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YouTube reinstates Trump's account
YouTube said today it has lifted restrictions placed on Donald Trump’s channel after the January 6 insurrection:
1/ Starting today, the Donald J. Trump channel is no longer restricted and can upload new content. We carefully evaluated the continued risk of real-world violence, while balancing the chance for voters to hear equally from major national candidates in the run up to an election.
— YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) March 17, 2023
2/ This channel will continue to be subject to our policies, just like any other channel on YouTube.
— YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) March 17, 2023
The popular video sharing site cut off the former president’s ability to post new content after the attack on the Capitol – a restriction it lifted today. It’s the latest instance of tech firms that turned their back on Trump rethinking their policies as he once again runs for president.
Last year, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk ordered the reactivation of Trump’s account on the platform, which was his defining mouthpiece while in office. Trump has not made any new posts on Twitter since then.
Hunter Biden has filed a countersuit against a Delaware computer repairman who played a key role in publicizing data from his laptop, ABC News reports.
The president’s son is responding to a defamation lawsuit filed by John Paul Mac Isaac, who has said he obtained the laptop after Biden abandoned it at his shop, and shared its contents with the FBI and Donald Trump’s allies. The lawsuit challenges whether Mac Isaac followed state law when determining the property was abandoned, among other issues. Here’s more from ABC’s story:
“[Hunter] Biden had more than a reasonable expectation of privacy that any data that he created or maintained ... would not be accessed, copied, disseminated, or posted on the Internet for others to use against him or his family or for the public to view,” according to the countersuit.
Attorneys for Hunter Biden challenged Mac Isaac’s claim that the laptop and an external hard drive became his property when Hunter Biden failed to retrieve them within 90 days of leaving them at the repairman’s Wilmington, Delaware, shop for servicing, citing the fine print of a repair order allegedly signed by Hunter Biden at the time.
“Contrary to Mac Isaac’s Repair Authorization form, Delaware law provides that tangible personal property is deemed abandoned” when the rightful owner has failed to “assert or declare property rights to the property for a period of 1 year,” lawyers for Biden wrote in legal documents.
The counterclaim adds that “other obligations must then also be satisfied before obtaining lawful title, such as the court sending notice to the owner and the petitioner posting notice in five or more public places, and advertising the petition in a newspaper.”
Hunter Biden is seeking a jury trial and unspecified “compensatory damages” from Mac Isaac. A lawyer for Mac Isaac did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Millions of Americans who rely on government food assistance just had their benefits cut, the Guardian’s Michael Sainato reports, thanks to the expiration of a special supplement passed during the Covid-19 pandemic:
Gina Melton is facing a dilemma. Like millions of other Americans, Melton and her family relied on food assistance benefits boosted by Congress to help them through the pandemic. Now that extra cash is gone.
The reduction has hit them hard. Three of her family members are disabled and one of her daughters works to take care of them through an agency. They had already relied on credit cards to pay for medical equipment that wasn’t covered by the federal health insurance schemes Medicare or Medicaid but have had to stop paying a couple of them in order to afford food.
“When you have to choose between feeding your family and paying a credit card bill, you have to choose food,” said Melton, 62.
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports on anxiety in Donald Trump’s social media company over emergency loans accepted as the company ran out of cash. Here’s more:
Top executives at Donald Trump’s social media company started to become concerned last spring about $8m that they had accepted from opaque entities in two emergency loans when its auditors sought further details about the payments, according to documents, emails and sources familiar with the matter.
The payments had come at a critical time for Trump Media – which runs the Truth Social platform – because it was running out of cash after its planned merger with a blank check company known as DWAC that would have unlocked $1.3bn in capital stalled pending an SEC investigation.
But the financing, which came in the form of a $2m loan from an entity called Paxum Bank registered in Dominica in December 2021 and a $6m loan from a entity called ES Family Trust in February 2022, had been arranged in a hurry and Trump Media knew next to nothing about the emergency lenders.
Trump special prosecutor zeros in on Mar-a-Lago staff who knew about documents
According to CNN, special prosecutor Jack Smith’s latest subpoena volley indicates a determination to learn every detail about the movement of classified documents around Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
News that the former president was holding government secrets at his south Florida property became public last year when the FBI searched the resort and carted away boxes of material. Attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Smith to handle both the documents case and the inquiry into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result – though the former has become clouded by the revelations that both Joe Biden and Mike Pence also had classified documents at their properties.
That doesn’t seem to be stopping Smith, who CNN reports is demanding testimony from anyone who could have seen anything regarding the documents at Mar-a-Lago. Here’s more from their report:
On Thursday, Trump’s communications aide Margo Martin, who worked in the White House and then moved with Trump to Florida, appeared before the grand jury in Washington, DC. One of special counsel Jack Smith’s senior-most prosecutors was involved in the interview.
Martin, who is among a small group of former White House advisers who have remained employed by Trump after he left office, declined to answer any questions when approached by a CNN reporter.
Smith has sought testimony from a range of people close to Trump – from his own attorneys who represent him in the matter to staffers who work on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago, including a housekeeper and restaurant servers, sources said.
The staffers are of interest to investigators because of what they may have seen or heard while on their daily duties around the estate, including whether they saw boxes or documents in Trump’s office suite or elsewhere.
“They’re casting an extremely wide net – anyone and everyone who might have seen something,” said one source familiar with the Justice Department’s efforts.
For instance, federal investigators have talked to a Mar-a-Lago staff member seen on security camera footage moving boxes from a storage room with Trump aide Walt Nauta, who has already spoken with investigators.
Many of the Mar-a-Lago staffers are being represented by counsel paid for by Trump entities, according to sources and federal elections records.
Special prosecutor aims subpoenas at Mar-a-Lago staff
Good morning, US politics blog readers. We learned a little bit more about special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago yesterday, when CNN reported that the prosecutor had sent subpoenas to a number of staffers at the south Florida resort – among them, restaurant servers and a housekeeper. Smith has been tasked with recommending whether to charge Trump over both his retention of classified materials and attempts to overturn the 2020 election, a decision that could upend the 2024 presidential race.
Here’s what else is happening today:
Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar is in Washington DC, where he’s having breakfast with Kamala Harris, visiting the Capitol and attending a reception with Joe Biden at the White House.
Trump hosts the Republican Party of Palm Beach County Lincoln Day Dinner at Mar-a-Lago this afternoon.
Abortion advocates are awaiting a ruling from a Texas judge in a case that could lead to abortion medication being banned nationwide. It could come today, or next week.
English (United States) ·