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    Prosecutors reiterate need for gag order against Trump in 2020 election case

    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 ahead of a hearing scheduled for 16 October in federal district court in Washington, accused Trump of continuing to make prejudicial public statements even after they had 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 US district judge Tanya Chutkan on 5 September, as they cited several threatening statements from Trump that could impact 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 chairman 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.”Trump has angrily pushed back at attempts to constrain his public remarks about the case as being politically motivated and had his lawyers previously complain to the judge that prosecutors were infringing on his first amendment rights, especially as he campaigns for another presidential term.But prosecutors rejected that characterization. The proposed gag order was narrowly tailored to limit Trump from making statements that could affect the outcome of the trial, prosecutors argued, such as about the identities or credibility of witnesses, or comments that could be intimidating.The additional problem with letting Trump go unchallenged, the prosecutors argued, was that he could continue to intentionally comment on witnesses and what they might say at trial months beforehand, which could poison the jury pool by making them adopt improper beliefs.“The defendant has made a large volume of public statements …… that would be unaffected by the proposed order,” the filing said. “All it would limit is the defendant’s use of his candidacy as a cover for making prejudicial public statements about this case.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe filing also raised the issue to the judge about how Trump appeared to be seeking special treatment as the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, saying he may have violated the terms of his release agreement when he visited a gun shop this week on a campaign swing through South Carolina.The incident involved Trump’s campaign spokesperson posting a video of the former president handling a custom Glock pistol and suggesting he wanted to buy the gun, which would be a federal offense because he is under indictment – but aides quickly denied he had done so.What actually happened with the gun is uncertain, not least because Trump would have to be a South Carolina resident to lawfully buy a firearm in that state. But prosecutors used the episode as an example of Trump benefiting from incendiary public statements and have others take responsibility.“The defendant either purchased a gun in violation of the law and his conditions of release, or seeks to benefit from his supporters’ mistaken belief that he did so,” the filing said, adding that Trump surely knew the effect of his words in all of his public statements. More

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    Trump official Jeffrey Clark loses bid to move Georgia trial to federal court

    A federal judge on Friday denied a request from Jeffrey Clark, the former Trump justice department official, to transfer from state to federal court his criminal case for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, saying he had failed to prove he had been acting within the scope of his official duties.The ruling from the US district judge Steven Jones, which came a day after Donald Trump decided against making a similar request, means Clark will be tried in Fulton county superior court – with its mainly Democratic jury pool – unless the ruling is overturned by the 11th circuit appeals court.Clark was charged last month alongside Donald Trump and top allies in the sprawling Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act case brought by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, because he had drafted a letter in December 2020 falsely claiming the justice department was investigating supposed election fraud in Georgia.The letter was never sent to Georgia officials and Clark had argued he had been acting within the scope of his official duties as the acting US assistant attorney general for the civil division when he drafted the memo, making him immune from state prosecution under a special federal law.But the judge rejected his arguments in a 15-page opinion that concluded the available evidence cut against him and his efforts to try to show he had satisfied a three-part test to determine whether he was eligible to move his case to federal court.“The letter pertained to election fraud and election interference concerns that were outside the gamut of his federal office. Consequently, Clark has not shown the required nexus for federal officer removal,” Jones wrote.Clark made two specific arguments at an evidentiary hearing last week: first, that he had been permitted to draft legal memos as the top official in the civil division, and second, that as an assistant attorney general, he could do work for any of the justice department’s sub-sections.The judge concluded that Clark’s first argument failed because election-related matters have never been in the purview of the civil division, which is involved in defending lawsuits that are filed against the United States or officers of the federal executive branch.The only witness to testify at the hearing, Jody Hunt, Clark’s predecessor as head of the civil division, also disclaimed Clark’s argument and affirmed that anything with respect to election irregularities would be handled by the civil rights division or the criminal division.The judge wrote that deposition transcripts showed that even Clark’s own assistant who helped him draft the letter, Kenneth Klukowski, had recounted to prosecutors he had been “shocked” at the assignment because “election-related matters are not part of the civil’s portfolio”.Clark’s lawyer had responded at the hearing that Clark had been in a unique position in 2020 because he defended the vice-president, Mike Pence, in an election-related lawsuit. But the judge dismissed that notion, saying Clark had to defend that suit because Pence was being sued as an actual federal officer.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJones also entirely rejected Clark’s second argument – that he had been acting within the scope of his justice department role because Trump could have delegated him authority to write the December 2020 letter – because he had failed to show any evidence that had actually happened.The contention from Clark’s lawyer Harry MacDougal at the hearing was that Trump had “ratified” Clark to look at election fraud allegations because he had been summoned to discuss the matter at an Oval Office meeting on 3 January 2020.However, the judge noted it was unclear whether Trump had expressly given Clark authority to write the letter. “Other than his counsel’s own vague and uncertain assertions, the Court has no evidence that the President directed Clark to work on election-related matters,” Jones wrote.“Instead, the evidence before this Court does not show the President’s involvement in this letter specifically until the January 3 meeting where the President decided not to send it to the Georgia officials,” Jones wrote, adding: “Any such delegation … would have been outside the scope of DoJ more broadly.” More

