Eliana Willis

The Georgia judge overseeing the racketeering case charging Donald Trump and allies with attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in the state has scheduled a hearing for February to weigh whether the Fulton county district attorney should be disqualified from prosecuting the charges.In a one-page order, the Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee set an evidentiary hearing for 15 February to address allegations raised by Trump’s co-defendant Michael Roman that the district attorney Fani Willis had an improper romantic relationship with one of her prosecutors.The judge also ordered the district attorney to file a response to the allegations by 2 February. Earlier this week, Willis’s office had privately told at least two lawyers involved in the case that they intended to submit their written response by that date, people familiar with the matter said.The case is unlikely to be dismissed outright even if the allegations are proven true. But that could result in the disqualification of Willis, which, under Georgia caselaw, would necessitate the disqualification of the entire Fulton county district attorney’s office, as well.At issue is an explosive complaint from Roman – director of Trump’s 2020 election-day operations – that Willis should be relieved of bringing the case because of conflicts of interests arising from her ongoing relationship with a lawyer named Nathan Wade, whom she hired as a special prosecutor.The filing claimed Willis personally profited from the contract. Wade was paid at least $653,000 and potentially as much as $1m for legal fees as one of the lead prosecutors on the Trump case, and the filing alleged Wade then paid for trips he took with Willis to Napa Valley and the Caribbean.The filing included no proof of the allegations. Roman’s lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, a respected local attorney who publicly endorsed Wade when he ran to be a Cobb county superior judge 2016, has said the claims were based on sources and records from Wade’s divorce proceeding that remains under seal.Wade started divorce proceedings the day after he was hired as a special prosecutor on the Trump case. According to court records, the divorce case has been contentious, and Joycelyn Mayfield Wade wrote that her husband had failed to disclose his finances, including from his Fulton county work.For his part, Wade has repeatedly insisted in court filings that he had complied with the discovery obligations and accused his wife of being “stubbornly litigious and dragging the matter out for no stated reasons”.Three days after Trump was indicted in Atlanta last August, the presiding Cobb county superior court judge Henry Thompson held Wade in contempt for failing to disclose financial statements, including bank and credit card statements.Weeks later, Joycelyn Mayfield Wade said in a filing in September that she would be forced to subpoena records to obtain her husband’s earnings from legal work done for the Fulton county district attorney’s office and Fulton county in November and December respectively.Willis herself was subpoenaed for testimony on 8 January, just hours before Roman filed his motion seeking dismissal of the charges and disqualification. The subpoena ordered her to appear for a 23 January video-taped deposition.Willis has not directly addressed the allegations, and a spokesperson has said it would all be addressed in court filings.Roman’s allegations threaten to upend one of the most consequential criminal cases against Trump, who pleaded not guilty to charges that he and his co-defendants violated the Georgia Rico statute through his efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat.Whether Willis, and therefore the district attorney’s office, can be disqualified from prosecuting the Trump case turns less on Wade’s credentials and more on the extent of a potential conflict of interest, legal experts said.The standard for disqualification does not turn on whether Willis made prosecutorial decisions to benefit Wade, the experts said, but whether she made decisions to extend a criminal investigation actually benefited Wade, who was also paying for travel and vacations.In 2022, the chief Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney disqualified the Fulton county district attorney’s office from prosecuting the Republican lieutenant governor Burt Jones after Willis endorsed his political opponent, Charlie Bailey.The order from McBurney found that there was an “actual” conflict of interest because even though Jones might not have had definitive proof that “an investigative decision was made to benefit Bailey … any public criminal investigation into Jones plainly benefits Bailey’s campaign”.Should McAfee ultimately decide to disqualify Fulton county, the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia would be tasked with deciding where the case would be transferred to. It could pursue the case itself, or give it to another district attorney’s office, which could choose to drop the charges. More

