. Biden Jr. from being sworn in to succeed him. Those texts served as a road map for House investigators.

Persons: Meadows, Trump, George Terwilliger, Trump’s, Joseph R, Biden Organizations: White House, Capitol Locations: Meadows

The precise contents of the document referred to by Mr. Trump during the recorded meeting remain unclear. The federal prosecutors under Mr. Smith have been examining whether Mr. Trump — the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — obstructed the government’s efforts and whether he violated other laws regarding the handling of national defense information and government documents. Mr. Smith is also overseeing a parallel investigation into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office after his defeat at the polls in 2020. After months of back-and-forth with the National Archives, Mr. Trump eventually turned over 15 boxes of material in January of last year. They turned out to include nearly 200 documents marked as classified.

Persons: Trump, Smith Organizations: White, Presidential, National Archives, Justice Department

Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified material have a recording of Mr. Trump from 2021 discussing a sensitive military document he had kept after leaving the White House, two people briefed on the matter said. The recording, in which Mr. Trump also indicated he knew the document was secret, could undermine his repeated claim that he had already declassified material that remained in his possession after he left office. Prosecutors are scrutinizing whether Mr. Trump obstructed efforts by federal officials to retrieve documents he took with him after leaving office and whether he violated laws governing the handling of classified material. The meeting was held at Mr. Trump’s club at Bedminster, N.J., where he spends summers. Until now, the focus of the documents investigation has been largely on material Mr. Trump kept with him at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, rather than in New Jersey.

Persons: Donald J, Trump, Mark Meadows Organizations: White, Prosecutors, CNN, Mr, Mar Locations: Bedminster, N.J, Florida, New Jersey

☆ Trump White House Aides Subpoenaed in Firing of Election Security Expert
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-31 | by ( Maggie Haberman | Jonathan Swan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who may have been involved in firing the government cybersecurity official whose agency judged the election “the most secure in American history,” according to two people briefed on the matter. The team led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has been asking witnesses about the events surrounding the firing of Christopher Krebs, who was the Trump administration’s top cybersecurity official during the 2020 election. Mr. Krebs’s assessment that the election was secure was at odds with Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions that it was a “fraud on the American public.”Mr. Smith’s team is also seeking information about how White House officials, including in the Presidential Personnel Office, approached the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump turned to after his election loss as a way to try to stay in power, people familiar with the questions said. The investigators appear focused on Mr. Trump’s state of mind around the firing of Mr. Krebs, as well as on establishing a timeline of events leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021. The latest subpoenas, issued roughly two weeks ago, went to officials in the personnel office, according to the two people familiar with the matter.

Persons: Donald J, Jack Smith, Christopher Krebs, ” Mr, Trump, Krebs Organizations: Trump White, Trump, White, Justice Department Locations: Trump’s

Like Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Ramaswamy sells a similar anti-woke sentiment, but he does so with the charm of a natural communicator. Mr. Trump has welcomed the non-DeSantis entrants to the race. And in the days leading up to Mr. Scott’s announcement, Mr. Trump was watching Fox News in his Mar-a-Lago office when he said, “I like him. For Mr. DeSantis, the squeeze was apparent on the day he entered the race. “If he’s just going to be an echo of Trump, people will just vote for Trump,” she said.

☆ Flush With Campaign Cash, Tim Scott Is Set to Join ’24 Race
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Jonathan Swan | Maggie Haberman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

After announcing his campaign in his hometown, North Charleston, Mr. Scott will head to Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states of the Republican nominating contest. Mr. Scott’s campaign has reserved around $6 million in advertisements across television and radio in those states, according to an adviser with direct knowledge of Mr. Scott’s plans. Mr. Scott, the most influential elected Black conservative in America, has a compelling life story around which he is expected to build his campaign. Mr. Scott rarely criticizes Mr. Trump directly, but his message could not be more different from the former president’s. While Mr. Trump talks ominously of “retribution” — his promise to gut the civil service and law enforcement agencies that he pejoratively calls the “deep state” — Mr. Scott prefers the sunny language of Ronald Reagan.

