Trump news today: Donald Trump fills memorial speech for vlogger Diamond with his favorite rally gripes

“10 dead in California shooting, horrible gun wielding ANTIFA protest against our great police in Atlanta – Nothing will happen to them despite night of rage and destruction,” the former president posted on Truth Social. “Yet our January 6th protestors, over a Rigged Election, have had their lives ruined despite nobody killed except true Patriot Ashli ​​B. This situation will be fully rectified after 2024 Election. Thank you!”

Director Doug Liman claims his new documentary about US Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh “picks up where the FBI investigation fell short”.

In 2018, Kavanaugh faced accusations from at least three women that he sexually assaulted them, or that they witnessed him sexually assaulting others.

Peony Hirwani reports on Bourne Identity director’s latest project.

The White House has some bad news for Kevin McCarthy as the newly-elected Speaker of the House prepares for a showdown with Democrats over the debt limit in the hopes of appeasing his far-right caucus members.

Joe Biden’s team is signaling that they will not accept any demands for concessions from Republicans over the issue, potentially setting Mr McCarthy up for a showdown with his own party.

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, is arguing that she should remain in her current role as she is best able to convince Donald Trump not to run a third-party candidacy in 2024 should he not get the party’s nomination.

A report published on Thursday in The Washington Postsays Ms McDaniel is attempting to thwart challenges to her leadership of the RNC by stirring up fears of a Trump third-party run splitting the GOP’s base.

Ms McDaniel has faced criticism from RNC members for presiding over the disappointing 2022 midterm election results which saw the party only narrowly win the House of Representatives and lose a seat in the Senate. Many had predicted a red wave sweeping the nation two years into the Biden presidency and propelling the GOP into full control of Congress.

With some party members blaming Mr Trump for the poor electoral performance many also appear to believe that Ms McDaniel is far too tied to him to continue to lead the party and that it is time to move on.

Steve Bannon asked Ms McDaniel about the criticism of her leadership on his show. Accusing her main challenger Harmeet Dhillon of lying about her, Mr Bannon asks her to be specific:

Donald Trump remains keen to remind his would-be 2024 rivals that he is still the Republican Party base’s top choice for their nominee, at least for now.

The ex-president “truthed” a graphic made by his team from a bimonthly tracking poll taken by Big Village polling; the survey shows Mr Trump supported by more than half of all GOP voters. Mr DeSantis was, once again, the only other Republican cracking double digits.

He has posted such data with more intensity in recent weeks following a dismal showing by many of his chosen candidates and the GOP as a whole in November’s midterms; many party elites have publicly signaled their growing disdain for the former president in the wake of those results.

White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who has spent more than two years as President Joe Biden’s top aide, is preparing to leave his job in the coming weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Mr Klain’s expected departure comes not long after the White House and Democrats had a better-than-expected showing in the November elections, buoyed by a series of major legislative accomplishments, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a sweeping climate, health care and tax package that all Republicans rejected.

Three US Marines have been charged with participating in the January 6 riots after one of them posted photos from inside the US Capitol to their Instagram account.

Bevan Hurley has the details.

Joe Biden is insisting that there is “no there there” following the discovery of classified documents at the president’s home and his post-vice presidential office.

Mr Biden used the phrase, first coined by the writer Gertrude Stein, as he dismissed the scandal during a visit to storm-ravaged California.

Graeme Massie reports from California.

This push to jail journalists for doing their jobs — their Constitutionally protected jobs — echoes a speech Trump gave last November, during which he mused about the same reporter being sexually assaulted in jail: “The reporter goes to jail. When the reporter learns he’s going to be married to a certain prisoner that’s extremely strong, tough, and mean, he will say, ‘You know, I think I’m going to give you the information.’”

This isn’t mere idle talk. According to the New York Times, while president, Trump told FBI Director James Comey “to consider putting reporters in prison” during an Oval Office meeting. More recently, RollingStone reported that Trump gathered advisors to discuss ways around the First Amendment in order to emulate authoritarian leaders’ crackdowns on journalists.

Donald Trump’s demand to jail a reporter who broke the story of a leaked Supreme Court draft has been denounced as “appalling” by a leading press freedom activist.

The top court has said that an eight-month investigation to try and identify who had leaked the draft of decision to overturn Roe v Wade had been unable to uncover the source of the leak.

The leaked draft, and its shuddering implications for the country, were published in May by Politico.

The Independent‘s Andrew Buncombe reports from Seattle: