Trump legal team expresses hope classified documents trial will not start in May – as it happened

A spending battle brews once again on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are nervously eyeing 17 November, the day when the federal government’s funding expires. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson will reportedly propose over the weekend a bill to keep the government open, with the money running out at differing dates. There are reasons to think both Democrats and at least some Republicans will oppose this idea, and by this time next week, the government may likely be on the brink of another shutdown. Expect this to be a big developing story over the coming days.

Here’s what else happened today:

• The FBI seized electronic devices belonging to New York City’s Democratic mayor Eric Adams as part of their investigation into his campaign finances, the New York Times reports.

• Donald Trump mulled in an interview using the FBI and justice department to retaliate against his enemies, if he is elected next year.

• Federal judge Aileen Cannon declined a request from Trump to delay his trial over the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, but his lawyers signaled that they are hopeful she will eventually push its start date back.

• Moderate Republicans reportedly don’t think impeaching Joe Biden is worth it, because the president is already unpopular.

• Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke issued strong criticisms of Biden’s handling of the southern border and immigration policy.

The New York Times reports that FBI agents seized two phones and an iPad belonging to New York mayor Eric Adams as part of their investigation into the Democrat’s campaign’s finances.

Here’s more from the Times:

F.B.I. agents seized Mayor Eric Adams’s electronic devices early this week in what appeared to be a dramatic escalation of a federal corruption investigation into whether his 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The agents approached the mayor on the street and asked his security detail to step away, one of the people said. They climbed into his S.U.V. with him and, pursuant to a court-authorized warrant, took his devices, the person said. The devices — at least two cellphones and an iPad — were returned to the mayor within a matter of days, the people said. Law enforcement investigators with a search warrant can make copies of the data on devices after they seize them.

It was not immediately clear whether the agents referred to the fund-raising investigation when they took the mayor’s devices.

The surprise seizure of Mr. Adams’s devices was an extraordinary development and appeared to be the first direct instance of the campaign contribution investigation touching the mayor. Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, said on Wednesday that he is so strident in urging his staff to “follow the law” that he can be almost “annoying.” He laughed at the notion that he had any potential criminal exposure.

In an interview with Spanish-language network Univision yesterday, Donald Trump signaled he would be willing to use the FBI and justice department to go after his political rivals in a second presidential term, without getting into specifics.

But behind the scenes, the former president has named the names of those he would like to go after, the Washington Post reported earlier this week:

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.

In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.

To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.

“It would resemble a banana republic if people came into office and started going after their opponents willy-nilly,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia who studies executive power. “It’s hardly something we should aspire to.”

Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.

The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed. In the final year of his presidency, some of Trump’s supporters urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down unrest after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but he never did it. Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force and said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.

Here’s more from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell about what federal judge Aileen Cannon’s decision today in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case tells us about when it may ultimately go to trial:

The federal judge overseeing the criminal case charging Donald Trump with retaining classified documents pushed back on Friday several major deadlines for the former president to file pre-trial motions, a move that could have the consequential effect of delaying the start of the trial in Florida.

The judge put off until March making the fraught decision about whether to actually delay the trial – currently scheduled for next May – but the new timetable she laid out in a nine-page written order gave little scope for the pre-trial process to finish in time.

The order from US district judge Aileen Cannon was positive for Trump, who has made no secret that his overarching legal strategy is to delay beyond the 2024 election in the hopes that winning re-election would allow him to pardon himself or direct the justice department to drop the charges.

Trump was indicted this summer with violating the espionage act when he illegally retained classified documents after he left office and conspiring to obstruct the government’s efforts to retrieve them from his Mar-a-Lago club, including defying a grand jury subpoena.

But the fact that Trump was charged with retaining national defense information means his case will be tried under the complex rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa, which governs how those documents can be used in court.

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that Donald Trump’s legal team is expressing confidence his trial on charges related to keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort will not start in May, when it is currently scheduled.

Earlier today, federal judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by the former president, turned down a request to delay the trial’s start date, but also moved back some deadlines related to the classified evidence that will be used in the trial, increasing the likelihood the trial will eventually be postponed.

Here’s what Turmp’s lawyers had to say about that:

Florida’s Republican state representative Michelle Salzman is facing increasing censure calls and outrage after she said “All of them” in response to her Democratic colleague saying, “How many [dead Palestinians] will be enough?”

