Donald Trump news today: Trump says he is ‘very unlikely’ to pardon himself after winning stay in New York fraud trial

Donald Trump has told NBC’s Meet the Press in a new interview that he is “very unlikely” to pardon himself should he regain the White House next year, saying doing so “would look terrible” and that he had declined the chance to absolve himself at the close of his first term.

“I could have pardoned myself when I left,” the Republican front-runner told Kristen Welker.

“People said, ‘Would you like to pardon yourself?’ I had a couple of attorneys that said, ‘You can do it if you want’.

“I had some people that said, ‘It would look bad if you do it’, because I think it would look terrible.

Of the prospect taking place in future, he said: “I think it’s very unlikely. What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything wrong. You mean because I challenge an election, they want to put me in jail?”

Not surprisingly, media pundits were not entirely convinced by the claim last night.

The hush money payments case wasn’t the only New York-centric legal battle Mr Trump faced this year.

On 9 May, a New York jury found him liable for the sexual abuse of E Jean Carroll.

In 2019, the longtime Elle magazine columnist accused Mr Trump of raping her in the dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in New York City in 1996, which the then-president denied.

The writer sued Mr Trump for defamation that year, and the Justice Department temporarily defended him, claiming his comments were part of his duties as president, though the DoJ ceased this defence in 2023. Ms Carroll later added a sexual battery charge against Mr Trump under a new New York law allowing survivors of sexual abuse to sue their abusers despite the statute of limitations.

The May verdict, which awarded Ms Carroll $5m, wasn’t the end of the matter, however. Though the jury found that Mr Trump was liable for sexually abusing Ms Carroll, it hadn’t technically found he had raped her.

In June, Mr Trump sued Ms Carroll for saying the New York businessman had in fact raped her. In an order made public on 7 August, federal judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed the former president’s counterclaim, finding that the original verdict “establishes against him the substantial truth of Ms Carroll’s ‘rape’ accusations.”

The former president is appealing the $5m verdict, while Ms Carroll is suing Mr Trump in a separate defamation action, after he criticised the original decision, denied ever meeting Carroll, and accused her once again of fabricating her rape allegation.

The administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is not recommending Covid boosters for people under the age of 65.

The recommendation goes against guidance from federal health authorities. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are recommending updated shots for everyone six months and older.

In a statement from DeSantis’s office released 13 September, the governor said, “I will not stand by and let the FDA and CDC use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe and effective…Florida is the first state in the nation to stand up and provide guidance based on truth, not Washington edicts.”

State Surgeon General Dr Joseph Ladapo, appointed by the governor, echoed DaSantis’s opinions in the statement.

Federal prosecutors have indicted President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, on three charges stemming from allegedly false statements he made when buying a firearm.

The indictment – the first ever against a sitting president’s son – came after a plea agreement on tax and gun charges collapsed in July under scrutiny from a federal judge.

Charges announced on Thursday follow a multi-year investigation by David Weiss, who was appointed as US attorney for Delaware by Donald Trump in 2018 and has remained under the current administration in an effort to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Mr Biden, 80, is no stranger to public office. He was first elected to the US Senate in 1972 and has been in Washington almost ever since, leaving public office only for a brief period between the expiration of Barack Obama’s second term as president and the beginning of his own first term.

Mr Biden’s 2020 campaign focused heavily on his character, drawing on his working-class Irish Catholic roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the tragedies he has suffered. Shortly after being elected at the age of 30, Mr Biden lost his first wife Neilia Hunter and their one-year-old daughter Naomi in a car accident.

Mr Biden’s young sons Beau and Hunter were both in the car that day but escaped with minor injuries. Beau Biden, an Iraq war veteran, passed away from a brain tumour in 2015, aged just 46.

Mr Biden is known for his empathy for ordinary people in times of trial and is thought of as a family man throughout Washington. After Mr Biden announced his bid for reelection on 25 April, here is a look at a selection of the family members closest to him.

Mr Trump is also under scrutiny from local officials in New York.

On 30 March, a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict the former president for allegedly falsifying business records relating to hush money payments he made to porn actress Stormy Daniels to prevent her from revealing an alleged affair during the 2016 election.

Mr Trump faces 34 first-degree felony charges for allegedly working through his former attorney Michael Cohen and former National Enquirer David Pecker to “catch and kill” embarrassing stories, passing out hundreds of thousands of dollars to silence allegations of affairs and a child born out of wedlock, then allegedly falsifying records to conceal the payments.

“We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is leading the prosecution, said in a statement.

The charges in Washington followed another special counsel prosecution against Mr Trump in Florida.

On 8 June, a federal grand jury indicted Mr Trump on 37 charges for allegedly retaining classified national defence information after leaving the White House, then conspiring to obstruct justice and making false statements when federal officials sought to take back the official documents.

Nearly two months later, on 28 July, federal prosecutors added three additional charges in the case, accusing Mr Trump and employees of his Mar-a-Lago estate of attempting to delete security footage pertaining to the documents so it couldn’t be used in a future investigation as evidence.

On 1 August, a grand jury approved an indictment accusing Mr Trump of conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding, and deprivation of civil rights under colour of law, the latter charge using a post-Civil War law designed to prosecute the Klu Klux Klan.

The four-count indictment alleges Mr Trump and his allies knew they lost the 2020 election, but sought to hold onto power anyway. They did so, according to federal prosecutors, by pressuring officials to ignore the popular vote, organising slates of illegitimate electors, conducting sham Justice Department investigations into state election counts, coercing Vice President Mike Pence to reject certifying the legitimate election results, then fueling the mob of supporters who sacked the Capitol on January 6.

Mr Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges and claimed he was the victim of a political prosecution.

“This was never supposed to happen in America. This is the persecution of the person that’s leading by very, very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading Biden by a lot so if you can’t beat them you persecute them or prosecute ‘em,” he said on 3 August.

A judge from a New York state appeals court has issued a temporary halt to the upcoming 2 October trial in the fraud lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James against Donald Trump and his family business.

The judge’s directive was issued during a surprise virtual hearing that was closed to the public.

The order was issued in response to the former US president’s lawsuit against Justice Arthur Engoron, the trial judge responsible for the case.

In his lawsuit, Mr Trump accused Justice Engoron and Ms James of disregarding a court order that could limit the scope of the lawsuit, the Daily Beast reported.

A court spokesperson said that Justice David Friedman from the appeals court has granted a temporary suspension of the trial and has referred the issue to a five-judge panel – which is expected to rule during the last week of September. That means that the trial could in theory still go ahead on 2 October, depending on the panel’s ruling.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law Thursday restricting release of her travel and security records after the Legislature wrapped up a special session marked by a fight to more broadly scale back the state Freedom of Information Act.

The law, which took effect immediately, allows the state to wall off details about the security provided the GOP governor and other constitutional officers, including who travels on the State Police airplane and the cost of individual trips. Proposed changes to the 1967 law protecting the public’s access to government records were among several items Sanders had placed on the agenda for a session that met this week.

Sanders has argued the restrictions are needed to protect her and her family, citing threats she’s faced since taking office and going back to her time as White House press secretary for former President Donald Trump.

“We protected the police officers who protect our constitutional officers and my family in keeping their security information and tactics exempt from Freedom of Information Act disclosure,” Sanders said before signing the measure, about two hours after lawmakers gave it final it approval.