Former US president Donald Trump said he dismissed the views of his own lawyers in continuing to challenge his 2020 defeat because he did not respect them, saying in an interview aired on Sunday that he had made up his own mind that the election had been “rigged” — a false claim that he continues to make.
Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to take on Democratic US President Joe Biden in next year’s election, is now facing four concurrent criminal prosecutions, including two involving his attempts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden.
“It was my decision,” Trump told NBC’s Meet the Press program, that the election was “rigged” against him, adding that he relied heavily upon his own “instincts” in coming to that conclusion.
Photo: Reuters
Trump has continued to make false claims that the election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.
Asked why he dismissed the views of lawyers in the White House and his campaign that he had lost the election, Trump said: “Because I didn’t respect them.”
Trump singled out former US attorney general William Barr, who told him that he had lost the election, as one of the lawyers whose advice he did not follow.
“I listened to some people,” Trump said. “Guys like Bill Barr, who was a stiff, but he wasn’t there at the time. But he didn’t do his job, because he was afraid.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty in all four criminal cases, including a federal prosecution in Washington and a Georgia state indictment that involve to his attempts to recruit a slate of phony electors for congressional certification of the 2020 election results.
His comments on Sunday could undermine one of his possible legal defenses — that he relied on the advice of his lawyers in continuing to challenge his defeat.
US courts threw out dozens of legal challenges from Trump’s campaign and allies following the November 2020 election.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) removed former minister of foreign affairs Qin Gang (秦剛) from his post after an investigation concluded that he had conducted an affair and fathered a child while serving as ambassador to the US, the Wall Street Journal reported. Top officials were told in August that a CCP inquiry into Qin uncovered “lifestyle issues,” the newspaper reported yesterday, citing people familiar with the situation that it did not describe. That phrase usually means sexual misbehavior of some type in the parlance of Chinese officialdom. Two of the people said the affair led to the birth of a child in
NO MORE LONG LINES: Swift border crossings for people traveling between Russia and areas it occupies in Ukraine show how quickly Moscow is seeking to absorb them To enter Russia from occupied Ukraine, all Tatiana has to do is arrive at the edge of the war-battered Donetsk region, show guards her Russian passport, say “thank you” and cross. Moscow has controlled several key border points since 2014, but the frontier has become more porous since the Kremlin annexed four Ukrainian territories last year, encouraging residents to take up new citizenship. “It’s become more comfortable because we’ve become Russians,” said the 37-year-old, who is from a Russian-occupied town. Tatiana used to have to go through a more arduous procedure to enter Russia: a check run by Moscow-sponsored separatists, then through Russian
GUNNED DOWN: The Canadian PM said there were credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey on June 18 India yesterday dismissed allegations that its government was linked to the killing of a Sikh activist in Canada as “absurd,” expelling a senior Canadian diplomat and accusing Canada of interfering in India’s internal affairs. It came a day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described what he called credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an advocate of Sikh independence from India who was gunned down on June 18 outside a Sikh cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia, and Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a
SECURITY: Wang met with the US national security adviser in Malta over the weekend, with the US side noting the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) yesterday headed to Russia for security talks after two days of meetings with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan over the weekend in Malta. China’s top foreign policy official will be in Russia until Thursday for a round of China-Russia strategic security consultations, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a brief statement. The US and China are at odds over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China has refrained from taking sides in the war, saying that while a country’s territory must be respected, the West needs to consider Russia’s security concerns about NATO’s
RSS