Trump turns ‘never-ending witch-hunt’ into email fundraising frenzy
by dozens of daily messages urging them to donate to a so-called Election Defence Fund, to fight what he falsely claimed was a “stolen election”.The scheme turned out to be a slush fund, from which about $US250 million was raised. As the January 6 Select Committee outlined in a recent hearing, no such defence fund actually existed. Most of the money instead went to Trump’s own Save America political action committee , which, in turn, gave contributions to a range of pro-Trump organisations.
Despite telling Fox News that he would do what he could to de-escalate tensions, Trump continued to rage about the FBI on his Truth Social platform, claiming the bureau “stole my three passports , along with everything else”. Last week’s search sparked a political storm across the US, with some Republicans so outraged by what they saw as government overreach that they demanded that the FBI be “defunded” or “destroyed”.
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for former president Donald Trump, has been called to testify.In the days since the warrant was issued, authorities say there has been an increase in violent threats against law enforcement and government officers. One threat outlined in a leaked bulletin from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security noted a suggestion to “place a so-called Dirty Bomb in front of FBI headquarters”.
, including allegations that he misrepresented the value of his assets to secure loans and get tax breaks.On Monday, lawyers for Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani were told he was the target of the special grand jury investigation into whether Trump and his allies violated the law in their efforts to flip the 2020 results in New York.