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    Rudy Giuliani faces damages claim in 2020 election defamation case – live

    The latest polling also showed that potential voters have concerns with both leading nominees. The surveys found that the majority of potential voters in Michigan and Georgia believe that Biden lacks the “sharpness” and “stamina” needed for a president. Voters in both battleground states also believe that Trump did not have the right “temperament” to be president.From the Hill:
    The surveys also highlighted potential problem areas for each candidate, with 69 percent of Michigan voters and 66 percent of Georgia voters saying Biden does not have the sharpness and stamina they want to see in a president. Fifty-seven percent of Michigan voters and 58 percent of Georgia voters said Trump’s temperament is not what they are looking for in a president.
    Read the full article here.Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in new polls surveying battleground states, the Hill reports.The latest polls by CNN found that Trump had a 10 point lead over Biden in Michigan, with 50% of responders saying they would vote for Trump in the 2024 election versus only 40% for Biden.In Georgia, 49% of responders said they would support Trump compared to only 44% for Biden.Both Biden and Trump are leading their party’s nomination for the general presidential election, with 2024 shaping up to be a rematch of the 2020 election.Rudy Giuliani has taken his seat in a federal courtroom in Washington where jury selection is about to begin in a weeklong trial to determine how much in damages he should have to pay two Atlanta election workers he defamed last year.The former New York City mayor could pay anywhere between $15 and $43m in damages to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, a mother and daughter he spread false lies about them after the election.Included in the questions potential jurors will be asked is “Do you believe that Joseph R. Biden’s election as president of the United States in 2020 was illegitimate?” and “Have you ever used the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” or the term or hashtag “WWG1WGA”?Opening statements in the trial are expected this afternoon. The trial is expected to wrap up by Friday.Giuliani has just arrived to his trial in federal court today, which will determine how much the ex-Trump lawyer will pay in damages after being found liable of defamation in August.Giuliani is expected to testify at some point during the week-long trial, though it isn’t clear if Giuliani will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights while testifying, CNN reports.Meanwhile, the legal team of Freeman and Moss will play videos of other Trump figures pleading the Fifth while refusing to answer questions on the stand.Giuliani is reportedly having trouble paying off mounting legal debts. He is currently selling his $6.5m New York apartment to help square away litigation costs.As of October, Giuliani owed more than $500,000 in unpaid taxes to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Forbes reported.Rudy Giuliani will be defending himself in federal court on Monday against a defamation lawsuit filed against him for false comments he made about two Georgia election workers after the 2020 election.The week-long trial starting Monday in Washington DC will be to determine how much Giuliani will pay in damages for inflammatory remarks he made against Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, two Black election workers in Fulton county.Giuliani is expected to testify in his defense.While serving as head of Trump’s legal team, Giuliani falsely claimed that Freeman and Moss counted 2020 election ballots after tallying had wrapped, sharing misleading security video that was later debunked by Georgia election officials.Freeman and Moss say they faced death threats following Giuliani’s comments, and strangers came to Freeman’s house to enact a “citizen’s arrest”.Giuliani has already been found liable of defamation in August. The latest trial is to determine how much Giuliani will pay in damages, with Freeman and Moss seeking between $15m and $43.5m in damages.Jury selection and opening statements for the damages trial are expected today.Here’s what else is happening:
    Biden is traveling to Philadelphia on Monday to announce a federal grant for the city’s fire department.
    Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy will arrive in the US for a last-ditch attempt to break a deadlock on Ukraine aid. More

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    Rudy Giuliani faces trial over defamation of 2020 election workers

