In late 2021 and early 2022, the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which owns Truth Social, received a combined $8m in loans with potentially dubious origins, The Guardian reports, citing multiple unnamed sources with knowledge of the investigation and a bank receipt showing the transfer.

The funds came from a trust and passed through Paxum Bank, registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica, which is partly owned by Anton Postolnikov, who appears related to Vladimir Putin ally Aleksandr Smirnov, a Russian connection that raised the interested of the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York, according to the report.

Josh Marcus reports on the alleged probe into the tangled web.

An attorney for Donald Trump has admitted that it is now “more probable” that the former president will be indicted on criminal charges over the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

Manhattan prosecutors have been investigating whether Mr Trump falsified the Trump Organization’s business records when Mr Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen made a payment of $130,0000 to Ms Daniels days before the 2016 election.

Prosecutors claim that the money was used to silence Ms Daniels about an alleged affair she had with Mr Trump.

Joe Tacopina told NewsNation on Tuesday that – while he hopes “justice will prevail” – he believes it is looking more likely that Mr Trump will face charges.

“The one thing I still hold onto is hope that justice will prevail,” Joe Tacopina said in an interview Tuesday with NewsNation host Dan Abrams.

Mr Tacopina insisted that Mr trump was a “victim of extortion” before saying: “Anyway, extortion or no extortion, there’s no crime here.”

Donald Trump’s super PAC announced on Wednesday that it had filed a state-level ethics complaint against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, accusing him of running a “shadow campaign” for the GOP nomination without formally filing paperwork to run for president.

The complaint, which came in the form of a letter sent by the Make America Great Again PAC to the Florida Ethics Commission, requests an investigation into the state’s governor for supposedly receiving gifts in support of a “shadow” presidential campaign which the Trump PAC alleges is being run alongside Mr DeSantis’s duties as governor.

John Bowden has the details.

Trump lawyer Joseph Tacopina reached for MSNBC host Ari Melber’s papers live on air as they argued over the former president’s hush money case involving porn actor Stormy Daniels.

Mr Melber was reading from a transcript of Mr Trump saying that he didn’t know of the hush money payment to Ms Daniels made during the 2016 campaign to prevent her from going public with her claim that she had an affair with Mr Trump in 2006.

Gustaf Kilander has the story.

He owned the 152-foot-long yacht on which Bannon was arrested in August 2020 and helped found a media group under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Guo, known as Ho Wan Kwok, among other aliases, was arrested in New York on 15 March on charges that he orchestrated a $1bn fraud scheme under a 12-count indictment alleging wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.

Alex Woodward has the details.

The FBI has officially denied a claim made by former President Donald Trump last year about supposedly utilising the law enforcement agency to aid Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the weeks after his election victory in 2018.

John Bowden reports from Washington, DC.

Donald Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina told Ari Melber that a lie is only one when said under oath…

But in the aftermath of two large bank failures, the conservative former vice president and the democratic socialist senator are striking remarkably similar tones. Pence, a Republican, bemoaned that “we live in a world where certain politically favored businesses are propped up, backstopped and bailed out by government.” Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said “we cannot continue down the road of more socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else.”

Their sentiment reflects the populism that has coursed through both political parties in the 15 years since shaky financial institutions last spurred anxiety about the broader economy. The 2008 financial crisis unleashed a political realignment that rejected perceived elites and establishment figures, often with unpredictable results for Democrats and Republicans alike.

Paris Hilton has addressed her controversial fib about having voted for former US President Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

During an interview with an Australian TV station days after Trump won the election, the American media personality said that she had voted for the Republican nominee, who she said she’s known “since she was a little girl”.

Now she has admitted the full truth, as Inga Parkel reports.

Former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are emerging as leading rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. But when it comes to Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine, they are united in arguing that stopping the aggression isn’t a vital US strategic interest.

This puts them at odds with many others in the Republican Party.