The Guardian’s Erum Salam reports:

The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair-Florida), the US’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said in a statement that Salzman’s remarks were a “chilling call for genocide” and a “direct result of decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by advocates of Israeli apartheid and their eager enablers in government and the media”.

The news comes on the heels of the censure of the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in the US Congress, after Tlaib echoed a popular rallying cry for Palestine that some have called antisemitic but others say is a call for Palestinian civil rights.

The censure resolution, which was supported by 22 Democrats, punishes Tlaib for allegedly “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel” and “promoting false narratives” about the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.

In Florida, calls for Salzman to be censured are being made by those opposed to her comments.

“Salzman’s words are incredibly dangerous and dehumanizing to Palestinians here at home and under the Israeli occupation,” the Cair-Florida executive director, Imam Abdullah Jaber, said. “She must face her party’s censure and a public repudiation from all Florida legislators.”

For further details, click here:

Former president George W Bush said to “stay positive” in response to a question on what advice he would give to the world on Veterans Day.

“Stay positive because if you study world history or US history, we go through cycles of being down and yet Americans ought to realize how blessed we are to live in this country… The images are grim and, yes, there’s violence, but ultimately love overcomes hate,” he told Fox News.

Following reports of letters containing fentanyl being mailed to multiple state election offices, Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensberger said that he has been informed that there is another suspicious letter in transit.

Speaking to CNN, Raffensberger said:

“We have been informed by the postal officials that there is a letter in transit so that’s a three to five day transit through their system. Obviously they will try to intercept that when it comes through the Atlanta processing facility but it hasn’t arrived to Georgia yet so we don’t know if it will be intercepted. And that’s why we’ve prepared staff at the Fulton county election office if it does actually make it through the system and it arrives.”

He added that officials are going to make sure that there is Narcan, the overdose reversal drug, available in all election offices that do receive incoming mail and that staff will be trained on how to administer Narcan.

Authorities across the country are currently investigation letters sent to several states’ election offices that contained fentanyl.

The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:

Law enforcement officials in the US are searching for the people responsible for sending letters with suspicious substances sent to election offices in at least five states, acts some election officials described as “terrorism”.

Election offices in Georgia, Nevada, California, Oregon and Washington state all were sent the letters, four of which contained the deadly drug fentanyl, the Associated Press reported. Some of the letters were intercepted before they arrived. The FBI and United States Postal Service are investigating.

In Washington, election offices in four counties – Skagit, Spokane, Pierce and King, which includes Seattle – were evacuated as workers counted ballots from Tuesday’s election. Two of the letters tested positive for fentanyl. Steve Hobbs, Washington’s Democratic secretary of state, said the letters were “acts of terrorism to threaten our elections.”

For further details, click here:

Anti-abortion members of the Ohio General Assembly have responded to the state’s passage of Issue 1 during Tuesday’s election.

Condemning the language of the proposal which enshrines abortion rights into the state’s constitution, several dozen anti-abortion state representatives said:

“Unlike the language of this proposal, we want to be very clear. The vague, intentionally deceptive language of Issue 1 does not clarify the issues of life, parental consent, informed consent, or viability including Partial Birth Abortion, but rather introduces more confusion.

This initiative failed to mention a single, specific law. We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed based upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state, and we will continue that work.

A spending battle brews once again on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are nervously eyeing 17 November, the day when the federal government’s funding expires. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson will reportedly propose over the weekend a bill to keep the government open, with the money running out at differing dates. There are reasons to think both Democrats and at least some Republicans will oppose this idea, and by this time next week, the government may likely be on the brink of another shutdown. Expect this to be a big developing story in the coming days.

Here’s what else is going on today:

• Donald Trump mulled in an interview using the FBI and justice department to retaliate against his enemies, if elected next year.

• Moderate Republicans reportedly don’t think impeaching Joe Biden is worth it, because the president is already unpopular.

• Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke issued strong criticisms of Biden’s handling of the southern border and immigration policy.

Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is expected to release his short-term government funding proposal over the weekend, setting the chamber up for a vote next week, NBC News reports:

The bill’s prospects remain highly uncertain. House Democrats have rejected the “laddered” approach Johnson is reportedly mulling, which would see government funding expire at different times, and the proposal is unlikely to get far in the Senate, where they hold a majority. Meanwhile, conservative Republicans in the House want to use any funding measure as an opportunity to force the government to cut spending, but that may alienate more moderate Republicans and cost the bill support it needs to pass.

Nonetheless, expect this to be a big developing story over the weekend and next week, as the 17 November deadline to fund the government draws nearer.