    Rudy Giuliani arrived slightly late to the Washington DC federal courtroom where a defamation lawsuit seeking to force him to pay tens of millions of dollars in damages to two election workers after making inflammatory false statements about them in the aftermath of the 2020 election.Ruby Freedman and her daughter Shaye Moss, the two Black election workers from Fulton county who said they faced death threats because of Giuliani’s claims, were also in the courtroom on Monday.Giuliani has already conceded he made the defamatory statements and the US district judge Beryl Howell, who is overseeing the case, has already found him liable for defamation, so the week-long jury trial will focus on what penalty he should have to pay. Freeman and Moss are seeking between $15m and $43.5m in damages. Jury selection and opening statements are expected on Monday.The case is significant because it is one of the most aggressive and advanced efforts to get accountability from Donald Trump allies who spread lies about the election as part of the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. It is one of several cases testing whether defamation law can be used as a new tool to combat misinformation. And perhaps more than any other episode in the chaotic aftermath of the 2020 election, it crystallizes the human toll of election denialism. Giuliani also faces criminal charges in Georgia as part of the wide-ranging case there over Trump’s efforts to turn the election.After the 2020 election, Giuliani had amplified and circulated misleading security footage he claimed showed Freeman and Moss counting ballots after tallying had ended on election night. Even after Georgia election officials quickly debunked the claim, Giuliani continued to spread the false claims.Freeman and Moss say their lives were upended as they became the subject of vicious attacks. They faced death threats, and strangers came to Freeman’s home to try to execute a “citizen’s arrest”.Freeman told the US House committee that investigated the January 6 attack that she was afraid to give her name in public. On election night in 2020, she was wearing a shirt that proudly proclaimed her name, but she now refuses to wear it in public.“I won’t even introduce myself by my name any more. I get nervous when I bump into someone I know in the grocery store who says my name. I’m worried about people listening. I get nervous when I have to give my name for food orders. I’m always concerned of who’s around me,” she told the committee.“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”Moss told Reuters in 2021 that she suffered anxiety and depression, and her son, who used a cellphone with a phone number once registered to her, started receiving death threats and began failing in school.Both women have not spoken much publicly since the 2020 election, but are expected to take the witness stand this week.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGiuliani has already conceded he made false statements about Freeman and Moss. But he argues that he is not responsible for the harm they suffered as a result of his false statements. “Giuliani will argue that Plaintiffs cannot show more than a de minimis relationship between their alleged harm and Giuliani’s conduct,” his lawyers wrote in a court filing in November.Giuliani has also already been sanctioned more than $200,000 for refusing to turn over documents as part of the lawsuit. Howell, the judge, also berated Giuliani’s attorney last week after Giuliani failed to show up for a hearing.He is also expected to testify during the trial, and his lawyer indicated last week that the former New York City mayor does not plan to invoke his fifth amendment rights during the proceeding.The original lawsuit, filed in December 2021, sought damages from both Giuliani and One America News, the far-right channel that spread countless pieces of misinformation after the 2020 election. Freeman and Moss settled with OAN in 2022. While the terms of the agreement haven’t been publicly disclosed, the network acknowledged on air shortly after that there was no widespread voter fraud in Georgia in 2020. More

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    Man convicted in January 6 riots running for Santos seat in Congress

    Of the 15-odd Republican candidates vying to replace George Santos in Congress, one stands out so far – not just because he has now been convicted for trying to obstruct the very body he wants to join, but because he claimed to have “no idea” Congress met at the Capitol building he stormed on January 6.Philip Grillo, a candidate in the special election for Santos’s vacant Long Island seat, was convicted this week of charges relating to the January 6 attack, when he entered and exited the building multiple times, at least once through a broken window.At one point during the protest Grillo, 49, was interviewed on camera about why he was there.“I’m here to stop the steal,” he said, according to the justice department. “It’s our fucking House!”He then made his way further into the Capitol. He also recorded videos of himself in the Capitol. “We fucking did it, you understand? We stormed the Capitol,” Grillo said in one. “We shut it down! We did it! We shut the mother..!”On his third entrance to the building, the justice department said, he could be seen in multiple instances pushing up against police officers and, in another recording, from his cell phone, smoking marijuana inside the building and high-fiving other rioters.Recently, during his trial, he testified that he had “no idea” Congress convened inside the Capitol.Grillo was found guilty this week of the felony charge of obstruction of an official proceeding, along with a series of misdemeanors, including entering restricted grounds and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building.At trial, his attorney’s argued that their client had “was acting under actual or believed public authority at the time of the alleged offenses” and said “he was and believed he was authorized to engage in the conduct set forth in the indictment”.Grillo is one of the more than 1,230 people who have been charged with crimes related to the effort on January 6 to block certification of the 2020 election.In May, 10 days before Santos was indicted in New York on multiple charges of fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements, Grillo registered as a candidate for New York’s third congressional district seat – the seat Santos, a Republican, held until his expulsion last week.A special election to replace Santos will be held on 13 February, the New York governor Kathy Hochul announced this week. Under electoral rules there is no primary, so Democrats and Republicans will each pick a candidate to go head-to-head.The candidates have not been announced, but Republicans are reported to be edging toward Jack Martins, a former state senator, and Democrats toward Tom Suozzi, who represented the third congressional district before it was redrawn.However, the Republican selection committee has said it is conducting a formal interview process. Committee chairman Joseph Cairo Jr has said the committee has “15 bona fide candidates” to review, including Grillo.The party will be hoping that mud from the Santos affair does not stick to their candidate, and Republicans in the state of New York have in recent years been more successful in leveraging wider turnout margins and courting independent voters than Democrats.For Democrats, the election will be a test of the party’s ability to flip districts in New York City’s suburbs and exurbs that turned red last year in a blow to the party’s majority in Congress.Veteran strategist Hank Sheinkopf told City & State that Santos’s expulsion would likely benefit Republicans because it made them “look like the defenders of the institution, of ethics, and of the courage to oust one of their own”.“Democrats might just for a moment pause and stop gloating. A gone Santos does not a Democrat replacement necessarily create,” Sheinkopf said.Since his disgrace and ouster, Santos has reportedly been making the equivalent of $174,000 a year by charging $400 for brief personalized video messages on the Cameo service.His profile on Cameo describes him as a “former congressional ‘Icon’!” along with a painted fingernail emoji and as “the expelled member of Congress from New York City”.The Cameo founder and chief executive, Steven Galanis, told CBS MoneyWatch this week that Santos has already booked enough Cameo videos to earn more than his congressional salary.“Assuming he can get through the videos, he will exceed what he made in Congress last year,” Galanis told the outlet. More

