Trump news app today: Rudy Giuliani backs out of Jan 6 committee interview

Defendants from the Oath Keepers militia group are due back in court today as their 6 January sedition case continues. The group is accused of planning its role in the violent attack on the Capitol, and according to prosecutors, leaders arranged to bring firearms to the protest and stashed them at hotels in the greater DC metro area.

The court appearance comes after a member of the group agreed to plead guilty to sedition, in the course of which it emerged he had heard indicted leader Stewart Rhodes place a call on which he asked a Trump intermediary to put the then-president on the line.

Read more on that shocking news below.

As far as the Trump faithful go, one of the biggest sins a Republican can commit is to refer to the 6 January attack on the US Capitol as a riot, an insurrection, or in particular an act of “terrorism” – as Ted Cruz found out the hard way when he used that word on the anniversary of the event this year.

Now, another member of Congress has weighed in for the conservative side, insisting that he refused to back an independent commission to investigate the riot because of the language it used.

“It was a protest, that’s what it was,” said Trump-backed West Virginia representative Alex Mooney in an interview. “A few people went in and the law should be implemented for those who broke it,” Mr Mooney said. “I do not think it was a domestic terrorist attack.”

The number of people charged with taking part in the riot has now topped 800.

Read more from Shweta Sharma:

The latest incendiary tell-all Trump administration memoir comes from Mark Esper, who served as the president’s defense secretary. In the latest passage to grab headlines, Mr Esper writes that in 2020, Mr Trump asked him about the prospect of launching missiles into Mexico to “destroy the drug labs”.

According to Mr Esper’s upcoming memoir A Sacred Oath, Mr Trump said Mexico didn’t “have control of their own country” and that “no one would know it was us”.

Like many of Mr Trump’s more bizarre foreign policy notions, the idea came to nothing. Maroosha Muzaffar reports:

Donald Trump has fought hard to stop the 6 January select committee from accessing certain of his White House records, mainly by claiming that they fall under “executive privilege”. He has filed several motions trying to delay the release, and now the Washington DC District Court has received another…

Former national security adviser John Bolton, who served for a time in the Trump administration and has since disowned his former boss as ignorant and dangerous, has once again described him as a potential threat to national security if he is re-elected in 2024.

Speaking to CBS News, Mr Bolton said the damage that Mr Trump did during his presidency was not permanent – but that if he got a second term, the ensuing damage to national security, political institutions and the Republican Party could be irreparable.

Donald Trump’s first term resulted in damage to national security and him getting a second term could be worse, says John Bolton, former national security advisor in the Trump administration.

Mr Bolton was asked on CBS News on Thursday if the former president would be a threat to US national security if he returns to the White House, to which the former national security advisor and author said: “Yes!”

“I think he caused damage to national security, to our political institutions, to the Republican party during the first time, I think all of that damage is repairable,” Mr Bolton said.

“But if he got a second term, the damage might be irreparable,” he adds.

“Trump doesn’t think in policy terms,” the former national security advisor who described the former president as a “dangerous” person in his book, told CBS News.

“For Trump it was transactional and it was viewed from the prism of ‘How does it benefit Donald Trump’ and that’s what’s fundamentally dangerous over the long-term.”

Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led his court efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, has withdrawn from an interview with the congressional committee investigating the 6 January riots, according to a spokesman.

Mr Giuliani was scheduled to take part in an interview on Friday, but Committee spokesman Tim Mulvey released a statement to multiple media outlets on Thursday night saying: “Mr Giuliani had agreed to participate in a transcribed interview with the Select Committee. Today, he informed committee investigators that he wouldn’t show up unless he was permitted to record the interview, which was never an agreed-upon condition.”

Donald Trump reportedly asked his defence secretary Mark Esper about the possibility of launching missiles into Mexico to “destroy the drug labs” and demolish drug cartel, according to The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, reporting from Mr Esper’s upcoming memoir A Sacred Oath.

“They don’t have control of their own country,” Mr Esper remembers then-president Trump saying.

“We could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,” he reportedly said. “No one would know it was us.”

Trump’s lawyers and the lawyers for writer E Jean Carroll – who sued him for defamation after he denied her allegations that he raper in the 1990s, said she was not his type, and alleged she only made the claims to boost book sales – have agreed to resume the exchange of evidence, including witness testimony, in the case.

The former president has denied the allegations.

Both sides have agreed to begin deposing witnessness from 3 August to 19 October.

Former president Donald Trump says he regrets endorsing Ben Sasse in the 2020 Nebraska Senate race.

“He’s bad news, Ben Sasse. He begged for my endorsement, the day after he started hitting me and we hit much harder than he knows how to hit. He’s bad news,” Mr Trump said during a rally held for Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster.

“Should have never given him the endorsement. He was horrible at the beginning. And then he was so good … and then the following day, literally, he started hitting back,” he added.