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It comes after some MPs criticised the response to cyber-attacks against the Electoral Commission and UK politicians, which the government has blamed on Beijing-linked hackers.

Ministers are facing growing calls to designate China as a "threat".

However, Downing Street has played down suggestions the government is preparing to do this.

Appearing in front of senior MPs on the Commons Liaison Committee, Mr Sunak defended the government's approach.

He rejected a suggestion from Business and Trade Committee chairman, Labour MP Liam Byrne, that where allies acted on China, the UK was merely "thinking about it".

Mr Byrne highlighted how the US House of Representatives had passed a bill requiring TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDanceto sell its controlling stake in the social media app or see it banned in America.
However, the prime minister pointed to examples including European countries not removing Huawei equipment from their telecommunications networks and not placing similar restrictions on exports of sensitive technology to China.

He added: "I am entirely confident that our approach to dealing with the risk that China poses is very much in line with our allies and in most cases goes further in protecting ourselves."

He added: "China represents the greatest state-based threat to our economic security."

The government currently describes China as an "epoch-defining challenge" but some MPs, including former cabinet ministers Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Suella Braverman, want it to go further and formally label the country a "threat".

On Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden suggested this could happen.

He told the Commons "we are currently in the process of collective government agreement" over the issue and the country's alleged involvement in the cyber-attacks "will have a very strong bearing on the decision that we make".

However, asked on Tuesday whether ministers were planning to designate China a threat, the prime minister's official spokesman said: "There isn't a mechanism under UK law or indeed in our G7 or Five Eyes countries [an intelligence alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States] that has a designation process like that."

He added: "The integrated review has already set out the UK's position in relation to China being a state-based threat to our economic security. And it set out a clear strategy to deal with the challenge that China presents."

In response to calls to put China in the "enhanced" tier under the foreign influence registration scheme, he said the scheme was "in the process of being finalised and no countries have been specified yet."

Specifying a country in the "enhanced tier" gives the power to require registration of activities of foreign government-controlled entities in the UK.

On Monday, the government announced sanctions on two Chinese nationals, as well as the China state-affiliated cyber espionage group Advanced Persistent Threat Group 31, over cyber-attacks on the Electoral Commission and 43 individuals including MPs and peers.

The cyber-attack on the Electoral Commission between August 2021 and October 2022 was one of the most significant in British history.

On Tuesday the charge d'affairs of the Chinese embassy was summoned to the Foreign Office over the cyber-attacks.

Some of the MPs targeted have criticised the government's response, with Sir Iain describing it as "like an elephant giving birth to a mouse".

Another Conservative MP Tim Loughton described it as like turning up "at a gun fight with a wooden spoon".

The sanctions were part of coordinated action alongside the UK's allies, with the United States charging seven alleged Chinese hackers on Monday.

China has rejected allegations of state involvement in the hacks.

Beijing's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian accused the UK and US of "politicising cyber security issues" and "smearing China".

A New York appeals court has given Donald Trump 10 more days to post his bond as he appeals the civil fraud judgment against him and cut the amount necessary to $175 million

It’s a major lifeline for the former president, who, along with his adult sons and his company, were fined more than $464 million, including interest, after Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump and his co-defendants fraudulently inflated the value of his assets.

The ruling staves off the prospect, for now, of New York Attorney General Letitia James seeking to seize the former president’s property to enforce the judgment against him. Trump had been struggling to come up with the means to post a bond of more than $500 million, the total that he would have needed before Monday’s appellate decision.
Trump said on Truth Social on Monday that he would “abide by the decision and post either a bond, equivalent securities, or cash” to meet the terms of the judgment. His attorneys said last week he was struggling to come up with bond to cover the full amount, noting that banks would not approve bond of more than $100 million.

The ruling stated that the $175 million bond will be in place until at least September, meaning James won’t be able to seek to enforce the judgment against Trump until then.

The order stayed the enforcement of several penalties Engoron had handed down in addition to the fine, including that Trump and his sons can still run a business in New York and obtain loans from New York financial institutions for now.

The order blocked those penalties in the judgment but also stated that the court-ordered monitor and the appointment of a compliance director will remain in place.

For days, Donald Trump’s fury over the requirement to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in bond money by Monday has been bubbling behind the scenes and through a steady stream of social media posts.

Friday’s public barrage on his Truth Social platform, which included multiple all-caps posts, highlighted his persistent anger with the judge who handed down the $464 million judgment, the New York attorney general who brought the civil fraud case and Trump’s insistence that it’s all designed to derail his presidential campaign.

