Hugo Lowell reports:
Just in: A federal judge has denied former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ request for an emergency order to prevent his arrest at Fulton County jail while he tries to have his case removed to federal court.
Furthermore:
A federal judge has denied former Trump Justice department official Jeff Clark’s request for an emergency stay to avoid having to surrender at Fulton County jail, after he filed to have his case removed to federal court. Clark has until Friday at noon to travel to Atlanta for booking.
In a fundraising email to supporters, the South Carolina senator Tim Scott offers a (very basic) taste of what he might offer on the debate stage in Milwaukee tonight.
“If you had told 7-year-old Tim Scott he would one day be on a presidential debate stage, he would NOT believe you,” the email says.
Seven-year-old Tim might also not have believed that his grown-up self would take his debate stage bow with just 1% support, a mere 51 points behind the frontrunner, Donald Trump. But I digress.
The email continues: “I’m a child of divorce. When I was 7, my mom, my older brother, and I moved into a two-bedroom rental house that we shared with my grandparents.
“My Mama and Granddaddy told me you can be bitter or you can be better. You can be a victim or you can choose victory. Well Friend, I’m ready to choose victory!
“Tonight, I’ll share why the truth of my life disproves the Left’s lies and why I believe America can do for anyone what she’s done for me.”
What Scott might do in the primary remains of course to be seen. He has big support from the Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison and with a big debate performance, who knows.
But the signs are not particularly rosy, even when one zeroes in on Iowa, the first state to vote and one where evangelical Christians, a key Scott constituency, are strong.
At the weekend, a major poll from NBC News and the Des Moines Register gave the senator third place. That was better than his position in national averages, linked to above. But though Scott had 9% support, Ron DeSantis of Florida had 19% and Trump – thrice-married and an adjudicated rapist yet still the No1 choice for Christian conservatives – had 42%.
Our Washington bureau chief reports from Milwaukee, ahead of tonight’s Republican debate …
Donald Trump is missing from the first Republican primary debate but his supporters are not. Nine hours before kick-off, they were roving outside the venue wearing “Make America great again” caps and brandishing signs mocking the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.
Some of the former president’s allies in the US Congress, such as Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, are also on here. Sitting in a hotel lobby, Greene told the Guardian that she backs Trump’s decision to stay away.
“I told him to skip it,” the far-right congresswoman and conspiracy theorist said. “It’s a waste of his time.
“He’s winning by over 60%, poll after poll depending on what state you’re looking at and the national poll. It’s a complete waste of his time to step out on a stage and be the centre of the attacks when he has a four-year record as president that everybody wants back and none of those people on the stage have anything that they can compare to him.”
There has been speculation that Trump could choose Greene as his running mate.
She said: “Well, I’d have to think about it and consider it. It’s talked about frequently and I know my name is on a list but really my biggest focus right now is serving the district that elected me.
“That’s of course a decision that President Trump has to make. I don’t know who that person is going to be and I don’t even think they’re going to be on that debate stage. I’ll argue that. But, of course, that’s up to him. But I would be honoured and consider it. But my most important job is, of course, to serve the American people and I’ll help him do whatever in any way I can.”
Greene said the three Republicans she talks to most frequently are Trump, Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House of Representatives, and James Comer, chairman of the House oversight committee. Do they all seem to be on the same page?
“A lot of times, yeah. Not all the time but a lot of times. It just depends on the issue.”
Trump is expected to surrender at the Fulton county jail on Thursday evening on racketeering and conspiracy charges, over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. It is Greene’s home state but she dismisses the sweeping indictment as “garbage” and has not read it.
“I wouldn’t waste five seconds of my time,” she said.
Booking pictures of those Trump aides and allies who have so far surrendered in Georgia have now been released.
Here is the official booking picture of Giuliani:
Here are some for more of the co-defendants:
Some levity, of a sort, for those wanting a slightly different angle on what until relatively recently would have been the outlandish, outrageous prospect of a former US president being booked at an Atlanta jail on charges including racketeering and conspiracy, related to an attempt to overturn an election.
