Trump indicates he expects to be arrested in federal January 6 investigation as rivals distance themselves – live

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Wisconsin‘s top elections official met with special counsel Jack Smith’s team and the FBI as part of the investigation into the 2020 election, according to a statement.

Wisconsin elections commission administrator, Meagan Wolfe, spoke to federal prosecutors in person in April, her spokesperson said. Wolfe, who was subpoenaed in April, declined further comment, noting that it was an ongoing investigation.

Election leaders in Wisconsin’s two largest cities, Milwaukee and Madison, have also spoken with investigators as part of the justice department’s probe into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Trump paid for recounts in those two cities and unsuccessfully sued in an attempt to get enough ballots tossed to overturn his loss. Joe Biden won Wisconsin by nearly 21,000 votes.

Investigators have also spoken with the leader of elections in New Mexico, Michigan and Georgia.

Special counsel Jack Smith has not commented on whether his team sent a letter to Donald Trump and his lawyers identifying him as a “target” in the justice department’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection.

John Eastman, the lawyer who advised Donald Trump on overturning the 2020 election, has not received a target letter from the special counsel, Eastman’s attorney said.

Eastman was in the vanguard of lawyers plotting schemes involving “fake electors” and other ploys to help Trump thwart Joe Biden’s win in 2020. The former California law professor is one of several lawyers whose legal stratagems have been heavily examined by special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump and his allies’ efforts to block Biden from taking office.

A statement from Eastman’s lawyer reads:

Our client has received no target letter, and we don’t expect one since raising concerns about illegality in the conduct of an election is not now and has never been sanctionable.

As we mentioned earlier, Donald Trump‘s lawyers, including Todd Blanche, are believed to have received the so-called target letter on Sunday informing them that their client could face charges in special counsel Jack Smith‘s investigation into the January 6 insurrection.

The letter caught Trump’s team off guard, who had not been anticipating Smith to potentially bring charges this month, or against Trump, according to a CNN report. The letter now indicates he could do so soon.

The White House media briefing is under way, and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wasted no time in tearing into Republican Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville for holding up military appointments.

Tuberville is blocking the appointments in protest of Pentagon policy on abortion.

Jean-Pierre points out that the hold-up is affecting the nation’s military readiness:

I would imagine our adversaries would look at something like this and be pretty happy that we create this kind of turbulence within our force.

Americans are deeply concerned at the damage Senator Tuberville’s holes can have on our armed services, and our military spouses and the children of servicemembers with his disrespect to our national security and our military.

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In some of the day’s least surprising news, Donald Trump is fundraising off his letter from justice department special prosecutor Jack Smith naming him as a target in the January 6 investigation.

His campaign has sent out emails to supporters insisting the former president is “completely innocent”, and asking for donations.

The text of the email mostly mirrors that of the statement Trump posted to his Truth Social network earlier today, calling Smith “deranged”, and lamenting how he was disturbed by his attorneys with Smith’s letter bearing “horrifying news” while attempting to eat dinner with his family.

“Let me be perfectly clear: I did nothing wrong,” Trump says, in all-capital letters.

Ron DeSantis is formally a candidate in South Carolina’s 2024 presidential primary after the Republican Florida governor filed paperwork during a campaign stop on Tuesday.

He’s the first presidential candidate from either major political party on the ballot for the primary, which will take place on 3 February, the first of any other southern state.

DeSantis is a distant second place to former president Donald Trump in polling after a lackluster start to a campaign launched in May.

Later on Tuesday, at 4pm, he will take part in an interview on CNN with host Jake Tapper, DeSantis’s first appearance on a major news network outside of Fox News.

Trump’s campaign doesn’t think anybody will be watching.

In a statement, senior adviser Jason Miller said: “DeSantis could have easily joined one of CNN’s high-profile primetime hosts and reached millions of new voters if he had something compelling to say, but with an unlikable candidate, no campaign message, and rapidly sinking poll numbers, the campaign is doing an afternoon hit that nobody will watch.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s daily briefing is scheduled to begin in just a few moments, at which she might be asked – but almost certainly won’t answer – questions about Donald Trump’s letter from justice department special counsel Jack Smith.

Many reporters have tried, but the Biden administration’s response has always been consistent… a blunt “no comment” on matters affecting the former president’s legal troubles.

Today is not expected to be any different. But we’ll monitor the briefing anyway, and bring you any developments as they happen.

Where has special prosecutor Jack Smith been amid today’s kerfuffle over his “target” letter to Donald Trump? At a Washington DC area sandwich shop, it seems.

CNN’s congressional sleuths tracked Smith, and apparently some of his colleagues, to a Subway store in the capital, from which he emerged clutching a brown paper bag probably containing his lunch. What might be in the sandwich, however, is not ours to know.

Here’s the “exclusive” clip of the very moment Smith exited the store:

US district judge Aileen Cannon previously presided over a legal challenge that the Trump team filed last year concerning the August 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.

Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump during his presidency, ruled in the former president’s favor in a challenge he brought to the justice department’s investigation brought months before criminal charges were filed.