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    Trump ally is first to plead guilty in Georgia elections case

    Former Republican bail bondsman Scott Hall, one of the 19 people charged alongside Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia, entered into a plea agreement on Friday, becoming the first defendant to plead guilty in the sprawling criminal case.The surprise move from Hall came after he gave a recorded statement, it was revealed in court, to prosecutors who are almost certain to use that testimony against the former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell when she goes to trial in October accused of several of the same crimes.A live video of the court proceeding showed Hall pleading guilty to five counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties, a misdemeanor charge.Hall was sentenced to five years’ probation, a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service, and to write an apology letter to the state.The description of the plea agreement suggested prosecutors were interested in having Hall flip against Trump and the other co-defendants in the wider Rico case, but especially against people like Powell who had similar legal exposure to him and also had direct links to Trump.In addition to contacts with Powell, Hall also had a 63 minute phone call with former Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark on 2 January 2021 where they discussed the 2020 election results in Georgia, according to the indictment. Clark, another co-defendant, lost his bid to transfer his case to federal court on Monday.Hall was indicted by an Atlanta-area grand jury last month on charges, brought by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, that he had played a role in trying to reverse Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election in a brazen plot to access voting machines in Coffee county, Georgia.The scheme involved several Trump allies hiring a team of forensics experts that gained unauthorized access to the voting machines and copied virtually every part of the elections systems, before uploading them to a password-protected website that could be accessed by 2020 election deniers.A day after the Capitol attack in Washington, surveillance footage showed data experts from SullivanStrickler, a firm that specializes in “imaging”, or making exact copies, of electronic devices, arrive at the Coffee county election office and meeting with Hall as well as others.What happened inside the elections office is only partially captured on surveillance video, but records show the SullivanStrickler team imaged almost every component of the election systems, including ballot scanners, the server used to count votes, thumb drives and flash memory cards.Hall was charged with multiple counts including engaging in the Rico plot, conspiring to commit election fraud, conspiring to commit computer theft, conspiring to commit computer trespass, conspiracy to commit computer invasion of privacy and conspiracy to defraud the state of Georgia.Powell, the former Trump lawyer who was charged with many of the same criminal violations, has argued that she did nothing wrong because it was only her non-profit company that paid the forensics experts and that there had been authorization from officials to access the voting machines.The exact nature of the recorded statement that Hall gave prosecutors remains unclear because it took place before he revealed he had taken the plea agreement and was not available on the case docket.But Melissa Redmon, a former deputy Fulton county district attorney and assistant professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, said Hall probably got the agreement because his testimony would undercut Powell’s defense arguments that the voting machine breaches were above board.The jury selection for Powell’s case, where she is being tried alongside another ex-Trump lawyer called Kenneth Chesebro, is scheduled to start on 23 October. Powell and Chesebro are going separately from the other co-defendants after they requested a speedy trial under Georgia state law. More

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    Revealed: far-right Oath Keepers kept up dues payments after Capitol attack