A Florida man described by prosecutors as one of the most violent rioters who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in prison, court records show.Kenneth Bonawitz, a member of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group’s Miami chapter, assaulted at least six police officers as he stormed the Capitol with a mob of Donald Trump supporters. He grabbed one of the officers in a chokehold and injured another so severely that the officer had to retire, according to federal prosecutors.Bonawitz, 58, of Pompano Beach, Florida, carried an eight-inch knife in a sheath on his hip. Police seized the knife from him in between his barrage of attacks on officers.“His violent, and repeated, assaults on multiple officers are among the worst attacks that occurred that day,” assistant US attorney Sean McCauley wrote in a court filing.US district judge Jia Cobb sentenced Bonawitz to a five-year term of imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release, court records show.The US justice department recommended a prison sentence of five years and 11 months for Bonawitz, who was arrested last January. He pleaded guilty in August to three felonies – one count of civil disorder and two counts of assaulting police.Bonawitz took an overnight bus to Washington DC on the day of the Capitol attack, chartered for Trump supporters to attend his Stop the Steal rally near the White House.Bonawitz was among the first rioters to enter the upper west plaza once the crowd overran a police line on the north side. He jumped off a stage built for Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration and tackled two Capitol police officers. One of them, Sgt Federico Ruiz, suffered serious injuries to his neck, shoulder, knees and back.“I thought there was a strong chance I could die right there,” Ruiz wrote in a letter addressed to the judge.Ruiz, who retired last month, said the injuries inflicted by Bonawitz prematurely ended his law-enforcement career.“Bonawitz has given me a life sentence of physical pain and discomfort, bodily injury and emotional insecurity as a direct result of his assault on me,” he wrote.After police confiscated his knife and released him, Bonawitz assaulted four more officers in the span of seven seconds. He placed one of the officers in a headlock and lifted her off the ground, choking her.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Bonawitz’s attacks did not stop until (police) officers pushed him back into the crowd for a second time and deployed chemical agent to his face,” the prosecutor wrote.More than 100 police officers were injured during the siege. More than 1,200 defendants have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. About 900 have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials – more than 750 have been sentenced, with nearly 500 receiving a term of imprisonment, according to data compiled by the Associated Press.Dozens of Proud Boys leaders, members and associates have been arrested on January 6 charges. A jury convicted former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and three lieutenants of seditious conspiracy charges for a failed plot to forcibly stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 election.Bonawitz isn’t accused of coordinating his actions on January 6 with other Proud Boys. But he “fully embraced and embodied their anti-government, extremist ideology when he assaulted six law enforcement officers who stood between a mob and the democratic process”, the prosecutor wrote.Bonawitz’s lawyers didn’t publicly file a sentencing memo before Wednesday’s hearing. More

Donald Trump won the US’s first election contest of 2024, easily fending off a field of Republicans who failed to gain traction against the former US president. The result for Trump was called quickly, while the battle for second place took much longer, with Ron DeSantis edging out Nikki Haley in an upset. Vivek Ramaswamy led the lesser-known pack of contenders, before he dropped out of the Republican nomination race and endorsed Trump More

A Houthi military spokesperson says overnight strikes by the US and UK, in response to the movement’s attacks on ships in the Red Sea, will not go without ‘punishment or retaliation’.

Yahya Sarea said the strikes had killed five Houthi fighters and wounded six others, and that the group would continue to target ships headed for Israel in response to the country’s war on Gaza.

The US and the UK said steps had been taken to minimise civilian casualties, partly by attacking at night, but it was unclear initially what damage had been done on the ground and the impact on the Houthi and civilian populations More

There will be “bedlam” in the US if criminal cases deny Donald Trump a White House return, said the former president who incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress but who is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination this year.“I think they feel this is the way they’re going to try and win, and that’s not the way it goes,” Trump told reporters, referring to Joe Biden and Democrats, after a court hearing in Washington DC on Tuesday.“It’ll be bedlam in the country. It’s a very bad thing. It’s a very bad precedent. As we said, it’s the opening of a Pandora’s box.”Trump claims he is a victim of political persecution.Prosecutors say he committed 91 criminal offenses, regarding federal election subversion (four charges); state election subversion (13, in Georgia); retention of classified information (40, federal) and hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who claimed an affair (34, in New York).Trump also faces civil trials over his business affairs and a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Arising from his incitement of the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021 – an attempt to overturn his defeat by Biden now linked to nine deaths and more than 1,200 arrests – Trump also faces attempts to remove him from the ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, introduced after the civil war to stop insurrectionists running for office.Trump has appealed removal in Maine in that state. An appeal against his removal in Colorado will be argued at the US supreme court.On Tuesday, Trump chose to attend an appeals hearing in his federal election subversion case, listening as his lawyers argued he enjoys immunity for anything done while president.One judge asked if a president would be immune to prosecution if he ordered Seal Team 6, an elite special forces unit, “to assassinate a political rival”.For Trump, D John Sauer, a former Missouri solicitor general, said a president “would have to be impeached and convicted” before being prosecuted for any such action.Trump was impeached (for a second time) for inciting the Capitol attack. Republicans in the Senate ensured he was acquitted.Representing Jack Smith, the special counsel, James Pearce said Trump’s lawyers were proposing “an extraordinarily frightening future”.Speaking to reporters, Trump referred to speeches by Biden around the January 6 anniversary, saying of the charges against him: “When they talk about threat to democracy, that’s your real threat to democracy.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionClaiming he did “nothing wrong, absolutely nothing”, he nonetheless repeated his claim: “If it’s during the time [in office], you have absolute immunity.”A reporter asked: “You just used the word ‘bedlam’. Will you tell your supporters now, ‘No matter what, no violence’?”Trump walked away.Polling shows a criminal conviction may reduce Republican support for Trump. The trial in the federal election subversion case is due to begin on 4 March, in the middle of the GOP primary. As in other cases, Trump’s appeal is widely seen as an attempt to delay proceedings.His prediction of “bedlam” stoked widespread alarm.Maya Wiley, chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, alluded to Republican endorsements of Trump when she said his “warnings” were “heard by too many as calls to action. Every Republican should come forward and repeat these simple and unequivocal words: ‘Political violence is never acceptable … it has no place in the democracy. None.’ This isn’t a game.”Tim O’Brien of Bloomberg News, a longtime Trump-watcher, recapped remarks in court and added just one word: “Fascism”. More

