Trump won’t answer Jan 6 question in ‘Meet the Press’ interview – live

A Republican senator condemned members of his party making “stupid” comments about the FBI and Department of Justice in response to the agencies’ prosecutions of Donald Trump.

Chuck Grassley of Iowa was speaking with a local PBS station on Friday when he was asked about Republicans in his party, including presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy, who have staked out various extreme positions against federal law enforcement agencies as they carry on a naked effort to court supporters of Donald Trump, who currently faces criminal charges stemming from two federal cases.

Mr Ramaswamy has taken perhaps the most extreme position: Support for eliminating the FBI entirely.

Federal prosecutors are asking the judge overseeing a case targeting Donald Trump’s alleged efforts to subvert the outcome of the 2020 presidential election to help stop his wave of “inflammatory” attacks.

Following a grand jury’s indictment in the case, the former president has “repeatedly and widely disseminated public statements” attacking Washington DC residents as well as members of the court, prosecutors and prospective witnesses, according to a filing in US District Court on 15 September.

His statements threaten “to undermine the integrity of these proceedings and prejudice the jury pool,” prosecutors warned. Shortly after a request from US Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith for the partial gag order, the former president lashed out on his Truth Social platform and called him “deranged”.

Donald Trump said this week that he was within his rights to continue attempting to thwart Joe Biden from becoming president after his own advisers told him that his claims of election fraud were false, explaining that he did not respect his own attorneys’ legal opinions.

The ex-president was speaking with Kristin Welker, new host of NBC’s flagship Sunday programme Meet the Press, when he was questioned about why he went through with efforts to interfere in the certification of the 2020 election after his court challenges failed and his White House attorneys advised him against doing so.

“I didn’t respect them as lawyers,” Mr Trump explained.

“You’d hired them,” Welker pointed out.

The interview — which ahead of broadcast received much criticism for giving the former president a platform from which he could repeat known falsehoods — was pre-recorded on Thursday and aired on Sunday morning on Welker’s first show as the new moderator.

The wide-ranging questioning turned to Mr Trump’s movements and actions on January 6, with Welker asking why he did not do more to stop the violence as his supporters battled with police and stormed Congress.

Here’s what happened next…

Democrats fumed at Ron DeSantis on Twitter after the Florida governor chose to wade in to the ongoing fight in the Senate over Senator Tommy Tuberville’s holdup of military promotions over an abortion-related policy.

The upper chamber of Congress has lost some of its bipartisan amity in recent days over a hold placed by the Alabama senator on officer promotions until the Department of Defense ceases a policy that allows service members to have their travel reimbursed if they choose to abort a pregnancy. The far right has taken aim at this policy in the wake of the end of federal abortion protections undone by the Supreme Court last year.

Mr Tuberville’s actions have been condemned by Democrats and even some in his own party, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as well as top leaders of America’s military branches.

A man who appeared to have a holstered firearm was spotted near the Wilmington home of President Joe Biden in Delaware on Sunday.

In a pool report, a reporter on the scene described the man “wearing a neon yellow and orange safety vest, khaki cargo shorts, tan boots and socks” walking “down the road toward the Biden home”. According to the reporter, the unidentified person appeared to have a gun holstered to their beltline.

A sign he was holding bore messages related to the GOP ongoing investigation into supposed criminal activity by the Biden family — an investigation that has drawn criticisms from numerous members of the Republican Party for jumping to conclusions based on thin evidence.

Kristen Welker, moderator, Meet the Press:

Now, as you just heard former president Trump referred to the federal indictments against him as Biden indictments, the indictments have been charged by a special counsel. And according to the White House, President Biden has not spoken to the Attorney General about them, and the White House found out about them from news reports.

As for the impeachment inquiry, so far, congressional investigators have not presented any evidence that President Biden has profited off of Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

American extremists are popping up on Russian social media platforms for two reasons: One – they’re there. Two – they’re much less moderated.

That’s the simple outline physics professor Neil Johnson at Georgetown University gave to The Independent over a video call.

On Facebook, far-right communities are “like a PG 13 version of what they can do on other sites just because of moderation,” the Harvard-educated Brit says. “Certain kinds of symbols, hate speech, and activities can get them shut down. And since they rely on followers and support, they don’t want to be shut down.”

The extremists instead post links on Facebook directing users to Russian platforms.