    Oath Keepers members paid dues to the rightwing militia’s then vice-president for up to almost a year after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and months after the organization and its founder, Stewart Rhodes, were named in court filings as participants in the assault, according to publicly accessible transaction records on the payment platform Venmo.Those who made payments to an Oath Keepers leader on Venmo include an engineer whose employer provides satellite technology to US government agencies including the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Homeland Security, a former Department of Homeland Security employee whose tenure at the agency overlapped with his membership in the group, and a 2022 candidate for the Wyoming state senate.Others connected on Venmo to Rhodes or other organizational leaders include a US navy recruiting officer.The Guardian corroborated the identity of some of the individuals making payments using earlier hacks and leaks of Oath Keepers membership rolls, payment records and internal communications.Venmo transactions were public by default throughout most of the service’s history. Megan Squire is deputy director for Data Analytics and OSINT at the Southern Poverty Law Centre, and from 2017 she was one of the first to use Venmo transactions to understand the internal structure of groups like the Proud Boys.Squire said: “Venmo has had security issues since its inception. They have tried to fix them but only after high-profile privacy breaches involving people like Joe Biden.”The Oath Keepers transactions were recorded on the profile of Jason Ottersberg, a Cheyenne, Wyoming, man who has been publicly identified as a senior leader in the Oath Keepers.Ottersberg’s name, email address and a username – “seebeewyo” – were all revealed in a leak of information from the Oath Keepers website in 2021. Ottersberg is also named as the recipient on an Oath Keepers fundraising page on the extremist-friendly fundraising site Givesendgo.Ottersberg’s current username on Venmo is based on his name, but a scrape of his account with the open-source intelligence tool Venemy shows that his original user name was nationalokvp, indicating that he was presenting himself as the Oath Keepers national vice-president.The account’s transaction history shows payments to and from Ottersberg along with explanations of the payments.On 1 September 2021, an account carrying the name Michael Ray Williams made a payment to Jason Ottersberg on Venmo with the message “OK dues”. The account’s avatar is a promotional image for Williams’s political campaign bearing the slogans “Michael Ray Williams Wyoming Senate District 11” and “Giving the power back to the people”.In 2022, Michael Ray Williams ran for the Constitution party for the Wyoming state senate, but lost handily to the Republican Larry S Hicks. On the Constitution party’s website and Ballotpedia’s candidate survey he expressed anti-abortion, pro-gun and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments.Williams told Buzzfeed News in October 2021 that he was an Oath Keeper, but his payment of dues the month before confirms his ongoing links to the group at the time of his election campaign.The Guardian contacted Williams for comment via email.Others identified by the Guardian hold sensitive positions in business, the military and government. One of those identified is a senior figure at Space Systems Engineering at Echostar Corporation, headquartered in Englewood, Colorado.Echostar is also a major government contractor in potentially sensitive areas. Last year, the company announced that its subsidiary Hughes won a contract to create a private 5G network at a US navy base on Whidbey Island in Washington state, and the previous year trumpeted its success in bidding for satellite services to the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) Advanced Battle Management System project.Historically, the DoD has been Hughes’s biggest client, according to US government spending records. Current Hughes contracts include supplying satellite services to the Department of Homeland Security. The person identified by the Guardian was involved in developing satellite-related technologies, including a project to gain limited access to Nasa satellites.Another separate payment on 4 October 2021 came from an account of someone who was a DHS employee until June 2021, according to their LinkedIn profile. They had also recently applied for a job in a state department of corrections. A third person connected to Stewart Rhodes on Venmo and identified by the Guardian works in US navy recruitment in Texas.Venmo records show that other accounts are connected to Stewart Rhodes and Ottersberg. A Venmo “friend” connection does not necessarily indicate that the parties have exchanged money, but it does indicate that the parties have recorded one another as telephone contacts.Throughout 2021, at least nine people paid Ottersberg or were charged by him on Venmo with comments indicating that the payment was for dues, membership or a new membership.In turn, Ottersberg appeared to funnel money onwards to Rhodes. On 24, 25 and 26 October, payments from him all mention “Stewart”, including one to an account in the name of Chad Rogers.In January 2022, Rhodes was arrested in Plano, Texas, at the home of Chad Rogers, a licensed security officer. Later, during Rhodes’s trial, prosecutors detailed a 10 January 2021 meeting between Rhodes and Jason Alpers, a man who Rhodes believed could pass on his plea to Trump to retain the presidency by force if necessary. Alpers testified that Rogers was present at the meeting.Squire, the SPLC deputy director, said of the new Oath Keepers revelations that “it’s amazing to me that they’re still using open, non-privacy focused payment solutions”.She added: “They don’t seem to have institutional knowledge about previous things that have happened to other groups, so they repeat their mistakes.”Despite Ottersberg’s apparently senior role in the Oath Keepers, and his access to key players including Rhodes, he has faced no known legal consequences for his membership in the group. The last publicly visible payment from his Venmo account, however, is to his wife, and is simply captioned “Lawyer”. More

