Eliana Willis

Donald Trump defeated Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina, a stinging setback that narrows her vanishingly thin path to the nomination. The Associated Press called the South Carolina primary for Trump when polls closed at 7pm, in a clear indication of his margin of victory. Trump locked in about 60% of the vote, with Haley hovering at about 40%. South Carolina voters have a long history of choosing the party’s eventual nominee, and Trump is on track to clinch the Republican nomination months before the party’s summer convention in Milwaukee. ‘I just want to say that I have never seen the Republican party so unified as it is right now,’ Trump told supporters at his victory party in Columbia, the state capital. ‘This is a fantastic evening. It’s an early evening, and fantastic.’ More

For Clint Hickman, an official who helped lead Arizona’s largest country through some of the most difficult moments of the pandemic and the 2020 election, the current moment in American life feels like the right one to quit.Amid yet more tumult and tense division in American public life, the Maricopa county supervisor announced this week that he’s not running again, choosing instead to prioritize his family – and get rid of the endless harassment that’s been a feature of his job the last few years and put him more than once in the national spotlight.“After the election in 2020, it’s gotten worse and worse,” he said. “I started to feel like all I get to do is play defense in this job any more … I thought I was looking way too much in the rearview mirror.”Hickman, a Republican, voted to certify Maricopa’s elections in 2020 despite an aggressive campaign from former president Donald Trump and his allies to reject the results and throw the state toward the Republican candidate over Joe Biden, the Democrat who narrowly won there.The threats arrived at Hickman’s door at one point, with people protesting outside his home while his wife and three kids, now teenagers, were there. “This is poor behavior brought to my doorstep, and I would like to think it hasn’t impacted my kids,” he said.Hickman, just shy of 60 years old, said his upcoming milestone birthday made him reflect on what he wants out of life now, and that’s more time with his family. But the threats he faced at work and the punishing environment in his role as a supervisor played a role in his decision to exit.He faced credible death threats, one of which resulted in a two and a half year prison sentence for an Iowa man. The threats amped up both in response to elections and in response to the county’s decision to institute a mask mandate during the pandemic, a fault line for conservatives in the purpling county.“Those [threats] didn’t just arrive to myself. It arrived to county workers, county elections workers, people in the county clerk’s office. During the pandemic, people were making threats to anybody wearing Maricopa county badge when it came to the mask mandate.”He’s still receptive to the idea of running for office someday again, but for now, he wants to get his kids away from the vitriol he’s faced. Hickman’s family is one of the Phoenix area’s biggest business families, running a giant egg farming operation. For now, it’s back to the eggs for Hickman.Maricopa county became a national flashpoint in 2020, then again in 2022. Errors like printing problems or the use of certain pens became the subject of endless speculation and conspiracies that still linger today. And 2024 will undoubtedly bring more, as the county is a critical piece of a swing state, one that both Trump and Biden will want to win to complete their electoral map.Part of his effort to move forward is getting out of the race to remain in office. He doesn’t want his name on the ballot this year, that way “no one can say that I have my thumb on an election that I’m going to rig for either myself or my friends”.The seat could, theoretically, go to someone who wouldn’t uphold the county’s elections – that’s up to the district’s voters, he said. He doesn’t think they’d go for it, but the seat belongs to the citizens there, not him.He joins a too-long line of public servants who have left their roles in the face of ongoing harassment over elections. A study of 11 states in the US west, including Arizona, by Issue One showed that more than 160 chief local election officials had left their roles since the 2020 election, leaving half of the 76 million Americans living in those states with a new top election official.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHickman called it “shocking” to see elections officials run out of their jobs, often whipped up by misunderstandings and distortions. “It is saddening to see so much of a brain drain in this space leaving due to harassment techniques by people that want to do people harm,” he said.He’s one of few officials who have seen the person who threatened them prosecuted. Mark Rissi, of Iowa, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison over threats he made to Hickman and to the state’s attorney general. In the voicemail Rissi left for Hickman in September 2021, he said he was going to “lynch” the supervisor. “You’re gonna die, you piece of [expletive]. We’re going to hang you. We’re going to hang you.”At the sentencing hearing, Hickman testified – and Rissi didn’t even recognize him, Hickman said. Rissi was supposed to enter prison on 8 January, but has so far delayed his sentence because of health issues.“I’m looking forward to the day I can stop looking over my shoulder for this guy,” Hickman said.Hickman said he isn’t sure what to do to address this kind of threatening behavior and how to stop it. Catching the people making threats and holding them accountable is part of it, but there seems to be a lot more going on – maybe the pandemic, maybe the people running for office – driving more people to conflict and chaos, he said.“I can certainly play the blame game all day long,” he said. “But we need some solutions. And I don’t know what those solutions are at this short moment. How about this? Maybe everybody needs to start watching Mr Rogers again and start treating people nicer.” More

Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, vehemently denied wrongdoing while testifying at a court hearing on Thursday as she rebutted accusations that her romantic relationship with a deputy prosecutor on the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump meant she should be disqualified from the case. The district attorney testified that her relationship with the special prosecutor Nathan Wade started months after he was retained to work on the case, charging Trump over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state, and ended in summer 2023 More

An Atlanta judge on Thursday will examine whether Fulton county prosecutors charging Donald Trump and his allies over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia had improper romantic relations that merit being disqualified from bringing the case.The eventual outcome of the hearing – expected to take over two days before the presiding Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee – could have far-reaching implications for one of the most perilous criminal cases against the former president.Trump’s co-defendant in the Georgia 2020 election interference case, Michael Roman, is seeking to have the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis and her top deputy, Nathan Wade, disqualified as a result of their romantic relationship because it constituted a conflict of interest.If Roman is successful in having Willis relieved from bringing the case, it would result in the disqualification of the entire district attorney’s office, throwing into disarray a prosecution that has already been roiled politically since the allegations were made last month.The district attorney’s office has vehemently rejected the claim that the romantic relationship gave rise to a conflict, arguing in court filings that there was no impropriety under the law and there was no financial benefit to either Willis or Wade, as has been alleged.McAfee allowed the hearing to go forward after he decided on Monday that there was the possibility of conflict that he wanted to resolve. “It’s clear that disqualification can occur if evidence is produced demonstrating an actual conflict or the appearance of one,” he said at a hearing.The judge is not expected to immediately rule on the matter. The anticipated two-day proceeding is what is known as an evidentiary hearing, where both sides are expected to call witnesses to testify in open court under oath.During the potentially fraught hearing, McAfee is expected to delve into three principal issues to tackle the conflict of interest question: whether Willis financially benefited from hiring Wade, when the romantic relationship started, and whether the romantic relationship was ongoing.The main focus of the hearing is likely the testimony of Terrence Bradley, a former partner at Wade’s law firm, and those of Willis and Wade. McAfee rejected a request from the district attorney’s office to quash their subpoenas but ruled out getting into Wade’s legal qualifications.The allegations first surfaced in an 8 January motion filed by Roman’s lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, who complained about a potential conflict of interest arising from what she described as “self-dealing” between Willis and Wade as a result of their then-unconfirmed romantic relationship.Roman’s filing, in essence, accused Willis of engaging in a quasi-kickback scheme, where Wade paid for joint vacations to Florida and California using earnings of more than $650,000 from working on the Trump case. The filing also alleged the relationship had started before he was hired.The filing itself, however, provided no concrete evidence that showed alleged self-dealing. At the time, Merchant said her information was based on confidential sources and information in Wade’s divorce case. Yet when the divorce records were unsealed, there was similarly no concrete evidence.After declining to address the allegations for a month, the district attorney’s office acknowledged on 2 February that Willis and Wade had been romantically involved but only after he had been hired as a special prosecutor, and insisted there was no financial benefit because travel costs had been split.