Trump news – latest: Trump Organization jury selected as Jan 6 panel plans to interview Secret Service agents

Ex-president to campaign for midterms with incumbents and newcomers whom he has endorsed

Donald Trump interrupted by crowd singing national anthem at rally

A jury has been selected for the upcoming trial of the Trump Organization, which has been indicted for allegedly perpetrating a massive tax fraud scheme. Prosecutors noted the difficulty in choosing a fair jury in Manhattan, where the former president is especially unpopular.

The company, which denies the allegations, has already seen its former CFO Allen Weisselberg plead guilty.

Meanwhile, as Donald Trump’s attorneys take receipt of the January 6 select committee’s subpoena compelling the former president to turn over documents and appear before its members, reports say that the panel is planning to call key Secret Service agents to testify as to what happened in the days leading up to the attack on the US Capitol.

In the course of the summer, it became clear that the service had lost or deleted messages exchanged between staff on the day of the riot and before it despite having been instructed to preserve them. The official explanation of how and why they were wiped has shifted over the last months, but at least some have been recovered.

Key points

• Jury selected in Trump Organization frud trial, despite difficulties in anti-Trump Manhattan
• Capitol riot committee seeking Secret Service testimony
• Jan 6 rioter sentenced for dragging officer Michael Fanone into Capitol riot mob
• Trump attorneys receive Jan 6 committee subpoena
• Trump shares Megyn Kelly rant blasting DeSantis’s 2024 chances

[27 October 2022 18:30 · Oliver O'Connell]

Trump shares Megyn Kelly rant blasting DeSantis’s 2024 chances

Donald Trump gleefully shared comments made by former Fox News anchor and Trump nemesis Megyn Kelly dismissing the chances of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2024.

The former president shared the comments which were included in Dave Rubin’s podcast after Ms Kelly initially made them on The Rubin Report on 16 October.

Gustaf Kilander has the story.

[27 October 2022 19:04 · Oliver O'Connell]

Armed ‘vigilantes’ and conspiracy theorists threaten to disrupt midterm elections

The latest calls to action join an army of election observers – fuelled by bogus claims of widespread election fraud and Donald Trump’s ongoing false narrative that the presidency was stolen from him – preparing for Election Day and its aftermath, and aiming to do what Trump and his allies failed to do in 2020.

More than 40 per cent of voters are now worried about threats of violence or intimidation at the ballot box this year, according to polling from Reuters.

Alex Woodward looks at the potential threats to the 2022 midterms.

[27 October 2022 19:35 · Oliver O'Connell]

Trump to hold Florida rally but snubs DeSantis

Donald Trump will host a rally in his new chosen home state of Florida just two days before Election Day, and a key absence is already raising eyebrows in the GOP and national press.

Typically, when a former president holds a campaign rally in an election year, their attendance is the big story of the day. But when Donald Trump’s Save America PAC announced his plans to host the rally in the backyard of rising GOP star Ron DeSantis without the governor in attendance, the potential snub became the headline.

John Bowden has the latest.

[27 October 2022 19:51 · Oliver O'Connell]

Trump knocks Biden while teeing off at Saudi-backed golf tournament

Former President Donald Trump joked about his successor Joe Biden while taking part in a golf tournament at the Saudi-backed LIV Invitational Pro-Am in Miami today.

The former president was at the Trump National Doral course alongside a number of professional players this morning when he made the comment.

Mr Trump hit a shot and then said to the camera: “Do you think Biden could do that? I don’t think so. I don’t so.”

[27 October 2022 20:10 · Oliver O'Connell]

Trump teasing 2024 run with Iowa rally

Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to return to Iowa ahead of the Nov. 8 midterms, to headline a rally for Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and Sen. Chuck Grassley.

The event, set for Nov. 3 in Sioux City, the hub of Iowa’s conservative northwest, comes as Trump has continued to tease interest in a White House comeback campaign as he has campaigned around the country for Republican candidates.

Returning to Iowa, where the 2024 Republican presidential caucuses are scheduled to launch the GOP nominating sequence, would likely further stoke speculation of Trump’s future.

[27 October 2022 20:27 · Oliver O'Connell]

Jury selected in Trump Organization frud trial, despite difficulties in anti-Trump Manhattan

A prosecutor in the New York criminal tax-fraud trial of the Trump Organization said on Thursday that if every prospective juror who disliked former President Donald Trump was excused from the case, there would not be a jury.

“If we were to strike every juror who had a negative opinion about Donald Trump, we wouldn’t be able to get a jury at all,” lead prosecutor, Susan Hoffinger, told New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Manuel Merchan, Insider reports.

“This is not about Donald Trump,” but about his business, stressed Ms Hoffinger, chief investigator for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Defence attorneys for the Trump Organization, Mr Trump eponymous real estate company, have already tried to deny a juror a place on the panel because he referred to the former president as “narcissistic”.

The huge allowed the juror to remain on the panel as he had also said he used to think Mr Trump was funny before he became president, noting that his opinions of the former president referred to how he conducted himself and not about him overall.

Jury selection for the high-profile trial in heavily Democrat Manhattan took three days, but all 12 jurors have now been selected.

Here’s some of our earlier reporting on the case and the difficulty in choosing a fair jury.

[27 October 2022 20:50 · Oliver O'Connell]

Jan 6 rioter sentenced for dragging officer Michael Fanone into Capitol riot mob

A Tennessee man who dragged a police officer into a mob of rioters, initiating one of the most harrowing acts of violence during the US Capitol attack, was sentenced on Thursday to more than seven years years in prison.

Albuquerque Cosper Head declined to address the court before US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to seven years and six months of imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release. The judge said Head was responsible for “some of the darkest acts committed on one of our nation’s darkest days.”

Read on for the full details of his sentence and crime.

[27 October 2022 21:13 · Oliver O'Connell]

Jan 6 committee to interview top Secret Service agents and officials

CNN reports that the House Select Committee investigating the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol is concluding its review of more than one million pages of Secret Service documents and plans to bring in top agents and officials from the agency to testify in the coming weeks.

The network cites multiple sources who say that about half a dozen witnesses will be called and asked about what the agency knew ahead of the attack and what happened during it, referencing earlier testimony from other witnesses.

[27 October 2022 21:50 · Oliver O'Connell]

Ex-Trump Ambassador hails Biden for doing ‘the impossible’ on Ukraine

Gordon Sondland, the man whose testimony confirmed Donald Trump’s sham investigations for military aid quid-pro-quo, tells Andrew Feinberg that Mr Trump’s successor has done ‘the impossible’ by rallying Nato and the EU in support of Kyiv.

[27 October 2022 22:30 · Oliver O'Connell]

Would Elon Musk allow Donald Trump back on Twitter?

And if he did, what would happen to Truth Social?