☆ DeSantis Is Set to Enter 2024 Presidential Race Next Week
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-18 | by ( Jonathan Swan | Nicholas Nehamas | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Ron DeSantis of Florida is expected to officially enter the presidential race next week, allowing him to raise the vast amounts of cash he will need to challenge former President Donald J. Trump, according to two people familiar with his intentions. Mr. DeSantis is expected to file paperwork declaring his candidacy with the Federal Election Commission ahead of a major fund-raising meeting with donors in Miami on May 25 that is meant to act as a show of his financial force. He must formally enter the race before he can solicit donations for his presidential campaign. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Mr. DeSantis would file the paperwork next week. Mr. Trump is running roughly 30 percentage points ahead of Mr. DeSantis in national polling averages, but the Florida governor would be the most credible Republican challenger to join the field so far.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is expected to soon declare a long-shot campaign for the White House against the president under whom he served, pitching himself as a “classical conservative” who would return the Republican Party to its pre-Trump roots, according to people close to Mr. Pence. Mr. Pence is working to carve out space in the Republican primary field by appealing to evangelicals, adopting a hard-line position in support of a federal abortion ban, promoting free trade and pushing back against Republican efforts to police big business on ideological grounds. He faces significant challenges, trails far behind in the polls and has made no effort to channel the populist energies overtaking the Republican Party. In a sign his campaign will be announced in the coming weeks, a pro-Pence super PAC called Committed to America is being set up. A veteran Republican operative, Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign and was the longtime top political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, will lead the group alongside Jeb Hensarling, a close friend of Mr. Pence’s who served with him in Congress.

Follow for live updates on the Trump CNN town hall meeting. Those objections intensified on Tuesday after Mr. Trump was found liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll. And foes of Mr. Trump will cringe at seeing him on air at all. He is backed by David Zaslav, the Warner chief executive, who has batted away objections to Wednesday’s Trump town hall. There is the awkward fact that Mr. Trump still has a pending $475 million defamation lawsuit against the network.

☆ Trump Camp Sees CNN Town Hall as Calculated Risk
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Maggie Haberman | Jonathan Swan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Since the end of his presidency, Mr. Trump has largely been relegated to appearing on right-wing networks and podcasts. The town hall will be Mr. Trump’s first appearance on CNN since the 2016 campaign. And that’s a clear contrast to what other candidates may or may not do.”The town hall has been months in the making. But Mr. Hannity ultimately did an interview with Mr. Trump instead, and the town hall never materialized. As the conversations about a Fox News town hall fizzled, the Trump team began negotiating with CNN in earnest.

☆ For Trump, a Verdict That’s Harder to Spin
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( Maggie Haberman | Jonathan Swan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When Alvin L. Bragg secured the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump, it galvanized Trump supporters. Ron DeSantis of Florida, mark that indictment as the moment that Mr. Trump sped away from his nearest opponent in the polls. The price that Mr. Trump was ordered by the jury to pay his accuser, Ms. Carroll, was $5 million, in a verdict he has promised to appeal. Mr. Trump was said to be furious about the verdict, and questioning the various decisions that were made by his team in the defense. Far from letting up on Ms. Carroll, his team plans to aggressively attack her claims and tether her to Democrats.

As they investigate former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, federal prosecutors have also been drilling down on whether Mr. Trump and a range of political aides knew that he had lost the race but still raised money off claims that they were fighting widespread fraud in the vote results, according to three people familiar with the matter. Led by the special counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors are trying to determine whether Mr. Trump and his aides violated federal wire fraud statutes as they raised as much as $250 million through a political action committee by saying they needed the money to fight to reverse election fraud even though they had been told repeatedly that there was no evidence to back up those fraud claims. The prosecutors are looking at the inner workings of the committee, Save America PAC, and at the Trump campaign’s efforts to prove its baseless case that Mr. Trump had been cheated out of victory. In the past several months, prosecutors have issued multiple batches of subpoenas in a wide-ranging effort to understand Save America, which was set up shortly after the election as Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising entity. An initial round of subpoenas, which started going out before Mr. Trump declared his candidacy in the 2024 race and Mr. Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in November, focused on various Republican officials and vendors that had received payments from Save America.

