Former President Donald Trump selected Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate, and the FBI revealed they have accessed the phone of Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Trump picks Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate
Former President Donald Trump has selected Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his pick to be vice president should he win in November.
“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Monday afternoon. “J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond.”
Vance, a Trump critic-turned-convert, has emerged as a leader on the Republican Party’s rightmost reaches and a favorite among some of the more radical figures in Trump’s world. Prior to winning his Senate race in 2022, Vance was a Marine and venture capitalist who wrote a bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” that garnered bipartisan praise for its depiction of his tumultuous upbringing in Middletown, Ohio, and path to Yale University Law School.
“I was a convert in 2019 to the cause of Trump's America First agenda,” Vance said in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington last week. “I was cognizant of the fact that, because I was a convert, Trump had not yet taken over the Republican Party, even in Washington, D.C., even in 2019 even though he was the president of the United States.”
“There were people who were aggressively pushing back against his influence, who were already planning a return to basically reimplementing the Wall Street Journal editorial page’s preferred positions in 2019. I think that's over now.”
In 2016, Vance notably called Trump an “idiot,” “noxious” and “reprehensible,” labeling himself as “a Never Trump guy” and telling a friend that Trump could be “America’s Hitler” as the then-businessman made his first run for president. Now, as Trump is just days away from receiving the Republican nomination for the first time, he has chosen the man who has become one of his most loyal supporters in Washington as his running mate.
“I always wish his memory was as bad as Joe Biden's, because he would forget about what I said about him in 2016,” Vance said in his speech last week.
As Vance has embraced Trump and his ideology, Trump has returned the favor in kind. In a Fox News radio interview last week, Trump described the 39-year-old Vance as looking like a “young Abraham Lincoln.”
“This guy turned out to be an absolute star. He is a young star, and he's a great senator and a real fighter, JD Vance,” Trump said at a March rally in Ohio.
Vance has emerged as one of Trump’s staunchest defenders since arriving in Washington. He made an appearance outside Trump’s criminal hush-money trial earlier this year and authored an op-ed slamming the district attorney and the judge in the case.
On Saturday, just two hours after Trump had been shot at by a would-be assassin, Vance blamed the violence on President Joe Biden’s campaign. Law enforcement have still not publicly identified a motive for the gunman, a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who was shot and killed by Secret Service after opening fire.
“Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote on social media. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.”
Vance is also the favored pick of Charlie Kirk, the influential leader of the pro-Trump youth organization Turning Point USA known for antisemitic, anti-immigrant and otherwise racist rhetoric. Kirk, who is close with Trump and whose organization is closely aligned with the Trump campaign, is slated to speak at the Republican National Convention on Monday night.
“I talked to the president over the weekend encouraging him to choose JD Vance,” Kirk said on his streaming show last week. “He's the only vice president of the finalists who's actually MAGA populist nationalist, not a more corporate, chamber of commerce mold.”
Vance himself has pitched himself as an economic nationalist in favor of producing more domestically and decreasing reliance on foreign trade, vehemently anti-immigrant, and an opponent of U.S. funding for Ukraine’s war against Russian invaders.
“The thing on immigration is that no one can avoid that it has made our society poorer, less safe, less prosperous and less advanced,” Vance said in his speech at the National Conservatism Conference last week.
The Ohio senator, who turns 40 in August, will now be pit against Vice President Kamala Harris as both junior partners will attempt to make the case to the American people that they are fit to assume the presidency if the 78-year-old Trump or the 81-year-old Biden can no longer serve.
FBI says it has gained access to cellphone of suspect in assassination attempt against Donald Trump
The FBI says it has now successfully gained access to the cellphone of Thomas Matthew Crooks and are analyzing all his electronic devices for clues as to a motive in the weekend assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
The bureau also said in a statement Monday that it has finished searching the suspect’s home and car.
FBI officials said Sunday that they were trying to access Crooks’ phone. They said the limited insight they had into recent communications didn’t reveal anything with regard to a motive in the attempted assassination.
The FBI has conducted nearly 100 interviews of law enforcement officials, attendees at the rally and other witnesses, and has received hundreds of digital media tips.
Judge dismisses classified documents case against Trump, calling special counsel's appointment unlawful
A federal judge on Monday dismissed the classified documents case against Donald Trump, ruling that she believes the Justice Department appointment of special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, is a massive victory for the former president, who faced dozens of felony charges accusing him of mishandling classified documents after leaving office and hampering the federal government's efforts to retrieve them. Trump pleaded not guilty last year and has denied any wrongdoing.
Trump's lawyers have repeatedly filed longshot motions to try and get the case tossed, many of which were rejected. Other courts rejected similar efforts to the one Cannon accepted on Monday.
"The Framers gave Congress a pivotal role in the appointment of principal and inferior officers," Cannon wrote in her ruling. "That role cannot be usurped by the Executive Branch or diffused elsewhere — whether in this case or in another case, whether in times of heightened national need or not."
"Upon careful study of the foundational challenges raised in the Motion, the Court is convinced that Special Counsel's Smith's prosecution of this action breaches two structural cornerstones of our constitutional scheme — the role of Congress in the appointment of constitutional officers, and the role of Congress in authorizing expenditures by law," she added.
Cannon faced widespread scrutiny for delays in bringing the case against Trump. The case was set to go to trial in May, but it was indefinitely delayed as she reviewed motion after motion put forth by Trump's attorneys.
"Both the Appointments and Appropriations challenges as framed in the Motion raise the following threshold question: is there a statute in the United States Code that authorizes the appointment of Special Counsel Smith to conduct this prosecution?" Cannon wrote. "After careful study of this seminal issue, the answer is no."
"In the end, it seems the Executive’s growing comfort in appointing ‘regulatory’ special counsels in the more recent era has followed an ad hoc pattern with little judicial scrutiny," she added.
It's unclear what happens next. The Justice Department is almost certain to appeal the decision to a higher court. Smith's team has not commented on the ruling.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the " dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step" in moving to dismiss all the cases against him, which he baselessly called "Witch Hunts."
"The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME," Trump alleged. "Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!"
The case was one of two that Smith brought against Trump. The other, a four-count indictment accusing him of working to subvert the 2020 presidential election, was supposed to go to trial in March, but has similarly been mired in delays, with Trump claiming absolute immunity from criminal prosecution as president.
The Supreme Court handed him at least a partial victory earlier this month, ruling that presidents are shielded from charges for official acts as president, though unofficial acts are not covered. The case now gets handed back to a lower court to determine if the charges still fit the bill under the high court's ruling.
Trump was separately convicted in New York in May of 34 felony counts of business fraud over hush money payments to an adult film star. Another state case against Trump, one accusing him and several allies of taking part in a criminal conspiracy to subvert Georgia's election results, has been delayed as defendants try to remove the prosecutor in the case.