Trump news today: Ex-president, his children to file appeal to stop depositions in New York AG probe

Couy Griffin, a New Mexico county commissioner who founded a group called “Cowboys for Trump”, faced trial on Monday on charges related to the 6 January Capitol riots.

A federal judge in the district of Columbia began the trial for Mr Griffin, who is charged with breaching a restricted area protected by the US Secret Service and engaging in disorderly conduct in that area.

The 48-year-old man was photographed at the Capitol during the riot and does not deny that he entered a barricaded area.

After Donald Trump’s contentious Supreme Court nominations and hearings, Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are hoping for a speedy, thoughtful round of hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The Trump justices have shifted the balance of the court significantly to the right. By comparison, Judge Jackson would replace Justice Stephen Breyer, the longest-serving liberal on the court, and maintain the court’s current ideological balance, albeit adding valuable perspective from a former public defender with criminal defense experience, a first on the court in decades.

Former president Donald Trump and two of his children have filed an appeal in a bid to stop an attempt by New York attorney general Letitia James to make them sit for depositions as part of a civil investigation into the Trump Organization.

In their appeal filed Monday, the former president and his children Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr argued that if the attorney general Letitia James wants their testimony, she should bring them before a state grand jury, where witnesses can receive certain immunities.

Trumps’ attorneys wrote that statutory protections can easily be “eviscerated if the same agency involved in the criminal investigation simply opens up a ‘civil’ investigation into the very same matters”, according to a CNN report.

Alaska congressman Don Young, the longest-serving member of the House, died at age 88 last week.

He will lie in state in National Statuary Hall on Tuesday, 29 March, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

US Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine – the first openly transgender four-star officer in any of the US – is a frequent target among transphobic and anti-LGBT+ right-wing figures. She was recently honoured by USA Today as one of the publication’s women of the year.

Twitter suspended the account of right-wing satire website the Babylon Bee for posting “The Babylon Bee’s Man Of The Year is Rachel Levine.”

CEO Seth Dillon suggested he won’t deleted the post to gain access to the account.

“They could, of course, delete the tweet themselves. But they won’t. It’s not enough for them to just wipe it out. They want us to bend the knee and admit that we engaged in hateful conduct,” he said on Twitter.

Last week, Twitter flagged a similar post from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton – whose state is seeking to prosecute gender-affirming healthcare for minors as “child abuse” – but the platform left the post up with a warning label.

Trump’s Save America PAC amassed $110m by the end of February after collecting $m that month but spending just $1.2m, according to FEC filings.

His PAC war chest is bigger than those of the Democratic and Republican national committees combined.

So far, Trump seems to be keeping the money for himself, with no new donations or independent expenditures backing Trump-endorsed candidates, according to Politico.

But the filings “reveal substantial payments to two law firms representing high-profile witnesses” sought by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.

In an interview with Fox Business on Monday, Donald Trump – asked whether he believes the climate crisis is happening – said in his “opinion” there’s “a thing called weather.”

“The climate’s always been changing,” he said.

Meanwhile, Florida – home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort – is at the centre of the nation’s sea-level rise.

Even with conservative projections of sea level rise, water could be sloshing over his home’s manicured lawns from the intracoastal waterway in the next 30 years, according to Climate Central’s coastal risk screening tool based on the latest NOAA data.

In an interview with right-wing cable network Newsmax, Rudy Giuliani claimed that Trump once threatened Putin with a campaign of church bombings.

In an interview with Fox Business, Trump said Vladimir Putin keeps using the “n-word” – as in “nuclear” – and claimed that the Russian president is a “different” man than the one he interacted with during his time in the White House.

“I listen to him constantly using the n-word, that’s the n-word, and he’s constantly using it, the nuclear word,” he said on Monday.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office is presiding over a sweeping civil investigation into the Trump family business, said she is undeterred by their latest attempt to delay or overturn a subpoena request for their testimony.

“Despite continuous efforts to impede this investigation, no one can stop our pursuit of justice, no matter how powerful they are,” she said in a statement. “We will continue to follow the facts without fear or favor.”