DeSantis news – latest: Florida governor most popular with rich Republicans as he defends move to fly migrants to California

Three more post-lunch Truth Social missals from Donald Trump on the 2024 campaign trail today, both attacking Ron DeSantis.

In the first, the former president claims DeSantis’s donors have fled “do [sic] to his terrible, and still falling, poll numbers”.

In the second, he says that DeSantis’s top political strategist believes the Florida governor should drop out of the race and then teases that he may — or may not — take part in the Republican Party primary debates.

He adds that he would rather go head-to-head with Mr DeSantis.

Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday afternoon to make it clear that a photo circulating of January 6 defendant Taylor Taranto standing with a cardboard cutout of the former president was indeed a cardboard cutout and not actually him.

He wrote:

Mr Trump linked to a Gateway Pundit article that features the photo prominently at the top. It appears to come from one of Mr Taranto’s social media accounts and is clearly him at an event, holding a glass of red wine and standing with a cardboard cutout of the former president.

Here’s some of our recent coverage of Mr Taranto and how Mr Trump and former President Barack Obama fit into the bizarre case that stretches well beyond the January 6 Capitol riot.

While Mr Trump’s former secretary of defence Mark Esper said he thought the former president may have kept the documents to further his own financial well-being in some way, Mr Christie had his own theory to put forward...

Iowa Republicans have voted to hold their first-in-the-nation caucuses on 15 January 2024.

This is the earliest start to the presidential nominating process since 2012, when caucusgoers gathered on 3 January.

The State Central Committee of the Iowa GOP met today and voted unanimously for the date.

Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann issued the following statement in response: “The Republican Party of Iowa is proud to announce that we will officially hold our 2024 First-in-the-Nation Caucus on January 15, 2024.

“After our state legislature and governor took needed action earlier this year to preempt Iowa Democrats’ plans to derail the Iowa Caucus by running a de facto primary election instead, we are also proud to affirm that Iowa will continue to honour our half-century-old promises to the other carve-out states.

“We remain committed to maintaining Iowa’s cherished First-in-the-Nation Caucuses, and look forward to holding a historic caucus in the coming months and defeating Joe Biden come November 2024.”

Maryland Rep Jamie Raskin, a congressman from the suburbs of the nation’s capital, announced Friday he will not run for the US Senate seat that is opening with the retirement of Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland.

Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Reform Committee who is in his fourth term, had been weighing a run for the rarely open Senate seat but said in a statement on Friday evening that he would instead seek reelection in the House.

Raskin announced in April that he had completed chemotherapy for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma with a 90 per cent prognosis of no relapse and that his cancer was in remission. It was the second time Raskin had been diagnosed with cancer. He previously battled colorectal cancer in 2010.

Raskin, 60, played a leading role in recent years as House Democrats twice impeached then-President Donald Trump and investigated Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection. He was the lead impeachment manager when the House impeached Trump one week after the attack.

So far, Rep David Trone and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks have announced candidacies for the Democratic primary for the Senate seat. Montgomery County Council member Will Jawando also is running.

AP

Remember the controversy when Trump and Sarah Palin ate New York pizza slices with knives and forks?

Same vibe right here:

A District of Columbia federal judge on Thursday said former president Donald Trump can be made to give evidence in a deposition as part of a lawsuit against the Department of Justice by ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok.

Andrew Feinberg has the details.

In complaining about the $9m cost of the investigations into his actions relating to the 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents, former president Donald Trump managed to score something of an own-goal by comparing them to the probe into the discovery of a small number of classified papers in the possession of Joe Biden.

If Special Counsel Jack Smith has racked up costs of $9m it is simply because of the sprawling nature of the investigation, across multiple states, and that it is two-pronged (the documents and the alleged 2020 election interference).

One of Trump’s latest posts highlights how serious allegations are against him, versus the limited nature of the Biden probe:

It may not be the point he was trying to make, but it’s the most self-evident conclusion from the figures released by the Justice Department.

Smith has also been digging into efforts by Trump and his allies to undo President Joe Biden’s election victory.

Since Smith’s appointment, he has cast a broad net in demanding interviews and testimony related to fundraising, Trump’s rally that preceded the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, and communications between Trump associates and election officials in battleground states.

In December, Smith subpoenaed local election officials in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania, asking for communications with or involving Trump, his 2020 campaign aides and a list of allies who were involved in his efforts to try to overturn the results of the election.

The Justice Department also released details on Friday about spending on the investigation led by former Maryland U.S. Attorney Robert Hur into the presence of documents with classified markings found at President Joe Biden’s home in Delaware and at an office in Washington. Hur’s team spent about $600,000 and another $570,000 was spent in Justice Department support expenses in the first roughly two months of that probe.

In comparison, Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to tilt the outcome of the election in his favor cost roughly $32 million, according to Justice Department documents. The Mueller investigation resulted in roughly three dozen criminal charges, including convictions of a half-dozen Trump associates.

Meanwhile, Special Counsel John Durham’s recently concluded four-year investigation into possible government mistakes and misconduct in the probe into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign cost more than $9 million. Durham’s report, released in May, said that the FBI rushed into its Russia investigation and relied too much on raw and unconfirmed intelligence. Durham’s investigation led to prosecutors securing a guilty plea from a little-known FBI employee but losing the only two criminal cases they took to trial.

AP