Trump news today: Rudy Giuliani boasted about selling pardons with Trump for $2m, lawsuit claims

Mr Giuliani reportedly claimed he would split the $2 million fee with then-president Donald Trump.

A Wisconsin judge on Monday refused to break up a lawsuit filed against 10 fake electors for former President Donald Trump and two of his attorneys, saying the case could proceed in the county where it was filed.

The lawsuit seeks $2.4 million from the fake electors and their attorneys, alleging they were part of a conspiracy by Trump and his allies to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential race. It also seeks to disqualify the Republicans from ever serving as electors again.

Fake electors met in Wisconsin and other battleground states where Trump was defeated in 2020, attempting to cast ballots for the former president even though he lost. Republicans who participated in Wisconsin said they were trying to preserve Trump’s legal standing in case courts overturned his defeat.

Nine of the 10 fake electors in Wisconsin, and one of Trump’s attorneys, argued that the lawsuit against them was wrongly filed in Dane County Circuit Court. Since none of them lived in that county, they argued, the lawsuit should be refiled against each of them in their respective home counties.

But Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington disagreed on Monday, saying the lawsuit was properly filed because, in part, at least one of the defendants appears to live in Dane County or does not present evidence to the contrary.

One of Trump’s attorneys, James Troupis, and fake elector Scott Grabins, the former Dane County Republican Party chair, both live in Dane County. Neither of them provided any evidence of where they lived, the judge said. Neither did Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who practices law in the Boston area.

Attorneys for the fake electors who don’t live in Dane County argued that a 2007 state law allows for venue changes to courts in the defendant’s home county in cases that relate to elections or election law. The lawsuit alleges that the defendants broke several criminal and civil laws when they met at the Wisconsin state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, in an attempt to cast the state’s electoral votes for Trump.

Remington said the law requires that the case be heard in Dane County where it was filed.

“Wisconsin law does not allow the problematic consequences of ten judges simultaneously litigating the same claims in ten different courts, or ten juries — some 120 jurors — hearing the same claims and rendering ten different verdicts,” Remington wrote.

The lawsuit was filed a year ago this month by two Democratic electors and a voter. They are represented by the Madison-based Law Forward law firm and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center.

“Although likely not the last, this was just the latest effort to delay any type of accountability,” said Law Forward attorney Scott Thompson. “We are pleased this matter will be resolved in the Dane County Courthouse, just one block from where the fake electors scheme was carried out.”

Attorneys for the fake electors did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Remington last week also revived a complaint brought by Law Forward against the fake electors filed with the Wisconsin Elections Commission. That complaint sought sanctions against the fake electors.

Remington ruled last week that the complaint must be heard again because a commissioner who considered the complaint last time should have recused himself. That commissioner, Robert Spindell, also served as a fake elector and is one of the defendants in the lawsuit seeking damages.

President Joe Biden won Wisconsin by nearly 21,000 votes, a result that has withstood recounts, partisan-led investigations, a nonpartisan audit and multiple lawsuits.

A special prosecutor has ended his four-year investigation into possible FBI misconduct in its probe of ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign with withering criticism of the bureau but a meager court record that fell far short of the former president’s prediction he would uncover the “crime of the century.”

The report Monday from special counsel John Durham represents the long-awaited culmination of an investigation that Trump and allies had claimed would expose massive wrongdoing by law enforcement and intelligence officials. Instead, Durham’s investigation delivered underwhelming results, with prosecutors securing a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee but losing the only two criminal cases they took to trial.

The roughly 300-page report catalogs what Durham says were a series of missteps by the FBI and Justice Department as investigators undertook a politically explosive probe in the heat of the 2016 election into whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to tip the outcome. It criticized the FBI for opening a full-fledged investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence,” saying the speed at which it did so was a departure from the norm. And it said investigators repeatedly relied on “confirmation bias,” ignoring or rationalizing away evidence that undercut their premise of a Trump-Russia conspiracy as they pushed the probe forward.

Former President Donald Trump called into an event hosted by his former national security adviser Michael Flynn over the weekend, telling his ex-adviser, “We’re going to bring you back.”

