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

Donald Trump’s political action committees have spent nearly $1m at Trump-owned properties since the former president left office, according to Federal Election Commission filings reported by HuffPost.

The money was spent at properties such as Mr Trump’s hotel on Central Park in New York City and his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Donald Trump was very active on Tuesday as his 2020 rival Joe Biden delivered his second State of the Union speech from Capitol Hill.

The former president (and current 2024 candidate) attempted to capture headlines and public attention with a long thread of live commentary meant to accompany his political foe’s address. Few saw it, however, as the former president remains inactive on Twitter after being unbanned by Elon Musk.

“Having a hard time getting the words out, even though the Fake News will credit him with one of the Great Speeches of all time. I really want to see him improve. Come one Joe, you can do it!” he wrote in one Truth Social post.

But that was far from the extent of the ex-president’s attempts to hug the spotlight on Tuesday. While Mr Biden spoke, his 2024 campaign released a flurry of press releases — eight in total — touting various accomplishments and goings-on of the Trump presidency.

Mr Trump also attacked Mr Biden and his campaign for supposedly coordinating with social media companies to censor conservatives — though there’s no evidence that’s true, beyond some instances where the Biden campaign sought to have explicit images of the president’s son removed from Twitter.

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A madcap House Oversight Committee hearing about a two-year-old New York Post story Republicans hoped would deal a fatal blow to Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign has been condemned as a “bizarre political stunt” by the White House.

The Wednesday morning hearing, which Oversight chairman James Comer said would be the first in a series examining issues related to Mr Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, focused on Twitter executives’ temporary move to block distribution of an October 2020 Post story purporting to reveal email messages from Hunter Biden to an executive at the Ukrainian gas company he represented as an attorney and later served as a board member.

In his opening statement, Mr Comer called the session a “first step in examining the coordination between the federal government and Big Tech to restrict protected speech and interfere in the democratic process” and claimed social media companies are “under the control of people who are hostile to the fundamental American principles of free speech and expression protected in the U.S. Constitution”.

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Florida governor Ron DeSantis said he’s too busy “delivering results” to respond to Donald Trump’s recent social media post amplifying a suggestion the Republican leader “groomed” teen girls and drank with his students while he was a high school teacher.

The ugly attack came this week as new polls have shown Mr DeSantis leading the former president in a head-to-head matchup for the 2024 nomination.

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Donald Trump has finally offered to hand over his DNA in his upcoming rape trial with E Jean Carroll – but only after the deadline passed to submit evidence in the case.

Attorneys for the former president said last week that he had finally agreed to take a DNA test so that his sample can be compared to a dress Ms Carroll says she was wearing at the time of the alleged sexual assault, reported The Daily Beast.

Ms Carroll, who was a TV talk show host at the time, says that she and Mr Trump randomly bumped into each other and they got chatting, before Mr Trump pinned her against a wall in a dressing room and sexually assaulted her.

Mr Trump denies the claims.

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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.

Cohen testified before Congress that Trump’s company misled banks and others about the value of its assets, helping to spur investigations that led to the Trump Organization’s conviction in December on charges that it helped some of its executives avoid personal income taxes.

The existence of the new grand jury was previously confirmed by two people familiar with the investigation, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the secret proceeding.

Trump has denied having extramarital affairs with either of the women — porn star Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal. Trump’s lawyers have said the payments were legal and that the investigation is politically motivated.

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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Florida governor Ron DeSantis said he’s too busy “delivering results” to respond to Donald Trump’s recent social media post amplifying a suggestion the Republican leader “groomed” teen girls and drank with his students while he was a high school teacher.

“I spend my time delivering results for the people of Florida and fighting against Joe Biden. That’s how I spend my time,” Mr DeSantis said at a press conference on Wednesday.

“I don’t spend my time trying to smear other Republicans.”

The Independent’s Josh Marcus has the story:

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN that President Joe Biden would face no Democratic primary challenger in 2024, after his State of the Union address.

Ms Pelosi, who stepped aside as leader of House Democrats but whom the caucus elevated to the honorary title of Speaker Emerita, spoke to CNN after the president delivered his joint address to Congress.

The address comes as Mr Biden weighs whether to run for a second term in 2024. But Ms Pelosi told CNN she did not think that Mr Biden would face any Democratic challenger.

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Chrissy Teigen reacted in disbelief after an old tweet of hers was quoted during the House Oversight Committee hearing in the US.

As part of the House Republicans’ newly launched investigation into US President Joe Biden and the Democrats, Wednesday’s (8 February) hearing examined Twitter executives’ temporary move to block distribution of a 2020 story by the New York Post about Hunter Biden.

The article claimed to show emails from Hunter to an executive at a Ukrainian gas company he represented as an attorney and later served as a board member for.

The Independent’s Inga Parkel has the story: