Trump news: White House slams Putin ‘scheme’ as ex-president rejects House speaker plan

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Trump calls for Putin to release dirt on the Biden family

Donald Trump poured cold water on suggestions that he could be elected speaker of the House of Representatives by Republicans after this November’s midterm elections – an idea that has been floated by some of his more hardcore congressional allies. Instead, the president said, “I wanna look at what’s happening and then we’re gonna be doing something else”.

This he did in the same interview where he called on Vladimir Putin to release dirt about the Biden family’s supposed dealings with the wife of the mayor of Moscow. His appeal to the Russian autocrat has drawn outrage given Mr Putin’s current assault on Ukraine, an American ally.

Meanwhile, it emerged that White House phone records from 6 January 2021 obtained by the committee investigating the Capitol riot feature a 7-hour gap in former President Donald Trump’s communications, a span of time that includes the assault on the building by a horde of his supporters.

Later on Tuesday, former national security adviser John Bolton said that contra the ex-president’s denials, Mr Trump was aware of the slang term “burner phone” – and that he used the term on multiple occasions.

Key points today

• Trump speaks out during war in Ukraine to call on Putin to release Hunter Biden dirt
• Bolton claims Trump knew about ‘burner phones’ despite denial over call logs gap
• Judge says Trump tried to ‘subvert this fundamental principle’ of democracy’
• 6 Jan committee report lays down reasons for contempt charges against two former Trump aides
• Former president Trump says he might run for office again

[30 March 2022 16:15 · Andrew Naughtie]

ICYMI: What Trump’s asking Putin to do

More than two years after he was impeached for holding up military aid to Ukraine to force an investigation into the Biden family’s activities, Donald Trump has called on Vladimir Putin to release unflattering material about the Bidens’ alleged dealings with the wife of the mayor of Moscow.

This he did as Mr Putin assaults an American ally, specifically suggesting that now would be a good time for Mr Putin to contribute what he knows because the Russian president isn’t a fan of the US government.

[30 March 2022 17:10 · Andrew Naughtie]

Hunter Biden’s laptop: the saga continues

Since late 2020, the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden that was abandoned in a Delaware computer repair shop have been something of an obsession within the right-wing media ecosystem – though the story tends to flare up noticeably whenever a scandal involving Donald Trump gets too hot for comfort.

While the original reports of the laptop’s contents were met with a great deal of skepticism by the mainstream, the Washington Post has now analysed reams of data ostensibly originating from the laptop that it says was given to it by a Republican activist. According to the paper, the findings of a detailed technical investigation will do little to resolve the row over the laptop’s authenticity or the value of its purported contents:

The contents of Biden’s laptop computer have sparked debate and controversy since the New York Post and other news organizations in the closing month of the 2020 presidential campaign reported stories based on data purportedly taken from it.

Many Republicans have portrayed this data as offering evidence of misbehavior by Hunter Biden that implicated his father in scandal, while Democrats have dismissed it as probable disinformation, perhaps pushed by Russian operatives acting in a well-documented effort to undermine Biden. Facebook and Twitter in 2020 restricted distribution of stories about the drive’s contents out of concern that the revelations might have resulted from a nefarious hacking campaign intended to upend the election, much as Russian hacks of sensitive Democratic Party emails shaped the trajectory of the 2016 election.

The Washington Post’s forensic findings are unlikely to resolve that debate, offering instead only the limited revelation that some of the data on the portable drive appears to be authentic. The security experts who examined the data for The Post struggled to reach definitive conclusions about the contents as a whole, including whether all of it originated from a single computer or could have been assembled from files from multiple computers and put on the portable drive.

Read more below.

[30 March 2022 18:10 · Andrew Naughtie]

ICYMI: Bolton says Trump knows what a burner phone is

The seven-hour-plus gap in the White House phone records from 6 January 2021 has raised concerns that the president and certain of his allies may have been communicating on disposable “burner phones” before, during and after the attack on the US Capitol – potentially making it impossible for investigators to definitively establish whom the president talked to and when.

The president’s defence against this theory has been that he does not in fact know what a “burner phone” is. However, his former national security adviser, John Bolton, has effectively dismissed that claim as a lie. And it has also been noted that his legal team used the term multiple times in a lawsuit against his niece and critic, Mary L. Trump.

[30 March 2022 18:32 · Oliver O'Connell]

Trump dismisses House speaker idea

Former President Donald Trump has officially rejected the idea of serving as Speaker of the House next year should Republicans win control of the House in this year’s midterm elections.

Mr Trump made his decision clear in an interview with John Solomon and Amanda Head, after Ms Head remarked that his reaction to the suggestion from Congressman Matt Gaetz at a Florida rally hosted by the ex-president did not make clear whether he supported the idea.

John Bowden reports.

[30 March 2022 18:45 · Oliver O'Connell]

Schiff: Trump is ‘consistently immoral and unpatriotic'

Former lead impeachment manager Rep Adam Schiff was asked by Garrett Haake of NBC News about former President Donald Trump asking Russian President Vladimir Putin for dirt on Hunter Biden.

Mr Schiff responded: “Well at least he’s consistent. Consistently immoral and unpatriotic to be appealing to Putin at a time when Russia is killing Ukrainians, once again for dirt on his opponents.”

[30 March 2022 19:10 · Andrew Naughtie]

Former impeachment counsel puts Trump’s Putin remarks in perspective

As Russian state TV hosts openly call for Donald Trump to return to power and the ex-president himself invites Vladimir Putin to release information unflattering to the Biden family, one of the former legal counsels in Mr Trump’s first impeachment – the trial related to his quid-pro-quo pressuring of the Ukrainian government – has this stark statement of just how serious the situation in the GOP is.

[30 March 2022 19:35 · Oliver O'Connell]

Trump’s Truth Social sign-ups have cratered

Donald Trump’s beleaguered social media platform, Truth Social, has seen a reported 93 per cent drop in downloads since it launched last month.

Analysts from tech company Sensor Tower found a drop of almost 810,000 users since Truth Social launched on 21 February, with about 870,000 installs in its first week, and as little as 60,000 more recently.

Gino Spocchia reports.

[30 March 2022 20:10 · Andrew Naughtie]

LGBT+ advocates condemn new Oklahoma law

The Republican governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, has signed a bill banning trans athletes from women’s sports, the latest salvo in a nationwide GOP-led culture war against inclusive gender politics.

While Mr Stitt described the law as “just common sense”, LGBT+ campaigners and advocates in his state take a different view:

Nicole McAfee, executive director of advocacy group Freedom Oklahoma, said LGBT+ residents are “exhausted, terrified, angry.”

“It’s unacceptable,” they said in a statement. “Trans girls are girls. Nonbinary Oklahomans exist. Having representation of gender and sexual diversity available to young folks is not obscene, but efforts to not only censor it but criminalize it certainly are.”

Read more below.

[30 March 2022 20:18 · Justin Vallejo]

White House slams Trump ‘scheme’ with Putin

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield responded to Donald Trump’s request of Russian president Vladimir Putin:

“What kind of American let alone an ex-president thinks that this is the right time to enter into a scheme with Vladimir Putin and brag about his connection to Vladimir Putin? There is only one and it’s Donald Trump.”

[30 March 2022 20:34 · Oliver O'Connell]

Morning Joe hosts slam Trump for asking Russia for dirt on Bidens

Morning Joe hosts slammed former presidentDonald Trump on Wednesday for asking Vladimir Putin to release “dirt” about Hunter Biden’s alleged business dealings in Eastern Europe, a request he made during an interview with journalist John Solomon on the Just the News television show.

Johanna Chisholm reports.