Trump valet Walt Nauta pleads not guilty in Mar-a-Lago documents case – live | Donald Trump

On the campaign trail, former vice-president Mike Pence defended his actions on January 6, when he rejected Donald Trump’s request that he meddle in Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.

The moment came during a meeting with voters in Iowa, and saw Pence elaborate on statements he made when announcing his campaign for the Republican nomination last month:

Polls indicate Trump remains far and away the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination next year.

Senate Democrats will move forward with legislation imposing a court of ethics on the supreme court, after a term in which the conservative-led bench struck down affirmative action and Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan while dealing with a swirl of ethics controversies.

Dick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee, says the body will take up the legislation when lawmakers return from the current Independence Day break:

‘God save the United States and this Honorable Court!’ These are the words spoken by the Marshal when she gavels the Supreme Court into session. But many questions remain at the end of the Court’s latest term regarding its reputation, credibility, and ‘honorable’ status. I’m sorry to see Chief Justice Roberts end the term without taking action on the ethical issues plaguing the Court—all while the Court handed down decisions that dismantled longstanding precedents and the progress our country has made over generations.

The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards. That’s why, as I previously announced, the Senate Judiciary Committee will mark up Supreme Court ethics reform legislation when the Senate returns after the July 4^th recess. An announcement on the timing of this vote will be made early next week.

Since the Chief Justice has refused to act, the Judiciary Committee must.

In a May hearing on the supreme court’s ethics following revelations of ties between conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch and parties with interests in its decisions, Republicans made clear they were opposed to any ethics legislation, potentially derailing chances of any bill getting through Congress.

Congress is on recess and lawmakers are dispersed across the country, taking time off, meeting with constituents, and, if you are Missouri’s Republican senator Josh Hawley, getting called out by their local newspaper for a loose relationship with the truth. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington tells the tale:

Josh Hawley has become the poster boy for blurring fact and fiction in the era of Donald Trump: the Republican senator from Missouri will forever be remembered as having raised a manly fist in solidarity with January 6 protesters at the US Capitol then, hours later, having been caught on security camera fleeing the rioting mob he helped to incite.

But even for a public figure known for his use of trolling imagery to foment culture wars, Hawley’s current record is impressive. His local Missouri newspaper, the Kansas City Star, has had to call him out twice in almost as many weeks for his egregious distortion of the facts.

Earlier this week, Hawley reframed Independence Day on Twitter as a great Christian event, quoting the founding father Patrick “Give me liberty, or give me death!” Henry as saying that America was founded “not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

In addition to getting voted out of her rightwing House caucus, Marjorie Taylor Greene was today turned into a laugh line by Joe Biden.

Speaking in South Carolina about his efforts to boost domestic manufacturing, he said he would attend the groundbreaking of a factory in the rightwing lawmaker’s district:

The president has lately taken to singling out Republicans who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed in 2021, but then applauded the fact their districts or states were set to benefit from its billions of dollars in funds.

For what it’s worth, Politico reports that Marjorie Taylor Greene has been kicked out of the House Freedom Caucus.

Greene is one of the most prominent far-right lawmakers in Congress, and known for all sorts of stunts and incidents. The Freedom Caucus is a grouping of rightwing Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives, many of whom supported the effort to stop Kevin McCarthy from becoming speaker for days in January, until he acceded to their demands.

You would think they would get along, but as Politico reports, they apparently do not. The disagreement, which culminated in the group voting to expel Greene, appears to center on her support for McCarthy and his agenda, including his deal with Joe Biden to raise the debt ceiling:

Léonie Chao-Fong

Joe Biden has spoken of his economic plans – or “Bidenomics” at a manufacturing plant in South Carolina.

The US president told the audience that he had created more jobs than any other US president in the first two years of an administration. He said inflation is down, job satisfaction up and more working-age Americans are in jobs.

CNN has a clip of his remarks:

The day so far

Meanwhile, answers remain elusive in the cocaine discovered in the White House over the weekend (though Donald Trump didn’t fail to mention it in yesterday’s Truth social tirade). But as the Guardian’s Wilfred Chan reports, the presence of drugs in the executive mansion should not come as a surprise:

Cocaine in the White House? Chances are it’s not the first time – and the drug could well have been used by at least one past president, according to a leading presidential historian.

Lab tests confirmed that a white substance found inside the building on Sunday was indeed cocaine, the Secret Service told reporters. The discovery, on the floor near an entrance to the West Wing that’s commonly used by tour groups, led to a security alert and a brief evacuation of the executive mansion. Authorities are working to figure out who brought the drug into the building. (At the time, Joe Biden and his family were at Camp David in Maryland.)

Still, there’s good reason to think that coke has entered the US presidential office on past occasions – and that its most famous user may have been Franklin D Roosevelt.

Former top Arizona Republican spoke to investigators looking into 2020 election meddling

Nauta arraignment concludes

A post by Donald Trump on his Truth social account kicked off a chain of events that led to an armed man being arrested near Barack Obama’s house, the Associated Press reports.

Trump uses the social network, which he owns, as his main platform ever since being booted off Twitter after the January 6 insurrection (his account there has since been reactivated by owner Elon Musk, but remains dormant).

According to the AP, the former president posted what he said was the address for Obama’s home on Truth, a soon after, an armed man was arrested nearby. Here’s more from their report:

Former President Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was the home address of former President Barack Obama on the same day that a man with guns in his van was arrested near the property, federal prosecutors said Wednesday in revealing new details about the case.

Taylor Taranto, 37, who prosecutors say participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, kept two firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition inside a van he had driven cross-country and had been living in, according to a Justice Department motion that seeks to keep him behind bars.

On the day of his June 29 arrest, prosecutors said, Taranto reposted a Truth Social post from Trump containing what Trump claimed was Obama’s home address. In a post on Telegram, Taranto wrote: “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.” That’s a reference to John Podesta, the former chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.

Taranto also told followers on his YouTube live stream that he was looking to get a “good angle on a shot,” prosecutors said.

A federal defender representing Taranto did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment. But in a motion seeking to have him released pending trial, the lawyer wrote that Taranto was not a flight risk, had a family in Washington state and had served in Iraq before being honorably discharged from the U.S. Navy.

“Mr. Taranto has been available and in plain sight for the last two and a half years,” wrote the lawyer, Kathryn D’Adamo Guevara.

Newly released portions of an affidavit have revealed more about what prompted federal agents to search Mar-a-Lago last August. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:

Federal prosecutors used surveillance footage to determine within weeks of collecting subpoenaed classified documents from Donald Trump last year that there might be more national security materials at Mar-a-Lago, according to newly unsealed descriptions in the FBI search warrant application.

Much of the justification for executing a search warrant on Trump’s residence in Florida was detailed in the sprawling indictment charging him with retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice.

But the parts of the affidavit released on Thursday – filed by the justice department after the federal magistrate judge in the Trump documents case ordered the release – provided a clearer explanation of the probable cause used to justify the FBI search.

Reuters reports that Walt Nauta’s arraignment lasted just a few minutes, with the aide to Donald Trump heading into a conference room afterwards and not answering questions from reporters.

Attorney Stanley Woodward entered Nauta’s plea in the hearing that was also attended by Sasha Dadan, the lawyer he hired to represent him in Florida.