A three-judge federal appeals court later overruled Cannon’s order and said she had lacked the authority for such a ruling.

Cannon’s ruling drew criticism from legal experts who saw her as overly preferential to Trump, according to AP. It also focused public attention on her limited experience as a judge, particularly in hugely sensitive national security matters.

US district judge Aileen Cannon will hear arguments on a procedural, but potentially crucial, area of the law known as the Classified Information Procedures Act.

Another issue that could come up during today’s session is the trial date. Cannon initially scheduled the trial to start on 14 August – a date that both the defense and prosecution opposed because they said they needed more time to prepare.

Lawyers for Trump have suggested that the trial be postponed until after next year’s presidential election. In a filing last week, Trump’s attorneys suggested holding the trial before the 2024 election is complete could impact the election’s outcome and make it hard for Trump to get a fair jury. They also argued that Trump’s side could not properly prepare for a trial by December because he will be busy with his campaign and is also facing several other court cases.

Prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith have proposed that the trial begin on 11 December. They have pushed back on the defense suggestions, writing that “there is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion, and the Defendants provide none.”

Cannon’s decision will be more than just a question of timing, as Politico writes.

Postponing the trial until after the election could allow Trump — if he wins a second term — to have the case dropped altogether or pardon himself before he might face jail time.

Donald Trump‘s lawyers are due in court in Florida today for a federal court hearing, presided over by US district judge Aileen Cannon, marking the first pretrial conference in the former president’s criminal case concerning the mishandling of classified documents.

The hearing is scheduled to begin at 2pm EST. Trump is not expected to attend the hearing as he is scheduled to travel to Iowa today, where he is taping a town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

As we reported earlier, Tuesday’s session is a routine subject for any prosecution that concerns classified information. But it is notable because it will be Cannon’s first time hearing arguments in the case since Trump’s indictment last month.

Trump and his codefendant and aide, Walt Nauta, have pleaded not guilty to a 38-count indictment that accuses them of unlawfully retaining national defense documents after Trump left office and of conspiring to obstruct government efforts to retrieve them.

Col Isaac Taylor, spokesperson for the US military in South Korea and UN Command, declined to confirm the individual believed to have been taken into North Korean custody was an American soldier. He said:

We’re still doing some research into this and everything that happened.

The White House, state department and Pentagon did not immediately comment. The state department tells US nationals not to enter North Korea “due to the continuing serious risk of arrest and long term detention”.

The South Korean defence ministry said it did not immediately have any information on the case.

Defections by Americans or South Koreans to North Korea are rare. Since the end of the Korean war, which was fought between 1950 and 1953, more than 30,000 North Koreans have fled south to avoid political oppression and economic hardship. In November 2017, North Korean soldiers fired 40 rounds as a colleague attempted to cross the border. The soldier was hit five times but survived.

Numbers of defectors have fallen recently, in large part due to North Korean precautions over the Covid-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, foreign embassies in Pyongyang closed down.

During the cold war, a small number of US soldiers defected to North Korea. Among them was Charles Jenkins, who deserted his post in 1965 and crossed the DMZ. He appeared in North Korean propaganda films and married a Japanese nursing student who had been abducted by North Korean agents. He died in Japan in 2017.

Panmunjom was created inside the demilitarised zone (DMZ) at the close of the war. No civilians live in the area, which is jointly overseen by the UN Command and North Korea. Bloodshed and gunfire have occurred there.

A US soldier who crossed into North Korea during a tour of the demilitarised zone (DMZ) Tuesday was believed to have been taken into custody, creating a fresh headache for the Joe Biden White House amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.

UN Command, which oversees the DMZ between South Korea and North Korea, said:

A US national on a [joint security area] orientation tour crossed, without authorisation, the military demarcation line into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

We believe he is currently in DPRK custody and are working with our [Korean People’s Army] counterparts to resolve this incident.

US officials told news outlets the individual who crossed into North Korea was a US soldier.An official told Reuters the soldier crossed into North Korea “willfully and without authorization”.

South Korean media named the individual, then deleted the name from reports. According to Reuters, the Donga and Chosun Ilbo newspapers cited South Korean army sources when they said the man was with a group of visitors, including civilians, to the Panmunjom truce village “when he suddenly bolted over the brick line marking the border”.

Two US officials, speaking anonymously, told Reuters the soldier had been due to face disciplinary action. It was not clear how the soldier arranged to participate in the tour.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Donald Trump “should have come out more forcefully” to stop the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January, but said the former president’s actions did not amount to criminal behavior.

DeSantis, speaking at an event at South Carolina’s GOP headquarters, said:

I think it was shown how he was in the White House and didn’t do anything while things were going on. He should have come out more forcefully […] but to try to criminalize that – that’s a different issue entirely.

From the Washington Post’s Dylan Wells:

DeSantis went on to say:

Criminal charges is not just because you may have done something wrong, it’s – did you behave criminally. What we’ve seen in this country is an attempt to criminalize politics and to try to criminalize differences.