Trump asks Supreme Court to overturn Colorado 2024 ballot ruling: Live

Glenn Kirschner, who worked for six years as a prosecutor for the US Army and 24 years for the US government, told Sky News that the weight of Republican witnesses against Mr Trump would make it very difficult for him to claim he was being unfairly persecuted.

“I think the odds of a conviction are extremely high,” Mr Kirschner told Sky News.

Join The Independent for a virtual roundtable event recapping the election results in Iowa and looking ahead to the rest of the year.

Deputy US editor David Taintor and senior Washington correspondent Eric Garcia will sit down with a panel of experts to analyse the results from the Iowa caucuses and look ahead to New Hampshire, using early signs to share predictions on how the upcoming race for the White House could unfold.

Our expert panel includes Doug Heye, a former Republican National Committee communications director and deputy chief of staff to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. He also managed Republicans’ communications for the 2012 Iowa Caucus.

The event will be hosted on Zoom and will last one hour. It will take place on Thursday, January 18 and will start at 4pm ET (9pm GMT).

For more information and to sign up for a free ticket click here.

Chris Christie has said that the notion that he’s set to drop out of the race for the 2024 presidential nomination is “crazy” despite his dwindling poll numbers and his failure to qualify for the next Republican debate.

The former New Jersey governor and Trump ally turned top critic of the former president appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, saying that “anybody thinks I’m getting out of this race, they’re crazy”.

Mr Christie argued that Mr Trump’s mounting legal woes will lead to President Joe Biden winning re-election, adding that he wasn’t ending his campaign in the face of calls from other Republicans that he call it quits, The Hill noted.

Gustaf Kilander has the story:

The man at the centre of a right-wing conspiracy theory alleging a federal agent incited the January 6 attack could face up to six months in prison after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge of disorderly conduct.

Federal prosecutors told a judge on Tuesday that Ray Epps helped “inspire and gather a crowd” outside the US Capitol, where a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters breached the halls of Congress and blocked the certification of 2020 presidential election results.

In an attached letter to the judge, Epps outlined the “overwhelming and unbearable” waves of “guilt, remorse and humiliation” that followed, after conspiracy theories amplified across social media and Fox News forced his family into hiding.

Alex Woodward has the story.

In 2022, Democrats staved off the worst possible outcomes when they held all of their Senate seats and Sen John Fetterman flipped Pennsylvania’s Senate seat for them, giving them a 51-seat majority. Republicans for their part nominated a slew of unelectable candidates, many of whom won their primaries thanks to Mr Trump’s endorsement.

This time is different. Democrats are defending Senate races in eight swing states. Three of them — Montana, West Virginia and Ohio — are in which Mr Trump won twice. Another four —Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan —are in states that he won in 2016 but lost in 2020. Another is taking place in the perpetual swing state of Nevada. That means that even if Democrats won races in all the states Mr Biden won in 2020 and Republicans won all the states Mr Trump won, Republicans would still control the Senate by three seats.

Eric Garcia takes an in-depth look at the crucial races:

Nikki Haley is reporting her strongest fundraising quarter so far as the former governor and ambassador storms into January ascendant in polling, money and attention.

The Haley campaign reported on Wednesday that it had taken in a “stunning” $24m in contributions in the final quarter of 2023. The total, campaign officials said in a press release, was more than double any previous quarter’s fundraising sum.

Her impressive haul is indicative of one thing: She is heading into the beginning of primary and caucus season with serious momentum behind her campaign, and may very well now be the Republican with the most credible chance of dethroning Donald Trump as the frontrunner for her party’s nomination. Mr Trump remains far ahead of Ms Haley in national polling of the Republican field, but has seen his former representative to the UN close the gap in New Hampshire. She has simultaneously pulled ahead of Ron DeSantis in some Iowa polling, too.

The legal files are part of a long-running defamation lawsuit brought by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre against his former fixer and convicted child trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in 2015.

Although the case was settled in 2017, Maxwell’s attorneys had fought for the names to continue to remain private. Their objection was lifted in 2022, a year after she was convicted and sentenced to two decades in prison.

In December, New York Judge Loretta Preska issued an order to unseal materials connected to the case.

The list has become very political, as we reported earlier this week:

The pair face-off in a CNN-hosted debate next week. Here’s what you need to know: