Giuliani associate Lev Parnas handed 20 months in prison for campaign finance fraud – as it happened

That’s it from us today, thanks for reading. Here’s how the day unfolded in Washington:

Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani and a key figure in Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation, was sentenced to a year and eight months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes. Parnas used the riches of a wealthy Russian to make illegal donations to politicians who might aid the launch of a legal recreational-marijuana business.

Trump-backed candidates had a mixed Tuesday in Republican primary elections around the country. Colorado voters largely rejected most Trump-supporting candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primaries, although Lauren Boebert, the extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman, won her bid for re-election. Moderate Republicans held off challenges from more extreme challengers in Utah, Mississippi and Oklahoma, but two Trump-endorsed officials triumphed in Illinois.

The Supreme Court will issue two key decisions tomorrow which could impact both the climate crisis and immigration. The court has been weighing how much power the Environmental Protection Agency should have to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and is also considering whether Joe Biden can end Remain in Mexico, the controversial Trump-era policy which sends asylum seekers to Mexico while they wait for their immigration cases to be heard.

Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, said he would be “willing and able” to defend a law which banned sodomy, in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade.

In an interview with News Nation, Paxton was asked about Lawrence v Texas, a 2003 Supreme Court ruling that overturned a state anti-sodomy law and made all such laws invalid nationwide.

Last week Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion following the Supreme Court overturning the right to abortion, wrote that the court should also “reconsider” the Lawrence v Texas ruling.

In the News Nation Paxton was asked if he would “feel comfortable defending a law that once again outlawed sodomy,” as well as gay marriage and birth control.

“I mean, there’s all kinds of issues here, but certainly, the Supreme Court has stepped into issues that I don’t think there was any constitutional issues dealing with, they were legislative issues,” Paxton said.

“This [abortion] is one of those issues, and there may be more.”

The News Nation host then asked Paxton how he would act if Texas passed a law banning sodomy.

Paxton said: “My job is to defend state law and I’ll continue to do that. That is my job under the Constitution and I’m certainly willing and able to do that.”

Joe Biden has announced that the US will increase its military forces across Europe with more land, sea and air deployments, as he gathered with Nato leaders for a two-day summit in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Arriving at the meeting in Madrid, the US president announced the stationing of a brigade of 3,000 combat troops in Romania, two squadrons of F-35 fighters in the UK and two navy destroyers in Spain.

“The US and its allies are going to step up. We’re stepping up. We’re proving that Nato is more needed now than it ever has been,” Biden said in a short statement he read out before the first summit meeting began.

Biden’s announcement is expected to be followed by further commitments by Nato members to a strengthening of forces on the alliance’s eastern flank, which was being discussed by Nato leaders on Wednesday morning.

The US president also said the US fifth army corps would establish a permanent base in Poland, extra troops would be committed to the Baltic states and extra air defence systems would be stationed in Germany and Italy.

It was, Biden said, a response to Russian aggression, adding: “Together with our allies, we are going make sure Nato is ready to meet threats across every domain, land, air and in the sea”, which came “at a moment when Putin has shattered peace in Europe and the very tenets of rules-based order”.

The US sent a further 20,000 troops to Europe earlier this year, taking the total based across the continent to over 100,000. Wednesday’s announcements come on top of that and Biden said the US would “continue to our adjust our posture” if necessary.

A lawyer for Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, has dimmed prospects for a quick appearance before congressional investigators probing the January 6 Capitol riot, after the attorney asked for more information on her requested appearance.

Ginni Thomas on June 16 expressed eagerness to speak with the House of Representatives panel investigating the 2021 assault, telling the Daily Caller she “can’t wait to clear up misconceptions.”

The committee sent an invitation that day.

On Tuesday, however, Thomas’ lawyer, Mark R. Paoletta, wrote to the committee that he did not “understand the need to speak with Mrs Thomas”.

“Before I can recommend that she meet with you, I am asking the Committee to provide a better justification for why Mrs Thomas’s testimony is relevant to the Committee’s legislative purpose,” Paoletta wrote.

Earlier this month the Washington Post reported that Thomas emailed 29 Arizona lawmakers in a bid to help overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat.

Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani who was a figure in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation, was sentenced Wednesday to a year and eight months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes.

Parnas, who had helped Giuliani connect with Ukrainian figures as part of a campaign to dig up dirt on President Joe Biden’s son, had sought leniency on the grounds that he’d helped the Congressional probe, Associated Press reported.

But prosecutors said the Soviet-born businessman’s aid was in response to a subpoena and deserved little credit.

Instead, they asked the judge to focus on a jury’s finding that Parnas used the riches of a wealthy Russian to make illegal donations to politicians who might aid the launch of a legal recreational-marijuana business.

Prosecutors had asked that Parnas be sentenced to more than six years.

An October conviction also supported a finding that he made illegal donations in 2018 to jump-start a new energy company.

In March, Parnas pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud, admitting that between 2012 and 2019 he conspired with another person to give investors false information about a Florida-based business, Fraud Guarantee.

Fraud Guarantee was promoted as a company that could protect investors against fraud. Giuliani accepted $500,000 from the company to act as a consultant, but was not accused of wrongdoing or charged with any crimes.

The criminal case against Parnas was not directly related to his work acting as a fixer for Giuliani as the former New York City mayor tried to get Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, before he was elected president.

Giuliani, who was working at the time as a personal lawyer for then-President Donald Trump, has said he knew nothing about the crimes of Parnas and others.

It was a mixed Tuesday for Donald Trump-backed candidates in Republican primary elections around the country. Colorado voters largely rejected most Trump-supporting candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primaries, although Lauren Boebert, the extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman, won her bid for relection.

In Illinois, Mary Miller, who had been criticized after she declared the Supreme Court’s abortion decision as a “victory for white life” – a spokesman said she had mixed up her words – won in after she was backed by Trump. Darren Bailey, who was also endorsed by Trump, won the Republican gubernatorial primary in the state.

Elsewhere John Curtis, and Blake Moore, Republican congressional candidates in Utah, defeated more extreme challengers. Stephanie Bice, a congresswoman from Oklahoma who – like Moore and Curtis – voted to form the January 6 commission, won her primary bid, as did Michael Guest, in Mississippi.

Stephen Breyer, the Supreme Court justice, has formally announced his retirement from the Court, effective Thursday.

Breyer, who announced earlier this year that he would retire – Ketanji Brown Jackson has already been chosen to replace him – wrote to Joe Biden to confirm he would step down tomorrow.

“This past January, I wrote to inform you of my intent to retire from regular active service as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, upon the Court rising for its summer recess,” Breyer wrote.

“The Court has announced that tomorrow, beginning at 10 am, it will hand down all remaining opinions ready during this Term. Accordingly, my retirement from active service under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 371(b) will be effective on Thursday, June 30, 2022, at noon.

“It has been my great honor to participate as a judge in the effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law.”

The extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert won her primary on Tuesday night, shortly after attacking the separation of church and state under the US constitution.

“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk,” she said.

A dedicated controversialist first elected in 2020, backed by Donald Trump and described by NBC News as a “Maga lightning rod”, Boebert convincingly beat Don Coram, a state senator, for the nomination to contest the midterm elections.

At one event recently Coram, 74, told voters: “My politics are very similar to my driving. To the chagrin of both my wife and my Republican colleagues, I tend to crowd the center line and sometimes I veer over a bit.”

In contrast, Boebert has heckled Joe Biden during the state of the union address; made racist attacks on Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota; vowed to carry a gun on to the House floor; and voted to object to results in swing states in the 2020 presidential election.

Boebert beat Coram by 31 points.

Fox News Channel is airing the January 6 committee hearings when they occur in daytime hours – and a striking number of the network’s viewers have made clear they’d rather be doing something else, according to Associated Press.

During two daytime hearings last week, Fox averaged 727,000 viewers, the Nielsen company said. That compares to the 3.09 million who watched the hearings on MSNBC and the 2.21 million tuned in to CNN.

It completely flips the typical viewing pattern for the news networks. During weekdays when the hearings are not taking place, Fox News routinely has more viewers than the other two networks combined, Nielsen said.

Last Thursday, Fox had 1.33 million viewers for the 2 pm Eastern hour before the hearing started – slightly below its second quarter average, but on par for early summer, when fewer people are watching TV.

After the hearing started, Fox’s audience’s sank to 747,000 for the 3 pm Eastern hour and even lower, to 718,000, at 4 pm. Fox cut away from the hearing at 5 pm to show its popular panel program, “The Five,” and fans immediately rewarded them: viewership shot up to 2.76 million people, Nielsen said.

The apparent lack of interest explains why the Trump-friendly network stuck with its regular lineup during the committee’s only prime-time hearing, while ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC all showed the Washington proceedings.

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss made a joke at Donald Trump’s expense, in the aftermath of Cassidy Hutchinson’s explosive testimony before the January 6 committee yesterday.

This morning, Beschloss shared a photo to Twitter of the last meal that Richard Nixon ate at the White House before he resigned as president.

“Nixon’s last lunch at White House, 1974,” Beschloss said of the photo. “Record shows that although he was leaving Presidency against his will, he did not throw this plate at the wall.”

That appeared to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to Hutchinson’s claim that Trump had a habit of throwing food when he was angry.

