Trump ballot eligibility in the balance as he implores Jack Smith to ‘drop all litigation’: Live

Yesterday’s report was authored by Robert Hur was delivered to Congress after many months of investigation and preparation and recommended no criminal charges for the incumbent president, even were he not protected by immunity from prosecution due to his current stature.

It did, however, contain much that will concern many Americans and was overall far from complimentary of the incumbent president.

The investigator painted a picture of a senile leader with severe memory issues whose innocence was less clear than his supporters would have hoped, while not necessarily coming across to a potential jury as malicious or criminal.

For some, how personal it all was overstepped the mark.

Here’s John Bowden with his key takeaways.

An angry and animated President Joe Biden hit back at a Republican prosecutor’s claim that his memory is faulty in last-minute remarks to reporters on Thursday.

Earlier in the day, the Department of Justice released a report by special counsel Robert Hur, the former Maryland US attorney that attorney general Merrick Garland charged with probing how classified documents ended up at Biden’s home in Delaware and former office in Washington.

Hur did not recommend that Biden face criminal charges, citing what he described as significant “mitigating factors” that led him to state that charges were not warranted and would not have been warranted even if Biden were not president and barred from being prosecuted by Department of Justice policy.

More contentiously, the Republican prosecutor noted that Biden’s memory about the documents was “significantly limited” during his interviews with investigators and included details in the report about Biden’s presentation during interviews that appeared tailor-made to fit claims by former president Donald Trump and his allies that the president is not mentally competent.

At one point, he claimed that Biden did not remember what year his late son, Beau Biden, had died from brain cancer, and he described part of an interview in which the president, in his telling, had trouble keeping track of the years during which he served as vice president.

Responding, the president was having none of it.

Here’s Andrew Feinberg’s report.

The plaintiff offered a response to the Supreme Court’s 14th Amendment hearing from Mar-a-Lago yesterday, which involved him rattling off his usual list of conspiracy-addled grievances.

However, it also contained this apparent “gotcha” moment in which he inadvertently appeared to agree that the Capitol right was an attempted insurrection after all, something his supporters have been claiming was not true for around three years now.

The Republican front-runner also won the Nevada caucuses on Thursday, a victory even less surprising than his repeat performances in Iowa, New Hampshire, and earlier in the evening on the US Virgin Islands.

Here he is in Las Vegas, gloating over Haley’s primary loss, which was in fact on Tuesday night, not Wednesday.

John Bowden has this one.

You Know Who amassed another win at a Republican caucus held on Thursday in the US Virgin Islands, where officials flouted several GOP party rules, including holding the contest earlier than allowed.

The caucus is the third Republican contest held this election season with delegates at stake, with Trump receiving 73.98 per cent of the votes and Nikki Haley 26.02 per cent.

Here’s more.

US Supreme Court justices appeared to doubt state authority to disqualify Donald Trump from holding public office, after the former president challenged a landmark court ruling from Colorado’s highest court that found the former president ineligible for the presidency for his actions surrounding January 6.

A historic two-hour hearing at the nation’s highest court on Thursday heard oral arguments in a case that could determine whether the leading candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination for president can remain on ballots in primary elections.

In December, justices on Colorado’s Supreme Court disqualified Trump under the scope of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which holds that “no person” can hold any office, “civil or military, under the United States”, if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same”.

But both conservative and liberal justices on the nine-member US Supreme Court appeared to cast doubt on the ability of individual states to disqualify federal candidates without permission from Congress.

The justices will issue their decision in Trump v Anderson at a later date.

Alex Woodward was following the case closely.

After an eventful day in Trumpworld, here’s what The Donald had to say for himself.

Rudy Giuliani told a federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee owe him roughly $2m for a spurious legal battle to overturn election results in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

The former president’s one-time attorney testified for the first time about his strained financial state on Wednesday, nearly two months after he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the wake of a $148m defamation judgment for his election lies.

“I wouldn’t be bankrupt, up until that,” he told the court.

But Mr Giuliani has declined to hold the former president accountable for what he says are unpaid legal fees.

A Montana appliance store owner and supporter of former President Donald Trump was convicted Wednesday for his role in the January 6, 2021, breach of the US Capitol that interrupted certifying the 2020 Electoral College vote.

The US Attorney’s Office in Montana announced the verdict.

Henry Phillip Muntzer of Dillon was arrested based on social media posts and videos taken inside the Capitol, according to court records.

Muntzer, 55, was found guilty of obstructing an official proceeding and civil disorder, both felonies, following a bench trial before US District Court Judge Jia M. Cobb. Muntzer was also found guilty of four misdemeanour charges. Sentencing is set for June 20.

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Republican strategist Karl Rove blasted the “lunacy” of the “conspiratorial right” for bizarre theories that Michelle Obama would replace Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s 2024 candidate.

Mr Rove, former deputy chief of staff to George W Bush, was being interviewed by Stuart Varney on Fox Business when the host brought up the idea of the former first lady replacing the incumbent president on the ticket ahead of November’s election.

The conspiracy is not new, having been floated as recently as last month by Georgia Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, and surfacing ahead of other recent elections.

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