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe lawyer for Roman told the judge on Monday that she could undercut that characterization with testimony from Bradley. Indeed, the central thrust of the allegations appear to be buttressed by Bradley; the judge referred at one point to Bradley as the defense’s “star witness”.But special prosecutor Anna Cross, another top deputy on the Trump case who is also representing the district attorney’s office in the matter, told the judge Bradley’s recollections were either fabricated or misrepresented, and was restricted in what he could say because of attorney-client privilege.Whether Willis will be disqualified remains uncertain. Legal experts have generally suggested the evidence to date – there has been almost none, bar Wade’s bank statements showing he paid for a couple of trips – did not show an actual conflict of interest.The potential problem for Willis is that she was previously disqualified from investigating the Georgia lt governor Burt Jones over a lower legal standard of “appearance of impropriety”, after she publicly endorsed Jones’s political rival in that re-election race.The allegations have also threatened to turn the case into political theatre. Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, has derided the prosecution as scandal-plagued in addition to his usual refrain that the criminal charges against him are a political witch-hunt. More

The special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump on federal charges involving the former president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss has urged the US supreme court to reject Trump’s bid to further delay trial proceedings as he presses his claim of immunity.Jack Smith’s filing to the justices responded to a request by Trump’s lawyers on Monday to put on hold a decision by a three-judge panel of the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit rejecting the claim of presidential immunity from prosecution.If the justices do not immediately reject Trump’s request Smith asked the court to take up the case and hear it on a fast-track basis.Trump’s lawyers asked the justices to halt the trial proceedings pending their bid for the full slate of judges on the DC circuit to reconsider the case, and, if necessary, an appeal to the supreme court.The supreme court in December declined Smith’s request to decide the immunity claim even before the DC circuit ruled – a bid by the special counsel to speed up the process of resolving the matter. The justices opted instead to let the lower appeals court rule first, as is customary.A 4 March trial date for Trump in federal court in Washington on four criminal counts pursued by Smith in the election subversion case was postponed, with no new date yet set. Trump has pleaded not guilty and has sought to portray the case as politically motivated.“The nation has a compelling interest in seeing the charges brought to trial,” Smith said in his filing to the justices, adding that “the public interest in a prompt trial is at its zenith where, as here, a former president is charged with conspiring to subvert the electoral process so that he could remain in office”.Smith said Trump’s criminal charges reflect an alleged effort to “perpetuate himself in power and prevent the lawful winner of the 2020 presidential election from taking office. The charged crimes strike at the heart of our democracy.”“A president’s alleged criminal scheme to overturn an election and thwart the peaceful transfer of power to his successor should be the last place to recognize a novel form of absolute immunity from federal criminal law,” Smith added.Trump’s lawyers claim a months-long criminal trial of Trump “at the height of election season will radically disrupt” his ability to campaign against Joe Biden.Trump is charged with 91 felony counts across four criminal cases – in New York, Florida, Washington and Georgia. He denies all the charges and faces the threat of prison if convicted.In the federal election interference case, Trump is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights, in his relentless pursuit to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and remain in office.On 6 January 2021, a group of Trump’s supporters broke in to the US Capitol in a deadly but failed effort to prevent the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Trump had urged them to “fight like hell” at a rally near the White House just before the insurrection, then did not take strong action to call the mob off after they attacked police officers and invaded Congress.On Thursday, two hearings will take place in two of the other cases. Trump is expected to attend a hearing in New York in the case involving an alleged hush money scheme during the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors accuse Trump of illegally reimbursing his former fixer Michael Cohen for money paid to the adult film producer and actor Stormy Daniels. This case is due to go to trial in March.And in Atlanta, a judge will hold a hearing in the state election interference and racketeering case brought against Trump and multiple co-defendants, where details will be presented about Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.And Trump awaits the decision of a civil judge in New York on the fraud case against his family business, the Trump Organization, which could gut his real estate empire. More

