District attorney must step aside or remove prosecutor for Trump Georgia case to continue
A court case against Donald Trump in Georgia cannot go ahead unless the district attorney steps aside or removes a special prosecutor she had a relationship with, the judge has ruled.
Trump is accused, along with 18 others, of attempting to overturn the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election in Georgia.
District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the case, was in a relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, which she argued began in early 2022 – months after she appointed Mr Wade to the prosecution in November 2021.
On Friday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee found the “appearance of impropriety” brought about by Ms Willis’s romantic relationship with Mr Wade must result in either Ms Willis and her office leaving the case – or just Mr Wade.
NBC News said if Ms Willis were to remove herself, the case would come to a halt, but having Mr Wade leave the case will ensure it continues without further delay.
Fani Willis. File pic: Reuters
Nathan Wade testifying in court. Pic: AP
The pair both previously testified that they had engaged in a romantic relationship, which is said to have come to an end last summer, but rejected the idea that Ms Willis improperly benefited from it.
Mr Wade said the pair went on trips to California, Belize and Aruba together, which he booked while being paid a $650,000 (£510,000) salary, and was later reimbursed by the district attorney.
The defence had argued that these financial arrangements “created an incentive” for the prosecution to prolong the court case.
Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee. Pic: Reuters
‘Less drastic’ options available
Giving his ruling, Mr McAfee said an outsider to the case could “reasonably think” that Ms Willis is “not exercising her independent professional judgment totally free of any compromising influences”, which he said will always be the case as long as Mr Wade remains on her team.
But more crucially, he said he did not find any evidence that the rights of defendants had been violated, or that the issues involved prejudiced them in any way.
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He said the disqualification of a constitutional officer, like a district attorney, is not necessary “when a less drastic and sufficiently remedial option is available”.
Responding to the ruling on Friday, Trump’s lead lawyer in the case, Steve Sadow, said the defence still believes there is a conflict of interest and that his team will use “all legal options available”.
Donald Trump during a campaign rally earlier this month. Pic: Reuters/Alyssa Pointer
The Georgia case is one of four criminal prosecutions that Trump is facing as he secured the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the November election.
The former president has long presented the Georgia prosecution, and others he faces, as politically motivated attempts to prevent him from returning to power.
He has highlighted the claims against Ms Willis as evidence of perceived misconduct by those pursuing him.
Trump also faces federal charges for his efforts to undo his election defeat and is due to stand trial in New York later this month on charges related to hush money paid to a porn star.
US
‘Ukraine can’t win war,’ says Trump – as reports emerge of another tumultuous meeting with Zelenskyy
Donald Trump has said he doesn’t think Ukraine can win the war against Russia – as reports emerge of a less-than-harmonious meeting between the US president and Volodymyr Zelenskyy .
Asked about the conflict by a journalist during a visit to the White House by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Mr Trump responded bluntly: “I don’t think they will,” before adding: “They could still win it, I never said they would win it… War is a very strange thing, a lot of bad things happen.”
It is a marked change from his comments a few weeks ago at a UN gathering in New York where he said Ukraine could retake “all of its territory”.
And it comes after the Financial Times claimed the behind-the-scenes of Mr Trump and President Zelenskyy’s meeting in Washington on Friday had descended into a “shouting match”.
According to the paper, the US president repeatedly told his Ukrainian counterpart to accept Vladimir Putin‘s terms for ending the war – warning him that the Russian leader would “destroy” Ukraine if it did not agree.
Mr Zelenskyy later attempted to pour water over the suggestions, saying their meeting was “positive” and that Ukraine was preparing a contract to buy 25 Patriot air defence systems as a result of their talks.
However, Mr Zelenskyy said he did not secure the Tomahawk missiles he had wanted for Ukraine. The long-range missiles would have been a major boost for Kyiv.
“In my opinion, he does not want an escalation with the Russians until he meets with them,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
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Why Tomahawks are off the table
Meanwhile, Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijarto has announced he will visit Washington on Tuesday. It follows claims from Mr Trump that he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest soon.
Will the pair meet again soon? File pic: Reuters
And on Monday, US secretary of state Marco Rubio had a phone call with Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
According to the state department, Mr Rubio and Mr Lavrov spoke about possible concrete steps to implement understandings reached during the call between Mr Trump and Mr Putin last week.
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‘Recovery’ after major internet outage
Mr Rubio had, a statement said, also “emphasised the importance of upcoming engagements as an opportunity for Moscow and Washington to collaborate on advancing a durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war, in line with President Trump’s vision”.