That habit reared its head in December 2020, when the AP published an interview with then-attorney general William Barr, who said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

According to Hutchinson, she walked into the White House dining room that day to see a valet cleaning up a dirty tablecloth. She noticed ketchup dripping down the wall where a television was mounted, and a porcelain plate lay shattered on the floor.

Asked whether Trump often engaged in such behavior, Hutchinson said: “There were several times throughout my tenure with the chief of staff that I was aware of him either throwing dishes or flipping the tablecloth to let all the contents of the table go onto the floor.”

New York City is suing five companies it says are involved in the sale of illegal, largely untraceable “ghost guns” flowing into the city, Reuters reports:

In a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, New York attorneys said the companies have created a public nuisance by selling “unfinished” firearms components that purchasers can build into guns, without undergoing background checks.

The result is “a proliferation of unserialized, untraceable, unlawful ghost guns in the city’s streets and homes, making the City more dangerous for both the public and for law enforcement, causing a quintessential public nuisance,” the complaint said.

Arm or Ally LLC, Rainier Arms LLC, 80P Builder, Rock Slide USA LLC and Indie Guns LLC were named as defendants The companies did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment.

New York City wants the defendants to stop selling ghost gun components and provide records of sales into the city over the last five years. City officials said this month that gun arrests are at a 28-year high.

Colorado voters rejected most Trump-supporting candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primaries, and they weren’t the only ones.

In Utah Blake Moore, a first-term US congressman who voted for an independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection, defeated his more extreme challengers.

John Curtis, a moderate Republican, also defeated a primary opponent from the right.

Stephanie Bice, a congresswoman Oklahoma from who – like Moore and Curtis – voted to form the January 6 commission, won her primary bid, as did Michael Guest, in Mississippi.

Tina Peters, who became nationally known after being indicted for her role in a break-in of her own county election system, lost her bid for the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state.

Still, there were some victories for Trump.

Lauren Boebert, the extremist Colorado Republican congresswoman, who has been backed by Trump, won her bid for relection, days after denouncing separation of church and state.

Mary Miller, who had been criticized after she declared the Supreme Court’s abortion decision as a “victory for white life” – a spokesman said she had mixed up her words – won in Illinois after she was backed by Trump. Darren Bailey, who was also endorsed by Trump, won the Republican gubernatorial primary in the state.

Andrew Giuliani, the anti-vax, Trumpite son of Rudy Giuliani, lost his bid to be governor of New York on Tuesday night.

Lee Zeldin, a US congressman who, like the younger Giuliani, supported Donald Trump, defeated his opponent by 19 points, bringing to an end a chaotic, firebrand campaign by Giuliani that failed to catch on with New Yorkers.

One of Giuliani’s final campaign events was marked by his father claiming a supermarket employee had assaulted him during a campaign event.

Video footage showed a man patting Rudy Giuliani on the back. Giuliani Sr said he could have been killed. Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, has suggested Giuliani, Trump’s on-again, off-again friend/lawyer/advisor, should be prosecuted for falsely reporting a crime.

Republicans in Colorado rejected two prominent candidates whose political profiles were centered on election falsehoods, in a fresh reminder that fealty to former President Donald Trump’s lies about mass voter fraud is no guarantee of success with conservative voters, Associated Press reports:

Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who became nationally known after being indicted for her role in a break-in of her own county election system, lost her bid for the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state. Instead, Republicans selected Pam Anderson, a critic of Trump’s election lies and a former clerk in suburban Denver who is well-regarded among election professionals. She is now positioned to challenge Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold.

“I will continue my fight for restoring the confidence of Colorado voters against lies and the politicians or interest groups that seek to weaponize elections administration for political advantage,” Anderson said after her victory.

One of Peters’ top Colorado allies, state Rep Ron Hanks, lost his bid for the party’s Senate nomination to Joe O’Dea, a businessman who has repeatedly acknowledged that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. That was a sharp contrast with Hanks, who attended the January 6 rally in Washington, doesn’t believe Biden is a legitimate president and says he discovered a new, animating purpose fighting election fraud after 2020.

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the day’s political news. Here’s what we’re monitoring today:

The Supreme Court is expected to give decisions today which could have lasting effects on how the US handles the climate crisis. The court has been weighing how much power the Environmental Protection Agency should have to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Remain in Mexico, the controversial Trump-era policy which sends asylum seekers to Mexico while they wait for their immigration cases to be heard, is also on the table. The Supreme Court is due to decide whether Joe Biden can end the program, which has kept thousands of would-be immigrants in sometimes dangerous conditions across the US border.

After the bombshell testimony that Donald Trump directed his supporters to march on the Capitol, despite knowing many of them were armed, the Secret Service has begun to push back. Numerous outlets have reported that members of the Secret Service are willing to testify that elements of the testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to the then White House chief of staff, are inaccurate.