The Washington DC judge in the election interference case against Donald Trump has responded to his legal team’s request that she recuse herself from the case with a stern warning. The former president’s legal team argued that Judge Tanya Chutkan should leave the case because of statements she had made when sentencing defendants for taking part in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. The lawyers for the former president argued that Judge Chutkan “agreed with portions” of a sentencing memo for one of the January 6 defendants which “wrongly placed blame on President Trump and complained that he had not been charged”. The defence lawyer for the defendant referred to in the motion said in a sentencing memo that “those voices, including the voice of the then-president himself, had convinced persons such as Mr. Palmer that the election was fraudulent and that they must take action to stop the transition of the presidency. . . . While many of the people who participated in the Capitol riot will be going to prison, the architects of that horrific event will likely never be charged with any criminal offense”. The Trump lawyers added that “although Judge Chutkan correctly noted that she does not have any influence on charging decisions, her ... comments stating ‘you have made a very good point . . . that the people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged’ and ‘you have a point, that the people who may be the people who planned this and funded it and encouraged it haven’t been charged, but that’s not a reason for you to get a lower sentence’ reflect her apparent opinion that President Trump’s conduct ... occurred, and supports charges”. “Otherwise, she would not have characterized the point as ‘very good’,” they said. “Judge Chutkan’s statement that ‘I have my opinions’ suggests that in her view—formed almost two years before the initiation of this matter—President Trump should be charged,” the Trump legal team added. After that filing, Judge Chutkan ordered that the prosecution, the legal team of Special Counsel Jack Smith, should file any opposing arguments within three days. She also warned the Trump legal team that they must notify the special counsel’s office before filing that kind of motion or they might risk that later motions be “denied without prejudice”. “Upon consideration of Defendant’s 50 Motion for Recusal, it is hereby ORDERED that the government shall file any opposition no later than September 14, 2023, and the defense shall file any reply within three calendar days from the filing date of the government’s opposition,” the judge wrote in the order on Monday. “All other deadlines set by the court remain in effect.” “Defense counsel is reminded of the requirement to confer with opposing counsel before filing any motion and to indicate whether the motion is opposed ...Future motions that fail to comply with that requirement may be denied without prejudice,” she added. Read More Biden slammed for falsely claiming he visited Ground Zero the day after 9/11 Trump lashes out at Biden over prisoner swap deal with Iran after demanding Jan 6 judge recuse herself - live Putin calls Trump’s laundry list of criminal charges ‘persecution’

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday said he believed the United States will not default on its debt

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Federal investigators have reportedly trained their attention on an employee at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, who, in the process of draining a swimming pool on the property last year, flooded a room where computer servers containing video surveillance logs were stored. According to reporting by CNN, investigators have asked at least one witness in the investigation into Mr Trump’s handling of classified documents about the flooding of the server room. It is as of yet unclear whether the room was flooded intentionally or on accident. Prosecutors have reportedly been told that the IT equipment in the room was not damaged during the flooding incident. The investigation into the conduct and intentions of Mar-a-Lago employees comes as investigators attempt to dechiper whether multiple people were involved a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Justice Department’s probe into Mr Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving the presidency in early 2021. Mr Trump suggested earlier today on the social media platform Truth Social that he will likely be charged in the case. “HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, WHEN NO OTHER PRESIDENT’S WERE CHARGED, WHEN JOE BIDEN WON’T BE CHARGED FOR ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACT THAT HE HAS 1,850 BOXES, MUCH OF IT CLASSIFIED, AND SOME DATING BACK TO HIS SENATE DAY WHEN EVEN DEMOCRAT SENATORS ARE SHOCKED,” the former president wrote. The post, in which Mr Trump also claimed he was being treated unfairly because former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was not indicted for having emails with information later deemed to be classified stored on a private email service, came shortly after Mr Trump’s attorneys met with Department of Justice officials in Washington. Mr Trump is already facing a bevy of legal problems: he’s been indicted in New York for his role in an alleged hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the buildup to the 2016 election and is also being investigated for interfering in the 2020 election in Georgia. That investigation may also be expanding. Mr Trump is alsoa candidate for president again and has taken a sizeable lead in early polling of the Republican primary contest. His opponents, including recent entrant Gov Ron DeSantis, have yet to repeatedly attack Mr Trump over his legal problems — seemingly hesitant to align themselves with the prosecutors investigating the former president. The potential destruction of the server room may be of particular importance in the classified document investigation given that the FBI first subpoenaed the Trump Organization for Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage last summer prior to the much-publicised search of the property last August. Two Trump Organisation employees, Mr Trump’s body man Walt Nauta and a maintenance worker who helped Mr Nauta move classified documents prior to the FBI’s visit, have already attracted the attention of investigators for their conduct. According to CNN, the maintenance worker who helped move the documents is also the person who is believed to have drained the pool and flooded the server room. The Justice Department has said in court that it believes “government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room” prior to the agents’ search. Read More Ivanka and Jared split over attending Trump 2024 launch – follow live Why was Donald Trump impeached twice during his first term? Four big lies Trump told during his 2024 presidential announcement Trump suggests he is about to be charged in Mar-a-Lago classified documents case Trump news - live: Ex-president’s furious Truth Social rant suggests charges are imminent in classified documents case