☆ Daines Endorsement Reflects Senate G.O.P.’s Uneasy Alliance With Trump
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Jonathan Swan | Carl Hulse | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

WASHINGTON — When Senator Steve Daines, the leader of the Senate Republican campaign arm, quietly informed Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, that he intended to endorse former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. McConnell was fine with the idea. Mr. McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, is not on speaking terms with the former president, having abruptly turned against him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Mr. Trump has publicly savaged the senator and repeatedly demeaned his wife with racist statements. But the minority leader, according to a person familiar with his thinking, believed that somebody in the Senate G.O.P. leadership ranks should have a working relationship with the party’s leading presidential contender — and it might as well be the man charged with winning back the Senate majority.

“See, this is the great part,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters who questioned how — if he could barely get his colleagues to elect him — he would ever be able to govern his slim and unruly House Republican majority. Mr. McCarthy is set as early as Wednesday to bring to the floor his proposal to lift the debt ceiling for a year in exchange for spending cuts and policy changes. That includes soliciting “yes” votes from right-wing members who have never before voted to increase the debt ceiling and take pride in that fact. But after late-night wrangling on Tuesday, Mr. McCarthy appeared to have acquiesced at least in part, moving up the imposition of stricter requirements by a year, to 2024. “The last five votes, you’re standing there begging,” Mr. Gingrich said he has told Mr. McCarthy of his own experience with tough bills.

☆ Heritage Foundation Makes Plans to Staff Next G.O.P. Administration
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Jonathan Swan | Maggie Haberman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

This so-called Project 2025 — part of a $22 million presidential transition operation at a scale never attempted before in conservative politics — is being led by the Heritage Foundation, a group that has been staffing Republican administrations since the Reagan era. Heritage usually compiles its own personnel lists, and spends far less doing so. But for this election, after conservatives and Mr. Trump himself decried what they viewed as terrible staffing decisions made during his administration, more than 50 conservative groups have temporarily set aside rivalries to team up with Heritage on the project, set to start Friday. They have already identified several thousand potential recruits and have set a goal of having up to 20,000 potential administration officials in their database by the end of 2024, according to Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage. Heritage has contracted the technology company Oracle to build a secure personnel database, Dr. Roberts said.

☆ Trump on the possibility of Ron DeSantis running against him in 2024: 'We'll handle that the way I handle things'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Cheryl Teh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Donald Trump sounded a warning shot at Ron DeSantis during a podcast on Monday. "So, we'll handle that the way I handle things," Trump said. Ron DeSantis. So, we'll handle that the way I handle things," Trump said. In November, Trump dubbed the governor "Ron DeSanctimonious" during a rally and blasted him as "average" on social media.

☆ A furious Trump is blaming Melania for urging him to support Dr. Oz, who lost a key Senate race: NYT reporter
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Sophia Ankel | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Trump-backed Republican Mehmet Oz lost the race for US Senate in Pennsylvania this week. The former president was "furious" about his loss, The New York Times' Maggie Haberman tweeted. Among others, Trump blamed his wife, Melania, for encouraging him to back Oz, Haberman said. Former First Lady Melania Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity had been pressing Trump to back Oz because they were friends with him, Axios' Jonathan Swan reported at the time. The Failing New York Times has gone crazy."

☆ Tucker Carlson called the House GOP's campaign chief in a fury and demanded to know who made unflattering comments about his son: Axios
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-25 | by ( Cheryl Teh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Tucker Carlson has beef with the House GOP's campaign chair, Tom Emmer, per Axios' Jonathan Swan. Carlson made an angry call to Emmer on Friday regarding his son Buckley, per Axios. Emmer told Carlson repeatedly that his office did not give the quote about Buckley Carlson to the Daily Beast, but Carlson was unconvinced and told Emmer they now have beef, per Axios. Does he really think that's a winning strategy for a Republican House leadership race? Representatives for Emmer and Tucker Carlson did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

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