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Also on Monday, French president Emmanuel Macron announced there will be a meeting of the coalition of the willing in London on Friday which Mr Zelenskyy will attend.
The coalition – co-chaired by Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz – has the aim of bringing countries together to protect a peace deal in Ukraine.
Dozens of websites, banks and apps are being affected by a major internet outage.
The problem, which started on Monday morning, appears to be related to an issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
As of 9.20am, there were more than 2,000 reports of the Amazon Web Services outage in the US alone, according to Downdetector, which monitors issues and outages in real-time.
On its service status page, the company said it was seeing “increased error rates” and delays with “multiple AWS services”.
Here’s what we know so far.
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
What has been affected?
Multiple banks, the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) website, mobile phone networks and video-chatting platform Zoom are among the websites having technical issues.
All Amazon products – including Prime Video and Amazon Music – have also been affected, as well as the main Amazon website.
Here’s a full list of what has been affected by the internet outage, according to Downdetector:
• Snapchat
• Ring
• Roblox
• Amazon Web Services
• Life360
• My Fitness Pal
• Amazon
• Xero
• Signal
• Canva
• Fortnite
• Blink Security
• Zoom
• HMRC
• Clash Royale
• Clash Of Clans
• Asana
• Wordle
• Slack
• Smartsheet
• Epic Games Store
• Duolingo
• Amazon Alexa
• Jira
• Vodafone
• Tidal
• Coinbase
• Atlassian
• IMDB
• Amazon Prime Video
• Pokemon Go
• BT
• Peloton
• EE
• Ancestry
• Square
• Playstation Network
• Eventbrite
• Amazon Music
• Sky
• Flickr
• Hay Day
• Rocket League
• Perplexity AI
• Dead By Daylight
• Bank Of Scotland
• Lloyds Bank
• Halifax
What has AWS said?
AWS confirmed it was suffering from “increased error rates and latencies” for multiple services.
In a statement on its website, the company said: “We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause,” an update on its website says.
“We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.”
The company is posting regular updates on the situation and said its engineers were “immediately engaged” as soon as they spotted the issue.
Concentrated in the US
ThousandEyes, a website that tracks the performance of local and wide area networks, servers and applications, shows many of the outages appear to be concentrated in the US.
A large portion is focused in Virginia, which is widely considered as the global capital for data centres.
Has something like this happened before?
US
Donald Trump mocks ‘No Kings’ protests with AI video of himself dropping brown sludge on protesters from jet
Donald Trump has responded to so-called “No Kings” rallies with an AI video of himself in a fighter jet, pouring brown sludge over protesters.
Millions of people were expected to take part in the demonstrations this weekend – the second such gathering after an initial nationwide day of protest in June coinciding with the US president’s birthday.
The term “No Kings” reflects the belief by some that Mr Trump is behaving like a “king” and some in his administration are depicting him as a monarch.
A protester in costume as Donald Trump presents the president as a prisoner in chains in Seattle. Pic: AP
One of the rallies in New York. Pic: Reuters
On Sunday, the president shared the AI video on his social media platform, Truth Social.
In the clip, an AI-generated version of Mr Trump is wearing a crown and sitting in a jet with “King Trump” written across it, to the soundtrack of Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone, from the film Top Gun.
The jet then drops thick brown sludge on to AI-generated protesters.
Supporters say the marches are a patriotic defence of free speech, while critics are calling them anti-American.
A large inflatable effigy of Mr Trump in Chicago. Pic: Reuters
This protest took place in Washington DC. Pic: AP
Mr Trump’s Republican Party has dismissed the demonstrations as “Hate America” rallies.
Many of the events featured marching bands, huge banners and signs, as well as effigies of the president and demonstrators wearing inflatable costumes.
Thousands gathered along the waterfront in Portland, Oregon. Pic: AP
Protesters at the Wyoming State Capitol got creative with their signs. Pic: Wyoming Tribune Eagle/AP
The protests follow Mr Trump’s return to the White House and come against the backdrop of a government shutdown which has closed federal programmes and services.
There has also been criticism of what some see as an aggressive executive, confronting Congress and the courts, in ways that protest organisers believe are a slide toward authoritarianism.
This event in San Francisco was among thousands taking place across the US. Pic: Reuters
A ‘No Kings’ sign, outside City Hall in Los Angeles. Pic: Reuters
So far, the atmosphere at most of the protests appears to have been largely energetic and upbeat, with protesters calling for accountability and protections for civil liberties.
Organisers said events would be peaceful – a direct response to Republican and Trump administration claims that the protests could be unsafe.
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