Trump wins backing of largest US police organization as 90 business leaders endorse Harris – live

Former vice president Dick Cheney will vote for Kamala Harris in November, his daughter Liz Cheney said on Friday.

In an interview on Friday at the Texas Tribune Festival, Liz Cheney said, “Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” NBC reports.

Earlier this week, Liz Cheney addressed an audience at Duke University where she said: “Because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”

During her interview on Friday, Liz Cheney also said that she will support Texas’s Democratic representative Colin Allred’s senatorial bid.

Speaking of Allred, who is challenging Republican incumbent Ted Cruz, Cheney called him a “tremendous, serious candidate,” adding: “We need people who are going to serve in good faith… We people who are honorable public servants, and in this race, that is Colin Allred, so I’ll be working on his behalf.”

Before Donald Trump’s trip to North Carolina today, the Fraternal Order of Police issued the following statement of endorsement of him:

In every election cycle, the FOP pays close attention to which presidential campaign highlights the issues most vital to the men and women of the FOP, including the challenges faced by the rank-and-file law enforcement officers, the real issues in public safety, and the problems in our criminal justice system …

The National FOP endorsed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. He led our nation through some very tough times. He provided our nation with strong, effective leadership during his first term, and now that he is seeking election to a second term, we intend to help him win it.

Hello, US politics blog readers. It’s a very busy news day even though the election campaign trail itself is rather quiet.

Kamala Harris is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, behind closed doors preparing for her historic debate next Tuesday with her opponent for the White House in November, Donald Trump. But she has been given good news in the form of her latest fundraising and polling results.

Trump, meanwhile, has been dealing with legal troubles in New York. First, he appeared in civil court at a hearing in which he is appealing a civil judgment against him that he sexually abused the writer E Jean Carroll, before holding a press conference uptown and then getting a vital judicial decision in his New York criminal case.

Here’s where things stand:

• The judge in the New York criminal case in which Donald Trump was convicted earlier this year of election-related fraud over hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and a cover-up has delayed sentencing of the former president until after the election.

• Donald Trump launched an angry tirade against E Jean Carroll, the Biden administration, Kamala Harris, news networks including ABC and CNN, and Iran and China in a long and aggressive press conference filled top to bottom with outlandish claims and personal attacks.

• More than 90 business leaders, including the heads of Yelp and Chobani, endorsed Kamala Harris’s presidential bid, in a new letter. It was also signed by current and former top executives including the former CEOs of PepsiCo, Ford Motor, Yahoo! and 21st Century Fox, and said: “Harris has a strong record of advancing actions to spur business investment in the United States and ensure American businesses can compete and win.”

• Trump’s lawyers argued at an appeal hearing in civil court in New York that the trial spurred by a lawsuit brought forth by the writer E Jean Carroll, where a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, consisted of improper evidence.

• Kamala Harris’s election campaign brought in $361m in contributions the last month, nearly tripling the $130m raised by Trump’s campaign during the same period. The campaign of Harris and Tim Walz, her running mate and the governor of Minnesota, called it the biggest grassroots fundraiser in presidential campaign history.

• Joe Biden is due to arrive in Ann Arbor, Michigan, soon, where he will speak about his administration’s economic agenda.

• JD Vance sparked a political row after calling school shootings an unwelcome “fact of life” and saying schools need stronger security, while Democrats, led by Biden and Harris, want stronger gun control, especially a ban on assault-style rifles, including the semi-automatic gun that was used in the school shooting in Georgia earlier this week.

Donald Trump and his legal team had asked Justice Juan Merchan to push back the former president’s criminal sentencing date until after the presidential vote on 5 November.

Merchan moments ago announced the sentencing would be pushed back from 18 September to 26 November (a Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving).

Here’s a fuller quote from Merchan’s response to both sides’ legal teams, picked out from the official decision by Reuters:

This matter is one that stands alone in a unique place in this Nation’s history. Unfortunately, we are now at a place in time that is fraught with complexities rendering the requirements of a sentencing hearing, should one be necessary, difficult to execute,.

Trump’s lawyers earlier this month had argued there would not be enough time before the original sentencing date for the defense to potentially appeal Merchan’s forthcoming ruling on Trump’s request to overturn the conviction due to the supreme court’s landmark decision on presidential immunity. Merchan had been scheduled to rule on that motion on 16 September.

He wrote today that he now plans to rule on that motion on 12 November.

The supreme court’s 6-3 ruling, which related to a separate criminal case Trump faces – the federal election meddling case – found that presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted for their official acts, and that evidence of presidents’ official actions cannot be used to help prove criminal cases involving unofficial actions.

Joanna Walters

Donald Trump has once again succeeded in pushing back the calendar on his legal troubles as, even though the case came to court and he was convicted, he will not now be sentenced in the New York hush-money criminal case until after the election.

The judge in the case in Manhattan, Juan Merchan, has said today that the situation is now “fraught with complexities” such that he cannot deliver sentencing on Trump’s felony conviction on 18 September as had been scheduled.

He said the case “stands alone in a unique place” in US history: the first time a former US president has been convicted of a crime.

The sentencing also follows a decision by the US supreme court in July that US presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts related to their office. It is therefore a matter of legal argument whether Trump’s actions, bringing a conviction for election campaign-related fraud, are covered by that ruling.

Merchan said the ruling created “one of the most difficult decisions a judge can face”.

Trump criminal sentencing put off until after election

Joanna Walters

The judge in the New York criminal case in which Donald Trump was convicted earlier this year of election-related fraud over hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and a cover-up has delayed sentencing of the former president until after the election.

Judge Juan Merchan in Manhattan has put the sentencing date back from 18 September until 26 November.

The presidential election is on 5 November, and the former president is running for another term in the White House as the Republican nominee for president, against Kamala Harris, the vice-president and Democratic party nominee.

Trump was found guilty by a jury in Manhattan in May of a hush-money plot to influence the 2016 election, on 34 felony counts.

In more than 45 minutes, Donald Trump launched an angry tirade against E Jean Carroll, the Biden administration, Kamala Harris, news networks including ABC and CNN, and Iran and China.

As Trump repeated his usual talking points including denying sexually assaulting Carroll while calling the case a “rigged deal”, a crowd of tourists and anti-Trump protestors gathered outside Trump Tower, with some waving signs that read “Guilty” and “Justice matters”.

Trump also invited his lawyers Alina Habba and Will Scharf to speak at the press conference. Both Habba and Scharf defended him while saying they were “disgusted” by the alleged attacks against him.

Barricades are erected outside the Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York City.

A small crowd of people are gathered outside the barriers, hoping to catch a glimpse of the former president.