US President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general to lead the Department of Justice has been accused of having inappropriate sexual relations with a minor and engagement in illicit drug abuse.

US media reports said an attorney representing two women who were witnesses in the House Ethics Committee’s investigation into Republican Representative Matt Gaetz is calling for the release of the committee’s report, with one of his clients having testified that she had witnessed the Florida congressman “having sex with a minor.”

“My client testified to the House Ethics Committee that she witnessed Matt Gaetz having sex with a minor,” Florida attorney Joel Leppard told ABC News.

“As the Senate considers former Rep. Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general, several questions demand answers. Democracy demands transparency. Release the Gaetz ethics report,” Leppard said. “What if multiple credible witnesses provided evidence of behavior that would constitute serious criminal violations?”

Asked about Leppard’s comments, a spokesperson for Gaetz told ABC News, “Merrick Garland’s DOJ [Department of Justice] cleared Matt Gaetz and didn’t charge him. Are you alleging Garland is part of a cover-up?”

Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader of the House, signaled his support for the report’s release and quoted the adage that, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

“In a democracy, transparency is always the best course of action, particularly when it relates to high-ranking government officials,” Jeffries said.

The House Ethics Committee has been investigating for months whether Gaetz, who is to serve as one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in the US, engaged in sexual misconduct and drug abuse.

GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson has resisted calls to release the report examining allegations against Gaetz, stressing that he will “strongly request” the committee not to release its report.

Allegations of sexual misconduct have fueled the controversy surrounding Gaetz’s nomination for the post. The Department of Justice, itself, launched a nearly three-year investigation into Gaetz, though it ultimately chose not to pursue charges.

The 42-year-old Republican faces what is expected to be a contentious Senate confirmation proceeding in 2025 to decide whether his nomination will pass.

Source: Presstv

Biden welcomed Trump to the White House on Wednesday for an Oval Office visit that is a traditional part of the peaceful handoff of power – a ritual Trump himself declined to participate in four years ago.

“Donald, congratulations,” Biden said, greeting Trump with a handshake and adding that he looked “forward to a smooth transition.”

“Thank you very much,” Trump said. “Politics is tough. And it’s, in many cases, not a very nice world. But it is a nice world today and I appreciate it very much.”

The president-elect touched down in Washington on Wednesday, arriving near the Capitol with billionaire Elon Musk in tow, for a meeting with House Republicans and then an Oval Office session with Democratic President Joe Biden as Trump prepares for a potentially unified Republican government and sweep of power.

Back in Washington for the first time since his election victory, Trump told the GOP lawmakers, “It’s nice to win.”

It’s a stunning return to the US seat of government for the former president, who departed nearly four years ago a diminished, politically defeated leader after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol but is preparing to come back to power with what he and his GOP allies see as a mandate for governance.

The White House meeting between a president and president-elect is one Trump himself declined to participate in four years ago after he lost to Biden.

Trump disputed his 2020 election loss to Biden, and he has continued to lie about widespread voter fraud that did not occur. He didn’t invite Biden, then the president-elect, to the White House and he left Washington without attending Biden’s inauguration. It was the first time that had happened since Andrew Johnson skipped Ulysses S. Grant’s swearing-in 155 years ago.

Biden insists that he’ll do everything he can to make the transition to the next Trump administration go smoothly, despite decrying Trump as a threat to democracy and the nation’s core values throughout the election campaign.

In the wake of the election, the president has abandoned his dire warnings about Trump, saying in a speech last week, “The American experiment endures. We’re going to be okay.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden is committed to “making sure that this transition is effective, efficient and he’s doing that because it is the norm, yes, but also the right thing to do for the American people”.

“We want this to go well,” Jean-Pierre added. “We want this to be a process that gets the job done.”

Traditionally, as the outgoing and incoming presidents meet in the West Wing, the first lady hosts her successor upstairs in the residence, but her office said Melania Trump wasn’t attending, saying in a statement that “her husband’s return to the Oval Office to commence the transition process is encouraging, and she wishes him great success”.

Source: AP

Donald Trump declares victory in the US election as he addresses jubilant supporters in Florida

“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” he says to cheering crowds

The Republican has picked up the battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, leaving Kamala Harris with only a narrow path to victory

Just before Trump began speaking, Fox News projected that he had won the election; other US TV networks are yet to do so

A return to the White House would be an extraordinary comeback for Trump after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020

Harris says she won’t speak today, as dejected supporters left her watch party earlier

Meanwhile, Republicans are projected to have taken back the Senate.

Source: BBC

US Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are hurtling toward their November 5 election showdown, one of the closest contests in modern American history.

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And in the handful of critical states framing the 2024 race, there is little daylight between the rivals with barely a week before Election Day.

Under the US Constitution, America’s founding fathers established that each of the 50 states would hold its own vote for president.

Under the complex Electoral College system, each state has a certain number of “electors,” based on population. Most states have a winner-take-all system that awards all electors to whoever wins the popular vote.

With candidates needing 270 of the 538 electoral votes to win, elections tend to be decided in the hotly contested “swing states” with a history of alternating between Republican and Democratic candidates.

This year, there are seven such battlegrounds, and every one is a toss-up within the margin of error. Here is a look:

Pennsylvania (19 Electoral College votes)

Pennsylvania was once reliably Democratic, but these days, they don’t come much tighter than the Keystone State.

Republican Trump won the most populous battleground, with 13 million residents, by 0.7 percentage points in 2016. Joe Biden claimed it by 1.2 percentage points in 2020.

Known for its “Rust Belt” cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has been blighted for decades by the steady decline of its industrial manufacturing base.

