Trump lawyer Will Scharf’s claims of prosecuting violent criminals conflicts with his record of mundane actions

A lawyer on the legal team that argued in favor of a US supreme court ruling granting Donald Trump broad criminal immunity has inflated his credentials as a violent crime prosecutor in a political beauty contest aimed at wooing the former president’s Maga supporters and becoming Missouri’s attorney general.

Will Scharf, who sat on the former’s president’s appellate team fighting charges of subversion brought by the special prosecutor Jack Smith, has burnished his crime-fighting credentials on his campaign literature as he seeks to unseat Missouri’s sitting attorney general, Andrew Bailey, in a GOP primary next month.

The president left viewers and supporters startled with his debate performance – and in the days since, has tried to calm worried donors and Democrats

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History may record them as eight days that sunk a presidency, or at least the rockiest road to a convention in living memory – a week that has left Joe Biden’s re-election bid hanging by a thread.

Reducing press conferences, interviews and meetings with Congress members exposed as damage control measures

For three and a half years, Joe Biden was wrapped in a metaphorical ball of cotton wool by an anxious White House staff eager to protect him from the worst of himself.

Worried about signs of ageing and an increasing propensity for verbal missteps, they cut press conferences and media interviews to a minimum.