Donald Trump news today: Trump defends Mike Pence over classified documents despite slamming Biden

Former Trump White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who hosts a podcast on which the Georgia Republican Representative has appeared, told NBC News that “this is no shrinking violet, she’s ambitious, she’s not shy about that, nor should she be”.

Gustaf Kilander has the story.

Former Lieutenant Governor of Georgia Geoff Duncan told CNN he believes there is enough evidence to indict former president Donald Trump in the state’s grand jury case on election fraud in 2020.

Mr Duncan, a new Republican political analyst for the network, was speaking on CNN This Morning.

Describing the investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as a “fact-finding mission”, Mr Duncan says there are three unique lanes being investigated — the phone call then-president Trump made to Brad Raffensperger saying he needed more votes; the basket of conspiracies to re-steer the election that could lead to a racketeering charge; and the fake electorate plan.

Asked by host Poppy Harlow how involved Mr Trump was in soliciting each of those, Mr Duncan replies that he was involved in all three.

Pressed by Don Lemon as to whether the former president could be indicted, Mr Duncan replies: “I think there’s enough information for him to be indicted.”

Full transcript and video available on Mediaite.

Andrew Feinberg filed this report yesterday on the latest in the probe when DA Willis asked that the special grand jury report on the case be kept under seal while a decision is made on criminal charges:

Georgia Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene is positioning herself to be Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate, NBC News reports citing two people who have spoken to her about her ambitions.

“This is no shrinking violet, she’s ambitious — she’s not shy about that, nor should she be,” said Steve Bannon, the former top Trump aide who hosts the War Room podcast, where Greene has been a guest.

A second source, with ties to former president Trump and who has advised Ms Greene, said her “whole vision is to be vice president”. They spoke anonymously to describe private conversations and added that he also believes she would be on Mr Trump’s shortlist.

The news comes after the bitter battle to make Kevin McCarthy speaker, in which Ms Greene appeared to adopt a stance aimed at bridging the divide between the hardline far right of the party with which she is traditionally associated, and more establishment Republicans such as Mr McCarthy.

Donald Trump issued a potentially revealing statement on Truth Social as news broke Tuesday that authorities in Fulton County, Georgia, are nearing a decision on charges for multiple members of his inner circle — including potentially Mr Trump himself.

The ex-president, out of nowhere, brought up his now-infamous 2 January 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he instructed the state elections chief to “find” more than 11,000 votes he would have needed to surpass Joe Biden’s total in the state.

“My phone call to the Secretary of State of Georgia, and a second call which the Marxists, Communists, Racists, and RINOS don’t even want to talk about, were “PERFECT” calls. Many people, including lawyers for both sides, were knowingly on the line. I was protesting a RIGGED & STOLEN Election, which evidence proves it was,” claimed the former president.

Read the full story here:

A Georgia prosecutor said that a decision was “imminent” around whether or not to bring charges against Donald Trump and his allies over their efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state.

A judge in Fulton County is currently hearing arguments about the public release of a grand jury report following an eight-month probe into Mr Trump’s alleged actions.

On Tuesday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said she opposed the report being made public just yet, as she suggested that the special grand jury had recommended multiple indictments.

“Decisions are imminent,” she said.

“We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly it’s not appropriate at this time to have this report released.”

The month before the riot at the US Capitol, members of the far-right nationalist gang the Proud Boys were growing increasingly angry about the outcome of the 2020 election and were expecting a “civil war,” a former member told jurors on Tuesday as he took the stand in the seditious conspiracy case against the group’s former leader.

Donald Trump leaped to Mike Pence’s defence on Tuesday after it emerged that classified documents had been found in the vice president’s Indiana home.

In a Truth Social post, Mr Trump called Mr Pence an “innocent man” and urged people to “leave him alone”.

“Mike Pence is an innocent man. He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!” he wrote.

Whether or not Mr Trump’s defence of his former right-hand man was genuine, remains to be seen.

However, his comments are a marked difference from his response to the discovery of classified documents at President Joe Biden’s Wilmington home and an office he used in Washington DC.

Now, classified documents have been found at the homes of Mr Trump, Mr Biden and Mr Pence, prompting investigations into the matters.

In an ABC News interview last year, Mike Pence strictly denied taking any classified material from the White House upon leaving the administration upon Joe Biden’s swearing-in.

“Did you take any classified documents with you from the White House?” Mr Pence is asked in the clip by ABC’s David Muir.

“I did not,” he responds.

He then goes further, digging the hole deeper, and adds: “[T]here’d be no reason to have classified documents, particularly if they were in an unprotected area”.

Today it was reported that a lawyer for the former vice president had recently turned over a dozen classified records to the FBI after they were found his home in Indiana.

Donald Trump has revived his thinly veiled racist attack against his former transportation secretary Elaine Chao, whom the former president baselessly connected to Joe Biden’s classified documents case because of right-wing media scrutiny involving their alleged storage in Washington DC’s Chinatown.

His statement on Truth Social from 23 January involves a series of disconnected right-wing media claims and conspiracy theories, all spuriously intertwined by Mr Trump’s ongoing attacks against Ms Chao and her husband, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

During the four years of his presidency, he called journalists and news outlets “fake news” roughly 2,000 times, averaging more than one daily broadside against the press and continuing a long legacy of attempts to undermine his critics that has continued well after his time in the White House.

Following the “leak” of a draft of what became the US Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down Roe v Wade, Mr Trump has repeatedly demanded that the journalist and outlet that published the draft be thrown in jail if they don’t reveal their source, accelerating the former president’s public war on the media.

A brief history of his recent attacks: