Closing summary
The reverberations of Donald Trump’s triumph in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primaries were felt in the Capitol, where the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, reportedly told his colleagues that they would not be voting on any agreement to tighten immigration policy and also pay for military aid to Ukraine and Israel. The reason, McConnell said, is because Trump wants to campaign against Joe Biden on the issue of immigration, and enacting the deal – which the GOP has been negotiating with Democrats for months, and which has still not been made public – would “undermine” that strategy. Things could nonetheless still change, and McConnell said as much today, when he told a reporter that negotiations are “ongoing”.
Here’s what else happened today:
Peter Navarro, a former Trump White House adviser, has been sentenced to four months in prison for defying the January 6 committee, but will appeal.
Nikki Haley is continuing what looks to be a long-shot bid to clinch the Republican presidential nomination by winning the primary in her home state South Carolina.
Trump briefly took the stand in the New York City trial of the defamation lawsuit against him by E Jean Carroll.
US economic growth came in better than expected in the final quarter of 2023, despite fears of a slowdown.
A lawyer representing Trump in the Georgia election subversion case argued the charges against him should be dropped because district attorney Fani Willis made “provocative and inflammatory extrajudicial racial comments”.
This time next year, Mitt Romney, the Republican senator from Utah who is one of the few avowed Trump foes in the chamber, will probably be out of politics.
The 76-year-old, who lost to Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, announced late last year that he would not run for office again. He’s keeping up his criticism of Trump as his final year in office begins, saying it’s “appalling” that the former president would try to undermine a compromise on immigration policy to boost his re-election campaign.
Here’s video of his comments, from CNN:
Mitt Romney: “I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn't want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is is really appalling." pic.twitter.com/L1LJex10JY
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 25, 2024
How did a divorce case lead to allegations of conflict of interest against district attorney Fani Willis that could undercut her indictment of Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants for trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 elections? The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has the answer:
A Georgia judge on Monday unsealed the divorce case involving a special prosecutor at the center of allegations concerning an improper relationship with the Fulton county district attorney who brought the racketeering case against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The judge also stayed the deposition of the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis in the divorce, until the special prosecutor Nathan Wade – whom she hired for the high-profile Trump case – had first testified about his relationship and financial conditions himself.
Trump’s co-defendant and 2020 campaign elections day operations chief, Michael Roman, has put forward a motion seeking to have the district attorney’s office disqualified from bringing the case because the alleged relationship between Willis and Wade was a conflict of interest.
The judge vacated the consent order sealing the divorce proceeding because no court hearing had been held at the time to shield the records. Roman and a coalition of media organizations, including the Guardian, had separately filed to unseal the case.
The allegations made by Roman threaten to undercut one of the most complex and high-profile criminal cases against Trump that could go to trial before the 2024 election. Trump, who won the Iowa caucuses last week with a 30-point margin, is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
In his argument to have Fani Willis thrown off the Georgia election subversion case and the charges against Donald Trump dropped, lawyer Steven Sadow hones in on comments made by the Fulton county district attorney at church.
“I’m a little confused. I appointed three special counsel, as is my right to do. Paid them all the same hourly rate. They only attack one,” Willis said, during a Martin Luther King Day service at Big Bethel AME Church, a historic Black church in Atlanta.
Willis continued, in part:
I hired one white woman, a good personal friend and great lawyer. A superstar, I tell you, I hired one white man, brilliant, my friend and a great lawyer. And I hired one black man. Another superstar a great friend and a great lawyer. Oh, Lord, they’re going to be mad when I call them out on this nonsense. First thing they say. Oh, she going to play the race card now? But no. God, isn’t it them who’s playing the race card when they only question one? Isn’t it them playing the race card when they constantly think I need someone from some other jurisdiction in some other state to tell me how to do a job I’ve been doing almost 30 years. God why don’t they look at themselves and just be honest?
In a statement to reporters, Sadow said Willis’s “attempt to foment racial animus and prejudice against the defendants in order to divert and deflect attention away from her alleged improprieties calls out for the sanctions of dismissal and disqualification.”
Alleging 'provocative and inflammatory' comments by Fani Willis, Trump lawyer asks judge to drop charges in Georgia election subversion case
A lawyer for Donald Trump has asked a Georgia judge to drop the charges against his client brought by the Atlanta-area district attorney Fani Willis, arguing she made “provocative and inflammatory extrajudicial racial comments” in a recent speech.
In a court filing, the Trump attorney Steven Sadow also asked for Willis to be removed from the case filed in August of last year against Trump and 18 co-defendants, which alleges they plotted to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election victory in the state three years ago.
Sadow’s argument came after a lawyer for one of Trump’s co-defendants alleged that Willis has a conflict of interest because she has had travel paid for by a special prosecutor she hired for the case, who she was allegedly in an improper relationship with. Sadow joins that filing, while also arguing that Willis made prejudicial comments about Trump during a speech at a Black church in Atlanta on Martin Luther King Day last week.
“The DA’s provocative and inflammatory extrajudicial racial comments, made in a widely publicized speech at a historical Black church in Atlanta, and cloaked in repeated references to God, reinforce and amplify the ‘appearance of impropriety’ in her judgment and prosecutorial conduct,” Sadow wrote.
Updated
Trump took stand for brief cross-examination in E Jean Carroll defamation case
Donald Trump took the stand in New York City for his much-anticipated cross-examination in author E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him.
It was over not long after it began. We have a separate live blog that will tell you all about what he said:
Senator says immigration deal 'really close' as Democrats angry over reports of Trump meddling
A senator working on a deal that would tighten immigration policy to discourage migrants and satisfy Republican demands to support aid to Ukraine and Israel says they are “very close” to reaching an agreement.
That’s according to Kyrsten Sinema, the independent lawmaker from Arizona:
For months, lead negotiators @ChrisMurphyCT, @SenatorLankford, and I have been working in good faith with DHS, the White House, and party leaders on a bipartisan border security package.
— Kyrsten Sinema (@kyrstensinema) January 25, 2024
We’re really close – and we’re working carefully to get this right.https://t.co/JrzXxEWvMz
But the bigger news is that Donald Trump is pressuring Republicans not to support the compromise, despite the fact that the GOP has been negotiating it. Democrats in the Senate are clearly not happy about this, with Connecticut’s Chris Murphy telling CNN he worries that Republicans are allowing Trump to “hand Ukraine to Vladimir Putin”:
Chris Murphy says he believes it will be clear in next 24-48 hours whether they can get immigration deal.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 25, 2024
On Trump trying to kill deal: “I hope we don't live in a world today in which one person inside the Republican Party holds so much power…” pic.twitter.com/1JJwuL9hDR
California’s Alex Padilla, meanwhile, reacted to the former president’s interference with a reference to everyone in Washington DC’s favorite TV show, Succession:
https://t.co/SZVjLUnkJg pic.twitter.com/c1Fgch2gYL
— Senator Alex Padilla (@SenAlexPadilla) January 25, 2024
Updated
As Navarro was delivering remarks to reporters, a group of protesters clanged cow bells and used whistles to drown him out.
One demonstrator held a sign, reading: “Lock Him Up”. Others chanted “Liar”, as Navarro spoke.
People from Navarro’s team attempted to quiet protestors, but to no avail.
The whistle and the cowbell drown out Peter Navarro as he attempts to speak to media pic.twitter.com/bLGzIjvCxi
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) January 25, 2024
Updated
Judge tells Navarro: 'You're not a victim ... these are the circumstances of your own making'
Judge Amit Mehta, who sentenced Navarro to four months in prison, told the ex-Trump adviser in court that his sentence for contempt of Congress is not the result of “political persecution”.
Mehta’s comments come as Navarro had refused to comply with a subpoena from Congress as apart of its January 6 probe.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported that Mehat told Navarro:
I guess what bothers me ultimately … is that here we are after a year and a half plus, and you still want to suggest to me that this is a political prosecution. You want me to believe this is a political prosecution … You are not a victim. You are not the object of a political prosecution. These are the circumstances of your own making.
Updated
Navarro announces he is appealing four-month sentence
Navarro announced that an appeal has been filed by his lawyers after the ex-Trump aide was sentenced to four months in prison on contempt of Congress charges.
“The top line here is that Mr Woodward has already filed the appeal in this case,” Navarro said in a press conference, referring to his attorney.
“This is a case of first impressions that I have said from day one is destined for the supreme court. It is a case that really asks the important question of whether a senior White House aide … can be compelled to testify by Congress,” he added.
lol this is not going well for Peter Navarro pic.twitter.com/3Y4tvFoRX4
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 25, 2024
Updated
Peter Navarro, who was recently sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress charges, has said he is not asking or expecting a pardon from Donald Trump if Trump is elected president in 2024.
From the Messenger’s Nolan D. McCaskill:
Navarro says he’s not asking or expecting to be pardoned if Trump returns to the White House next year pic.twitter.com/QKI2izSpSY
— Nolan D. McCaskill (@NolanDMcCaskill) January 25, 2024
Navarro is speaking now following Thursday’s sentencing.
Updated
The day so far
The reverberations of Donald Trump’s triumph in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primaries are being felt in the Capitol, where the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, reportedly told his colleagues that they would not be voting on any agreement to tighten immigration policy and also pay for military aid to Ukraine and Israel. The reason, McConnell said, is because Trump wants to campaign against Joe Biden on the issue of immigration, and enacting the deal – which the GOP has been negotiating with Democrats over for months, and which has still not been made public – would “undermine” that strategy. Things could nonetheless still change, and McConnell said as much today, when he told a reporter that negotiations are “ongoing”.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Peter Navarro, a former Trump White House adviser, has been sentenced to four months in prison for defying the January 6 committee.
Nikki Haley is continuing what looks to be a long-shot bid to clinch the Republican presidential nomination by winning the primary in her home state South Carolina.
US economic growth came in better than expected in the final quarter of 2023, despite fears of a slowdown.
Updated
A good comparison for Peter Navarro is Steve Bannon, the Donald Trump confidant who was also convicted of contempt of Congress for defying the bipartisan House committee investigating the January 6 attack.
Like Navarro, Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison on two charges of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the lawmakers. But Bannon is not in jail – his sentence has been suspended as he appeals it, a situation Navarro probably hopes to replicate.
Updated
It’s unclear what happens next for Peter Navarro.
Politico reports that federal judge Amit Mehta has not yet decided if Navarro will be jailed while he appeals the sentence:
MEHTA does not immediately rule on whether Navarro's 4 month sentence will be stayed pending appeal. He wants further briefing before he decides.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 25, 2024
NAVARRO now huddling with his lawyers in the courtroom after Mehta leaves the bench.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 25, 2024
Federal judge sentences former Trump aide Peter Navarro to four months in prison
Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro has been sentenced to four months in prison for defying a congressional subpoena issued by the January 6 committee, Reuters reports.
The sentence caps the long-running prosecution of Navarro, who unsuccessfully argued that Trump’s invocations of executive privilege meant he did not have to comply with the summons. The sentence from federal judge Amit Mehta was in line with the mandatory minimums of two months in prison each for the two charges of contempt of Congress a jury convicted Navarro of in September.
However, prosecutors in the case had asked for a stiffer penalty of 12 months behind bars and a $200,000 fine.
Updated
Shifting to federal court in Washington DC, the judge Amit Mehta is on the verge of sentencing the former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro for ignoring a subpoena from the January 6 committee, Politico reports.
He was convicted of contempt of Congress charges last September:
NOW: MEHTA is back and preparing to deliver his sentence. He begins by talking about Navarro's life. Notes he is not someone who "comes from means." Notes he joined the Peace Corps after college.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 25, 2024
MEHTA says "respect for the law" and need for "general deterrence" should be reflected in his sentence for Navarro. "This was a significant effort by Congress to get to the bottom of a terrible day in American history."
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) January 25, 2024
Updated
Trump back in New York court as E Jean Carroll's defamation trial resumes
If you are wondering what Donald Trump is doing today, the answer is: sitting on a chair in the courtroom where a judge has resumed hearing E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him.