Lawyers for Donald Trump asked the US supreme court on Monday to keep on hold the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results while he prepares to challenge a recent appeals court ruling that found he was not immune from prosecution.The former US president also asked the nation’s highest court to stay the US court of appeals for the DC circuit order that prevented him from seeking what is known as an “en banc” rehearing of the case by the full bench of appeals judges.“President Trump’s application easily satisfies this Court’s traditional factors for granting a stay of the mandate pending en banc review and review on certiorari by this Court,” Trump’s lawyers John Sauer, John Lauro and Greg Singer wrote in the 110-page petition.The petition argued that Trump had met the key tests for the supreme court to grant a stay because there was a strong likelihood it would hear the case and because without a stay, Trump would suffer “irreparable injury” if the case proceeded to trial in the interim.“It is axiomatic that President Trump’s claim of immunity is an entitlement not to stand trial at all, and to avoid the burdens of litigation pending review of his claim,” the petition said.The filing broadly expounded earlier arguments Trump had made about presidential immunity, which his legal team has viewed as the best vehicle to delay the impending trial because it was a vehicle through which Trump could pursue an appeal before trial that also triggered an automatic stay.Trump has made it no secret that his strategy for all his impending cases is to seek delay – ideally beyond the 2024 election in November, in the hopes that winning a second presidency could enable him to pardon himself or direct his attorney general to drop the charges.For months, Trump has attempted to advance a sweeping view of executive power – that he enjoyed absolute immunity from prosecution because the conduct charged by the special counsel Jack Smith fell within the “outer perimeter” of his duties as president.The contention received short shrift from the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing his case in Washington and rejected his argument. It received similar treatment from a three-judge panel at the DC circuit, which categorically rejected his position.“We cannot accept former president Trump’s claim that a president has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power,” the unsigned but unanimous opinion from the three-judge panel said.“At bottom, former president Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the president beyond the reach of all three [government] branches,” the opinion said. “We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”But Trump’s lawyers have long viewed the immunity issue as more of a vehicle to stall the case from going to trial than an argument they would win on its merits. It was perhaps the only motion they could make that triggered an appeal before trial and came with an automatic stay.Trump was forced to appeal directly to the supreme court, instead of making an intermediary challenge that would cause further delay, after the DC circuit panel issued parameters on how Trump could use further appeals if he wanted the case to remain frozen.The panel ruled that Trump needed to petition the supreme court by Monday to keep the stay in place. The stay would remain until the supreme court either declined to hear the case or until it issued a judgment in the event it did agree to take up the matter.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat effectively foreclosed Trump from pursuing an “en banc” rehearing – which is where the full bench of judges at the DC circuit would reconsider the decision of the three-judge panel – since pre-trial proceedings under Chutkan would resume while he waited for the DC circuit to weigh in.Over the weekend, Trump’s chief appellate lawyer John Sauer prepared the application for a stay, a person familiar with the matter said.The concern in recent days among the Trump legal team has been whether the supreme court would agree to keep the case frozen while Trump made his final appeal, the person said. And even if they granted the stay, it remains unclear whether the supreme court would ultimately agree to take up the case.How the court moves next could decide whether Trump will go to trial on the federal election interference case before the 2024 presidential election. Recent public polls have shown that voters would be more inclined to vote for the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020, if Trump was convicted in this case.If the supreme court declines to hear the case, it would return jurisdiction to Chutkan in the federal district court in Washington. Chutkan scrapped the 4 March trial date she initially scheduled, but has otherwise shown a determination to proceed to trial with unusual haste.If the supreme court does accept the case, the question will be how quickly it schedules deadlines and arguments – and how quickly it issues a decision. The closer to the end of its term that the court issues a decision, the more unlikely a trial would take place before the election.The speed with which the supreme court moves has become important because Chutkan has promised Trump that he would get the full seven months to prepare his trial defense that she envisioned in her original scheduling order that set the 4 March trial date. More