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    Cassidy Hutchinson says Republicans face ‘make-or-break’ moment on Trump

    The former Donald Trump White House aide who became a crucial witness to the January 6 attack says she believes the Republican party is facing a “make-or-break moment” over whether to nominate him in the 2024 presidential race.“We’re talking about a man who at the very essence of his being almost destroyed democracy in one day, and he wants to do it again,” Cassidy Hutchinson said of Trump during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow on Monday, a clear reference to the assault on the US Capitol that the ex-president’s supporters staged after his electoral defeat to his Democratic rival Joe Biden nearly three years ago.“He wants to run for president to do it again.”Alluding to the more than 90 charges pending against Trump across four separate criminal indictments, Hutchinson added: “He has been indicted four times since January 6. I would not have a clear conscience and be able to sleep at night if I were a Republican … that supported Donald Trump. And I think that if they’re not willing to split with that, then we’re in serious trouble.”In a separate notable portion of her interview with Maddow, Hutchinson addressed and summarily dismissed rumors that she had dated Matt Gaetz, the far-right Republican US congressman from Florida who helped spread the claims himself.“I will say on behalf of myself – I never dated Matt Gaetz,” said Hutchinson, who appeared on Maddow’s show to promote her memoir Enough, hitting bookshelves on Tuesday. Explaining that the pair had an “amicable working relationship” and “were good friends at points”, she added: “I have much higher standards in men.”Those remarks seemingly build on a cameo from Gaetz in Enough, in which the congressman is shown to unexpectedly take Hutchinson up on an offer to meet several Washington DC political aides out for drinks one night. Later that evening, according to Enough, Gaetz brushes his thumb across Hutchinson’s chin and tells her: “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a national treasure?”Despite the prominence of men like Trump and Gaetz in her party, Hutchinson reiterated that she still considered herself a Republican, though more in the mold of Senator Mitt Romney or the late president Ronald Reagan, whom some see as more moderate conservatives in retrospect.“I do not believe that Mr Trump is a strong Republican,” Hutchinson said. “In this election cycle, in my opinion, it’s a make-or-break moment for the Republican party. Now is the time if these politicians [in the party] … want to make the break and want to take the stand – they have to do it now.”Under subpoena, Hutchinson gave some of the most dramatic testimony about the Capitol attack during live congressional hearings in the summer of 2022. One key moment she described being told about was Trump’s accosting of a Secret Service agent and his lunging for the steering wheel of the car he was in when he was told he would not be driven to the Capitol on the day of the attack.That wasn’t all she endured that day. In Enough, Hutchinson recounts how on January 6 she was groped by Rudy Giuliani, the Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor.A short while after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell”, they mounted the January 6 attack on the Capitol in a desperate but unsuccessful maneuver aimed at preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election weeks earlier.The uprising has been linked to nine deaths. More than 1,100 people have been charged in connection with the attack, and the majority of them have either pleaded guilty or been convicted by judges or juries at trial.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges filed against him. The various charges collectively accuse him of retaining classified documents after his presidency, hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, and efforts to subvert his 2020 defeat which led to the January 6 attack.Despite the legal peril, Trump maintains dominant polling leads over other candidates pursuing the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.Enough plots out the 27-year-old Hutchinson’s trek from being an earnest believer in Trump to disenchantment with him. She was working for Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, at the time of the January 6 attack.Martin Pengelly contributed reporting More

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    US Capitol rioter who attacked photographer sentenced to five years