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    Georgia prosecutors predict jail sentences in Trump 2020 election case

    Fulton county prosecutors have signaled they want prison sentences in the Georgia criminal case against Donald Trump and his top allies for allegedly violating the racketeering statute as part of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to exchanges in private emails.“We have a long road ahead,” the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, wrote in one email. “Long after these folks are in jail, we will still be practicing law.”The previously unreported emails, between Willis and defense lawyers, open a window on to the endgame envisioned by prosecutors on her team – which could inform legal strategies ahead of a potential trial next year, such as approaches toward plea deal negotiations.Prosecutors are not presently expected to offer plea agreements to Trump, his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former election lawyer Rudy Giuliani, but left open the possibility of talks with other co-defendants, the Guardian previously reported.The emails also underscore the increasing breakdown in trust with a growing number of defense lawyers who have regarded prosecutors’ tactics – including Willis assuming she will win – as inappropriately aggressive and presumptuous given the case remains months from a potential verdict.The district attorney raised the prospect of defendants in prison in a 29 November exchange, which started with Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow complaining about an incomplete Giuliani transcript the defense received in discovery, according to two people with direct knowledge of the emails.Willis responded that the defense lawyers would receive the full transcript in the next production of discovery and, in increasingly tense exchanges, took offense that she was not being referred to by her formal title as well as the implicit accusation that they were withholding evidence.“No one placed me here and I have earned this title,” Willis said, apparently taking umbrage that she was not referred to specifically as the district attorney, but as a prosecutor. “I’ve never practiced law by hiding the ball, I’ve enjoyed beating folks by making sure they have the entire file.”The email took a turn when Willis added that they should remain professional because their legal careers would continue even after the election case co-defendants went to jail. Willis signed off: “yours in service”.Trump and 18 co-defendants in August originally pleaded not guilty to charges that they violated Georgia’s state racketeering statute as they sought to overturn the 2020 election. In the following weeks, four of the 18 negotiated plea deals and extricated themselves from the case.The remark about jail caused consternation with some of the defense lawyers, who have been aghast that the district attorney’s office would throw around what they took as a prison threat in a cavalier manner, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for Willis declined to comment.Relations between prosecutors and defense lawyers have been particularly strained in recent weeks, people close to the case have said, mainly since several media outlets published videotaped “proffer” statements that the former Trump lawyers Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro gave as part of plea deals.The district attorney’s office had privately believed Trump’s team leaked the videos, only to be surprised when the lawyer for the former Coffee county elections official Misty Hampton acknowledged at a court hearing that he had disseminated videos to a certain news outlet.The leak of the proffer statements prompted prosecutors to seek an emergency protective order on discovery materials and to refuse to provide copies of any future proffer videos to defense lawyers, who would instead have to view them in the district attorney’s offices in Atlanta.In the separate federal 2020 election subversion case brought against Trump in Washington, the discovery materials were subject to a protective order almost as soon as Trump was charged. But special counsel prosecutors have not forced Trump’s lawyers to only view the discovery in person.The Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding in the case, ultimately agreed to impose a protective order governing the release of discovery materials marked as “sensitive”, though the threat to only have proffer videos available in the district attorney’s offices was dropped. More

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    Six Nevada Republicans charged with casting fake electoral votes in 2020

