Haley plans to vote for her former rival Trump in November. He has announced that if he is re-elected, he wants to pardon the life-sentenced Silk Road founder Ulbricht. All news about the US election in the ticker.
Monday, May 27, 2024, 7:22 a.m.: Former US President Donald Trump has announced that if he wins the election again, he will pardon the founder of the illegal online trading platform Silk Road, who was sentenced to life imprisonment. “If you vote for me, I will commute Ross Ulbricht’s sentence on day one,” Trump said Saturday in Washington at the Libertarian Party convention, where he was seeking support in the November presidential election.
Ulbricht ran the drug trafficking hub Silk Road on the Internet and became a millionaire. In addition to drugs, users on the website could also buy weapons and fake IDs and hire hitmen. The transactions were carried out using the digital currency Bitcoin. In 2015, Ulbricht was convicted of, among other things, drug trafficking and sentenced to two life sentences.
Republican Trump was repeatedly booed during his appearance at the Libertarian Party. By announcing that he would ensure Ulbricht’s release, he brought the members of the small party to his side. There was even a moment of cheering in the hall.
There is a lot of support for Ulbricht in libertarian circles: his conviction is criticized as excessive government intervention in the free market economy by libertarians who advocate an unregulated economy, the legalization of drugs and the abolition of welfare benefits.
Thursday, May 23, 2024, 7:07 a.m.: Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley says she wants to vote for her former rival Donald Trump in the US election in November. President Joe Biden is “a disaster,” Haley said Wednesday at a conservative think tank event. “Therefore, I will vote for Trump.” Haley ended months of silence after dropping out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination in March.
However, Trump should “reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they will rally behind him,” warned the former governor of the state of South Carolina, who left the race at the beginning of March had dropped out of the US presidential candidacy.
Haley said she is prioritizing “a president who (…) secures the border” and “supports capitalism and freedom.” Trump has not been perfect on these matters, “I’ve made that clear many, many times,” Haley continued. However, Biden is “a disaster,” so she will vote for Trump.
Haley is popular with moderate Republican voters – votes that Democratic incumbent President Biden could steal from Trump. Trump had said he would not consider Haley for vice president.
Wednesday, May 22nd, 2:27 p.m.: Former US President Donald Trump’s private lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has rejected allegations of attempted manipulation of the 2020 presidential election in an Arizona state court. Giuliani made his brief statement via video link on Tuesday. Like him, ten co-defendants pleaded not guilty at the same court date.
The court in Phoenix ordered former New York Mayor Giuliani to post bail of $10,000 (around 9,200 euros) after he dodged a court summons for days and even sent provocative messages to the public prosecutor’s office on online networks. According to a report by the TV channel CNN, the subpoena was finally served to Giuliani during a party on Friday in the US state of Florida for his 80th birthday.
Giuliani played a leading role in Trump’s massive attempts to overturn his election defeat against current President Joe Biden. In Arizona, Giuliani and a total of 17 other representatives of the Trump camp are accused of conspiring against the election. The Republican Trump had narrowly lost in the southwestern state, which was a decisive factor in the overall victory of the Democrat Biden in the election.
The Arizona public prosecutor’s office accuses Giuliani, among other things, of putting pressure on officials to subsequently change the election outcome in Trump’s favor. As part of the alleged plot, according to the prosecution, Trump supporters were also supposed to be sent as illegitimate Arizona representatives to the electoral college, which ultimately elects the president based on the results in the individual states.
Among the co-defendants who had a court date with Giuliani on Tuesday were nine of these alleged “false electors.” Those charged in Arizona with alleged attempts to manipulate the election also include Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and his former campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn.
Trump, who will most likely run against Biden again in the presidential election next November, continues to claim that he was actually cheated out of an election victory in 2020. However, his allegations of electoral fraud have been repeatedly and clearly refuted.
Trump himself is also facing criminal charges in the US state of Georgia and in a federal court in Washington for his attempts to subsequently overturn the election results. However, it is uncertain when the trials for these two lawsuits could begin.
4:40 p.m.: Donald Trump will not testify as a witness in the hush money trial. On Tuesday, his lawyers ended questioning witnesses without calling the former US president to the witness stand. The judge then scheduled the closing arguments for next Tuesday.
In the first criminal trial in history against a former US president, Trump is accused of using falsified business documents to cover up a hush money payment to former porn actress Stormy Daniels and thereby illegally interfering in the presidential election.
The payment persuaded the former porn actress to keep quiet about an alleged sex affair she said she had with the real estate mogul in 2006. Trump denies any sexual contact with the woman.
Tuesday, May 21, 9:47 a.m.: According to media reports, former US President Donald Trump wants to take action against a film that portrays him in a negative light. “We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false claims made by these alleged filmmakers,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Variety.
It’s about the film “The Apprentice,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday evening. Iranian director Ali Abbasi’s work is a biopic of Trump in his younger years, set in the 1970s and 1980s as he was expanding his real estate business in New York. The film portrays Trump as some sort of ruthless monster.
In one scene, as a character in “The Apprentice,” he rapes his former wife Ivana Trump, and in another, he is seen having liposuction performed. The Romanian-American actor Sebastian Stan portrays the now 77-year-old. Trump is running again as a candidate in the presidential election in November and is currently facing trial in a hush money lawsuit.
5:34 p.m.: US President Joe Biden has announced a TV duel with Donald Trump on X. On Now it’s your turn, Donald. Like you said: anywhere, anytime, anywhere.” Trump responded on Fox News Digital, saying, “I’ll be there.” He was looking forward to “being in beautiful Atlanta.” CNN confirmed the date.
The two had previously teased each other. “Let’s set the dates, Donald,” Biden said in a video clip posted on the X platform. The 81-year-old teased: “I heard that you always have time on Wednesdays.” Trump is currently having to answer in court in a criminal case in New York – and Wednesdays are usually not a trial day.
Trump reacted immediately on the social media platform Truth Social, which he founded, and wrote there that he was ready for debates on the proposed dates. However, he advocated holding more than two debates and choosing “a very large venue for the sake of excitement,” even if Biden was apparently afraid of crowds. “Just tell me when,” he wrote to Biden. “I’ll be there.”
Wednesday, May 15, 7:06 a.m.: Donald Trump’s hush money trial depends on the credibility of the key witness. The ex-president’s defense is now trying to destroy it. Some answers, however, cause amusement.
Read more: Former lawyer Michael Cohen – Trump key witness under cross-examination: “You called me a little bastard?”
Tuesday, May 14, 2024, 3:01 a.m.: In the criminal trial against former US President Donald Trump, key witness Michael Cohen testified, accompanied by huge media interest, about details about the hush money payments to a porn actress. Shortly before the 2016 US election, then presidential candidate Trump ordered him to pay erotic star Stormy Daniels and promised a refund of the money, Cohen said in court in New York on Monday. Journalists present reported this unanimously. Trump was personally present in the hall, but mostly appeared uninvolved. Cohen will continue his testimony this Tuesday.
At the time, Daniels wanted to sell her story of an alleged affair with Trump to the media. According to his own statements, Trump then instructed his lawyer Cohen to transfer $130,000 to buy her silence. “Just do it,” Trump said to Cohen – and also agreed to refund the money.
Cohen is seen as a central figure in establishing a direct link between Trump and the hush money payments to Daniels. Prosecutors accuse Trump of trying to improve his chances of winning the 2016 presidential election by paying porn actress Daniels $130,000. Although the payment itself was not illegal, the now 77-year-old is said to have manipulated documents when refunding the amount to Cohen in order to conceal the true reason for the transaction. This made the payments illegal campaign financing.