National security threat updates: White House confirms ‘concerning’ Russian weapons plan

Donald Trump’s request that the business fraud charges against him in relation to a 2016 hush money payment be thrown out has been denied and the judge in the case has announced that jury selection will begin on 25 March.

Judge Juan Merchan’s ruling means that it’s likely to become the first criminal prosecution of a former president.

The business fraud charges stem from a hush money payment to adult actor Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 election. She alleged that she had had an affair with Trump in the mid-2000s.

Gustaf Kilander reports.

The United States is “closely monitoring” Russian efforts to develop a new “anti-satellite” weapons capability that so alarmed the leader of the House Intelligence Committee that he went public and described it as a “national security threat,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Thursday.

The House Intelligence Panel chairman, Ohio Representative Mike Turner, drew attention to the threat earlier on Wednesday when he issued an unusually cryptic statement on the “serious national security threat” and called on Mr Biden to “declassify all information relating to this threat so that Congress, the Administration, and our allies can openly discuss the actions necessary to respond to this threat”.

According to ABC News, two sources described the threat at issue as emanating from Russia and involving plans to potentially use space-based nuclear weapons for anti-satellite purposes.

Mr Kirby did not say whether the threat in question was nuclear-based, but he did confirm to reporters at Thursday’s White House press briefing that the threat raised by Mr Turner is “related to an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing”.

He took pains to stress that the weapon is not one that Russia could use at this time.

“This is not an active capability that’s been deployed. And though Russia’s pursuit of this particular capability is troubling, there is no immediate threat to anyone’s safety,” he said.

“We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on Earth. That said, we’ve been closely monitoring this Russian activity and we will continue to take it very seriously”.

Mr Kirby told reporters the president has been kept “fully ... and regularly informed” on the developments related to this Russian capability by his national security team, and he stressed that Mr Biden has “directed a series of initial actions” in response, including “additional briefings to congressional leaders, direct diplomatic engagement with Russia, with our allies and our partners as well and with other countries around the world who have interests at stake”.

While White House officials have briefed Mr Turner, House Intelligence Committee ranking member Jim Himes, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on the threat, and Mr Turner has in turn allowed each member of the House to view the classified intelligence at issue, Mr Kirby said the Biden administration would not be taking immediate action to declassify the intelligence that Mr Turner thrust into the public eye on Wednesday.

He told reporters that the US Intelligence Community has “serious concerns about a broad declassification of this intelligence,” and he explained that intelligence officials believe “private engagement” would be a better course of action than working swiftly to declassify and publicise the information at issue.

“We make decisions about how and when to publicly disclose intelligence in a careful, deliberate and strategic way, in a way that we choose,” he said. “We’re not going to be knocked off that process, regardless of what in this particular case has found its way into the public domain”.

He added that the administration would “continue to keep members of Congress as well as our international partners and all of you and the American people as fully informed as possible”.

Donald Trump boasted that he did “nothing” to alter the Second Amendment during his time as president – just hours after a mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade left one person dead and dozens more injured.

Horror unfolded on Wednesday when gunfire broke out close to Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri.

Police said that 22 were shot including one woman – local radio DJ Lisa Lopez-Galvan – who died from her injuries. Nine children were among those treated for gunshot wounds.

Three individuals, who have not been named, were detained by police for questioning.

None of which stopped the Republican presidential candidate bragging about his administration’s failure to address gun violence between 2017 and 2021.

Here’s our report.

More from Miss Greene, who, in addition to picking a fight with Britain, has also called out Larry David, which is perhaps even more ill-advised.

Hard-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has said British foreign secretary Lord Cameron “can kiss my a**” after he urged Congress to pass aid to Ukraine and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, citing the appeasement of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in the lead-up to the Second World War.

Gustaf Kilander has more.

Here’s a significant endorsement for the president from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the young New York progressive who was not always seen eye-to-eye with his policy positions.

A new Monouth University Poll shows that just under one in five Americans believe Taylor Swift is involved in a “covert effort” to help President Biden’s re-election campaign.

Of those polled, 71 per cent of those who believe this theory identify as or lean Republican — and 83 per cent say they are likely to support Donald Trump in November.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, almost three-quarters of those who believe the Swift conspiracy also think the 2020 election result was fraudulent.

“The supposed Taylor Swift PsyOp conspiracy has legs among a decent number of Trump supporters. Even many who hadn’t heard about it before we polled them accept the idea as credible. Welcome to the 2024 election,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

At the same time, 68 per cent of the American public supports the singer encouraging her fans to vote in the upcoming election.

Here’s the president swearing off malarkey.

Trump’s rival for the Republican presidential nomination Nikki Haley is going all in on what she sees as the safest line of attack against him — questions about his mental fitness and temperament in a year where the incumbent Democratic president is facing similar concerns.

The former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador sat down with NBC’s Craig Melvin for an interview with the Today show this week as she prepares for a showdown with Trump in her home state that is a litte more than a week away.

The primary election in South Carolina could be a jolt in the arm of her campaign as she continues to steeply trail the frontrunner — or, it could be the death knell of her presidential bid.

It could also be neither of those things, as she marches on towards Super Tuesday in March.

Haley made some of her most forceful criticism of Trump’s mental state yet during the interview and John Bowden was watching.

The Senate majority leader is distinctly unimpressed with the move by House Republicans to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday evening.

“The one and only reason for this impeachment is for Speaker Johnson to further appease Donald Trump,” Chuck Schumer said after the House voted along party lines, 214-213, to impeach Mayorkas on a charge of refusing to enforce immigration law at the US southern border with Mexico and breaching the public trust.

Schumer said the evidence presented by House Republicans falls well short of the high crimes or misdemeanours standard demanded by the Constitution.

“House Republicans failed to produce any evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has committed any crime,” the New York Democrat said.

“House Republicans failed to show he has violated the Constitution. House Republicans failed to present evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense,” he fumed.

“This is a new low for House Republicans.”

The impeachment motion will also certainly now be buried alive in the Senate and achieve precisely nothing.

Here’s even Speaker Johnson admitting it amounted to a “desperate measure”.