    A man who attacked an Associated Press photographer and threw a flagpole and smoke grenade at police officers guarding the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, was sentenced in a federal court on Friday to five years in prison.Rodney Milstreed, 56, of Finksburg, Maryland, “prepared himself for battle” on January 6 by injecting steroids and arming himself with a four-foot wooden club disguised as a flagpole, prosecutors said.“He began taking steroids in the weeks leading up to January 6, so that he would be ‘jacked’ and ready because, he said, someone needed to ‘hang for treason’ and the battle might come down to hand-to-hand combat,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.A prosecutor showed US district judge James Boasberg videos of Milstreed’s attacks outside the Capitol, as supporters of Donald Trump marched on and later invaded the Capitol in the vain hopes of preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.“I know what I did that day was very wrong,” he said.Capitol police officer Devan Gowdy suffered a concussion when Milstreed hurled his wooded club at a line of officers.“January 6 is a day that will be burned into my brain and my nightmares for the rest of my life,” Gowdy told the judge. “The effects of this domestic terrorist attack will never leave me.”Gowdy told Milstreed that he “will always be looked at as a domestic terrorist and traitor” for his actions on January 6. The officer has since left the police.Milstreed was arrested in May 2022 in Colorado and pleaded guilty in April to assault charges and possessing an unregistered firearm.A cache of weapons and ammunition was found at Milstreed’s Maryland home and in his Colorado hotel room investigators found 94 vials of probably illegal steroids.Milstreed spewed violent, threatening rhetoric on social media in the weeks before the insurrection.He attended Trump’s rally near the White House earlier on January 6 and then, with the president urging his supporters to overturn the election result, followed the crowd of supporters of the Republican to the Capitol.Milstreed was “front and center” as rioters and police clashed outside the Capitol, prosecutors said. He tossed his wooden club at a police line and a video captured him retrieving a smoke grenade from the crowd and throwing it back at police across a barricade.Milstreed then joined other rioters in attacking an AP photographer, grabbing the photographer’s backpack and yanking him down some steps.Milstreed used Facebook to update his friends on the riot in real time.“Man I’ve never seen anything like this. I feel so alive,” he wrote, sharing photos of blood on a floor outside the Capitol, also writing it “felt good” to punch the photographer.More than 1,100 people have been charged with January 6-related federal crimes. More

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    Ex-Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson claims Rudy Giuliani groped her on January 6

    Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump aide turned crucial January 6 witness, says in a new book that she was groped by Rudy Giuliani, who was “like a wolf closing in on its prey”, on the day of the attack on the Capitol.Describing meeting with Giuliani backstage at Donald Trump’s speech near the White House before his supporters marched on Congress in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Hutchinson says the former New York mayor turned Trump lawyer put his hand “under my blazer, then my skirt”.“I feel his frozen fingers trail up my thigh,” she writes. “He tilts his chin up. The whites of his eyes look jaundiced. My eyes dart to [Trump adviser] John Eastman, who flashes a leering grin.“I fight against the tension in my muscles and recoil from Rudy’s grip … filled with rage, I storm through the tent, on yet another quest for Mark.”Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, was Hutchinson’s White House boss. Hutchinson’s memoir, Enough, describes her journey from Trump supporter to disenchantment, and her role as a key witness for the House January 6 committee. It will be published in the US next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.Since Trump left office, Giuliani has landed in extraordinary legal and financial trouble. Like Trump, Giuliani has pleaded not guilty to 13 criminal racketeering and conspiracy charges in Georgia, over attempted election subversion. Giuliani was also found liable for defamation of two Georgia election workers. The Washington DC Bar Association has recommended he be disbarred.Struggling to pay his legal expenses, his luxury New York apartment up for sale, and Giuliani also faces a $1.3m lawsuit from his own lawyer, seeking unpaid fees, and a $10m suit from a former personal assistant. In that suit, Giuliani is accused of offences including abuse of power, wage theft, sexual assault and harassment.A representative for Giuliani did not immediately respond to a Guardian request for comment about Hutchinson’s description of her interaction with the former mayor.Describing the events on January 6, the deadly culmination of Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden, Hutchinson writes that she “experience[d] anger, bewilderment, and a creeping sense of dread that something really horrible [was] going to happen”.“I find Rudy in the back of the tent with, among others, John Eastman,” she continues. “The corners of his mouth split into a Cheshire cat smile. Waving a stack of documents, he moves towards me, like a wolf closing in on its prey.“‘We have the evidence. It’s all here. We’re going to pull this off.’ Rudy wraps one arm around my body, closing the space that was separating us. I feel his stack of documents press into the small of my back. I lower my eyes and watch his free hand reach for the hem of my blazer.“‘By the way,’ he says, fingering the fabric, ‘I’m loving this leather jacket on you.’ His hand slips under my blazer, then my skirt,” Hutchinson writes.
    Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse is available from the following organizations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html More

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    CCTV appears to show Lauren Boebert vaping during Beetlejuice musical – video

    Newly released surveillance video from a Denver theater appears to show Lauren Boebert vaping, singing, filming and disturbing other patrons during a Beetlejuice musical play. The US congresswoman has issued an apology after being kicked out of the performance in Denver for inappropriate behavior, an experience she has called ‘difficult and humbling’ More