Bookies are offering punters the chance to bet on what Donald Trump’s recorded weight will be when he surrenders at the Fulton County Jail tomorrow. As the Daily Beast puts it, perennially pleasingly snarky…
The line currently sits over/under 278.5lb, a far cry from the 244lb White House physician Sean Conley recorded for Trump in 2020.
As the Beast also notes, part of punters’ interest in the former president’s avoirdupois is fueled by the purest schadenfreude, if I might overdo the pretentious italics. Trump, of course, has a habit of abusing his opponents, critics and enemies – see Christie, Chris and O’Donnell, Rosie, passim – about their body mass index.
Trump’s height will also be taken. His 2020 White House physical said he was 6ft 3in tall. There is speculation, widespread, that the truth is different:
Here’s a slightly fuller version of comments from Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor turned Trump attorney, after his surrender in Atlanta on charges including conspiracy and racketeering.
Speaking to reporters, and laughing as he did so, Giuliani said he was “very, very honoured to be involved in this case because this case is a fight for our way of life”.
“This indictment is a travesty,” he said. “It’s an attack on not just me, not just President [Donald] Trump, this is an attack on the American people. If this could happen to me, who is probably the most prolific prosecutor maybe in American history and the most effective mayor for sure, it can happen to you.”
Giuliani was indeed a prolific prosecutor, back in New York before he became mayor and briefly, after leading New York on and after 9/11, dreamt of a rise to the White House.
As US attorney in Manhattan, he memorably cracked down on organised crime by using racketeering statutes.
It’s safe to say his current predicament in relation to similar such statutes … has been noticed by quite a few observers.
I typed “Giuliani irony” into Google, and this and this and this came up. And more.
Here, meanwhile, is some further reading about what Michael Cohen, another Trump attorney who turned on his old boss after being sent to jail, had to say the other day about Trump, Giuliani and the concept of payment for legal services rendered …
Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota and GOP presidential candidate, said he will consult a physician before deciding if he will participate at tonight’s debate, after injuring his leg at a basketball game yesterday.
Speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash, Burgum said his debate walkthrough went well despite tearing his achilles tendon.
Fulton County officials have released the mug shot of Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of Donald Trump’s fake electors plot.
Chesebro surrendered at the Fulton county jail earlier on Wednesday.
Here’s the mug shot, as shared by CBS’ Scott MacFarlane:
Rudy Giuliani claims he is being indicted because he was a lawyer for Donald Trump.
The former New York mayor accuses the FBI of having “stole(n) my iCloud account the day that I began representing Donald Trump”.
Rudy Giuliani says the Fulton county district office’s case against him, Donald Trump and his co-defendants is “an attack on the American people”.
“If they can do this to me, they can do this to you,” he tells reporters.
Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis “will go down in American history for having conducted one of the worst attacks on the American constitution”, Giuliani says.
Rudy Giuliani is speaking to reporters after he surrendered to authorities at the Fulton county jail on charges that he helped lead a racketeering enterprise and conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.
Asked if he regretted attaching his name to Donald Trump, Giuliani replied:
I am very, very honoured to be involved in this because this case is a fight for our way of life.
This indictment is a travesty. It’s an attack on not just me, not just President Trump, not just the people in this indictment, some of them I don’t even know.
Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis sharply rejected efforts by two of Donald Trump’s co-defendants – former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark – to move their sprawling racketeering cases to federal court.
From my colleague Sam Levine:
Rudy Giuliani left Manhattan in the morning to travel to Atlanta with his lead lawyer, John Esposito, on a private jet, though the source of the funding for the plane remains uncertain given Giuliani has struggled financially in the wake of mounting legal bills.
Giuliani’s financial trouble stemming from having to retain lawyers for the congressional and federal criminal investigations into efforts to subvert the 2020 election results have become particularly acute in recent weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The money problems have been exacerbated by Giuliani’s recent setbacks in court – including in a defamation case against two Georgia election workers he falsely accused of stealing ballots – and the suspension of his law license over his election subversion efforts means he has few income streams.
The situation has led to Giuliani listing his Manhattan apartment for sale for more than $6m. He also travelled to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in April to ask the former president to help pay his legal bills after Trump rejected his earlier entreaties for support, the people said.