    Six Republicans who cast fake electoral votes for Donald Trump in Nevada in 2020 were charged with two felonies each by the state’s attorney general on Wednesday.The Democratic attorney general, Aaron Ford, announced the charges, saying a grand jury had decided to charge the six fake electors with “offering a false instrument for filing” and “uttering a forged instrument” for sending documents claiming to be the state’s electors.Fake electors in Georgia and Michigan have already been charged, while others of the seven states with similar schemes are still investigating the issue. A separate civil lawsuit in Wisconsin over the fake electors settled this week, with the Republicans who claimed Trump won the state acknowledging Biden’s victory and agreeing not to serve as electors next year.“When the efforts to undermine faith in our democracy began after the 2020 election, I made it clear that I would do everything in my power to defend the institutions of our nation and our state,” Ford said in a statement. “We cannot allow attacks on democracy to go unchallenged. Today’s indictments are the product of a long and thorough investigation, and as we pursue this prosecution, I am confident that our judicial system will see justice done.”Ford had previously said the state’s laws didn’t address a situation like this. The state legislature passed a bill to make it a felony to be a fake elector, but the governor vetoed the bill.The six Nevadans charged are Michael McDonald, Jesse Law, Jim DeGraffenreid, Durward James Hindle III, Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe filing a false instrument charge is a category C felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, while the uttering a false instrument charge is a category D felony, with potential for up to four years in prison and a $5,000 fine. More

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    Republicans to blur faces in January 6 footage as ‘we don’t want them charged’

    The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said he would blur the faces of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 before releasing new footage to the public, in order to shield the rioters from justice.In a Tuesday press conference Johnson, who was personally involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said: “We have to blur some faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DoJ.”Johnson’s office later acknowledged that the justice department already has the surveillance film.Some Republicans claim the events of that day were mischaracterized. Two years ago, the Georgia Republican congressman Andrew Clyde said protesters entering the Capitol had “walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures”.“If you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit,” he added.More than 1,200 defendants have been charged in connection with the January 6 attempt to interrupt the certification of the election, according to a tally by NBC News.More than 400 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration and an additional 1,000 January 6 participants have been identified but not arrested.Johnson said he planned to release the first tranche of security footage, around 90 hours, to the public because he wants people to do their own research into the Capitol attack.“We want the American people to draw their own conclusions,” Johnson said. “I don’t think partisan elected officials in Washington should present a narrative and expect that it should be seen as the ultimate truth.”Raj Shah, former deputy White House press secretary in the Trump administration and currently Johnson’s deputy chief of staff for communications, said in a statement shared online: “Faces are to be blurred from public viewing room footage to prevent all forms of retaliation against private citizens from any non-governmental actors. The Department of Justice already has access to raw footage from January 6, 2021.”Earlier this month, Johnson said that releasing the film, which totals 44,000 hours, was part of a pledge he had made to far-right members of his party when he was campaigning for his current job.“This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials,” he said in a statement.Johnson’s comments come as Colorado’s highest court will hear arguments on Wednesday on whether Trump provoked and participated in the January 6 insurrection – as the January 6 committee found – and if that act requires his removal from the ballot.The case, the first of several to reach court, will look at if the former president can be disqualified under a section of the 14th amendment that states that anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking an oath of office to support the Constitution is forbidden from holding any public office.A lower court in Colorado previously found that Trump could remain on the ballot because the insurrection clause does not apply to the office of the president.Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, has said that ruling was “pretty surprising”. Griswold, a Democrat, told Politico: “The court’s decision to say the presidency is excluded from section 3 of the 14th Amendment is the really surprising part. Under that decision, Donald Trump is above the law when it comes to insurrection.” More

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    Trump victory in 2024 would mean no trial in Georgia for years, lawyer argues