Will he take the stand? He was expected to on Monday, until a juror got sick and the day’s hearing was adjourned. Follow our live blog for the latest news from today’s trial:
Speaking of the US recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, government data released this morning shows economic growth at the end of last year was better than expected, defying some economists’s predictions of a slowdown, or even a recession. Here’s more on what the numbers mean, from the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe:
The pace of US economic growth slowed in the last three months of 2023, but far less than had been expected, underlining the continued resilience of the economy.
The commerce department reported on Thursday that US gross domestic product (GDP) – a broad measure of economic health – grew at an annualized rate of 3.3% in the final quarter of the year, down from 4.9% in the previous quarter but in line with pre-pandemic growth, and well ahead of the 2% economists had expected.
Robust consumer spending and government outlays contributed to the growth.
The Federal Reserve has been attempting to cool economic activity in order to bring down inflation. Since March 2022 the Fed has increased rates to a 22-year high and held them there. Inflation has fallen from a high of 9% in June 2022 to 3.4%.
The rate rises have increased the cost of borrowing and many – including the Fed – had expected a subsequent slowdown in economic activity to lead to layoffs. But so far the Fed appears to be on course for what it has termed a “soft landing”.
Hiring has remained robust – unemployment hovers at close to a 50-year low – and while growth has slowed, consumers have continued to spend, the US economy has weathered the rate rises and stock markets have hit record highs.
The sentencing hearing of Peter Navarro has just begun in a Washington DC federal court, and we will soon find out if the former Donald Trump adviser is heading to jail for defying a subpoena. Here’s more on the long-running case, from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly:
The former Trump adviser Peter Navarro faces sentencing on Thursday on two counts of contempt of Congress, arising from his refusal to comply with a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on Congress.
The mandatory minimum sentence is two months in prison, one for each count. Prosecutors in the case, which saw Navarro convicted in federal court in Washington DC in September, asked for 12 months prison time and a $200,000 fine.
Navarro denies wrongdoing, saying Donald Trump invoked executive privilege to stop him complying with the subpoena. His lawyers asked for no more than six months probation and $100 fines on each count, and for sentence to be paused as an appeal proceeds.
In court papers, attorneys wrote: “The appeal … will definitely answer what is required of a former president to invoke executive privilege as to their senior advisers and no future adviser will be in the same position of not knowing that the president they served had not properly invoked the privilege.”
An academic and China hawk with a controversial past including quoting himself under an anagram of his own name – Ron Vara – Navarro was a trade adviser to Trump also closely involved in the response to the Covid pandemic.
He became involved in Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election, based on the lie that the Democrat won through electoral fraud. Navarro publicly discussed a battle plan he called the “Green Bay sweep”.
Mitch McConnell may be calling Donald Trump “nominee” behind closed doors, but the contest for the Republican presidential nomination is not over yet.
The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley remains on the campaign trail, despite coming well short of victory in the New Hampshire primaries. She is planning to make another stand against Trump in her home state, which votes on 24 February, despite polls showing him in the lead there, too.
Haley, who served as Trump’s UN ambassador, is trying to change that, and rallied in North Charleston yesterday:
South Carolina is 𝗛𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘆 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗿𝘆!
— Team Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaleyHQ) January 25, 2024
📍North Charleston pic.twitter.com/UEl6OGwR5s
Updated
Here’s one view from the Biden administration on the potential death of the Ukraine/Israel/border security deal.
As the treasury department official Ashley Schapitl points out, Democrats indeed worked with the GOP and Donald Trump in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out to pass the Cares Act – a huge emergency package that made the economic collapse caused by the virus less severe:
Democrats could have taken this view in March 2020 (no helping the country in an election year), but instead approved a COVID aid package that was many, many times more generous than Republicans would have approved had the shoe been on the other foot. https://t.co/YC8yepKm3l
— Ashley Schapitl (@AshleySchapitl) January 25, 2024
Schapitl’s argument is that Republicans would not be returning the favor, if they honor Trump’s reported wish not to act on a potential compromise on immigration policy.