The far-right strategist and Donald Trump loyalist Steve Bannon is again playing an influential role in the propaganda circles around the former US president as he bids to return to the White House, even as Bannon faces a barrage of legal problems.The conspiratorial Bannon, who spearheaded part of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and served as chief White House strategist in the first half of 2017, is waiting to see if a federal appeals court overturns his obstruction of Congress conviction. He also faces other legal problems from New York fraud charges, former lawyers and potentially other fronts.But at the same time he is pushing a tidal wave of election disinformation on his War Room podcast to help Trump win the presidency again and promote a Maga-heavy policy agenda as Trump and his allies plot out authoritarian-style plans for a second presidency.Ex-justice department prosecutors, Democrats and Republicans say Bannon’s odds of winning his obstruction of Congress appeal are long, and foresee more legal headaches ahead for the pugnacious Make America Great Again guru, while analysts warn that by spreading election falsehoods and other misinformation he endangers democracy.At present, the biggest legal threat confronting Bannon is his two-count federal conviction and a four-month jail sentence for defying a House panel subpoena for documents and testimony concerning the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results.Last fall, Bannon appealed his contempt of Congress conviction for refusing the House subpoena, citing executive privilege and advice from a lawyer, even though he had long left the administration and the matters covered by the subpoena.Separately, Bannon is slated to be tried in May on New York charges of fraud and money laundering involving his key role in a private “We Build the Wall” Mexico venture that bilked thousands of investors out of about $25m, a scheme in which three Bannon associates have been convicted.Bannon last month sought to dismiss the charges, which alleged in part that $1m of the funds were improperly diverted to Bannon and a top associate, but Manhattan prosecutors wrote in a court filing that his argument “bears little resemblance to reality”.The charges by the Manhattan district attorney against Bannon, an alleged architect of the scheme to raise private funds for Trump’s abortive Mexico wall, mirror earlier ones from federal prosecutors against Bannon that Trump pardoned him for the night before leaving office.Experts say more legal scrutiny of Bannon could come on other fronts. The exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, a Bannon ally and benefactor who last year was charged by federal prosecutors in a billion-dollar fraud case, was charged again in January for running a “criminal enterprise” that bilked Chinese American dissidents out of tens of millions of dollars.Guo allegedly promoted a cryptocurrency scam, propaganda and other businesses, plus financing a lavish lifestyle including purchasing a yacht, on which Bannon in 2020 was arrested on the federal Mexico wall project charges.Among the businesses linked to Guo in the superseding indictment was the conservative social media platform Gettr, which he helped finance and launch in 2021 and which Bannon’s War Room has profited from. Guo is slated to be tried in April.Bannon’s War Room podcast has reaped tens of thousands of dollars a month in ads from Gettr, according to a source familiar with its operations and news reports.War Room, which regularly hosts staunch Trump allies such as the congresswoman Elise Stefanik and the My Pillow CEO, Mike Lindell, last year was named the top promoter among political podcasts of misinformation about elections, Covid-19 and other issues, according to a Brookings Institution study.Unfazed, Bannon told the New York Times his top ranking was a “badge of honor … What they call disinformation or misinformation we consider the truth.”A key figure in promoting the January 6 Save America rally, Bannon proved prescient shortly before the insurrection on his War Room podcast when he said “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow”.Former justice department prosecutors and members of both parties say Bannon’s legal woes are mounting.“Like former president Donald Trump, Steve Bannon’s sketchy business and political activities seem to be a magnet for criminal prosecutions and investigations,” said Paul Pelletier, an ex-acting chief of the Department of Justice’s fraud section.“With his criminal ‘Build the Wall’ fraud trial looming and his criminal contempt of Congress long-shot appeal pending, it appears Bannon’s penchant for associating with and profiting from unsavory characters and his own schemes will keep him busy fending off financial fraud investigations for the foreseeable future.