When that trip failed to convince Trump to have his Save America political action committee pay for Giuliani’s legal bills, in the way that Trump has doled out $21m for aides’ legal bills tied up in the criminal investigations, Giuliani’s son Andrew made his own trip to see Trump.
Trump has never explained why he has consistently refused to help Giuliani, but people in his orbit point to Trump’s complaints that Giuliani was defeated in almost every 2020 election lawsuit that he brought.
But the meeting with Andrew Giuliani appears to have helped, and Trump agreed to attend two fundraisers, the people said. Trump will host a $100,000-per-person fundraiser at his Bedminster club in New Jersey next month, according to an invitation reviewed by the New York Times.
Rudy Giuliani’s surrender to authorities at the Fulton county jail marks a jarring moment for Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor who made his name with aggressive racketeering cases, now facing a racketeering charge himself.
Alongside Donald Trump, Giuliani faces the most charges in the sprawling 41-count indictment handed up by a grand jury last week that described how he played a principal role in marshalling fake slates of electors among other schemes to reverse Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.
The bond for Giuliani was set at $150,000 after his lawyers met with the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis earlier in the day. The amount was slightly less than the $200,000 bond for Trump but more than the $100,000 bond for another former Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden and his family are on vacation in Lake Tahoe.
The president, first lady and members of the Biden family “are taking a Pilates class followed by a spin class”, the White House said earlier.
AP’s Seung Min Kim shared a photo of Biden after his pilates and spin classes:
Democrats will be denied political oxygen on Wednesday night but hope to turn this to their advantage by framing all the Republican candidates as Donald Trump-adjacent extremists.
At a press conference on the top floor of a downtown Milwaukee hotel, Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said:
Tonight, in prime time, Americans will have an opportunity to see in action the most extreme, the most divisive, the most chaotic slate of presidential candidates in history when these Maga 2024 Republicans take the debate stage here in Milwaukee, and I don’t know if it’s going to be a debate, but more like a circus.
They may try to differentiate themselves but the truth is that every single one of these candidates from Donald Trump on down are extreme.
Harrison went on to list the candidates one by one, setting out their positions on abortion, pushing conspiracy theories and past associations with the Tea Party or Trump.
No matter who you pick, this group is as extreme as it gets. A bag full of Maga apples and they are all rotten. They are wildly out of step with the American people.
He attempted to draw a contrast between the two parties. “We believe that our better days as a nation are ahead of us, not behind us. They believe that our better days are behind us and that is the difference in this election.
Joe Biden wakes up every day thinking about how to make the lives of the American people better. They wake up every day thinking about how do I get back in power? That is the difference between the Democratic party led by Joe Biden and a Republican party led by Maga extremists.
Satya Rhodes-Conway, the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, accused Republicans of pushing a national abortion ban. “Let me be crystal clear about this: the 2024 Maga Republican presidential candidates are running on their extreme anti-choice records,” she said.
I’m sure that they’re going to talk about freedom on the debate stage tonight. But what about the freedom to make my own health care decisions? I guess that their version of freedom doesn’t include women.
Rhodes-Conway added:
Here’s the bottom line: the American people don’t want anything to do with their abortion bans. Voters in states all across this great country, including right here in Wisconsin, have made it clear that the craven abortion bans are wildly unpopular and out of step with the American public.
Rudy Giuliani has turned himself in at the Fulton county jail over charges tied to his efforts to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The former New York City mayor and longtime Trump ally faces 13 charges that include racketeering, soliciting lawmakers to violate their oaths of office, making false statements and conspiracy counts dealing with the recruitment of fake electors.
Here’s a look at the Fulton county jail records, as shared by NBC’s Blayne Alexander:
Rudy Giuliani has arrived at the Fulton county jail and surrendered to authorities, according to the county sheriff’s website.
The former New York mayor and lawyer for Donald Trump faces charges in the sprawling Georgia elections racketeering case. At a meeting earlier today with Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’ team, Giuliani’s bond was set at $150,000.
“I’m feeling very, very good about it because I feel like I am defending the rights of all Americans, as I did so many times as a United States attorney,” Giuliani told reporters in New York this morning.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