    Donald Trump’s trial on charges that he conspired to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia would be delayed until 2029 if he won re-election next year because the US constitution prohibits states from interfering with federal government functions, his lawyer argued at a court hearing on Friday.“I believe that the supremacy clause and his duties as president of the United States – this trial would not take place at all until after his term in office,” the former president’s lawyer Steve Sadow said.The remark came during an hours-long hearing before the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the sprawling conspiracy and racketeering case connected to the efforts taken by Trump and dozens of his top allies to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the state.While that argument – that Trump would be shielded from the criminal case brought by the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis were he to become president once more – has been privately discussed for months, this marked the first time Trump’s lawyer affirmed the position in open court.The remark from Sadow came as the judge grappled with how to schedule a trial date in the case. Fulton county prosecutors had previously asked the judge to set trial for 5 August 2024, positioning it after Trump’s other criminal cases in Washington, New York and Florida.Trump’s current schedule includes: his Washington trial on federal charges over efforts to overturn the 2020 election on 4 March, his New York trial on local charges over hush-money payments to an adult film star on 25 March, and his classified documents trial in Florida on 20 May.Fulton county prosecutors’ proposal envisioned going to trial after those cases were complete. But with the New York case and the Florida case are almost certain to be delayed for months, and Trump likely to be the GOP presidential nominee, McAfee put off setting a trial date at the hearing.The judge said an August trial date was “not unrealistic”, though he added he was uncertain that could be determined months in advance.McAfee gave no indication how he might rule on a trial date and tried to navigate its politically and legally sensitive nature by questioning Trump’s lawyer and prosecutors on whether proceeding in the summer, just months before the election, would amount to “election interference”.The arguments were predictable: Trump’s lawyer Sadow argued it would take Trump off the campaign trail during the most crucial time, while prosecutor Nathan Wade contended that Trump was a defendant and it was “moving forward with the business of Fulton county”.The judge then turned to the question of whether Trump’s trial could even continue should he win the election, with prosecutors anticipating the case stretching into 2025. “Could he even be tried in 2025?” McAfee asked.Sadow responded that Trump could not, because the supremacy clause in the constitution meant the state’s interest in prosecuting him would be secondary to the federal government’s interest in him fulfilling his presidential role, although how it would apply in a criminal prosecution remains untested.The situation would apply only to Trump, Sadow conceded – and the judge indicated he would break up the remaining 14 co-defendants so that they would go to trial in several groups. McAfee added that it was still too early to decide how many groups he would create.Trump and the original 18 co-defendants in August pleaded not guilty to the indictment handed up by an Atlanta-area grand jury charging them with reversing his defeat in the state, including by advancing fake Trump electors and breaching voting machines.In the weeks that followed, prosecutors reached plea deals in quick succession with the former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro – all of whom gave “proffer” statements that were damaging to Trump, to some degree – as well as the local bail bond officer Scott Hall.The district attorney’s office currently does not intend to offer plea deals to Trump and at least two of his top allies, including his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the Guardian reported this week. More

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    Trump can be sued over January 6 Capitol attack, US appeals court rules

    A US appeals court on Friday ruled that Donald Trump must face civil lawsuits over his role in the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, rejecting the former president’s claim that he is immune.A panel of the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit found that Trump was acting “in his personal capacity as a presidential candidate” when he urged his supporters to march to the Capitol. US presidents are immune from civil lawsuits only for official actions. Part of the lawsuit was filed under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law, which makes it illegal to prevent an officer of the United States from performing their duties through threats or intimidation.“When a first-term President opts to seek a second term, his campaign to win re-election is not an official presidential act,” Sri Srinivasan, the chief judge of the US court of appeals for the DC circuit wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. “While Presidents are often exercising official responsibilities when they speak on matters of public concern, that is not always the case.”Srinivasan, an appointee of Barack Obama, was joined by Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, and Judith Rogers, an appointee of Bill Clinton.While the panel ruled Trump could be sued, it made it clear it was not precluding him from arguing that he was acting in his official capacity as a defense as the lawsuit proceeds.“When these cases move forward in the district court, he must be afforded the opportunity to develop his own facts on the immunity question if he desires to show that he took the actions alleged in the complaints in his official capacity as President rather than in his unofficial capacity as a candidate,” the opinion said.The ruling clears the way for Trump to face lawsuits from police officers and US lawmakers seeking to hold him responsible for the violence by his supporters during the riot, which was an attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat.“More than two years later, it is unnerving to hear the same fabrications and dangerous rhetoric that put my life as well as the lives of my fellow officers in danger on January 6, 2021,” said James Blassingame, a Capitol police officer who is a plaintiff in the case, James Blassingame v Donald Trump. “I couldn’t be more committed to pursuing accountability on this matter. I hope our case will assist with helping put our democracy back on the right track; making it crystal clear that no person, regardless of title or position of stature, is above the rule of law.”Trump is currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Joe Biden in the 2024 election.The civil suits will only add to the significant legal problems the former president faces. In total, Trump already faces 91 felony charges.Both the justice department and the Fulton county district attorney have criminally charged Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election. The justice department is also prosecuting him for his handling of classified documents after leaving office. The Manhattan district attorney also has a pending case against Trump over hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Trump has also spent much of the last month defending his business in a civil case in New York on charges it committed fraud by inflating the value for obtain more favorable terms on loans and insurance. More