Trump files motion to dismiss 2020 election subversion case – as it happened

As Republicans scramble to find a new House speaker, Donald Trump is mulling visiting the Capitol to weigh in on what the party should do next. Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy’s staffers are reportedly working to secure support for judiciary chair Jim Jordan to replace him. It’s unclear why, but it could have something to do with another report saying majority leader Steve Scalise began his campaign for the speakership before McCarthy had even been formally ousted.

Here’s what else happened today:

• Environmentalists are outraged after the Biden administration began constructing new border fencing. Joe Biden says he doesn’t think it will be effective, but federal law required him to do so. Meanwhile, his administration reportedly will resume deportation flights to Venezuela, a major source of migrants.

• Trump for speaker of the House? It could theoretically happen, and one Republican wants it to, but it would probably be a bad idea for the GOP.

• A Georgia judge rejected former Trump attorney Sidney Powell’s attempt to get charges against her related to trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election result dismissed.

• George Santos’s former campaign treasurer pleaded guilty to an unspecified felony. It’s unclear what his means for the congressman and admitted fabulist, who is under federal indictment.

• Alabama will get a second majority Black congressional district, despite the best efforts of state Republicans. A Democrat will likely represent it, bolstering their margins in the House.

Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for Donald Trump, is facing criminal charges over her involvement in a scheme to breach election systems in a rural Georgia county. Her case is on course to continue after a judge today turned down an attempt to dismiss the charges.

Brian Rafferty, Powell’s attorney, argued in a 213 page motion filed last week that the case should be thrown out because prosecutors had presented misleading evidence to the grand jury that indicted Powell, and failed to turn over exculpatory evidence. The central thrust of Powell’s defense in the case is that she was not involved in the voting machine breach. Will Wooten, a prosecutor in the Fulton county district attorney’s office, strongly disputed those claims during a brief hearing on Thursday, saying they were “absurd and unsupported.”

Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing the case, said that he had not heard anything meriting dismissal ahead of a jury trial scheduled to begin later this month. “Just purely on procedural grounds, I don’t believe that this motion to dismiss for misconduct … I don’t see that as clearing just the procedural bar of being something under the court’s authority,” he said. “It’s the jury’s role to decide contested issues.”

McAfee also pressed Rafferty to give a concrete list of items he wanted prosecutors to ensure they wanted to turn over. Wooten said all relevant evidence had been turned over to Powell’s team, but agreed to have his office again review special grand jury transcripts and other materials to double check.

Powell, who was one of Trump’s key lawyers as he sought to overturn the 2020 election, faces seven criminal charges in Georgia, including racketeering, conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to commit computer theft, and conspiracy to commit computer trespass. She is alleged to have helped facilitate a scheme in which a team gained access to Coffee county’s election equipment and copied sensitive information.

Powell and Ken Chesebro, another Trump attorney who was the architect of the fake elector scheme, successfully severed their trial from Trump and the 17 other defendants, and will have the first trial of the group.

The Biden administration will restart deportations to Venezuela, as it faces rising pressure to curb surging migrant flows on the southern border, CBS News reports:

Deportations to the South American country have been paused for years due to Washington’s strained relations with Caracas, but CBS News reports Venezuelans who have entered the US illegally and lack a valid basis to stay will now be sent home.

Last month, the homeland security department extended temporary permission for about 472,000 Venezuelans to live and work in the US:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a judge has rejected Sidney Powell’s attempt to dismiss the charges filed against her by district attorney Fani Willis related to trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election.

Powell acted as a lawyer for Donald Trump, during the period when he and his allies attempted to disrupt Joe Biden’s election victory in the swing state. She was indicted alongside the ex-president in August, and has pleaded not guilty to the charges:

And in a taste of what the trials for the 19 defendants Willis charged will be like, an attorney for Powell’s co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro said he has been told nearly 180 witnesses who could potentially be called:

Punchbowl News has obtained House Democratic whip Katherine Clark’s instructions to the party’s lawmakers ahead of the expected speakership election next week.

There’s not much surprising here, and her instructions underscore that Democrats will do what they did in January, when Kevin McCarthy was elected as House speaker after a painful 15 ballots: repeatedly vote for minority leader Hakeem Jeffries:

The big question thus remains: who will the GOP vote for?

Should Donald Trump become the next speaker of the House? At least one Republican thinks so.

Far-right fixture Marjorie Taylor Greene says she wants the ex-president and current frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination to take the chamber’s top post:

Legally, it’s possible – the House speaker does not have to be an elected member of the chamber.

But as Punchbowl News’s John Bresnahan – a veteran chronicler of Congress – observes, appointing Trump would … well, maybe you should just hear it from him:

There’s no saying how a judge will rule on Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss the charges against him for trying to overturn the 2020 election, but the case has been slowly grinding towards trial. Here’s Hugo Lowell’s report from last week, when special counsel prosecutors asked the judge to issue a gag order against Trump:

Special counsel prosecutors reiterated Friday to the federal judge overseeing the 2020 election interference prosecution against Donald Trump the need to impose a limited gag order against the former president to curtail his ability to attack them and potentially intimidate trial witnesses.

The sharply worded, 22-page filing, submitted before a hearing scheduled for 16 October in federal district court in Washington, accused Trump of continuing to make prejudicial public statements even after they first made the request three weeks ago.

“He demands special treatment, asserting that because he is a political candidate, he should have free rein to publicly intimidate witnesses and malign the court, citizens of this district, and prosecutors. But in this case, Donald J Trump is a criminal defendant like any other,” prosecutors wrote.

The prosecutors said the need for a limited gag order had only increased in urgency since their initial request, filed under seal to the US district judge Tanya Chutkan on 5 September, as they cited several threatening statements from Trump that could affect their case and potential jurors.

In particular, the filing highlighted Trump’s posts on his Truth Social platform that attacked his former vice-president, Mike Pence, saying without evidence that he had “made up stories about me” and had gone over to the “dark side” after he testified to prosecutors about Trump’s conduct.

The filing also raised Trump’s post about Gen Mark Milley, the retiring chair of the joint chiefs of staff and another likely trial witness after he was cited in the indictment, that baselessly accused him of committing treason and suggested that he be executed.

“No other criminal defendant would be permitted to issue public statements insinuating that a known witness in his case should be executed,” the assistant special counsel Molly Gaston wrote. “This defendant should not be, either.”

Donald Trump has filed a new motion to dismiss the special counsel’s 2020 election subversion case.

In a new filing on Thursday, Trump’s lawyers argue that he has “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions performed within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”

The motion states:

“Breaking 234 years of precedent, the incumbent administration has charged President Trump for acts that lie not just within the ‘outer perimeter,’ but at the heart of his official responsibilities as President.

In doing so, the prosecution does not, and cannot, argue that President Trump’s efforts to ensure election integrity, and to advocate for the same, were outside the scope of his duties.

Instead, the prosecution falsely claimsthat President Trump’s motives were impure— that he purportedly “knew” that the widespread reports of fraud and election irregularities were untrue but sought to address them anyway.

The full motion can be found here.

Following federal judges setting a new congressional voting map in Alabama that could help Democrats achieve a majority in the US House next year, here is the Guardian’s Jewel Wicker and Sam Levine’s report on the story:

The map was chosen from three proposals presented by the court-appointed Special Master Richard Allen. The new map adds a second congressional district to the state, allowing Black voters to choose their preferred candidate.

Following the 2020 census, Republican lawmakers had enacted a congressional map that provided Black Alabamans with one majority district out of seven in the state.

The three-judge panel found it violated section two of the Voting Rights Act, which bans race-based discrimination in voting procedures, and ordered lawmakers to create a map where Black Alabamans made up the majority of voters in two districts.

For the full story, click here:

Far-right Republican representative and staunch Donald Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that if Trump assumed the House’s vacant Speaker position, the “House chamber will be like a Trump rally everyday.”

She added, “It would be the House of MAGA!!!”

Earlier this week, following the ouster of former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, Greene announced that the only candidate she will support is Trump.

“We can make him Speaker and then elect him President,” Greene tweeted.

Here is video of president Biden’s full comments on Thursday in which he explains reasons why the Texas border wall construction has started after his administration waived 26 federal laws to allow for the construction.

“The border wall money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t, they wouldn’t.

In the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated for. I can’t stop that,” said Biden.

As Republicans scramble to find a new House speaker, Donald Trump is mulling visiting the Capitol to weigh in on what the party should do next. Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy’s staffers are reportedly working to secure support for judiciary chair Jim Jordan to replace him. It’s unclear why, but it could have something to do with another report saying majority leader Steve Scalise began his campaign for the speakership before McCarthy had even been formally ousted.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• Environmentalists are outraged after the Biden administration began constructing new border fencing. Joe Biden says he doesn’t think it will be effective, but federal law required him to do so.

• George Santos’s former campaign treasurer pleaded guilty to an unspecified felony. It’s unclear what his means for the congressman and admitted fabulist, who is under federal indictment.

