Trump news today: Esper says he stopped ex-president from doing ‘terrible things’

Former president Donald Trump in an affidavit filed with the court has stated that he doesn’t have any cell phones requested by New York attorney general Letitia James in the ongoing investigation of alleged fraud by the Trump Organization.

In a bid to stay a $10,000 per day fine for contempt of court, the former president said he had turned over all material in his possession that the attorney general’s office had subpoenaed.

Mr Trump said he no longer has a phone given to him by the organisation in 2015, two other flip phones, or a Samsung phone that was “taken from me at some point while I was president”, according to a CNN report.

Former president Donald Trump has refused to comment on allegations made by former defence secretary Mark Esper that he suggested launching missiles into Mexico to “destroy the drug labs”.

Mr Esper during an interview with CBS alleged that during the last year of the Trump administration, he and other officials worked tirelessly to prevent “really bad things” from happening under the former president’s watch.

When CBS sought comments from Mr Trump, he responded by flatly denying all but one of the claims sent over by the network.

Johanna Chisholm reports.

Former president Donald Trump claimed he had to “run the military” during his tenure in office because his defence secretary Mark Esper was a “lightweight”.

Hitting out at Mr Esper, the former president in a written response to CBS said: “Mark Esper was weak and totally ineffective and because of it, I had to run the military.

“Mark Esper was a stiff who was desperate not to lose his job. He would do anything I wanted, that’s why I called him ‘Yesper.’ He was a lightweight and figurehead, and I realised it very early on,” he added.

Maroosha Muzaffar has more.

Donald Trump’s longtime fixer and former personal attorney Michael Cohen told reporters on Monday that he was deposed for several hours as part of a lawsuit filed by protesters who say that Trump Organization security attacked them outside of Trump Tower.

According to Mr Cohen, Donald Trump’s security guards attacked the demonstraters after being ordered by then-candidate Trump himself to “get rid” of them. The ex-president has denied this.

“They asked me a series of questions and I answered them honestly and truthfully,” Mr Cohen said on Monday, adding: “The truth does not benefit Donald.”

Read more from The Independent’s Alex Woodward:

Joe Manchin, the centrist Democratic senator whose opposition to the president’s Build Back Better agenda torpedoed that legislation last year, could be on the verge of breaking with his party again.

Asked by CNN on Monday whether he would join with Democrats to vote to advance their bill codifying abortion rights into federal law, he replied: “I’m going to wait — until tomorrow,” apparently meaning he has not made up his mind.

The West Virginia senator opposed a similar bill in February, and also has long stood in opposition to using federal money to support abortion services.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is swinging at his successor, Kamala Harris, after she criticised the Supreme Court’s apparent impending decision that would upend 40 years of protected abortion rights in the US.

Ms Harris was speaking at an event hosted by the pro-choice EMILY’s List group when she questioned last week: “Those Republicans leaders who are trying the weaponise the use of the law against women, well we say, how dare they? How dare they tell a woman what she can do and cannot do with her own body?”

Mr Pence fired back in response at an anti-abortion group’s event on Friday, exclaiming: “I say with the lives of 62 million unborn boys and girls ended in abortion since 1973, generations of mothers enduring heartbreaking loss that can last a lifetime: Madam Vice President, how dare you?”

Read more about the growing US divide on abortion rights from The Independent’s Eric Garcia:

Arizona’s highest court has ruled that activists seeking to block three GOP lawmakers from the ballot in November over their support for efforts to overturn the 2020 election will not succeed.

The move ends the effort to block US House members Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar as well as state Rep. Mark Finchem from running for reelection in 2022; the three are loyal supporters of Donald Trump and vocally supported his false claims about the 2020 election being supposedly stolen by Joe Biden.

Similar efforts were kicked off in numerous states including North Carolina and Georgia targeting other allies of the former president like Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene in response to the violence on January 6.

Read more from The Associated Press:

National Public Radio legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, a veteran of US Supreme Court coverage, theorised on Sunday that a conservative justice or a clerk working for them may have leaked the draft opinion of the ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in order to pressure one of the Court’s other members.

In an interview with ABC’s This Week, she explained that many experts are considering the possibility that the draft was leaked to avoid one of the conservative justices moving to support a more watered-down expansion of abortion restrictions by the Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts.

“The leading theory is a conservative clerk who was afraid that one of the conservatives might be persuaded by Chief Justice Roberts to join a much more moderate opinion,” she said.

Read more in The Independent from Andrew Feinberg:

A Republican running for Congress in Wisconsin was cited last year for bringing a loaded gun to an airport

Derrick Van Orden’s campaign described what it said was a “mistake” after the GOP candidate apparently brought a loaded weapon to a security checkpoint; the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel first reported the incident’s occurance this week.

While relatively mild in nature, the incident mirrors a similar accident that North Carolina Rep Madison Cawthorn was cited for earlier this year.

Read more from The Independent’s Johanna Chisholm:

Democrats are wasting no time in pivoting to the issue of protecting abortion rights from federal bans in swing-district races.

The candidates embracing the issue as a talking point include Maggie Hassan, a senator running for reelection…