Judge Karen Henderson gets into what the appeals court’s options are going forward.Trump attorney John Sauer says he thinks the judges should remand the case back to the lower district court, with instructions to go through the indictment and consider whether each alleged act is an official act, or private conduct.Sauer’s position is that private conduct can be prosecuted, but officials acts cannot, and that all the acts in the indictment are official acts.Judge Karen Henderson moved on to what acts are official acts for a president, saying, “I think it’s paradoxical to say his constitutional duty to say that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate the law”.Sauer replied that a president’s actions can never be examinable by the courts.Judges Karen Henderson and Michelle Childs pressed John Sauer on comments Donald Trump uttered while in office, when he conceded that no former officeholder is immune from investigation and prosecution.Senators might have relied on that to acquit Trump in the impeachment that followed the January 6 insurrection, Henderson said.Sauer replied that he disagrees with the judges’ interpretation of that line, which has been memorialized in the congressional record. He says the term “officeholder” would pertain to lesser government officials, not the president, and, in any case, Trump was referring to being investigated generally.Judge Florence Pan started off her questioning of Trump lawyer John Sauer by offering a novel scenario.“Could a president who ordered Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival and was not impeached, could he be subjected to criminal prosecution?” Pan asked.After some back and forth, Sauer said, “Qualified yes, if he’s impeached and convicted first.”Circuit judge Florence Pan is putting Trump lawyer John Sauer in a tough spot. After Sauer said that presidents can be prosecuted so long as there’s impeachment and conviction in the Senate, Pan asks if he is conceding that presidents actually do not have absolute immunity, and that if president can be prosecuted, don’t “all of your separation of powers and policy arguments fall away”?Live television cameras are not allowed in federal courtrooms.But live audio is, and you can listen to the back and forth between Donald Trump’s lawyers and the three judges at the top of the page. The former president is not expected to address the court.Donald Trump’s lawyers have begun making their arguments to a panel of three federal appeals judges that the former president cannot be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election because the events took place while he was president.The three federal judges hearing the case are now in the courtroom.They are Michelle Childs, who was appointed by Joe Biden, Karen Henderson, a George HW Bush appointee, and Florence Pan, another Biden appointee.Donald Trump’s lawyers have arrived in the courtroom where a federal appeals court will consider whether he is immune from charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election.Representing Trump today is former Missouri solicitor general John Sauer. Also in attendance for the former president are lawyers John Lauro, Greg Singer, Emil Bove and Stanley Woodward.There is at least one anti-Trump demonstrator waiting in the foul weather to greet the former president, WUSA9 reports:Since it’s 42 degrees Fahrenheit and raining in Washington DC today, do not expect the lively crowds that gathered for Donald Trump’s August arraignment to convene once again for his potentially pivotal immunity hearing.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, who is covering the hearing from within the E Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse, saw no supporters, protesters or lookie-loos outside, and this morning’s wire photos of the building show a pretty unremarkable scene:Good morning, US politics blog readers. Donald Trump is taking a break from the campaign trail today to appear in a Washington DC federal appeals court, where his lawyers will attempt to convince a three-judge panel that his “presidential immunity” prevents him from facing trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election. The stakes will be the highest of any court hearing for Trump since he was first indicted on the charges by special counsel Jack Smith in August, and if the former president prevails, Smith’s prosecution will end. We do not expect to get a decision today, and whichever way the three judges – two appointed by Joe Biden, and one by George HW Bush, rule, chances are the issue will go to the supreme court.Trump is not required to attend the hearing, but is using the proceedings as an opportunity to juice his claims of political persecution ahead of Monday’s Iowa Republican caucuses, which he is expected to win. “I was looking for voter fraud, and finding it, which is my obligation to do, and otherwise … running our Country”, the former president wrote yesterday on his Truth Social network. The hearing kicks off at 9.30am eastern time.Here’s what else is happening today:
Nikki Haley’s support has peaked in New Hampshire, or perhaps not. Ahead of the state’s 23 January Republican primary, a Boston Globe/Suffolk University/USA Today poll reports she has 26% support compared with Trump’s 46%. But a CNN poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire shows a much closer race, with Trump at 39%, and Haley at 32%.
The House returns today after the holiday break, and we get a better sense of whether rightwing lawmakers are prepared to reject a framework announced over the weekend to prevent a government shutdown.
Joe Biden has no public events, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at 2pm. More

A federal appeals court is considering whether Donald Trump can be criminally prosecuted on federal charges over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election because it involved actions related to his office that he undertook while still president.The decision that the appeals court in Washington reaches after the Tuesday morning hearing – which the former president said on his Truth Social platform he will attend – and how long it takes to issue a ruling, could carry profound consequences for the scheduled March trial.Trump appealed his federal election interference case last month after the trial judge rejected his effort to have the charges thrown out on grounds that he was afforded absolute immunity from prosecution.The argument from Trump’s lawyers advanced a sweeping interpretation of executive authority that contended all of his actions to reverse his election defeat in 2020 fell under the “outer perimeter” of his duties as president and were therefore protected.Trump’s motion was swiftly rejected by the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who wrote in an opinion accompanying the ruling that neither the US constitution nor legal precedent supported such an extraordinary extension of post-presidential power.“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass,” Chutkan wrote. “Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.”Trump’s lawyers had always expected to lose their initial attempt to toss the charges, which is scheduled for trial in federal district court in Washington on 5 March, and to use the appeals process as their final strategy to delay the case as long as possible.Trump has made it no secret that his strategy for all his impending cases is to delay, ideally beyond the 2024 election in November, in the hopes that winning re-election could enable him to potentially pardon himself or direct his attorney general to drop the charges.The clear attempt to stave off the looming trial prompted the special counsel, Jack Smith, to attempt a rarely seen move to ask the US supreme court to resolve the presidential immunity question before the DC circuit had issued its own judgment.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionProsecutors made it plain in their 81-page court filing that they wanted to leapfrog the lower appeals court because they were concerned that the process – scheduling hearings and waiting for rulings – would almost certainly delay the trial date.But the supreme court declined to hear the matter last month, remanding the case back to the DC circuit and having the three-judge panel of Florence Pan, Michelle Childs and Karen Henderson issue its own decision first. In the interim, the case against Trump remains frozen.The decision has almost certainly slowed down Trump’s federal election interference case. Even if the DC circuit were to rule against Trump quickly, he can ask the full appeals court to rehear the case, and then has 90 days to lodge his own appeal to the supreme court. More