Trump and Harris have campaigned repeatedly in the eastern state, where the pair held their one and only presidential debate. Trump, who survived an assassination attempt at a July rally in Pennsylvania, is courting the rural white population and warning that migrants are overwhelming small towns.

Harris is touting recent infrastructure wins, and in Pittsburgh she outlined plans to invest $100 billion in manufacturing, a key issue for state residents.

Georgia (16)

This southeastern state was an election flashpoint at the end of Trump’s first term, and the controversy simmers.

Prosecutors in Georgia indicted Trump in an election interference case after he called state officials urging them to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s narrow 2020 victory.

But in a boost for Trump, the case is paused until after the election.

Biden was the first Democrat to win the Peach State since 1992. Demographic changes are likely to benefit Harris, who has courted minority voters across Georgia.

North Carolina (16)

The southeastern state has voted Democratic only once since 1980, but Harris believes it’s back in play.

The population, now over 10 million, is expanding and growing more diverse, benefiting Democrats.

Complicating matters for Trump, a scandal involving the state’s Republican gubernatorial candidate has infuriated party officials who worry it could sink Trump in a close race.

As in neighboring Georgia, one wild card is how the devastation from storm Helene, which recently laid waste to towns in western North Carolina, might impact the vote.

Michigan (15)

Trump flipped Michigan, a former Democratic stronghold, on his way to defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Biden returned it to the blue column in 2020, buoyed by unionized workers and a large Black community.

But this time, Harris risks losing the support of a 200,000-strong Arab-American community that has denounced Biden’s — and by extension her — handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Arizona (11)

The Grand Canyon state was among 2020’s tightest races, with Biden triumphing by just 10,457 votes.

Trump hopes frustrations over the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policy will swing Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico, back in his favor.

Harris visited Arizona’s border in September vowing to crack down on migration and work on reviving last year’s bipartisan border bill, which she said Trump “tanked” for political purposes.

Wisconsin (10)

Clinton lost Wisconsin after giving the state a wide berth during the 2016 campaign.

As with Midwestern neighbor Michigan, it was a different story when Trump’s opponent was Biden, who turned a 23,000-vote deficit into a winning margin of 21,000 for Democrats.

Trump considers it winnable, and his party held its summer national convention there.

While Trump led early against Biden, Harris has made the state race a nailbiter.

Nevada (6)

The Silver State, with a population of 3.1 million, hasn’t voted Republican since 2004. Conservatives, buoyed by Trump’s headway with Hispanic voters, are convinced they can flip the script.

Trump held a significant lead here against Biden.

But within weeks of becoming the Democratic nominee, Harris — promoting her economic plans to help small businesses and combat inflation — has erased that advantage in the western state, whose largest city Las Vegas is dominated by the hospitality industry.

© 2024 AFP

Kamala Harris said Tuesday that America is “absolutely” ready to elect its first woman president but downplayed her historic bid, saying she simply wants to turn the page for a nation “exhausted” by Donald Trump.

With two weeks to Election Day, Harris and Trump are saturating swing states with rallies and taking to the airwaves and podcasts on the hunt for an advantage in a race that polls suggest is effectively tied.

Speaking on the national NBC network, Harris responded “absolutely” when asked if America was ready to elect its first woman — but also noted her candidacy was about “turning page.”

“People are exhausted with Donald Trump and his approach, because it’s all about himself,” she said.

Trump speaking to supporters in North Carolina, pitched a very different message.

“This election is a choice between whether we will have four more years of incompetence, failure and disaster, or whether we’ll begin the four greatest years in the history of our country,” he said to cheers.

‘Lock him up’

The race is overshadowed by extraordinary tensions and fears of violence or a refusal by Trump to recognise the results if he loses, as he continues to do over his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.

Harris told NBC that her campaign was “of course” ready for a scenario where Trump prematurely claims victory during a vote-counting process that could take days to complete.

Biden, who has been an infrequent presence in Harris’s campaign, took a shot at Trump Tuesday by re-wording the ex-president’s notorious anti-Hillary Clinton chant of “Lock her up”.

On a visit to New Hampshire, Biden told a small crowd that “we got to lock” Trump up — adding quickly, “politically lock him up.”

With Trump facing multiple pending criminal charges as he competes against Harris to succeed Biden, the White House has been very careful not to weigh in on the Republican’s legal problems.

The Trump campaign responded that Biden and Harris had a “plan all along… to politically persecute their opponent.”

About 18 million Americans have already voted by mail or in person — representing more than 10 percent of the total in 2020.

Some polls appear to be giving the Republican, who at 78 is the oldest nominee from a major party in US history, a slight edge recently — but all within the margin of error.

Whatever the result, US voters will make history on November 5: they will either elect the country’s first woman president, or they will put the first convicted felon into the White House.

Early voters

Harris, 60, is also deploying two of her party’s most popular emissaries onto the campaign trail: Barack and Michelle Obama.

The former president, speaking at a rally in Madison, rolled back the years with fiery attacks on Trump.

“Don’t boo, vote!” he implored people after his jibes.

Upping the star factor, rapper Eminem later introduced Obama at a major Harris campaign event in Detroit on Tuesday.

Trump has increasingly pushed conspiracy theories on the campaign trail, mainly taking aim at migrants and his political opponents.

The Harris campaign has begun to hammer at his mental and physical fitness to occupy the Oval Office while trying to woo moderate Republican voters.

One of Trump’s top aides as president, former Marine general John Kelly, confirmed Tuesday to The New York Times previous reports that he considered the Republican to be a fascist.

“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Joe Rogan, host of one of the most listened to podcasts in America, said his interview with Trump is due out Friday.

Non-traditional media, including podcasts, have played a key role in the campaign in targeting specific audiences like young women and Black men.

Source: AFP