International News

New York attorney general opens criminal investigation into Trump Organization

Donald Trump is facing growing legal danger after the attorney general’s office in New York said it had opened a criminal investigation into his business activities, and those of Trump family members. The attorney general, Letitia James, had been conducting a civil inquiry into the Trump Organization. On Tuesday night her office said it was joining a sweeping criminal investigation being conducted in parallel by Manhattan’s district attorney, Cyrus Vance. The move – communicated in a recent letter from James to the Trump Organization – significantly raises the stakes for the former Republican president, who now faces three separate criminal investigations.

‘A threat America has never seen before’: Liz Cheney delivers fiery speech before ouster vote

On the eve of a vote almost certain to remove her from a leadership role in the Republican party, a defiant Liz Cheney embraced her fall from party grace and offered a final appeal to her colleagues: “We must speak the truth.” In a speech on the House floor on Tuesday evening, Cheney said: “Today we face a threat America has never seen before. A former president, who provoked a violent attack on this capital in an effort to steal the election, has resumed his aggressive effort to convince Americans that the election was stolen from him. He risks inciting further violence.

FCA investigates Greensill as David Cameron’s lobbying texts are made public

The UK’s financial regulator has launched a formal investigation into the collapse of Greensill Capital, as David Cameron’s text message lobbying of serving ministers in an efforts to save the controversial bank were made public for the first time. In one text message at the beginning of the pandemic Cameron said he was “riding to the rescue … with my new friend Lex Greensill”. In other calls and emails over a four-month lobbying campaign he told ministers and their adviser that the Treasury’s failure to provide financial support to Greensill was “nuts” and “bonkers”.

BBC cuts Prince Andrew joke from RuPaul’s Drag Race

The BBC is embroiled in a bizarre row about censorship, the royal family and drag queens after editing an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race to remove a joke about Prince Andrew. The national broadcaster is currently showing episodes of the new series RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under on its iPlayer streaming service but edited out a comment made by a drag artist dressed as Queen Elizabeth II, apparently in the belief it could offend UK audiences. Viewers of the original Australian broadcast saw performer Anita Wigl’it, dressed in full drag as the British monarch, ad-lib the comment: “I wish a dingo would have taken my baby, then I wouldn’t have anything to do with Prince Andrew any more.”

 

Trump family members got ‘inappropriately close’ to Secret Service agents, book claims

Two Trump family members got “inappropriately – and perhaps dangerously – close” to agents protecting them while Donald Trump was president, according to a new book on the US Secret Service. Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, by the Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, is published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy. Leonnig won a Pulitzer prize in 2015, for her reporting on security failures at the Secret Service. She was also part of the Post team which won a Pulitzer for its work on Edward Snowden’s leaks about National Security Agency surveillance techniques and reported extensively on Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow. She has also won three Polk awards.

Conservative candidate to replace Angela Merkel accused of allowing antisemitism

The conservative candidate for German chancellor in September’s elections has been told by the country’s leading environmentalist that he is legitimising antisemitism by refusing to oust the former head of domestic intelligence from his party. The accusation was levelled at Armin Laschet, the leader of the CDU, by Luisa Neubauer, the face of the Fridays for Future movement in Germany, in a standoff on a popular weekly chatshow on Sunday night. Hans-Georg Maaßen was the head of the BfV, the domestic intelligence service, until 2018, when he was sent into early retirement after criticising Angela Merkel’s immigration politics and making comments seen to chime with far-right opinions.

 

Biden denies benefits are holding back job-seekers

US President Joe Biden has rejected criticism that expanded unemployment benefits are keeping Americans from taking new jobs.Mr Biden said any unemployed American offered a "suitable" job must take it, or risk losing unemployment benefits. Republicans have blamed bad economic data last week on the Democratic president's decision to extend expanded unemployment benefits. The US added 266,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate edged up to 6.1%. Economists had predicted from 900,000 to 2 million jobs. Yet there are 7.4m unfilled positions, according to the US labour department.

Biden picks ex-Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel as US ambassador to Japan

Joe Biden has picked former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel to be his ambassador to Japan. The selection ends months of speculation over whether Barack Obama’s first chief of staff, a former congressman and longtime Democratic operative, would be nominated to an administration role. In the first days of the Biden presidency Emanuel, 61, was mentioned as a possible secretary of transportation. Biden ended up picking Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who ran strongly in the Democratic presidential primary.

Republican Joni Ernst accuses party of cancel culture over Liz Cheney ousting

The only woman in Republican Senate leadership complained about cancel culture on Monday, regarding the imminent removal of Liz Cheney, the only woman in Republican House leadership, because she opposes Donald Trump’s big lie that the presidential election was stolen. The Iowa senator Joni Ernst told reporters: “I feel it’s OK to go ahead and express what you feel is right to express and, you know, cancel culture is cancel culture no matter how you look at it. “Unfortunately, I think there are those that are trying to silence others in the party.”

Larry Hogan decries 'circular firing squad' within GOP

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said Sunday the Republican Party experienced its "worst four years we've had, ever" under President Donald Trump, noting the party's losses in both chambers of Congress and the White House. "We've got to get back to winning elections again. And we have to be able to have a Republican Party that appeals to a broader group of people," said Hogan, a Republican, on NBC News' "Meet the Press." "Successful politics is about addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division."