The 44th president urged people to fight for the institution of democracy.

Speaking in an hour-long interview with Christiane Amanpour of CNN entitled Obama & Amanpour: Will Democracy Win?, the ex-commander-in-chief was asked about Mr Trump’s legal woes.

Gustaf Kilander has the story.

Trump is set to address the evengelical Faith and Freedom Coalition event in Washington DC on Saturday night, the one-year anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.

His speech follows Mike Pence’s remarks on Friday, when he announced support for a national ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Mr Trump, who has repeatedly taken credit for the Supreme Court ruling to strike down a constitutional right to abortion, and Republican officials more broadly have been reluctant to embrace certain bans. The former president also blamed Republicans’ poor outcomes in the 2022 midterm elections because of their anti-abortion platforms.

Read more about the state of abortion access and the political landscape for abortion rights one year after the end of Roe:

A criminal trial involving the former president’s stash of White House documents recovered from his home in an FBI raid may not take place until November.

That was the request that Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith filed late Friday evening with judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the prosecution of the former president.

ABC News first reported the filing, which cites the need for prosecutorial staff to obtain security clearances as one of the key reasons for their requested delay past the original trial date in August.

A second motion requests that Ms Cannon prevent the release of a list of witnesses for the trial whom the Justice Department will seek Mr Trump be barred from contacting. Among other crimes, the ex-president is also charged with witness tampering, and has been ordered not to be in contact with one of his close aides – Walt Nauta.

Read more from The Independent’s John Bowden:

In a post to his Truth Social platform on Saturday morning, Trump blamed Joe Biden for a range of foreign policy decisions, baselessly accusing the president of “illegally” taking “millions and millions of dollars” from China, Ukraine and “many other countries.

“Why hundreds of billions of dollars are given, without any control, to Ukraine,” he wrote.

Trump has repeatedly stated that he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine and would withdraw aid and force a negotiated settlement, while the Biden administartion has continued to support aid to the war-torn country and affirmed US support amid the crisis.

“We’re focused on making sure that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have everything that they need to be successful,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House on Friday.

Elise Stefanik, the fourth highest-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives Republican, and rightwing hardliner Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a pair of resolutions that if enacted would aim to change the record “as if such articles had never been passed”.

The two leading GOP presidential contenders had very different interview experiences with Fox News in the past week — each an illustration of the influence that even a damaged Fox has over the Republican nominating process.

Ms Boebert, who has insisted in the past that raising a child is cheaper than paying for birth control, made the announcement while dodging a question about her spat with congressional colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Graig Grazisosi has the story.

A top Republican election official in Arizona filed a defamation lawsuit Thursday against Kari Lake, who falsely claims she lost the 2022 race for governor because of fraud.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said he’s faced “violent vitriol and other dire consequences” because of lies spread by Lake, including death threats and the loss of friendships.

No, this is not about a new sartorial direction for the former president.

A former FBI analyst has been sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted of illegally retaining classified documents in a case that bears similarities to the legal battle faced by former president Donald Trump.

Kendra Kingsbury, 50, worked as an analyst for the FBI for 12 years and held top secret security clearance when she was accused of taking classified documents out of the secure workspace and storing them in her Kansas City home.