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A desperate Vladimir Putin, increasingly isolated on the world stage, is eyeing a return to the UN Human Rights Council – and he has launched a shameless charm offensive to get him there. Armed with stolen Ukrainian grain, the Russian president is on a mission to curry favour with potential backers ahead of a vote for council membership next month, although his efforts are likely to fall short. Two years after being kicked off the panel for invading its neighbour, Putin has ordered his diplomats to try and secure the backing of enough countries for Moscow to beat two other eastern European nations on 10 October. A Russian position paper circulated to dozens of other countries ahead of the vote strikes a markedly different tone to the nuclear threats and wartime sabre-rattling of Putin’s addresses since he invaded Ukraine, calling for “constructive mutually respectful dialogue” and referring to the 47-member Human Rights Council as “a key body in the United Nations system”. Russia is competing with Albania and Bulgaria to win one of two spots up for grabs on the council that are reserved for central and eastern European nations. Ironically one of the countries being replaced is in fact Ukraine – its and the Czech Republic’s terms are expiring. Moscow is going all out to try and reverse the April 2022 vote that saw it booted, experts tell The Independent. Then, 93 countries voted in favour of suspending Russia, while 24 voted against and 58 abstained. “Russia is apparently offering incentives such as grain and arms in exchange for votes. Along with other moves to deepen relations with Africa, we know that President Putin had already promised African states grain back in July at the Russia-Africa Summit,” says Yousuf Syed Khan, a senior lawyer at international human rights firm Global Rights Compliance. “At the same time, Russia is engaged in the systematic pillage of Ukraine’s grain, having rebuilt infrastructure to harness the ability to export millions of tonnes from occupied Ukrainian territory into Russia. This is not a coincidence,” the war crimes lawyer adds. Russia has been accused of weaponising global food security in its war against Ukraine, targeting key Ukrainian infrastructure with missile strikes while at the same time pulling out of a UN-brokered deal that had allowed Kyiv to keep exporting grain to other parts of the world where rising food prices are pushing more people into poverty. “The bottom line is that Russia is in no better standing to join the Human Rights Council now than it was nearly 18 months ago when it was voted off. In many ways, its bid to re-join and the outcome of the vote will be a barometer of Russia’s international standing,” Khan says. Alongside what it can offer in terms of trade, Khan says Russia will likely try to convince smaller countries that they do not want to be “instrumentalised to serve the political wills of Western nations”. “This logic may speak to some of the African States that Russia will desperately need to vote in its favour,” he tells The Independent. This tallies with the language in the position paper Russian diplomats have already distributed. The paper says Moscow “believes it is important to prevent the increasing trend of turning the Human Rights Council into the instrument, which serves political wills of one group of countries punishing non-loyal governments for their independent internal and external policy,” reported CNN. Alfred de Zayas, a former independent UN expert on human rights, says he believes the odds are stacked against Russia rejoining the council, despite the concerns voiced in recent days by Western officials. “At present, there are five eastern European states represented in the council – Czechia [the Czech Republic], Georgia, Lithuania, Montenegro and Ukraine. The terms of Czechia and Ukraine expire in December 2023. There are two openings but three candidates – Albania, Russia and Bulgaria,” he tells The Independent. De Zayas says that there was little in Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s recent comments at the UN General Assembly in New York to suggest a rapprochement with “the collective West” is any nearer. But at the same time, he argues that including Russia on multilateral platforms like the Human Rights Council is exactly what is needed to work towards peace talks to end the Ukraine war. “Maximum inclusiveness, bringing in as many countries as possible would be desirable, so that meaningful exchanges of ideas and perspectives could be conducted. Excluding Russia is counterproductive because it closes an important avenue of compromise and quid pro quo,” says De Zayas. “Precisely because there is a war going on, it is crucial to take advantage of every forum of dialogue,” he suggests. For Khan, however, Russia’s ongoing abuses in Ukraine are likely to see Putin’s charm offensive fall short. “Since the initial days of its full-scale invasion in February last year, Russia has been engaged in starvation as a method of warfare across Ukraine,” he says, recounting Moscow’s significant human rights violations during the conflict. “Unlawful conduct includes the laying of sieges to areas such as Chernihiv and Mariupol while denying access to even the most basic items required for civilian survival such as food, medicine and potable water. “More recently, we have seen Russia attacking grain ports along the Danube, forcing Ukraine to pivot to the Sulina Channel with its exports and to work with Romania, to elicit sanctions relief for Moscow. Russia also destroyed at least 270,000 tonnes of grain in late July and early August alone. None of this is being done with any valid military objective.” The latest report by Mariana Katzarova, the UN’s special rapporteur on Russia’s rights situation within its own borders, noted that rights have been on a “steady decline” over the last two decades but things have “significantly deteriorated since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022”. Mass arbitrary arrests, detentions and harassment were recorded for “anyone speaking out against Russia’s war on Ukraine or daring to criticise the government’s actions,” the report found. The UN’s website says that “with membership on the [Human Rights] Council comes a responsibility to uphold high human rights standards”. “One would hope that all nations vote in line with the HRC membership criteria,” says Khan, who has worked with the UN for a decade on atrocity inquiries, adding that on this point Russia is falling far short. Read More Ukraine-Russia war - live: ‘Nuclear crisis’ warning over Putin-controlled power plant on the frontline Russia tries to rejoin UN Human Rights Council Russia ‘weaponised food and deliberately caused starvation’ in Ukraine Ukraine repels Russian attacks as Putin’s forces try to recapture territory lost in counteroffensive

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