Trump news - live: Trump to testify in E Jean Carroll defamation case as feds raid Pence home

Like most State of the Union speeches, this one was notable not for its content but for the drama that was unleashed on the margins. It began with a CNN report that Mitt Romney had gone up to George Santos in the chamber and told him, “You don’t belong here,” and it ended with Marjorie Taylor Greene heckling the president while dressed as Cruella de Vil.

But let’s rewind. Al Weaver, a reporter at The Hill who covers the Senate, asked Romney to confirm whether he had called Santos “an embarrassment”, and got the reply: “I don’t know the exact words I said. He shouldn’t have been there. Look, he’s a sick puppy. He shouldn’t have been there.”

Mitt clearly hadn’t gotten the memo that you shouldn’t mention sick puppies around George Santos. (For anyone who hasn’t been following the latest on Congress’s most fascinating liar, one of the many, many allegations recently made against Santos is that he stole $3,000 from a GoFundMe intended for a veteran’s sick dog. Then again, Santos has never admitted to those allegations – whereas Romney himself once readily admitted to strapping the family dog to the luggage rack of his car before driving six hours down the highway.)

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Donald Trump’s former national security adviser has been subpoenaed in special counsel probes investigating the former president, according to reports – which came just hours after it emerged a subpoena had been served to former vice president Mike Pence.

Robert O’Brien, who served as national security advisor from 2019 to 2021 under the Trump administration, was served a subpoena by special counsel Jack Smith in both his investigation into the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago and the probe into Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

A source familiar with the matter told CNN that Mr O’Brien has so far been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are asking of him.

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Donald Trump‘s former lawyer Michael Cohen said he was meeting yet again Wednesday with New York City prosecutors who have spent years examining the former president’s financial dealings.

Cohen stopped briefly to talk with reporters as he entered the Manhattan district attorney’s office. He said it was the 15th time he had met with prosecutors.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg recently convened a new grand jury to hear evidence related to payments Cohen helped arrange in 2016 to two women who claimed to have had sexual encounters with Trump.

“I don’t know why I’m here yet. We’ll find out as soon as I get upstairs,” Cohen said.

Cohen was previously one of Trump’s top lieutenants, acting as a liaison with the media and handling some of his legal and business affairs. But after federal prosecutors charged Cohen with tax evasion and criminal campaign finance violations, the two have become enemies.

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Donald Trump has so far remained silent on his newly-restored Facebook and Instagram accounts – despite the revelation that two of his administration’s top officials have been subpoenaed in special counsel probes investigating the former president.

On Thursday, Mr Trump officially had his Facebook and Instagram accounts restored by Meta after a two-year ban following the January 6 US Capitol riot.

The social media giant said in January that the one-term president would have his suspension lifted “in the coming weeks” and his accounts became active again on Thursday.

Mr Trump, who has announced he is running again for the White House in 2024, now has access again to a Facebook account which in January had 34 million followers and 23 million on Instagram.

Sir Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister who is now Meta’s president for global affairs, announced in a January blog post that the company had made the decision after assessing “whether the serious risk to public safety that existed in January 2021” had “sufficiently receded”.

As of around 6am ET on Friday, Mr Trump was yet to make a return to the accounts – with the last posts on the page still being his final posts on January 6 2021.

The image amplified by Mr Trump on Tuesday was shared by a Truth Social user whose other posts include a claim that he is a “soldier for Trump ready to go on a battlefield and shed blood”.

The unverified photo links back to a 2021 report on Mr DeSantis from a site called Hill Reporter, a blog from a Democratic super PAC.

The article cites anonymous sources and claims that someone with “close knowledge of the matter” said Mr DeSantis “had a reputation among students for being a young ‘hot teacher’ who girls loved, and the girls in the photo are believed to have graduated in 2002, making them seniors at the time.”

Last year, the New York Times reported that after Mr DeSantis graduated from college, he spent time teaching at the Darlington School in Georgia as a 23-year-old, where he had a reputation for attending parties with seniors who lived nearby.

“As an 18-year-old, I remember thinking, ‘What are you doing here, dude?’” one former student told the paper.

Others said his alleged presence at the parties, including at least two where alcohol was served, wasn’t unwelcomed.

Maryland congressman and former January 6 committee member Jamie Raskin hammered former Twitter executives at a GOP-led House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Mr Raskin argued at the hearing that “rather than conspiring to suppress right-wing MAGA speech, as my colleagues astonishingly claim, Twitter and other media companies knowingly facilitated Trump’s spread of disinformation”.

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Democratic US Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticised Twitter for its refusal to permanently suspend an influential account linked to anti-LGBT+ smears and threats of violence, including bomb threats at children’s hospitals.

During a House Oversight Committee hearing on 8 February, the New York congresswoman questioned former executives at the social media platform why “Libs of TikTok” was allowed to falsely suggest that Boston Children’s Hospital was performing hysterectomies on transgender children, claims that allegedly fuelled threats and harassment towards the hospital and its staff.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez asked Twitter’s former head of safety Yoel Roth why the account was not suspended “despite inspiring a bomb threat due to the right-wing incitement of violence against trans Americans.” Mr Roth said that “regrettably” the account remained active.

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A whistleblower has revealed that Donald Trump asked Twitter to take down a tweet from Chrissy Teigen because he felt it was “derogatory” towards him.

In 2019, Mr Trump had tweeted about the model and TV personality, calling her the “filthy-mouthed wife” of her husband John Legend.

Teigen famously responded calling the then-president a “pussy a** b****.”

During testimony at a House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Wednesday, former Twitter employee Anika Navaroli said that the Trump White House had contacted the social media platform requesting Teigen’s post be removed.

“In that particular instance, I do remember hearing that we had received a request from the White House to make sure that we evaluated this tweet and that they wanted it to come down because it was a derogatory statement directed toward the president,” she said.

The revelation came as the House committee kicked off its hearings into Twitter’s role in restricting access to a New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop – something Mr Trump and other Republicans have slammed as censorship.

The testimony indicated that the Trump White House actually engaged in efforts at censorship.

Sen Steve Daines of Montana had his Twitter account suspended for several hours on Tuesday for violating the company’s sensitive media policy.

It is believed that the affronting photograph was Mr Daines’ profile picture, which shows him and his wife in hunting gear posing with a dead animal. Mr Daines’ campaign account, which shows him shooting a gun, was not suspended.

“We don’t allow images of dead animals or blood in profile photos because we are unable to label them as NSFW and keep them from being seen by users who specifically don’t want to see graphic images,” Twitter’s Vice President for Trust and Safety Ella Irwin wrote to Mr Daines’ Senate office, in a message explaining the suspension that was reported by CNN.

The profile picture appears to show flecks of blood on the animal’s leg that become more apparent upon zooming in on the photograph. Mr Daines appears to be holding the animal’s head up.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee did not take kindly to the suspension or the explanation.

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