Updated
Despite his comments in private to Republican senators yesterday, Bloomberg News reports that Mitch McConnell, who never talks to reporters in the Capitol hallways, told a reporter in a Capitol hallway that talks on the immigration deal were “ongoing”:
*MCCONNELL SAYS TALKS ARE STILL ONGOING ON BORDER DEAL (to me in hall )
— Erik Wasson (@elwasson) January 25, 2024
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, meanwhile said nothing:
SCHUMER no comment to me on whether Trump has killed the border talks
— Erik Wasson (@elwasson) January 25, 2024
One of the biggest surprise players in the apparent downfall of America’s military assistance to Ukraine is Mitch McConnell.
The Republican Senate minority leader and Donald Trump do not get along, for a variety of reasons. Unlike Trump, McConnell has been a steadfast supporter of arming Kyiv, and yet, he yesterday told Republicans behind closed doors that assisting a nation considered crucial to the US’s national security priorities would have to wait.
“When we started this, the border united us and Ukraine divided us,” Punchbowl News reports McConnell said. “The politics on this have changed.”
The change is, of course, Trump’s emergence as the likely GOP nominee after winning the New Hampshire primaries on Tuesday – McConnell even called him “nominee” in the meeting.
Trump wants to make cracking down on migrants a key plank of his election campaign, and McConnell said he was willing to go along with Trump’s wishes and scupper a deal under negotiation to tighten immigration policy.
“We’re in a quandary,” McConnell said, in something of an understatement.
Updated
How Congress managed to deadlock over Israel, Ukraine aid and border policy – simultaneously
Congress has been a place of legislative trench warfare for much of the past decade-plus, but the quandary lawmakers are in right now over aid to both Ukraine and Israel and border policy is unique for the sheer variety of issues at hand.
It all started in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October terrorist attack, when Joe Biden rushed over to Israel, then came back to the White House and made an Oval Office address pleading for Congress to approve assistance to Ukraine and Israel’s militaries, as well as some funds for Taiwan and to bolster border security.
But in Congress, a growing faction of Republicans had turned against further aiding Kyiv’s defense against the Russian invasion. Biden’s request nonetheless presented an opportunity to get the Democrats to bend on an issue more or less completely separate from the military aid request: immigration policy. Rates of migrants entering the United States from Mexico have surged under Biden, which Republicans have pounced on to argue his administration is failing to protect the country.
While not everyone in the GOP was behind the effort, a group of Republican and Democratic senators began negotiating over tightening US immigration policy – a topic Congress hasn’t been able to find agreement on for two decades, at least. The idea was that, if Democrats would sign on to policies that may turn out not to be that different from what Donald Trump approved while in office, the Republicans would vote to approve aid to Ukraine.
Right from the start, there were plenty of reasons to think the deal wouldn’t come together, and with Republican senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s reported comments yesterday that he won’t support the deal so Trump can run on curbing immigration, it appears the naysayers were right all along.
Updated
Seeing Trump as presumptive nominee, Republicans reportedly turning against deal to help Ukraine and Israel
Good morning, US politics blog readers. The fallout from Donald Trump’s win in the New Hampshire primary has reached the US Capitol, where reports have emerged that the top Senate Republican is ready to walk away from a deal to send military assistance to Ukraine and Israel. The reason? Republicans now believe Trump has a lock on the party’s presidential nomination, and, on the campaign trail, the former president wants to be able to accuse Joe Biden of failing to stop a surge of migrants crossing the southern border. The agreement under discussion in Congress would have changed immigration policy to discourage migrants, while also unlocking GOP support for military assistance to Israel and Ukraine, a country whose cause the party’s far right has turned against.
It was a delicate bargain with global implications that senators had been hammering out for months, and it all now appears to be falling apart because of Trump. “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him,” top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell said of the former president in a behind-closed-doors meeting with his colleagues, which Punchbowl News first reported. The deal isn’t quite dead yet, but if it indeed unravels, it’s unclear what it will mean for Ukraine’s beleaguered defense against Russia, or Joe Biden’s controversial effort to arm Israel.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Peter Navarro, a former Trump White House aide who was convicted of contempt of Congress for ignoring a subpoena from the January 6 committee, will be sentenced in federal court.
Biden is heading to Wisconsin, a state he really needs to win in November, to announce $5bn in transportation investments from the 2021 infrastructure overhaul he championed.
Trump may or may not testify today, when the trial of author E Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit resumes against him in New York City.
