US midterms 2022: Democrats’ hopes of keeping House fade as counting continues – live

Prosecutors say criminal charges not expected from Giuliani raid

New York prosecutors said in a letter to a judge on Monday they do not plan to criminally charge Rudy Giuliani following a probe into his dealings with Ukrainian associates – a development Giuliani’s called “a total victory”.

Prosecutors had been investigating whether Giuliani should have been registered as a foreign agent due to his dealings with figures in Ukraine in the run-up to the 2020 election.

The investigation, which resulted in raids on his residence in April 2021 and seizure of a number of electronic devices, has concluded, and that criminal charges would not be forthcoming.

“In my business, we would call that total victory,” Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, told the Associated Press. “We appreciate what the US attorney’s [office] has done. We only wish they had done it a lot sooner.”

Read the full story here.

Kari Paul here taking over for the next couple hours, stay tuned for updates.

Trump wasn’t keeping all those classified documents at Mar-a-Lago for the money, The Washington Post reports.

Rather, the motivation for his alleged retention of government secrets at his south Florida resort was more about Trump’s desire to hang on to keepsakes from his time in the White House, according to the Post, which cited federal investigators. That doesn’t mean he won’t face charges in the case, which is one of many inquiries the former president is involved in nearly two years after he left office.

Here’s more from the Post:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell, or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said.

Several Trump advisers said that each time he was asked to give documents or materials back, his stance hardened, and that he gravitated toward lawyers and advisers who indulged his more pugilistic desires. Trump repeatedly said the materials were his, not the government’s — often in profane terms, two of these people said.

The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the investigation is ongoing, no final determinations have been made, and it’s possible additional information could emerge that changes investigators’ understanding of Trump’s motivations. But they said the evidence collected over a period of months indicates the primary explanation for potentially criminal conduct was Trump’s ego and intransigence.

A Justice Department spokesman and an FBI spokeswoman declined to comment. A Trump spokesman did not return a request for comment Monday.

The analysis of Trump’s likely motive in allegedly keeping the documents is not, strictly speaking, an element of determining whether he or anyone around him committed a crime, or should be charged with one. Justice Department policy dictates that prosecutors file criminal charges in cases in which they believe a crime was committed and the evidence is strong enough to lead to a conviction that will hold up on appeal. But as a practical matter, motive is an important part of how prosecutors assess cases and decide whether to file criminal charges.

The Guardian’s Kari Paul is now taking over the live blog, and will take you through the latest politics news over the remainder of the day.

Another notable Republican has reiterated his support for Donald Trump, Politico reports.

Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville said he will back Trump for president in 2024, if he announces:

He also announced that he would back Mitch McConnell as Senate minority leader, the top office available for the GOP in that chamber after they failed to win control in the midterms.

CNN reports that the bipartisan group of senators pushing a bill to codify same-sex marriage believes it has enough support to pass the chamber:

The Respect for Marriage Act passed the House earlier this year with some Republican support. Assuming all Democratic senators vote for it, it will need the votes of at least 10 Republicans to overcome a filibuster, but it’s previously been unclear if that support exists.

Ahead of the release of his memoir tomorrow, former vice-president Mike Pence sat down with ABC News to talk more about his experience on January 6.

Here was his reaction when asked about Trump’s tweet lashing out at Pence on the day of the attack:

In their quest to understand why they performed so poorly in the midterms, some Republicans are pointing the finger at Donald Trump, arguing he has outlived his usefulness to the party.

Writing in The American Conservative, JD Vance, a Republican who just won a seat in the Senate representing Ohio, attempted to dissuade the GOP from casting blame on the former president. He argues that Trump serves as a unifying force for Republicans and can offset Democrats’ advantages in fundraising and voter turnout that are going to make it more difficult for the GOP to win House and Senate races.

Here’s more from his piece:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In the long term, the way to solve this is to build a turnout machine, not gripe at the former president. But building a turnout machine without organized labor and amid declining church attendance is no small thing. Our party has one major asset, contra conventional wisdom, to rally these voters: President Donald Trump. Now, more than ever, our party needs President Trump’s leadership to turn these voters out and suffers for his absence from the stage.

The point is not that Trump is perfect. I personally would have preferred an endorsement of Lou Barletta over Mastriano in the Pennsylvania governor’s race, for example. But any effort to pin blame on Trump, and not on money and turnout, isn’t just wrong. It distracts from the actual issues we need to solve as a party over the long term. Indeed, one of the biggest changes I would like to see from Trump’s political organization—whether he runs for president or not—is to use their incredible small dollar fundraising machine for Trump-aligned candidates, which it appears he has begun doing to assist Herschel Walker in his Senate runoff.

Blaming Trump isn’t just wrong on the facts, it is counterproductive. Any autopsy of Republican underperformance ought to focus on how to close the national money gap, and how to turn out less engaged Republicans during midterm elections. These are the problems we have, and rather than blaming everyone else, it’s time for party leaders to admit we have these problems and work to solve them.

Meanwhile in Georgia, the midterms are very much not over.

The Senate race is headed to a run-off election on 6 December, with Republican Herschel Walker challenging Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock for the seat.

In a speech today, Walker attacked Warnock for using campaign funds to pay for childcare – as US election law allows:

Left unsaid were reports that Walker paid for two women to have an abortion, even though he supports a nationwide ban on the procedure, without exceptions. He also did not mention one of his son’s claim that he has not been much of a father.