The posts, including one sent just before 2 a.m. Friday, contained a mix of invective and claims devoid of fact or evidence. (There is no evidence that the White House has played any role in the case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, let alone ordered her to pursue her effort. Nor is there any evidence that Trump, as he claimed, has plans to use any of his own money for his presidential campaign.)
But also embedded in the posts was a reality that has pushed Trump’s company and personal finances to the brink with just two days remaining to land a solution.

Trump, as he himself noted, does have a significant amount of cash, according to a review of his most recent candidate financial disclosure and personal financial statements.

It’s a point he made repeatedly in his deposition and testimony during the New York fraud trial though that diverged from his latest social media claim of having “almost five hundred million dollars in cash.” He consistently pegged the number during legal proceedings at $400 million and, barring any recent and unreported cash infusion, a person familiar with his finances confirmed that remains roughly where his cash holdings stand.

Yet even if the higher-end estimate is accurate, as Trump’s lawyers have made clear in sober, detailed filings, it wouldn’t be enough.

The $464 million decision levied in the verdict, and the bond Trump is scrambling to secure to forestall potential seizure of his properties, would require cash or cash equivalent of roughly $557 million based on industry practice.

And at least some of the money Trump does have is tied up in loan agreements that include terms requiring him to have tens of millions of dollars in cash on hand.

In other words, as the clock ticks toward the Monday deadline, securing a bond of the scale required remains – to quote Trump’s own lawyers – a “practical impossibility.”
Trump’s deft navigation of – and ability to leverage – his unprecedented collision of the campaign and courthouse has defined the path he bulldozed to once again become the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

But it was a filing by New York state lawyers at a county clerk’s office 25 miles north of Trump Tower that demonstrated how perilously close the former president is to a dramatic derailment of that strategy.
The move by James’ office to enter judgments in Westchester County marked a first step toward seizing Trump’s assets should he fail to secure a bond.

Westchester County is home to Trump’s golf course and private estate known as Seven Springs.

The initial action, which state lawyers already took in Manhattan, is just the start to what would be a complex and lengthy process.

It also came as Trump’s lawyers have continued to press to reduce or waive the bond requirement, calling it “patently unreasonable, unjust and unconstitutional,” in a Wednesday filing.

But for Trump, a man who has made his brand and his buildings his central animating feature, the filing that put a target on one of his properties crystalized a moment unlike any other he’s faced in his White House comeback bid.

“I think the whole thing is bullsh*t,” one House Republican, who communicates with Trump’s team said of the order to secure the $464 million bond while waiting for a decision on his appeal. “But it had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing will ever stick to him, so this has been different.”

In other words, there may be actual consequences.
Over nearly a year, as four indictments and 88 charges piled on, Trump’s poll numbers in the GOP primary tracked a steady climb.

Days when Trump faced charges, or showed up at court to face those charges, consistently ranked among his best fundraising days on the campaign.

That money, in part, has covered Trump’s legal bills so he wouldn’t have to on his own.

The lawyers that money financed have been both unequivocal about their pursuit of dilatory strategies – and have repeatedly succeeded in those efforts.

If, as countless former campaign officials say, presidential candidates’ most valuable asset is their time, Trump’s decision to repeatedly attend court hearings when his presence wasn’t required made clear his view of the incentives. So did the voters.
Trump successfully cut down – with relative ease – the best financed and most politically gifted of his primary challengers. He all but locked up the GOP nomination after just two primary contests as the party largely fell in line behind a candidate under whose tenure it lost the House, the Senate and the White House.

Trump was also the same candidate whom some publicly – and many more privately – had hoped would simply disappear after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and the steady stream of revelations that he and his advisers had sought to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

People around Trump say they’ve seen no sign of any political damage from his latest legal stress test. National polls continue to show a margin-of-error contest with Biden, and more importantly, surveys in the critical swing states haven’t revealed a tangible shift. New CNN polling conducted by SSRS in two battleground states showed Trump tied with Biden in Pennsylvania at 46% each, and ahead in Michigan, 50% to 42%.

Biden flipped both states from Trump’s column in 2020.

Trump’s campaign apparatus trails Biden’s team significantly in fundraising, but those around Trump are confident that the gap will be closed. The former president, these people say, has been privately working the party’s biggest donors in a way they haven’t seen before.

“The money will be there,” one person told CNN. “He’s never been more focused or effective on that front than he is right now.”

One adviser mused that any pursuit of Trump’s properties would only serve to help the campaign politically, pointing to email and text donation appeals with lines like “Keep your filthy hands off Trump Tower!” as evidence to that effect.