“Bannon’s business and financial ties with Guo should certainly attract rigorous scrutiny,” he added.View image in fullscreenOther justice department alumni concur Bannon faces big legal headaches.“Bannon is nothing more than a garden variety fraudster,” said the ex-federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig. “He had the benefit of a patron in the White House who rewarded his loyalty and protected him.” But with Trump gone, “he is now going to pay the price.“His appeal will not succeed and his criminal trial in New York will result in conviction. Only a Trump victory in November can save him from the federal [obstruction] case and even that won’t suffice to save him in New York.”Bannon has pleaded not guilty to the various criminal charges he faces, and his attorney Harlan Protass did not respond to calls for comment.Still, the ex-Republican congressman Charlie Dent noted: “It’s absurd and nonsensical for Bannon to think he was protected by executive privilege for events that occurred when he was not a White House employee.”The Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, a key member of the House panel that investigated the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s role in it, said: “Bannon seems to have been deeply enmeshed in the planning of the disruption of the peaceful transfer of power and the seizing of the presidency for Donald Trump.”Raskin noted: “Bannon is the intellectual ringleader of the Maga circus … In fact, he fancies himself not just the philosopher of white Christian nationalism in our country but the political strategist for allied autocrats and theocrats all over the world.”In that role, Bannon’s War Room podcast has loomed large, making him an influential figure in promoting Trump and Maga world views including falsehoods about the 2020 election and Covid-19.Bannon’s personal account shows he has nearly 7 million followers and on Gettr, where War Room is one of the most popular shows, more than 800,000 followers.Bannon’s close Gettr ties are underscored by his frequent mention of the platform on War Room. Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings fellow in emerging technologies and AI who led its podcast research, said that Gettr was referenced, often multiple times, in more than 60% of more than 1,000 episodes reviewed.Trump allies who were on War Room multiple times last year included Stefanik, Lindell and the ex-justice department assistant attorney general Jeff Clark, with whom Trump plotted to promote fake electors in several states that Biden won.Bannon has touted Clark, an unindicted co-conspirator in the special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment of Trump over his attempts to subvert the election results, as attorney general if the former president wins another term. Clark was also indicted along with Trump and 17 others by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, for trying to overturn Joe Biden’s win in Georgia.“Bannon’s War Room stands out – with claims about votes being switched by Dominion machines to Sharpies being used to disenfranchise voters to the Covid-19 virus being a plot to deny Trump a second term, among many, many others,” Wirtschafter said.While Bannon’s War Room keeps pushing Maga misinformation, the bombastic strategist faces other financial and legal woes.Robert Costello, a former Bannon lawyer who played a key role in Trump’s pardon of the strategist, filed a claim against him last year for $480,000 in monies owed. Costello and his firm won a summary judgment from New York’s supreme court to obtain payment, but Bannon, with Protass’s help, is fighting the ruling.Interestingly, Protass in a court filing last month wrote that an effort by Costello’s firm to access Bannon’s bank account and depose him “poses a significant risk of compromising” his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination with fraud charges against him pending in New York.Regarding Bannon’s upcoming Mexico wall fraud trial, Raskin said: “Given that three associates of Bannon have been convicted of the conduct charged in these events, it has to be a serious threat to Bannon too.”Bannon’s multiple legal problems do not surprise Raskin. “He has adopted the persona of bad boy lawlessness. Like Trump, Bannon considers himself way beyond the reach of the law.” More

President Joe Biden welcomed the finding of a special counsel report that he would not face criminal charges in his handling of classified documents. Biden said he was ‘pleased’ the special counsel had ‘reached the conclusion I believed and knew all along they would’. The US Department of Justice special counsel investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents after his vice-presidency released a report concluding that he ‘willfully’ kept and shared classified information including ‘classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan’ and handwritten notes about national security and foreign policy ‘implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods’. More