It’s just one pollster in one state, but take a look at who CWS Research found was leading among Republican candidates for the White House in 2024.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis topped Donald Trump in the poll of Republicans and independents, with 43% support against Trump’s 32%. The survey was conducted from 12 to 13 November, after the midterm elections, and represents a change from a previous poll conducted in mid-October before the vote. Then, Trump led, with 46% support compared to DeSantis’ 29%.

Trump is widely expected to announce another campaign for office tomorrow, but DeSantis had a far better midterm election. The Florida governor resoundingly won another term on a day when Republicans performed well in the state overall. Trump, meanwhile, saw several of his handpicked candidates for office rejected by voters in states across the country.

Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student debt has lost again in court and will remain on hold, Politico reports:

The Guardian’s community team wants to hear from Americans about what they think of the results of Tuesday’s midterm elections. Be you Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, independent or something else, let them know your thoughts:

The dust is settling from Tuesday’s midterm elections. Control of the House is still up for grabs, but the GOP appears on course to eke out a majority, while Democrats have won themselves the Senate for another two years. The 2024 presidential race may very well kick off tomorrow, when Donald Trump is expected to announce another campaign for the White House.

Here’s what else is happening today:

• Joe Biden doesn’t believe the House is winnable for Democrats, nor that there’s enough support for a measure to codify abortion rights into law.

• The Senate plans to vote on a measure to codify same-sex marriage rights this week, after a conservative supreme court justice raised the possibility of the court reconsidering its ruling establishing the rights.

• The January 6 committee is cleared to access the phone records of Arizona’s Republican party chair after the supreme court quashed a challenge to the lawmakers’ subpoena.

Mo Brooks was once one of Donald Trump’s closest allies, but has since joined the ranks of those who have fallen out with the former president.

The Alabama Republican congressman will retire at the end of this year, and in an interview with AL.com called on the party to dump the former president.

“It would be a bad mistake for the Republicans to have Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024,” said Brooks, who was the first congressman to object to the certification of the 2020 election. “Donald Trump has proven himself to be dishonest, disloyal, incompetent, crude and a lot of other things that alienate so many independents and Republicans. Even a candidate who campaigns from his basement can beat him.”

The bad blood between the two men stems from Trump’s withdrawn endorsement of Brooks for Alabama’s Senate seat, which was won last week by Republican Katie Britt. Brooks said Trump asked him to remove Joe Biden from office and elevate the ex-president back to power, which the congressman told him was illegal.

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports on a new justice department filing in the Mar-a-Lago case, which claims Donald Trump kept classified documents at the resort, even after he left the White House:

Donald Trump retained documents bearing classification markings, along with communications from after his presidency, according to court filings describing the materials seized by the FBI as part of the ongoing criminal investigation into whether he mishandled national security information.

The former US president kept in the desk drawer of his office at the Mar-a-Lago property one document marked “secret” and one marked “confidential” alongside three communications from a book author, a religious leader and a pollster, dated after he departed the White House.

The mixed records could amount to evidence that Trump wilfully retained documents marked classified when he was no longer president as the justice department investigates unauthorised possession of national security materials, concealment of government records, and obstruction.

Mike Pence will on Tuesday release a memoir detailing his time in the Trump White House, and Martin Pengelly takes a look at what the former vice president reveals:

In his new book, Donald Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, protests his loyalty to his former boss but also levels criticisms that will acquire new potency as Trump prepares to announce another presidential run and the Republican party debates whether to stay loyal after disappointment in last week’s midterm elections.

According to Pence, Trump mishandled his response to a march staged by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017, a costly error that Pence says could have been avoided had Pence called Trump before a fateful press conference in which Trump failed to condemn “the racists and antisemites in Charlottesville by name”.

Also in Pence’s judgment, “there was no reason for Trump not to call out Russia’s bad behaviour” early in his term while beset by investigations of Russian election interference on Trump’s behalf and links between Trump and Moscow.

“Acknowledging Russian meddling,” Pence writes, would not have “somehow cheapen[ed] our victory” over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Pence does not stop there. Among other judgments which may anger his former boss, he says Trump’s claimed “perfect call” to Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine in 2019, the subject of Trump’s first impeachment after he withheld military aid in search of political dirt, was in fact “less than perfect” – if not, in Pence’s judgment, impeachable.

The January 6 committee can access the phone records of the chair of Arizona’s Republican party after the supreme court turned down an attempt to block the lawmakers’ subpoena:

Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are two of the court’s most conservative justices, and objected to the court’s order.

Arizona was one of the states targeted by Donald Trump and his allies in the weeks after the 2020 election, as part of their effort to tamper with Joe Biden’s election victory.

Later this week, Republicans in the House and Senate are set to vote on who their leaders will be for the next two years, but the party’s weak showing in the midterms has sparked calls to delay the election.

It appears rightwing lawmakers are trying to punish top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell for failing to retake the chamber, and House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy for the party’s weak showing there. According to Axios, conservative figures outside of Congress will soon release a letter backing the calls for a delay:

Among the signatories: Ginni Thomas, wife of rightwing supreme court justice Clarence Thomas. She’s a prominent denier of the facts surrounding Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, and was interviewed by the January 6 committee earlier this year. Lawmakers on the panel said she didn’t have much to offer, and there wasn’t evidence she played a significant role in the insurrection.