From 3h ago
Lawyers for former US president Donald Trump are asking Georgia’s highest court to prevent the district attorney who has been investigating his actions in the wake of the 2020 election from prosecuting him and to throw out a special grand jury report that is part of the inquiry, the Associated Press reports.
AP writes:
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating since early 2021 whether Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his narrow election loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. She has suggested that she is likely to seek charges in the case from a grand jury next month.
Trump’s Georgia legal team on Friday filed similar petitions in the Georgia Supreme Court and Fulton County Superior Court naming Willis and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury, as respondents. A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment. McBurney did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Trump’s legal team — Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg — acknowledged that the filings are unusual but necessary given the tight time frame. Willis has indicated she will use the special grand jury report to seek an indictment “within weeks, if not days.” Two new regular grand juries were seated this week, and one is likely to hear the case.
“Even in an extraordinarily novel case of national significance, one would expect matters to take their normal procedural course within a reasonable time,” the filings say. “But nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable. And the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies below are because Petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”
Republicans and Democrats in Congress are on a collision course after rightwing lawmakers inserted provisions targeting Pentagon policies on abortion access, transgender care and diversity into a must-pass defense spending bill that cleared the House this morning. Democrats are outraged that the GOP used the measure, which usually attracts bipartisan support, to push culture war goals, but there’s no word yet on what will become of the legislation when it arrives in the Senate, where Joe Biden’s allies rule the roost and are unlikely to support attempts to prevent service members from accessing abortions services or gender-affirming care. Expect to hear lots more about this in the days to come.
Here’s what else happened today:
Tucker Carlson might be unemployed, but that apparently has not changed his views on US support to Ukraine, as he made clear in an exchange with GOP presidential contender and senator Tim Scott.
Mike Pence tried to explain to a rightwing crowd in Iowa why he did not go along with Donald Trump’s wishes on January 6. It did not go well.
Speaking of Trump, his lawyers are trying to stop Atlanta-area prosecutor Fani Willis’s investigation of his campaign to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia.
A federal appeals court panel blocked a judge’s ruling that prevented some Biden administration officials from holding talks with social media companies intended to fight misinformation.
Four House Democrats from swing districts crossed party lines to support the defense funding bill, while four conservative Republicans opposed it, with one saying it was too expensive.
Former US vice president Mike Pence earlier at the Tucker Carlson-anchored event in Iowa, reiterated his disapproval of Donald Trump’s encouragement on January 6, 2021, of protesters to seek the overturning of the 2020 election results.
Having already defended his refusal to block the certification by the US Congress of Joe Biden’s victory, Pence gladly repeated for the highly-pro-Trump crowd his assertions that he’s made before that Trump’s exhortations (and tweets) on January 6 exhorting the crowd to take action to keep him in office were reckless.
“Trump’s words that day were reckless…whatever his intentions in that moment, it endangered me, my family and everyone else in the Capitol,” Pence said.
He added, as the audience remained eerily quiet: “The law will hold him accountable.”
He later added, perhaps in a desperate attempt to win more warmth from the crowd: “And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024.”
The now-stayed federal judge’s ruling restricting how some Biden administration officials may interact with social media companies was evidence of a “weaponization of the court” that benefits pedalers of misinformation, an expert on combating such lies told the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington earlier this month:
Restricting the ability of the Biden administration to work with social media companies in countering online conspiracy theories is a “weaponisation of the court system” that could devastate the fight against misinformation ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a leading expert has warned.
Nina Jankowicz, a specialist in disinformation campaigns, told the Guardian that an injunction imposed by a federal judge on Tuesday against key federal agencies and officials blocking their communication with tech platforms could unleash false information in critical areas of public life. She said that election denialism and anti-vaccine propaganda could be the beneficiaries.
“This is a weaponisation of the court system. It is an intentional and purposeful move to disrupt the work that needs to be done ahead of the 2024 election, and it’s really chilling,” she said.
A federal appeals court has stayed a judge’s ruling from earlier this month that put limits on how certain White House officials could interact with social media companies, Reuters reports.
The lower court’s ruling in response to a lawsuit from Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri complicated efforts by the Biden administration to work with platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to address misinformation around elections and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Here’s Reuters reporting from when the lower court’s ruling was first handed down on what it means for the fight against conspiracy theories:
The ruling said US government agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech” under the free speech clause of the first amendment to the US constitution.
A White House official said the US justice department was reviewing the order and will evaluate its options.
The order also mentioned by name officials, including the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in its restrictions.
Judge Terry Doughty, in an order filed with the US district court for the western district of Louisiana, made some exceptions for communications between government officials and the companies, including to warn about risks to national security and about criminal activity.
The injunction was first reported by the Washington Post.
Tuesday’s order marks a win for Republicans who had sued the Biden administration, saying it was using the coronavirus health crisis and the threat of misinformation as an excuse to curb views that disagreed with the government.
US officials have said they were aiming to tamp down misinformation about Covid vaccines to curb preventable deaths.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers have plenty to say about the defense spending bill that just passed the House, with one GOP congressman saying his party wanted to use the legislation to align the military’s policies with “traditional America”.
Here are Tim Burchett’s comments to CNN:
Then there’s the ever-puzzling Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman from South Carolina who does not seemed pleased with the bill’s provisions barring the Pentagon from paying for service members to travel for abortions, but voted for it anyway:
Donald Trump’s attorneys are attempting to disrupt Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s investigation into the campaign to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia days after she impaneled two grand juries specifically tasked with deciding who should face charges in her inquiry. Here’s coverage from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly of that development, from Tuesday:
A grand jury selected in Georgia on Tuesday is expected to say whether Donald Trump and associates should face criminal charges over their attempt to overturn the former president’s defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
The district attorney of Fulton county, Fani Willis, has indicated she expects to obtain indictments between the end of July and the middle of August. Trump also faces possible federal charges over his election subversion, culminating in his incitement of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.
Trump already faces trials on 71 criminal charges: 34 in New York over hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels and 37 in Florida, from federal prosecutors and regarding his retention of classified documents after leaving office.
Lawyers for former US president Donald Trump are asking Georgia’s highest court to prevent the district attorney who has been investigating his actions in the wake of the 2020 election from prosecuting him and to throw out a special grand jury report that is part of the inquiry, the Associated Press reports.
AP writes:
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating since early 2021 whether Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his narrow election loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. She has suggested that she is likely to seek charges in the case from a grand jury next month.
Trump’s Georgia legal team on Friday filed similar petitions in the Georgia Supreme Court and Fulton County Superior Court naming Willis and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury, as respondents. A spokesperson for Willis declined to comment. McBurney did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Trump’s legal team — Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg — acknowledged that the filings are unusual but necessary given the tight time frame. Willis has indicated she will use the special grand jury report to seek an indictment “within weeks, if not days.” Two new regular grand juries were seated this week, and one is likely to hear the case.
“Even in an extraordinarily novel case of national significance, one would expect matters to take their normal procedural course within a reasonable time,” the filings say. “But nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable. And the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies below are because Petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”
The sound of silence. Or, to be fair, the whisper of sporadic applause. That’s what just greeted Mike Pence when he again defended his refusal on January 6, 2021, to refuse to block the certification by Congress of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.
The presidential candidate did not impress the right-wing crowd at Tucker Carlson’s event when he said: “I did my duty” and upheld the US constitution, after thousands of extreme Trump supporters had invaded the US Capitol in a deadly insurrection as they tried to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.
A few hands clap. This is hardly surprising, but very interesting to hear live.
“It’s important that we hold those accountable that perpetrated acts of violence in our nation’s Capitol,” he said, to almost total silence in the hall. He quickly added that there needed to be more vigor in prosecuting people who ended up rioting during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. That drew cheers.
Carlson asked Pence: “Do you think the last election was fair?”
In short, Pence indicated he did. He noted that there were some irregularities and that changes made by states to voting procedures as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic undermined public confidence in the system. But he noted that there were recounts and lawsuits and in the end, in terms of the votes “states certified and courts upheld and ultimately we were able to establish that” nothing “would change the outcome of the election in any way,” adding: “I knew I had to do my duty that day” when he endorsed the certification of Biden’s victory, in the early hours of January 7, 2021.
Former US vice president Mike Pence has taken the stage at the event in Iowa hosted by Tucker Carlson, as he eyes a comeback after being fired from Fox News, a forum together with Blaze Media feature Republican presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson.
Pence begins by slamming Biden economic policy, Biden policies at the US-Mexico border and celebrating the Iowa legislature passing a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, when many people don’t even know they’re pregnant.
Pence noted the bill will be signed into law later today by Iowa governor Kim Reynolds.
Now Pence is talking about the insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. More in a moment.
Hello again, US politics live blog readers, it’s been a lively morning and there is more action to come, on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.
Here’s where things stand:
Tucker Carlson has been one of the most prominent public skeptics of America’s support for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and he’s carrying on in this bent at the event he’s hosting today. “Why not force a peace?” he asked GOP presidential candidate Tim Scott today.
The House approved the annual defense bill that rightwing Republicans packed with culture war amendments, including provisions blocking the Pentagon’s policies on abortion, gender-affirming care and diversity.
The White House today announced it had forgiven $39bn in student loan debt held by 804,000 borrowers after making fixes to a program intended to provide relief for certain people who had been paying for 20 years or more.
House Democrats accused GOP of ‘extreme and reckless legislative joyride’ in defense bill. In a joint statement, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, whip Katherine Clark and caucus chair Pete Aguilar encouraged their members to vote against the NDAA, saying “extreme MAGA Republicans have chosen to hijack” legislation that is typically passed with bipartisan support.
After House conservatives packed it with culture war amendments, this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed by a party line vote – with a few exceptions.
Democrats generally opposed the legislation, while Republicans approved it, except for the following crossover votes, as compiled by CNN:
The four Democrats who voted for it all hail from swing districts, while the four Republicans who opposed it are generally seen as belonging to the party’s right wing.
Among the Republican opponents was Colorado’s Ken Buck, who in a statement cited the legislation’s price tag as the reason he voted against it:
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