After scrubbing a rally in Iowa on Saturday night because of bad weather, Trump spoke via telephone at an event for Flynn’s “ReAwaken America Tour” held at the former president’s Miami resort. The retired lieutenant general, a top figure in the far-right movement, has been one of the leading proponents of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

During the call, which was captured on a video of the event posted online, Flynn is seen holding a cellphone up to a microphone as Trump, on the line, says to Flynn, “You just have to stay healthy because we’re bringing you back. We’re going to bring you back.”

It wasn’t clear from Trump’s remarks if he was specifically talking about bringing Flynn into his administration should he win the presidency in 2024 and, if so, for what role.

“We’re proud of you, general,” Trump said. “I knew it from day one — you’re really somebody very special.”

Noelle Dunphy claims that Donald Trump’s former lawyer made her perform sex acts on him as part of job.

Donald Trump went on yet another bizarre rant on Truth Social following his controversial town hall hosted by CNN at a New Hampshire college.

“It’s really amazing to watch the head of CNN get absolutely lambasted for asking me to do a so-called Town Hall,” Mr Trump wrote on Sunday, referring to CNN CEO Chris Licht.

Mr Trump then went on to criticise Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s relationship.

“In all fairness, nobody had any problems with what he wanted to do until after the show started, when they quickly realized that Ms Collins was not exactly Barbara Walters, or even close,” he wrote before bashing progressive Democratic New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“That’s when the trouble from the Radical Left started. Neurotic little AOC with the bad looking boyfriend, went crazy,” Mr Trump added. “‘He owns CNN, he’s in their head,’ they screamed. CNN, take the GREAT RATINGS!”

An investigation by a Trump administration prosecutor charged with undermining and discrediting the FBI’s probe into alleged ties between former president Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government has ended after four years and just a single criminal conviction.

The findings from the probe, led by Special Counsel John Durham, are laid out in a nearly 300-page report in which the once-respected career prosecutor — who was hand-picked to delegitimise the FBI’s efforts to determine whether Mr Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia’s efforts to boost his candidacy — railed against the FBI for opening a probe into Mr Trump’s campaign based on “raw, unanalyzed and uncorroborated intelligence” and accusing investigators of suffering from “confirmation bias”.

Over the four years Mr Durham worked to discredit the department’s investigation, he only brought a handful of cases against criminal defendants, including an FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to doctoring an email used to secure a surveillance warrant against an ex-Trump campaign adviser, and two other figures associated with the Trump-Russia probe who were acquitted at trial.

In an interview, Donald Trump was asked about the John F Kennedy assassination files, which he said he was going to release in full as president.

He didn’t end up fulfilling that pledge.

Judge Andrew Napolitano said in a podcast interview that Mr Trump had said that the information shouldn’t be made public.

“I released a lot, as you know. And I will release everything else,” Mr Trump told The Messenger.

Mr Trump was then asked: “So there was nothing in there that the public should be scared about or that makes the US look terrible?”

“Well, I don’t want to comment on that. But I will tell you that I have released a lot. I will release the remaining portion very early in my term,” he said.

Donald Trump has said that his wife, former First Lady Melania Trump, is very “enthused” about his 2024 campaign.

Mr Trump was asked by The Messenger: “Is your wife, Melania Trump, going to be involved in your reelection?”

“She’s very enthused – very, very enthused about it,” Mr Trump said.

As the US marked Mother’s Day on Sundat, Mr Trump posted a predictably oddly phrased message celebrating mothers, in particular those of his main foes.

Perhaps in his rush to stick it to the “Radical Left Fascists” he failed to mention his wife, Melania, mother to his youngest son, Barron.

The former president wrote on Truth Social: “Happy Mother’s Day to ALL, in particular the Mothers, Wives and Lovers of the Radical Left Fascists, Marxists, and Communists who are doing everything within their power to destroy and obliterate our once great Country.”

He continued: “Please make these complete Lunatics and Maniacs Kinder, Gentler, Softer and, most importantly, Smarter, so that we can, quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

Donald Trump was reportedly shown tweets from Democrats blasting CNN for hosting the town hall with him to psyche him up during the live broadcast.

During the initial commercial break, Trump adviser Jason Miller showed the former president recent tweets backstage at the New Hampshire college where the event was hosted, according to Axios.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez tweeted 23 minutes into the event: “CNN should be ashamed of themselves. They have lost total control of this ‘town hall’ to again be manipulated into platforming election disinformation, defenses of Jan 6th, and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim.”

“The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host,” she added.