President Donald Trump's Monday evening press briefing is being widely panned as a rambling diatribe of complaints and misinformation. The President had difficulty pronouncing many words, including "plasma," as many noted.
Trump also lied about the timing of any possible vaccine:
And he lied about the state of the pandemic in the U.S.:
Here's a sampling of what many are saying:
Special counsel Jack Smith's testy slap-back to an attorney for Donald Trump's body man was unsealed Wednesday by the Florida federal judge overseeing the former president's classified documents case.
Smith's newly published report responds to Trump-funded attorney Stanley Woodward, who claimed last year he was threatened by Jay Bratt, the Justice Department’s chief of counterintelligence, during a meeting to discuss his client Walt Nauta in 2022.
"The allegations told an implausible, if not ludicrous tale," Smith replies, "in which a career prosecutor who had served the Department with distinction for more than 30 years concocted a plan to threaten an attorney."
Woodward reportedly complained Bratt told him, "Unless his client agreed to cooperate, the prosecutor would contact the White House and attempt to scuttle the attorney's nomination to D.C.Superior Court."
As Woodward described it, Bratt allegedly said, "I wouldn't want you to do anything to mess that up."
In his reply, Smith noted the alleged threat would represent a violation of Department policy as soon as contact with the White House was made.
Smith also included a snippet of Woodward's complaint — filed under seal when the Guardian first reported its claims last June — that show Nauta's defense attorney was infuriated by Bratt's argument as to why his client should cooperate with the prosecution.
"Mr. Bratt also advised that the government's case against Mr. Nauta was strong," Woodward wrote, "referencing his belief that one way or another Mr. Nauta would be giving up a lifestyle of private planes and private golf courses."
ALSO READ: Revealed: What government officials privately shared about Trump not disclosing finances
In his report, Smith notes the conversation in question took place in August 2022, about nine months before Woodward raised any complaints about alleged prosecutorial misconduct.
"Woodward — who had dealt with several prosecutors from the Special Counsel's Office during that span — never raised any allegation, concern, or complaint about that meeting," Smith writes.
"The Government had never seen or heard of any complaints about the August 2022 meeting until Trump filed the Disclosure Motion in June 2023."
A 2023 NBC report on Woodward's claim notes it was "consistent with a strategy by Trump’s legal team to raise questions about prosecutorial tactics."
The report also states Trump took to Truth Social to complain prosecutors tried to “bribe & intimidate” Woodward by offering an “important judgeship” in the Biden administration if his client “flips” on Trump.
"That does not match how the source described Woodward’s allegations," the report noted.
The U.S. Supreme Court was set to hear a crucial case Wednesday weighing whether Idaho's near-total ban on abortion violates federal law requiring hospitals to stabilize patients needing emergency care.
It comes nearly two years after the conservative-majority bench overturned the national right to terminate a pregnancy, making reproductive rights a pivotal issue that could shape the outcome of the November presidential election.
The ruling in the Idaho case could have sweeping consequences for hospitals across the country.
Dozens of women's rights activists gathered in front of the court before oral arguments began, some draped in red-stained sheets symbolizing blood. Anti-abortion activists also arrived, chanting slogans.
Idaho has some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the United States, allowing the procedure only if a pregnant mother is at imminent risk of death.
The Biden administration sued Idaho arguing that its law conflicts with a federal law that requires hospitals that receive government Medicare funding to provide emergency room care, including abortion, in situations that are serious but not necessarily life-threatening.
"Beyond care necessary to prevent death, the law provides no defense whatsoever when the health of the pregnant patient is at stake," the Justice Department said.
A federal judge in Boise, the Idaho capital, issued a preliminary injunction in August 2022 blocking the state law on the grounds it put doctors in a difficult position.
But in January the Supreme Court put the Idaho ban back in place while it took up the matter.
The Supreme Court ruling overturning the constitutional right in June 2022 to abortion left states free to create their own laws around the procedure.
A Texas woman was recently forced to leave the state for an emergency abortion after being prevented from terminating her potentially life-threatening pregnancy.
Texas physicians found guilty of providing abortions face up to 99 years in prison, fines of up to $100,000 and the revocation of their medical license.
Under Idaho's "Defense of Life Act" someone who carries out an abortion may be jailed for five years.
In a recent statement, President Joe Biden said that the court's overturning of the federal right to abortion last year "has enabled Republican elected officials to pursue dangerous abortion bans like this one that continue to jeopardize women's health, force them to travel out of state for care, and make it harder for doctors to provide care."
© Agence France-Presse
An Iranian court has sentenced to death a popular rapper jailed for more than a year and a half for supporting nationwide protests sparked by Mahsa Amini's death, local media reported Wednesday.
"Branch 1 of Isfahan Revolutionary Court... sentenced Toomaj Salehi to death on the charge of corruption on Earth," the singer's lawyer Amir Raisian said, quoted by the reformist Shargh newspaper.
Salehi, 33, was arrested in October 2022 after publicly backing the wave of demonstrations which erupted a month earlier, triggered by the death in custody of 22-year-old Amini, an Iranian Kurd who had been detained over an alleged breach of the Islamic republic's strict dress rules for women.
The court "in an unprecedented move, emphasised its independence and did not implement the Supreme Court's ruling", the lawyer said, adding that "we will certainly appeal against the sentence".
"The Supreme Court, as an appellate authority, had reviewed the case and issued a ruling to the lower court to remove the flaws in the sentence," he added.
"The fact is that the verdict of the court has clear legal conflicts," the lawyer was quoted as saying.
"The contradiction with the ruling of the Supreme Court is considered the most important and at the same time the strangest part of this ruling."
The Revolutionary Court had accused Salehi of "assistance in sedition, assembly and collusion, propaganda against the system and calling for riots", he said.
Months of unrest following Amini's death on September 16, 2022 saw hundreds of people killed including dozens of security personnel, and thousands more arrested.
Iranian officials labelled the protests "riots" and accused Tehran's foreign foes of fomenting the unrest.
Nine men have been executed in protest-related cases involving killing and other violence against security forces.
(AFP)
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