Donald Trump largely ducked speaking about the January 6 attack on the US Capitol during a campaign speech Saturday, which he delivered on the third anniversary of the insurrection, reflecting the degree to which Republican voters have absolved the former president of responsibility for that day’s deadly consequences.Trump’s remarks came a day after Joe Biden appeared in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, and spoke about how his presidential predecessor had urged his supporters to “fight like hell” shortly before they staged the Capitol attack.Trump brought up January 6 only once as he addressed hundreds of supporters in the town of Newton, Iowa, nine days before that state’s Republican caucuses are scheduled to kick off the 2024 presidential campaign. He repeated previous claims that the Democrat Biden, whom he is likely to face in a general election rematch in November, is the true threat to democracy.“You know this guy [Biden] goes around and says I’m a threat to democracy,” Trump said. “No, he’s a threat because he’s incompetent. He’s a threat to democracy.”“Nobody thought J6 was even a possibility,” Trump said later, without elaborating.Trump also attacked the former Republican representative Liz Cheney, who has been sharply critical of Trump since the January 6 attack, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol as legislators were certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory.On the other hand, Biden has repeatedly called Trump a threat to democracy on the trail, and that messaging has emerged as a central theme of his campaign so far.“We saw with our own eyes the violent mob storm the United States Capitol,” Biden said Friday. Referring to Trump, Biden continued: “He told the crowd to ‘fight like hell,’ and all hell was unleashed. He promised he would right them. Everything they did, he would be side by side with them. Then, as usual, he left the dirty work to others. He retreated to the White House.”Biden’s remarks were a clear attempt to balance out the approach at recent campaign events in Iowa by Trump’s – and those backing other Republican presidential hopefuls – who have downplayed the significance of January 6. Many of them have also embraced conspiracy theories regarding the events of that day.Trump himself has suggested during previous campaign stops that undercover FBI agents played a significant role in instigating the attack, an account not supported by official investigations.More than 1,200 people have been charged with taking part in the riot, and more than 900 have either pleaded guilty or been convicted following a trial.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides.Yet on Saturday, Hale Wilson, a Trump supporter from Des Moines who was at the Newton event, said of the attack: “It wasn’t really an insurrection. There were bad actors involved that got the crowd going.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump has been in Iowa to curry support before the state’s Republican caucus on 15 January, which is the first contest of the Republican presidential nominating contest. He currently leads all competitors by more than 30 percentage points in the state, according to most polls.Polls have also shown that a rematch with Biden later this year could be close and competitive despite 91 criminal charges pending against Trump, who was twice impeached during his time in the Oval Office.The criminal charges against Trump are for trying to subvert his defeat to Biden in the 2020 race, illegally retaining government secrets after he left the White House and giving hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who has reported having a sexual encounter with the former president during an earlier time in his marriage to Melania Trump.Trump additionally has grappled with civil litigation over his business practices and a rape allegation which a judge deemed to be “substantially true”.Biden on Friday said Trump’s January 6 denial betrayed an attempt “to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election”.“There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to do,” Biden remarked.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More