• Alabama will get a second majority Black congressional district, despite the best efforts of state Republicans. A Democrat will likely represent it, bolstering their margins in the House.

Former Democratic presidential candidate and independent New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said Democrats should have done more to stop Kevin McCarthy from being removed from office.

He characterizes McCarthy as a conservative who had at least some interest in actually governing, but is now set to be replaced with a hardliner who will be even more difficult to work with. Writing in the Washington Post, Bloomberg says:

McCarthy’s failure to reach out to Democrats was inexcusable, of course. But so too was Jeffries’ failure to extend an olive branch. Not only has it empowered the Republicans’ extreme right wing, but it also squandered an opportunity for Democrats to increase their influence.

Jeffries had a chance to use the crisis to push for a more bipartisan governing model in the House, one that would have given Democrats more involvement in crafting legislation and conducting oversight. It could have been a transformative moment for Congress and the country. But if any informal Democratic overture occurred, it was too little, too late.

It’s true that McCarthy gave no indication he would have had the good sense to accept a serious peace offering by Jeffries. But even if he had rejected it, Democrats could have shown voters that at least one party in Washington is serious about finding common ground. Their failure to make a peace offering falls heaviest on the party’s moderates, who speak of bipartisanship but, when push comes to shove, don’t practice it.

Now, with the House paralyzed, not only is Congress failing to do the people’s business, but aid to Ukraine has been indefinitely paused, helping Russia’s war effort and costing people their lives.

“There has to be an adult in the room,” McCarthy said over the weekend, after keeping the government from shutting down with the help of Democrats. He was right. Sadly, in the end, neither he nor Jeffries could do the adult thing, by reaching across the aisle to prevent Congress from sinking even deeper into dysfunction.

Joe Biden explained that his administration was moving forward with building a wall on the US border with Mexico because federal law required it – even though he does not believe it will work.

Here are comments he made to the press from the Oval Office:

Environmental advocates are furious with Biden for waiving federal laws in order to move forward with the construction, even though his own administration said in its early days in office that such a barrier would not be effective. Here’s the latest on this story:

For a sense of how the GOP is trying to spin this week’s theatrics in the House, take a look at this tweet from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is tasked with winning seats in the chamber:

All the Democrats you see there represent swing or red districts, and many won re-election only narrowly last year, when Joe Biden’s allies overperformed expectations thanks to factors like the downfall of Roe v Wade and successful warnings about GOP extremism.

The Democratic caucus was unanimous in voting to oust Kevin McCarthy, arguing that they were merely keeping with the common practice of the minority party in the House refusing to support the majority’s choice for speaker.

Donald Trump is considering meeting with House Republicans at the Capitol next week, a source familiar with the former president’s plans tells the Guardian, as his party works to elect a new speaker following Kevin McCarthy’s overthrow.

Trump is the frontrunner for the GOP’s presidential nomination, and has been endorsed by several House lawmakers. He has denied involvement in congressman Matt Gaetz’s successful effort to remove McCarthy from power, and both lawmakers call themselves Trump allies.

More hints of the dynamics of the speaker’s race within the House Republican Conference are emerging.

The latest report is from the Messenger, which, citing unnamed sources, reports that Steve Scalise began campaigning to replace Kevin McCarthy even before he had been officially ousted.

Scalise, the majority leader, is one of two major candidates who have declared their candidacy, along with judiciary chair Jim Jordan. Both are staunch conservatives, and the Messenger’s report may explain why McCarthy’s aides are reportedly encouraging lawmakers to support Jordan:

Kevin McCarthy had just been ousted as speaker of the House. Republicans — and the entire Congress — were stunned. Yet McCarthy’s deputy, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., wasted no time, as he quietly launched a bid to become the next speaker, multiple sources tell The Messenger.

Four Republican sources say Scalise started his campaign for speaker on Tuesday evening, moments after the House approved a far-right motion to vacate McCarthy from the speakership, before any other member had formally declared a candidacy.

One House Republican who was lobbied by Scalise early Wednesday morning said the Louisiana Republican’s outreach was “was too early.”

“The body wasn’t even cold,” the lawmaker, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the speaker’s race, told The Messenger. “It was bullsh–.”

The race to replace McCarthy has just two declared candidates so far: Scalise, and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee. There is also Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., who has fielded support from members but has not yet formally announced a bid.

Another thing that could prove pivotal to determining control of the House next year: the revolt that ousted Kevin McCarthy from office.

His ouster was unprecedented, and the GOP is still digesting its implications for their broader campaign to hold onto the House, and regain the senate and White House next year. One lawmaker, Ohio’s Max Miller, told CNN it set the party back: