Trump news – live: Rudy Giuliani boasted about selling pardons with Trump for $2m, lawsuit claims

A former aide to Rudolph Giuliani says he told her the ex-New York City mayor and then-president Donald Trump were offering to sell presidential pardons for $2 million apiece, according to court documents.

The bombshell allegation was levied in a complaint filed against Mr Giuliani by Noelle Dunphy, a New York-based public relations professional who is suing him for “unlawful abuses of power, wide-ranging sexual assault and harassment, wage theft, and other misconduct” committed while she worked for him in 2019 and 2020.

Mr Giuliani has strongly denied the claims in the lawsuit.

Earlier it it was reported that Mr Trump was shown tweets from Democrats blasting CNN for hosting the town hall with him to psyche him up during the live broadcast.

During the initial commercial break, Trump adviser Jason Miller showed the former president recent tweets backstage at the New Hampshire college where the event was hosted, according to Axios.

Mr Trump grew more bellicose as the night went on after being shown posts by several people slamming CNN, including New York progressive Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez tweeted 23 minutes into the event: “CNN should be ashamed of themselves. They have lost total control of this ‘town hall’ to again be manipulated into platforming election disinformation, defenses of Jan 6th, and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim.”

“The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host,” she added.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump posted an oddly phrased Mother’s Day message attacking the parents of his main foes on Sunday, as he rushed to stick it to the “Radical Left Fascists”.

Key points

• Giuliani sued for $10m for alleged sexual assault by former employee
• Trump calls DeSantis a ‘rank amateur’ as he blasts governor’s media strategy
• Trump claims town hall called ‘success’ by ‘radical left, fascists, Marxists, communists, and normal people’
• Supreme Court to review Democratic lawmakers’ suit over Trump hotel lease
• New Hampshire college condemns Trump after ‘deeply troubling’ CNN town hall on its campus