John Bolton says he hopes to expose Trump’s ‘abuse of power’ after being indicted – US politics live | US news

After a federal judge tossed Donald Trump’s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, book publisher Penguin Random House and two Times reporters last month, the US president filed a 40-page amended complaint on Thursday.

US district court judge Steven Merryday in Florida gave Trump 28 days to refile and amend the action he threw out on 19 September.

The initial lawsuit named investigative reporters Suzanne Craig, Russ Buettner and Michael S Schmidt as well as the New York Times’s chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker. All but Schmidt are still named in the amended complaint.

The amended complaint includes an itemized list of dozens of allegations tied to specific publications and statements. Like the first lawsuit, Trump is asking for $15bn in compensatory damages. He’s also asking for “punitive damages in an amount to be determined upon trial of this action.”

In his initial disqualifying, Merryday cited rule 8(a) of the federal rules of civil procedure requiring a complaint to include a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.

“Alleging only two simple counts of defamation, the complaint consumes 85 pages,” Merryday wrote. “Count one appears on page 80, and count two appears on page 83 … Even under the most generous and lenient application of rule 8, the complaint is decidedly improper and impermissible.”

A phone call between US president Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin shows that the Russian president reacts to pressure for serious peace talks, a German government spokesperson said on Friday.

“The pressure on Vladimir Putin for serious peace talks must be increased as a matter of urgency,” the spokesperson said.

“He reacts to pressure … this telephone call yesterday also showed that it is also a consequence of decisions based on announcements by the US side.”

Anna Betts

New York City’s three mayoral candidates faced off on Thursday night in the first of two televised debates, less than three weeks before voters head to the polls.

On stage were Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, former governor Andrew Cuomo – now running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June – and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race several weeks ago, did not participate.

During the two-hour-long debate, the candidates clashed over a variety of local and national issues, including crime, policing, affordability, housing and transportation, as well as how they would handle the Trump administration and the recent Gaza ceasefire deal.

Mamdani and Cuomo, the race frontrunners, wasted no time and began sparring – with Sliwa between them – almost immediately.

Cuomo is notably attempting a political comeback after resigning as governor of New York in 2021 in the wake of multiple allegations of sexual harassment. He started the night echoing his performance in the primary debates, painting Mamdani as too unqualified and inexperienced to lead the city.

“This is no job for on-the-job training,” Cuomo said. “If you look at the failed mayors, they’re ones that have no management experience.”

Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assemblyman from Queens and self-described democratic socialist, pushed back on Cuomo by citing his five years in the New York state assembly and his lived experience in New York City. He touted himself as “someone who has actually paid rent in the city” and “who has had to wait for a bus that never came, someone who actually buys his groceries in this city”.

Cuomo shot back: “What the assemblyman said is he has no experience.”

Mamdani fired back: “What I don’t have in experience, I make up for in integrity, and what you don’t have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience.”

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.

We start with the news that the justice department has filed federal charges against John Bolton, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump who turned into one of his biggest critics, accusing him of transmitting and retaining highly classified information under the Espionage Act.

The 18-count indictment was handed up by a grand jury in federal district court in Maryland on Thursday. Bolton has been charged with sending diary entries to two unnamed individuals about his day-to-day activities when he was national security adviser, many of which contained highly classified information.

The indictment marked the third time in recent weeks the justice department has secured criminal charges against one of Trump’s critics. In response to a question about the charges, Trump told reporters on Thursday that he was not aware of them but that Bolton was a “bad guy”.

While Bolton parted on sour terms from the White House, the criminal investigation gained momentum during the Biden administration over disclosures that troubled the US intelligence community.

The justice department pursues Espionage Act cases in the event of so-called “aggregating factors”: willful mishandling of classified information, vast quantities of classified information to support an inference of misconduct, disloyalty to the US and obstruction.

“BOLTON took detailed notes documenting his day-to-day meetings, activities, and briefings. Frequently, BOLTON handwrote these notes on yellow notepads throughout his day at the White House complex or in other secure locations, and then later re-wrote his notes in a word processing document,” the indictment said.

“The notes that BOLTON sent to Individuals 1 and 2 using his non-governmental personal email accounts and messaging account described in detail BOLTON’s daily activities as the National Security Advisor. Often, BOLTON’s notes described the secure setting or environment in which he learned the national defense and classified information that he was memorializing in his notes.”

In a statement, Bolton said, “I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power.” Bolton’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said his client had not engaged in wrongdoing.

Read our full story here:

In other developments:

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy will head to the White House on Friday for a crucial meeting with Donald Trump, hours after the US president said he had agreed to another summit with Vladimir Putin in Budapest after a “very productive” call. The possible supply of US Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine is expected to top the agenda during the Ukrainian president’s visit.

• New York City’s three mayoral candidates faced off on Thursday night in the first of two televised debates, less than three weeks before voters head to the polls. On stage were Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, former governor Andrew Cuomo – now running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June – and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race several weeks ago, did not participate.

• After a federal judge tossed Donald Trump’s $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, book publisher Penguin Random House and two Times reporters last month, the US president filed a 40-page amended complaint on Thursday. US district court judge Steven Merryday in Florida gave Trump 28 days to refile and amend the action he threw out on 19 September.

• Amid escalating tensions with Venezuela and US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, the US admiral who commands military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced on social media. Adm Alvin Holsey’s abrupt departure comes less than a year after he took over as head of the US military’s southern command, which oversees operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The posting typically lasts three years.

• The US Senate failed on Thursday to reopen the government and to vote to fund the military during the federal government shutdown, ensuring that the standoff will stretch into next week. The Senate vote on a short-term Republican funding bill failed for the 10th time with just 51 votes.

• More than two centuries have passed since France celebrated the emperor Napoleon’s birthday by laying the foundation stone of the Arc de Triomphe. Now Donald Trump has imperial ambitions of his own. On Wednesday, the US president unveiled plans for a grand arch in Washington that has already been dubbed the “Arc de Trump”.