Trump news today latest: DeSantis privately tells donors Trump can’t win

Just one week after a Manhattan jury found former president Donald Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming writer E Jean Carroll, no fewer than three women who had senior roles in his administration have come forward to allege inappropriate behaviour on Mr Trump’s part towards women on his White House staff.

Donald Trump has responded to the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee hearing on the “weaponisation of the federal government” and claimed that he too is a “victim” of this “weaponisation”.

The former president wrote on Truth Social: “Very sad watching what took place today in Congress regarding Whistleblowers and the FBI. There has never been a time like this in our Country, the complete weaponisation of Justice.

“I am a victim also, but the real victim is the United States of America. Congress must use its purse strings to straighten it out, before it is too late!” he added.

Earlier on Thursday the House panel met for a tense hearing over three FBI agents that Republicans say faced retaliation for their conservative views.

Attorneys for Kari Lake entered a second day Thursday of trying to build a case for the only remaining legal claim in her challenge to the Arizona governor’s race.

A judge in suburban Phoenix is allowing Lake a three-day trial to prove county election officials failed to perform higher level signature verifications on mail-in ballots that had been flagged.

Maricopa County has a failed process for verifying thousands of ballot signatures that even some of its own workers question, her attorneys argued in court Wednesday.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis who is planning to launch his officially announce his 2024 presidential bid next week has privately said to donors that Donald Trump cannot win.

“You have basically three people at this point that are credible in this whole thing,” Mr DeSantis told donors on a call, organized by the super PAC supporting him, Never Back Down according to a report in The New York Times.

“Biden, Trump and me. And I think of those three, two have a chance to get elected president — Biden and me, based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him.”

At another point in the call which a New York Times reporter listened in to, Mr DeSantis said: “I think the voters want to move on from Biden.

“They just want a vehicle they can get behind” but “there’s just too many voters that don’t view Trump as that vehicle.”

The Lincoln Project tweeted on Thursday indicated that journalists from CNN were angry at CNN Chairman and CEO Chris Licht for allowing former president Donald Trump to host a town hall.

“ CNN’s professional journalists have leaked to both The Lincoln Project and the news media how outraged they are about CNN Chairman and CEO, Chris Licht’s decision to enable Donald Trump,” The Lincoln Project wrote.

Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign wasted no time in knocking Florida governor Ron DeSantis over the news that Disney is cancelling a $1bn plan to expand its business in Florida.

The campaign for the former president to return to the White House sent out a fundraising email on 18 May after the news broke about the shelving of the planned relocation of some thousands of staff to the Orlando area.

Headlined: “President Trump is always right”, the email included a Truth Social post from Mr Trump dated 18 April.

Oliver O’Connell and Alex Woodward report:

Ron DeSantis is reportedly preparing to announce his official campaign for 2024 president next week, after months of anticipation.

Two people with knowledge of Mr DeSantis’ plans told The Wall Street Journal the Florida governor plans to file formal paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Thursday, 25 May.

The filing date will correspond with a donor meeting in Miami, according to the report.

The Supreme Court announced on Thursday it will remove the case surrounding the Trump-era immigration policy Title 42 from its calendar, likely because the Biden Administration ended the public health emergency which Title 42 fell under.

CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump proved so divisive that even its own staff have taken issue with the event – with Christiane Amanpour the latest of the network’s high-profile names to voice their dissatisfaction.

The New Hampshire event drew 3.3 million viewers, who watched as the former president sparred with CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins, whom Mr Trump referred to as a “nasty person”.

Speaking in an address to Columbia Journalism School on Wednesday, Amanpour said if she were Collins, she would have “dropped the mic” as soon as Mr Trump called her nasty, adding that she had spoken with the network’s CEO Chris Licht and told him the ex-president should not have been able “to appear in that particular format”.

After a two-year investigation by a Trump administration prosecutor charged with undermining and discrediting the FBI’s probe into alleged ties between former president Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government has ended after four years and just a single criminal conviction, a report on the findings of that investigation found that the FBI was justified to open a preliminary probe into the matter.