Trump fumes over Durham report as Giuliani accused of pardon scheme – live

A civil complaint filed with the Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday, Mr Giuliani’s ex-employee Noelle Dunphy, 43, alleges that he began sexually abusing her almost immediately after hiring her as an off-the-books business development director and public relations consultant in January 2019, thereafter routinely pestering her for sex, drinking to excess, withholding her salary, bragging about being able to sell presidential pardons for $2 million apiece and engaging in alcohol-fuelled racist rants.

Joe Sommerlad has the details.

Mr Trump has been using the band’s songs such as “YMCA” and “Macho Man”at his events and rallies for years now.

The former president was sent the cease-and-desist letter over a video of him and a Village People lookalike group of musicians dancing to “Macho Man”at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

After the video was widely shared on social media, fans of the band started accusing them of endorsing Mr Trump. That is when the band realised things had gone too far. They have now asked him to stop hiring impersonators to perform their songs at Mar-a-Lago or any events and rallies.

The cease-and-desist letter to Mr Trump stated that the band “tolerated” his use of their music in the past and threatened that they will file a lawsuit against the former president if he doesn’t stop using the band’s images and music.

On 7 October 2016 — one month before voters went to the polls on Election Day — The Washington Post published a video taken of Mr Trump and then-NBC host Billy Bush.

The footage was taken in a bus while the two men were travelling to a taping of Access Hollywood eleven years prior to the 2016 campaign. The film’s audio track included a lewd exchange in which Mr Trump described his efforts to seduce a woman who he knew to be married, starting with an unwanted kiss.

“I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything,” he said.

While some top Republicans strongly condemned the then-GOP presidential nominee — with a few even calling on him to drop off the Republican ticket — Mr Trump remained defiant and shrugged off the criticism.

A month later, he was elected president of the United States.

A 2016 story in The New York Times included accounts from more than 50 women who had become acquainted with the future president over the years, either socially or professionally, or as models or beauty pageant contestants.

The Times said the women’s stories showed a history of “unwelcome romantic advances, unending commentary on the female form, a shrewd reliance on ambitious women, and unsettling workplace conduct” in settings ranging from construction sites of his projects, at his various homes, beauty pageant dressing rooms, and his eponymous Manhattan skyscraper.

These written accounts of alleged bad behaviour — all of which Mr Trump and his spokespersons have strenuously denied — surfaced again and again throughout Mr Trump’s 2016 campaign, and were further validated by what became known as the “Access Hollywood tape” in October 2016.

Since former president Donald Trump entered the American political arena as a candidate for president in 2015, at least 25 women have accused him of all manner of sexual misconduct, ranging from inappropriate passes and groping to outright rape.

The allegations leveled against the New York developer and television personality turned president go back decades, long before he ever considered running for the White House, with many of them dating to his heyday as a real estate tycoon and business icon in the 1980s and 1990s.

One oft-reported incident stemmed from a divorce deposition given in 1990 by his late first wife, Ivana Trump. During their divorce proceedings, his soon-to-be ex-wife accused Mr Trump of raping her during a violent attack after a visit to a plastic surgeon she’d recommended left him in pain from a scalp reduction procedure.

That allegation was revealed in 1993 book Lost Tycoon by author Harry Hurt III, who viewed a transcript of the deposition. In his book, Hurt described the incident recounted in the deposition as a “violent assault” with a sexual component.

A former aide to former Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani says he told her the ex-New York City mayor and then-president Donald Trump were offering to sell presidential pardons for $2 million apiece, according to court documents.

The bombshell allegation was levied in a complaint filed against Mr Giuliani by Noelle Dunphy, a New York-based public relations professional who is suing him for “unlawful abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft, and other misconduct” committed while she worked for him in 2019 and 2020.

The lawsuit also claims that she was subjected to sexual assault, harassment, wage theft and other misconduct by Mr Giuliani, and alleges that she was forced to perform sex acts on him and work in the nude.

In her civil complaint against the ex-Trump attorney, Ms Duphy described an interaction she allegedly had with Mr Giuliani on or about 16 February 2019, when he was serving as Mr Trump’s personal attorney and attempting to dig up overseas dirt on then-former vice president Joe Biden, who at the time was two months away from entering the 2020 presidential race against Mr Trump.

An investigation into the origins of the FBI‘s probe into ties between Russia and Donald Trump‘s 2016 presidential campaign has finally been concluded, with the prosecutor leading the inquiry submitting a much-awaited report that found major flaws.

The report, the culmination of a four-year investigation into possible misconduct by U.S. government officials, contained withering criticism for the FBI but few significant revelations. Nonetheless, it will give fodder to Trump supporters who have long denounced the Russia investigation, as well as Trump opponents who say the Durham team’s meager court record shows their probe was a politically motivated farce.

Rudy Guiliani has been accused of forcing an aide to give him oral sex while he was on speakerphone to Donald Trump in a bombshell $10m sexual assault and harassment lawsuit brought against the former New York City mayor.

Noelle Dunphy, who worked as an aide to Mr Giuliani in 2019 and 2020, claims that he would make her perform sex acts on him while speaking to his high-profile associates over the phone because it made him “feel like Bill Clinton”.

“He often demanded oral sex while he took phone calls on speaker phone from high-profile friends and clients, including then-President Trump,” Ms Dunphy claims in the lawsuit.

“Giuliani told Ms Dunphy that he enjoyed engaging in this conduct while on the telephone because it made him ‘feel like Bill Clinton.’”

The allegation is just one of several explosive claims laid out in a 70-page lawsuit filed on Monday against the man who has had a remarkable fall from grace from “America’s mayor” in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks to election conspiracy theorist and one of the biggest players at the centre of Mr Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 result.

Former President Donald Trump called into an event hosted by his former national security adviser Michael Flynn over the weekend, telling his ex-adviser, “We’re going to bring you back.”

After scrubbing a rally in Iowa on Saturday night because of bad weather, Trump spoke via telephone at an event for Flynn’s “ReAwaken America Tour” held at the former president’s Miami resort. The retired lieutenant general, a top figure in the far-right movement, has been one of the leading proponents of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

During the call, which was captured on a video of the event posted online, Flynn is seen holding a cellphone up to a microphone as Trump, on the line, says to Flynn, “You just have to stay healthy because we’re bringing you back. We’re going to bring you back.”

It wasn’t clear from Trump’s remarks if he was specifically talking about bringing Flynn into his administration should he win the presidency in 2024 and, if so, for what role.

“We’re proud of you, general,” Trump said. “I knew it from day one — you’re really somebody very special.”