Trump news today: Georgia grand jury recommended multiple charges in election probe

The former president will visit the small town of East Palestine in Ohio on Wednesday – site of a major freight train derailment earlier this month that caused a major chemical spill and forced local residents to have to temporarily leave their homes.

The accident occurred shortly after 9pm on Friday 3 February, when 38 Norfolk Southern carriages crashed off the rails as the result of what investigators later determined was a broken axle, 10 of which were transporting hazardous materials cross-country.

Fortunately, no one was harmed but more than 2,000 East Palestine residents out of approximately 4,800 had to be temporarily evacuated from the area due to health concerns arising from the spill.

As part of the clean up operation, five of the tankers containing vinyl chloride – a compound used to make plastic pipes, wires, cable coating, car parts and packaging but which can cause cancer – had to be intentionally breached by emergency crews, who diverted the substance into an excavated trench and carried out a controlled burn to prevent an explosion, sending noxious black clouds billowing into the atmosphere.

According to Fox News Digital, Mr Trump plans to meet local officials including mayor Trent Conaway and state senator JD Vance and members of the community on Wednesday and is set to donate thousands of gallons of cleaning supplies and more than a dozen pallets of water.

“President Trump is meeting with the citizens of East Palestine and will never forget them and what they are going through,” an advisor told Fox.

“Contrast that with Biden and the federal government who has failed them from the beginning.”

As if the atmosphere weren’t toxic enough already in East Palestine…

Tucker Carlson allegedly called former president Donald Trump a “demonic force” who could “destroy” him if he missteps, in his texts to his producer.

“He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong,” Carlson texted his Fox News producers, according to court filings in the Dominion defamation case. He called Mr Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer,” adding, “But he’s not going to destroy us.”

The $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election has been termed as an assault on the First Amendment by the attorneys for the channel. So far, revelations from the lawsuit have been nothing short of embarassing for the conservative network.

On Monday night, the former president also defended his previous claim that he trusted Mr Putin over US intelligence.

In 2018, during a summit with Mr Putin in Helsinki, Finland, Mr Trump was asked if he trusted the conclusion of US intelligence that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US election or if he believed Mr Putin’s rejection of those allegations.

In response, Mr Trump appeared to suggest that he believed Mr Putin.

Gustaf Kilander has more for The Independent:

The Georgia special grand jury investigating the attempt by former President Donald Trump and his associates to overturn the 2020 election results in the state has recommended indictments against several individuals on multiple charges in its report, only parts of which have been released, the jury’s forewoman has said.

“It is not a short list,” Emily Kohrs told The New York Times. She said the jury appended eight pages of legal code “that we cited at various points in the report”.

She chose not to comment on who the grand jury has recommended for indictment as the judge chose to not release that information when publishing parts of the report last week.

Donald Trump swiped at his presumed 2024 GOP primary rival, Ron DeSantis, in a pair of Truth Social posts late Tuesday morning.

In one, he took a shot at the size of a crowd Mr DeSantis was able to draw in New York this week as the Florida governor visited Staten Island.

“So interesting to watch FoxNews cover the small and unenthusiastic 139 person crowd in Staten Island for DeSantis, but stay as far away as possible from coverage of the thousands of people, many unable to get in, at the Club 47 event in West Palm Beach, Florida,” Mr Trump noted, referring to his own event.

In another, he criticised Mr DeSantis in a more direct manner: “Florida was doing GREAT long before Ron DeSanctus got there. People are fleeing from New York to Florida (and other places) because of high TAXES and out of control CRIME, not because of Governor (thank you President Trump!) DeSanctimonious. Rick Scott did great, and even Charlie Crist had very good numbers. SUNSHINE AND OCEAN, very alluring!!!”

James O’Keefe has resigned from Project Veritas.

Appearing in a tear-filled video, Mr O’Keefe informed his fellows that the board of Project Veritas had removed him as CEO, and that he had stepped down. Mr O’Keefe went on to vow to form another organisation similar in form to the conservative group famous for undercover interviews, some of which have faced allegations of deceptive editing.

On Sunday, Donald Trump congratulated one of his supporters, Kristina Karamo, following her takeover of the Michigan Republican Party. He called her a “fearless election denier” in a Truth Social post.

“If Republicans (and others!) would speak the truth about the Rigged Presidential Election of 2020, like FoxNews should, but doesn’t, they would be far better off,” the ex-president complained.

He then took a victory lap: “The New York Times stated that “This cements the Party’s takeover by Trump loyalists.” I don’t call them loyalists, I call them GREAT AMERICAN PATRIOTS!!!”

Donald Trump’s campaign on Monday announced the hiring of key staff in Iowa, which is currently set to remain the site of the GOP’s first caucus of 2024.

Among the new hirings was Eric Branstad, son of the state’s former governor, Terry Branstad. The younger Branstad is joining the Trump campaign as a senior adviser.

Fox News is facing a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, a Denver-based manufacturer of voting machines, over its coverage of the 2020 presidential election and then-president Donald Trump’s bogus claims that the contest was “rigged” to ensure victory for Joe Biden.

In a 192-page court filing published on Thursday containing private messages from many of Fox’s biggest stars, Dominion argues: “From the top down, Fox knew ‘the Dominion stuff’ was ‘total bs’.”

“Yet despite knowing the truth – or at minimum, recklessly disregarding that truth – Fox spread and endorsed these ‘outlandish voter fraud claims’ about Dominion even as it internally recognised the lies as ‘crazy’, ‘absurd’ and ‘shockingly reckless’,” the filing said.

Attorneys for Fox, however, have argued that Dominion has advanced only “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” figure in damages aimed at winning headlines, silencing protected speech and enriching its owner, Staple Street Capital Partners, and its investors.

A Fox spokesperson said in a statement in response to Thursday’s filing: “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v Sullivan.”

A five-week trial is scheduled to begin on 17 April.

Here, The Independent’s Joe Sommerlad gives a brief overview of some of the most astonishing claims in the new filing, which collects private text messages from prominent anchors like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and owner Rupert Murdoch discussing coverage of the 2020 election’s aftermath:

Bernie Sanders has slammed Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley’s suggestion that politicians over the age of 75 should receive a mental competency test – calling it “absurd”.

Haley, 51, made the demand as she launched her campaign to win the GOP nomination and criticised 76-year-old Donald Trump and 80-year-old Joe Biden.

But Mr Sanders, who himself is 81, refuted the idea as he appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday morning.